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Commander’s decision. And there was more to the story than that, but that was for O’Gilroy to tell, if he chose.
    Dagner nodded again. “There’s nothing like secret service work for breeding myths and legends. I wonder if it’s that we’re the last place that isn’t swamped with paperwork? If they’d had paper and typewriting machines in Ancient Greece we’d never have heard of their gods and heroes, just their orders of the day and ration returns. D’you trust him?”
    “I do.”
    When Ranklin didn’t say any more, Dagner asked: “Could he tell our counter-intelligence people anything useful about his erstwhile colleagues in Ireland?”
    “‘Could’ I don’t know. Certainly he didn’t.”
    Dagner raised his eyebrows gently. “And you trust him.”
    “I do tend to trust a man who refuses to betray his friends.”
    “Yes.” But it was another meaningless sound and Ranklin sensed that Dagner was shelving rather than concluding the topic. “Now, to the rest of our flock: what do you make of the new boys?”
    “So far, no more than what their CR’s tell us. If there’s a common denominator, it’s that they all started off as go-getters—” He saw Dagner’s puzzlement at the American slang and made a hasty revision; “—recommended for accelerated promotion, then something got lost along the way. Two of them were down to ‘delayed promotion’ by the end. Collectively, I’d say their last CO’s were only too glad to be rid of them.”
    “Quite,” Dagner agreed. “Not exactly the cream of the crop.”
    “In the British Army – I don’t know about the Indian – you won’t get the best regimental officers volunteering for Intelligence work. No promotion, no medals.”
    “We certainly don’t want glory-hunters . . . But at least they volunteered.”
    Ranklin said nothing. Army interpretations of the word “volunteer” would fill a lexicon. Technically, he himself had volunteered. Dagner continued: “The trouble is, I haven’t your experience of command, of bringing up young officers. I was working so much by myself. So I may be no judge . . . But they seem bright enough.”
    Ranklin nodded. “And they’re what we’ve got.”
    “Quite. Now – I’d better know what’s going on. What was O’Gilroy doing in Belgium?”
    “He was in Brussels looking at some documents – technical drawings – a commercial firm of spies had offered for sale. And some Italian senator who was coming to a meeting at our Foreign Office had gone to our embassy there and said he thought his life was in danger and could he have an armed escort? They asked us, and O’Gilroy was free, so he took it on. I gather that there
was
an incident, but this was on the telephone . . .”
    “So the Foreign Office can occasionally find a use for us . . . May I assume they’ll be told the job was properly carried out? Good. But did you say a firm of
commercial
spies?”
    Yes, Ranklin realised, that must sound a bit odd. I accept them because they were there when I came into this business and everything seemed odd. “You find such people, particularly in Brussels and Vienna, buying and selling secrets. Really, it’s no more than a formal version of the informers you probably had in the bazaars at Peshawar and Lhandi Kotal. Some are better than others, of course, but they are useful on the technical side, now we seem to be living in an age of Secret Weapons. What with submarines and torpedoes and mines and all sorts of flying machines, it’s risky to disbelieve anything.”
    “Or, of course, believe too much of it,” Dagner said thoughtfully.

5
    “How very nice to see you back in town, Mrs Finn,” said one of the sub-managers or floor-walkers or whatever Debenham’s called the people it dressed as diplomatists. Corinna flashed him a dazzling smile while privately thinking it extraordinary presumption to assume that just because she hadn’t been in his damned shop for a few weeks she couldn’t have