‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

‘Sure, Mikey,’ he said.

‘They didn’t contain what you were looking for? What you needed?’

‘It all helps – I wasn’t expecting gold dust.’

‘You sure you’re OK?’

‘What is this – the third degree?’

‘You don’t look well. You don’t look yourself.’

‘So now you’re a doctor,’ he said. ‘You’ve only just become a player, done a little chickenshit thing, and now you think you’re a doctor as well.’

But his irritation subsided almost as quickly as it had arisen and I knew too that something had altered in our relationship. I would still play the role of subservient – and in outward and practical matters that was what I was, even though I couldn’t help feeling an intellectual superiority to him – but neither of us could entirely believe the other was a complete fool. While he continued to spar with me and occasionally offer his exasperated scorn, I think in the coming weeks he understood I could stand up if that was what was needed. And my involvement was increasingly required as I reprised my visit to Greenberg’s office, and on some of those incursions I suspected that the requested material was destined for DAO and in particular George Bloomfield. On occasions, as instructed, I slipped documents into the burn bag that was destined for the incinerator and once I inserted a document that Donovan had given me, and for all I know that he had written, into a particular file. It struck me then, as it continues to do, how much energy must have been dissipated in this fragmented world of conflicted interests and power struggles. We were engaged in the dying throes of a war that had cost so many lives and yet there was no unity of political or military purpose, and strong-willed individuals and centres of power were allowed to continue imposing readings of events depending on their particular point of view or their vested self-interest. And when this was compared to the relentless unity of purpose displayed by our enemy, our ultimate defeat can hardly come as a surprise. But it’s not as simple as that because, if you were to ask me, I would probably once have said that the very thing I thought of as our weakness stood as our national strength. So perhaps it is the multiplicity of unfettered voices that best allows us to be who we are. However, time and events change things and now so many bitterly discordant voices begin to proliferate I’m no longer sure it’s a belief I still harbour.