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the back of the building. All the windows had blinds down and the dozen desks were mostly occupied by his fellow students bent over papers or slowly
tapping the keyboards of heavy grey Olympia typewriters. They were writing up the results of the exercise. The only one to look up when Charles entered was Gerry, their instructor, slumped over the
podium in his shirtsleeves and making pencil notes which he kept crossing out. The film screen was unrolled and blank behind him.
    ‘Welcome, Carlos. Late lunch?’ Gerry altered or invented names for everyone.
    ‘Late agent.’
    ‘Agents are never late in Exercise Tabby Cat. Never accidentally, anyway.’ Gerry grinned and pushed his oversize glasses up his nose. Approaching forty, he had unruly fair hair, an
expressive, good-natured, prematurely lined face and a generally dishevelled appearance. ‘Better crack on with your write-up. We’ve got the moving pictures soon. Big treat. You’ve
missed tea.’
    Charles went to his desk. The worst part of exercises was the write-up. It was supposed to be concise and properly divided between factual account, intelligence product – if any –
and opinion and recommendation. It was supposed to contain everything important and nothing unimportant, with the proviso that some unimportant things might later turn out to have been
important.
    ‘Never weary the busy A officer reader,’ Gerry often told them. ‘Action officers are dealing with at least twenty other cases apart from yours and they don’t want to read
about sunsets in deathless prose. At the same time, when your case goes bottom up and the proverbial hits the fan, as is not unknown’ – he would grin and push his glasses again –
‘you will be the first to be blamed for not having told the A officer something which at the time he did not want to know.’
    When Rebecca, the training course secretary, entered the students – all men between their early twenties and early thirties – looked up. ‘Message for Charles,’ she said,
smiling more confidently now than in the early days when she used to blush through her suntan as they all looked at her. ‘C/Sov wants to see you a.s.a.p.’
    Controller/Soviet Bloc was in charge of all Soviet and Eastern European operations.
    ‘Found you out already,’ called Roger, from the far side of the room.
    ‘Wants more sugar in his tea,’ said Christopher Westfield, a plump former merchant banker who was said to have taken a salary cut of three-quarters when he joined.
    ‘Probably disgusted by your anti-surveillance precautions,’ said Gerry. ‘Becky, please politely convey to C/Sov that Carlos will sprint over to Head Office as soon as he has
finished here, which will be some time after six. Meanwhile, let’s be having your write-ups soon, gentle men.’ He rubbed his hands as he separated both words. ‘I’ll be
having some more tea.’ He and Rebecca left the room.
    Charles looked across at Roger. ‘Is that mine?’
    Yawning, Roger held up the bottom of his tie and considered it. ‘Possibly. Probably. Shirt, too, maybe. All my own teeth, though.’
    Desmond Kimmeridge, a former cavalry officer known, thanks to Gerry, as Debonair, glanced at the tie. ‘I should let him keep it if I were you.’
    Gerry returned rubbing his hands. ‘Right, that’s it. Finish your write-ups later, in your own time. Meanwhile, mes enfants , we have a film show. Windows and blinds fully
closed, please, for the Secret Intelligence Service’s very own Keystone Cops. Probably all of you thought you were under surveillance at some point during this morning’s exercise, and
you should’ve specified times and places in your write-ups, with descriptions of surveillants. Perceived surveillants. Imaginary surveillants. None of you was, you see, except one. Cheaper
that way. Let it roll, Becky.’
    After a couple of false starts and the usual teasing, Rebecca coaxed the cumbersome apparatus at the back of the room into action. Charles