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within
the Soviet Union, were similiarly reformed and renamed.
    But the prestigious First Chief Directorate, with responsibility for foreign espionage and intelligence operations, continued its operations without interruption. Except for two changes of name,
that is. The first such change, to Centralnoye Sluzhba Razvyedki, or the Central Intelligence Service of the USSR, occurred in 1991. That designation lasted only until January 1992, when it then
became the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi, the name under which it still operates. The only other significant change at the time was the appointment of Yevgeny Primakov, an experienced
professional intelligence officer, as the organization’s first head. Neither of these changes had any practical effect upon the ongoing operations at Yasenevo, apart from alterations in
section titles and several irritating and largely unnecessary revisions to the internal telephone directory.
    The SVR retained control of all agents recruited and run by the KGB, and has been diligently increasing their numbers ever since, not least because the break-up of the former USSR has
significantly added to the number of countries from which Russia now requires intelligence data.
    The new organization continues to work from the former KGB’s sixty-acre complex of offices at Yasenevo – bearing more than a passing resemblance to the headquarters of the Central
Intelligence Agency at Langley, Virginia. The main building was designed by Finnish architects and its construction utilized considerable quantities of aluminium and glass. The original
seven-storey structure is shaped like three-pointed star, but is now dwarfed by a new twenty-two-floor extension situated at the far end of the western arm of the core building.
    Raya Kosov walked towards the extremity of the northeasterly wing, passing on her way the separate entrance reserved for senior officers. She pushed through the glass double doors of the main
entrance, stepped into a wide marble foyer,and again showed her pass to further SVR sentries. Striding past the bust of Feliks Dzerzhinsky standing in the middle of the foyer, she crossed to the
news-stand to one side, where she bought a magazine. She then passed through a further checkpoint and into the new extension building, before stopping at the main bank of elevators.
    As the doors opened, she stepped into the lift, and pressed the button for the fifteenth floor.
    Paxton Hall, Felsham, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
    The land had been a part of the Paxton family estate in Suffolk since 1675, but the proximity of marshy fenland and the difficulty of providing proper drainage had ensured
that it remained relatively unproductive. In 1724 Roger Paxton decided to erect a new family seat at the edge of the land, and within eight years the Paxton family had built the Hall and moved
in.
    Roger Paxton’s abiding passion, and his ultimate ruin, was gambling, and in 1742 ownership of the house, and the six acres of woodland that surrounded it, passed to one Giles de Verney in
settlement of numerous debts. The new owner took up residence with his family, put up with the damp and cold for just over two years, and then gave the property to his cousin Charles.
    Charles de Verney actually liked living in the Hall, and his descendants continued to reside there until the early years of the twentieth century. The last de Verney to own the property was
Edith, who survived her husband by the better part of forty years and, after his death in 1876, retreated to the Hall in her widow’s weeds.
    With the passing years, she became increasingly eccentric and erratic in her behaviour, virtually never leaving the premises and steadily filling each room of the large house with rubbish. Edith
finally died in her small single bedroom at one end of the east wing, all alone as she’d been for fifteen years, and her body wasn’t found there for nearly three weeks.
    William Verney – whose branch of the family had