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notice that this is not the first time you have been party to a… a what should we call it, I wonder?”
    “A flap,” said Hopko.
    Patterson stayed silent.
    “Quite,” said Bastable. “Last year. Operation STONE CIRCLE .” She licked a finger, turned another page. She’s attempting gravitas, thought Patterson. “Says here you were responsible for exfiltrating two agents from China by means of an extremely dangerous contingency operation. Rather blotted your copy-book, as I recall.”
    “The inquiry found not.”
    “All undertaken without the necessary authorizations and permissions.”
    “The inquiry found that I acted… excusably.”
    “Sod the inquiry. What on earth were you doing?”
    “I’ll tell you, if you like. We were spying. Operation STONE CIRCLE got us inside classified Chinese computer networks. It worked. For once. We used a Chinese asset, and a British journalist as cutout and courier. The two of them did everything we asked of them, and the entire operation bled gold. Then some cretin on the seventh floor of this Service decided to hand over operational control to an external player. To a private company. And the whole thing went belly up. Read the report.” Patterson felt the shock of memory, thought of sitting alone in the P section watching the operation die, watching her agent run. She thought of Mangan’s voice on the phone, rigid with fear, and of the ruthless, sharp-eyed bastard around which the whole operation had revolved. They’d called him “Peanut.” She wondered for a second what had happened to him, where he was.
    Hopko was looking at her, a
there-you-go-again
look. Bust-your-balls’s face was reddening.
    “People died,” she said.
    “People do.”
    “There was a girl involved, wasn’t there. What happened to her?”
    “Ting. She was the journalist’s assistant in Beijing. They were… having an affair. She was arrested.”
    “Charming.”
    Human Resources tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear, smirked at Patterson.
    “You do seem to be a sort of Typhoid Mary of espionage, don’t you? People expiring left and right. Getting carted off to the Lubyanka. Or its Chinese equivalent.” She glanced at Mobbs. Looking for approval, thought Patterson. The Director of Requirements and Production was reading the file, doggedly. Hopko was looking at the ceiling.
    “I must say,” Bastable went on, “I sense that the Controllerate has been very accommodating, has allowed you every chance, but from my perspective, I have to ask if your… your background really has prepared you for operations.”
    There it is, thought Patterson. There it is.
Background.
    Hopko was leaning back in her chair, eyes half-closed. Patterson wondered if she was smiling.
    “Well?” said Bastable.
    “I’m not sure I heard a question,” said Patterson.
    Bastable’s eyes flickered with irritation.
    “Well, let me make it very clear, then. I sense an impulsiveness and a lack of judgment in you, as evidenced by your role in STONE CIRCLE , and in your handling of the lately departed CAMBER . Please tell me why you should retain your operational role.”
    Patterson shifted in her chair, but it was the D/RP who spoke.
    “Out of interest, what happened to the journalist, the access agent in STONE CIRCLE ? What was his name?”
    “Philip Mangan,” said Hopko.
    “Mangan, that’s right. He was a rather clever bloke, as I remember.”
    Bastable was regarding him with a frozen expression.
    “He’s marinading in East Africa,” said Hopko. “Keeping his mouth shut in this life and the next.”
    Mobbs closed the file, placed his hands on the table and spoke directly to Patterson with an air of finality.
    “All right. All right. While you retain the confidence of your Head of Controllerate, you will remain in your operational role. I will expect to see performance reviews that reflect that confidence.”
    Hopko was nodding, listening to him with a fixed, admiring smile, one which Patterson