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the Commanders sound-proofed inner room.
    Ranklin directed the rearrangement of chairs into a rough line. Three of the new recruits were Army officers, one a Marine, and all around thirty years old. They had trickled in over the past week and he knew very little about them apart from their reports. And CR’s were tricky things, supposedly frank assessments by former CO’s, but seen by the reportee himself. It helped if you knew the CO’s – which he didn’t – and could read between the lines, which he had been trying to do.
    He gave a mental shrug; whatever the CR’s said, these were the people he had to try and train. And it wasn’t your seniors who forced you into believing in what you were doing, it was having damned juniors whom you mustn’t disillusion.
    After precisely five minutes, Dagner reappeared. He stood looking at them for a moment, cautiously tested a table for its solidity, then sat on the corner of it, swinging one long leg. “Smoke if you want to,” he invited them, then began: “We – you and I – are all new boys in this Bureau. Although I’ve played the Game out in India for a few years, already I’ve realised that I’ve got a great deal to
un
learn in the very different climate of Europe. So we’re starting at the bottom of the ladder together.”
    He had an easy confidence, Ranklin conceded. It took that to admit ignorance to subordinates yet be sure you wouldn’t lose their respect.
    “But one thing I think I shall find is the same: that there comes a time when all the scaffolding of authority falls away and you have to stand alone. And it is not how you cope with that loneliness that will make you an effective agent but how you do more than cope, how you decide and act.” He paused, then went on thoughtfully, almost diffidently: “It can help to remember that at such moments you are working
directly
for your country. The link is simple and unimpeded. I suggest you let that be your guide.
    “Now—” he relaxed and let a small, friendly smile show; “—we aren’t going to send you out equipped with only a few noble thoughts. Captain . . . R is laying on a training programme to give you some basic knowledge and skills that you’ll find useful in the field. That will begin—” A telephone rang and Ranklin almost knocked over his chair in reaching it.
    “I thought I asked you not to put any calls through here,” he whispered huskily.
    The telephone girl was unimpressed. “It’s Mr O’Gilroy, sir.”
    “All right, I’ll come out there. Don’t lose him.” He hung up, nodded apologetically at Dagner and tiptoed out.
    The outermost room of the suite was both spartan and had the Feminine Touch, being staffed by girls, and one widow, of good naval and military families. All wore a semi-uniform of dark skirt and demure high-necked white blouse fixed with a bow-tie or cameo brooch. Somebody – perhaps they had organised a rota – brought in fresh flowers for each desk every day, and there were cheerfully dull prints of Scottish landscapes on the walls.
    The telephonist indicated a spare instrument, then did something brisk and technical with her wires and plugs. Ranklin picked up the earpiece and said: “Hello?”
    O’Gilroy sounded very stilted and exaggeratedly Irish. “Matt? Matt? Is it yeself, Matt?”
    “It’s me.” He settled himself for an obscure and roundabout conversation; O’Gilroy wisely didn’t trust telephone operators. “Where are you speaking from?”
    “The hotel. Jest got into town. Seems like nobody was meeting us.”
    Blast Scotland Yard. They’d promised to have someone ready to take over from O’Gilroy the moment he came ashore at Harwich. Arranging that had been a courtesy on the Bureau’s part, to demonstrate that their people were not “active” on British soil.
    “Sorry about that. I’ll remind them. Did you have a good crossing?”
    “Wasn’t exactly a storm.” That probably meant a flat calm; O’Gilroy was a dedicatedly bad