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King rewarded her by exceeding her wildest expectations, becoming in due time an outstanding student who worked his way through secondary
education and exhibited such promise that he was taken into US Government Service under which sponsorship he won an excellent degree and then was sent to the UK to do a postgraduate thesis at
Oxford. Now, at the age of twenty-six, this was the first time that he could not make his monthly visit back home to his mother’s small house in a small town.
    King Offenbach was older than the undergraduates with whom he shared life at Oxford and he had little in common with any of them. In addition, he was a self-effacing man, much more inclined to
listen than to offer opinions. Despite his colour, King had a talent for melding into the background, present but not accounted for.
    King’s course at Oxford was for one year, and David first met him one gloomy evening in November 1964. He was running late for an appointment with his tutor as he rounded a corner in his
college and collided with the unbending Offenbach frame. To make matters worse, David assumed him to be a tourist visitor or a new member of staff and had been less than polite.
    From such an unpromising start can sometimes grow the strongest relationships. People would say of Offenbach that he stood a little apart from the rest of them by reason of his age and others
would cite his colour, his Deep South accent or his religious fervour. Or could it have been the ‘transatlantic flavour’ as one Don famously labelled a prejudice for which he could find
no other name.
    It was Pente Broke Smith who became closest to Kingston Offenbach, and even he talked of deep and still waters. Pente remarked one day to David, ‘I know this is being pretty pompous, but I
reckon that on a spiritual level, King will always keep a bit back. He has this compulsion to hold onto his reserve. But of course that personality trait is cranked up further by his
profession.’
    David looked at him with surprise.
    ‘What profession? He’s a student like the rest of us. Just a little more mature, that’s all. Oh, and a bit darker too!’
    ‘Dimwit’, rejoined Pente as they walked together, ‘no David, you’re missing it. Our Kingston is on the CIA payroll and has been since he was at school, I shouldn’t
wonder.’
    ‘Balls,’ said David, but he had his doubts even then.
    David, Alexa, Pente, Conrad and King: a group of friends drawn into a coterie which was recognised by their many colleagues and contacts throughout the university — so much so that someone
dubbed them the ‘Oxford Five’, a collective which they were all happy to embrace and to retain down the years to come.
    There was another man too, in his own way just as vital an ingredient, but he was not at Oxford and was about as different to David Heaven as could be imagined. Perhaps that’s why it
worked as well as it did. In the long vacation of David’s second year, he joined a party of bright young characters to spend a month on the Riviera near Menton. The arrangement was as might
be expected. One fellow undergraduate blessed with plenty of money and some good connections is keen to acquire a wider circle of friends and thus a house party is assembled.
    They swam, sailed, caroused and gambled. Towards the end of the holiday, they were returning from a casino outing when one of the party’s cars, with David at the wheel, was in a minor
traffic jam collision with a sprightly sports car driven by a young man of about his age. Damage was minimal, there was no police involvement and hardly any delay. But the following day brought a
telephone call for David from the other party, politely asking him over for a quick drink to deal with some insurance questions. What the hell, David said to himself, and went. That was the
introduction to his first employer who was to become also his business partner, mentor and a much valued friend.
    Unlike some of his companions in Menton, it