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PC, and a collection of flats, each a huge, blown-up photo of London: London at night, London by the river. Directly behind the desk, situated so that it would be framed by the camera, was a mock window with venetian blinds. The scenes could be swung behind the window, and the blinds raised or lowered, to convey the impression of location-reporting as the situation warranted.
    Behind the blinds on this occasion was a view of the building across the road from the CBC—red bricks and white window sashes. A simple, effective lie.
    “I chose this location with your well-being in mind, Simon,” Evan provided, shutting the door. Beyond the studio, television monitors were playing out scenes of the armoured siege of the Russian White House, and its defense by the citizens of Moscow. “Very few people are going to question a British media personality paying a social visit on the CBC.”
    Simon Darrow looked hot and nervous. He sat down in the newsreader’s chair, unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, and rolled up his cuffs.
    “Mind doing something with those lights?” he complained.
    Evan obliged. He turned off the rack of overhead spots, leaving just the desk lamp, and the exit sign over the door. He set the video camera in motion on his way back, framing Simon Darrow in the false window. The man didn’t look well.
    “Would you like a glass of water?”
    Darrow put on a pained expression. “Your concern for my health’s touching,” he said, cynically. “See if you can cadge a couple of aspirins from the ladies, while you’re at it.”
    Evan located a supply of paper cups in the men’s washroom, and a packet of Panadols in a vacant desk in the office opposite the studio. Darrow swallowed them quickly, as if he was unsure about trusting his insides to keep them down.
    “I don’t even know why you’re bothering with me,” he said. “I’m nothing. Nobody. Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time? Or has the new world order suddenly made you lot redundant?”
    Evan smiled. “Try to think of this as an exercise in ecology, Simon. A minute study of the planet’s oceans. Try to think of yourself as a single celled entity, drifting aimlessly in a soup of undersea nutrients. Plankton. Protozoa. Fish food.”
    “Fish food,” Darrow muttered, following the aspirins with a second, swift swallow of water.
    “There is a shark in our family of intelligence communities, Simon, and he’s been there for quite some time, working his way up through the ranks, blowing covers, sabotaging operations. Sabotaging lives. Not just one or two lives, Simon, and not only the lives of the crew aboard the Cilla Rose . A lot of good agents were sacrificed over the years to save the skin of our clever friend. That’s why I’m bothering with you, Simon. I want to know where to find the fish that swallowed you. And after that I’ll find out who swallowed him—or her. And so on, up the food chain, until I’ve hooked my shark.”
    “Why don’t you just go and ask the Russians? We’re all starting to be good friends now, aren’t we? Everything swept under the carpet? Files thrown open, conspiracies traded?”
    “Friends of a sort, certainly, Simon. But even good friends have been known to keep secrets from one another in the interests of national —and personal—security. And with the current state of affairs in Moscow being what they are…”
    Evan’s voice trailed off as Darrow finished his water.
    “Get on with it,” he muttered.
    “Suppose you begin by telling me how you were recruited.”
    “I wasn’t ‘recruited’. I was approached. I fell into it by accident. I was…” He smiled wanly. “Entrapped. I’m sure you’re familiar with the technique.”
    “What was her name?”
    “I don’t know what was on her birth certificate, but she told me her name was Jean.”
    “Jean what?” Evan was taking notes with a BBC pen on a sheet of red and white CBC letterhead.
    “Jean-can’t-remember, offhand,”