“Lance, I don’t think you should bandy about notions of that sort,” the brigadier said. “They might come back to bite you on the arse.”

“Of course, you’re right, Roger, and I try to keep my ass out of the way of people like Sir Timothy.”

“Good. I’m looking forward to seeing a bit of your shop,” Fife-Simpson said, desperately trying to change the subject.

Lance scratched his head. “There was another incident in which you and Sir Tim participated, I believe. Let’s see, what was it?”

Lance’s phone buzzed, and he picked it up. “Send her in, please.” He hung up and turned to Fife-Simpson. “One of our brilliant young ladies is going to be your shepherd in our meadow.”

Fife-Simpson was vastly relieved that Lance had been interrupted.

There was a rap on the door, and a middle-aged woman with a cropped haircut and dressed in a baggy tweed suit entered the room.

“Ah, here we are,” Lance said. “Meg Tillman, this is Brigadier Sir . . . Excuse me, I’m getting ahead of myself . . . Brigadier Roger Fife-Simpson, the shiny new deputy director of MI-6, an organization that has never had a deputy director until the brigadier came along and impressed everybody. Roger, Meg is known around our shop as one of our brightest minds, and she is an expert on our history and mission. She’s going to give you the two-and-a-half-dollar tour of both Langley and Camp Peary, our training facility, and answer all your questions.”

Lance stood up. “Oh, I remember the other thing now. You and Sir Tim served in Belfast together, didn’t you?”

“We did. We were both young lieutenants at the time.” He made to move toward his guide, but Lance held him back.

“Let’s see, as legend has it, you two young fellows were in search of—how shall I put it?—just the right sort of bar . . . weren’t you? And you somehow got it wrong and ended up in a nest of IRA vipers and were set upon. You managed to occupy their attention long enough for Lieutenant Tim to fetch a squad of British military policemen, and they got to you in the nick of time, just before the Irish would have cut your balls off.”

“That’s not quite the way it happened,” Roger said, blushing.

“Oh, of course it was. I was in Belfast at the time, at the Royal Ulster Hospital’s casualty ward, getting a flesh wound attended to, when they brought you in. You were a mess. Sir Tim was very upset about it, I recall, and you spent a few days in hospital, closely attended by your friend.”

“It was quite different . . .”