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working here, anyway.”
    Sir Nigel turned from the window and his study of the lights of the West End across the water. “It looks like Munro, wouldn’t you say?” he asked.
    “I would have thought so,” answered Personnel.
    “What’s he like? I’ve read the file; I know him slightly. Give me the personal touch.” “Secretive.”
    “Good.”
    “A bit of a loner.” “Blast.”
    “It’s a question of his Russian,” said Personnel. “The other two have good, working Russian. Munro can pass for one. He doesn’t normally. Speaks to them in strongly accented, moderate Russian. When he drops that, he can blend right in. It’s just that, well, to run Mallard and Merganser at such short notice, brilliant Russian would be an asset.”
    “Mallard” and “Merganser” were the code names for the two low-level agents recruited and run by Lessing. Russians being run inside the Soviet Union by the Firm tended to have bird names, in alphabetical order according to the date of recruitment. The two M s were recent acquisitions. Sir Nigel grunted.
    “Very well. Munro it is. Where is he now?” “On training. At Beaconsfield. Tradecraft.”
    “Have him here tomorrow afternoon. Since he’s not married, he can probably leave quite quickly. No need to hang about. I’ll have the Foreign Office agree to the appointment in the morning as Lessing’s replacement in the Commercial Section.”

    Beaconsfield, being in the Home County of Buckinghamshire—which is to say, within easy reach of central London—was years ago a favored area for the elegant country homes of those who enjoyed high and wealthy status in the capital. By the early seventies, most of the buildings played host to seminars, retreats, executive courses in management and marketing, or even religious observation. One of them housed the Joint Services School of Russian and was quite open about it;
    another, smaller house, contained the training school of the SIS and was not open about it at all.
    Adam Munro’s course in tradecraft was popular, not the least because it broke the wearisome routine of enciphering and deciphering. He had his class’s attention, and he knew it.
    “Right,” said Munro that morning in the last week of the month. “Now for some snags and how to get out of them.”
    The class was still with expectancy. Routine procedures were one thing; a sniff of some real Opposition was more interesting.
    “You have to pick up a package from a contact,” said Munro. “But you are being tailed by the local fuzz. You have diplomatic cover in case of arrest, but your contact does not. He’s right out in the cold, a local man. He’s coming to a meet, and you can’t stop him. He knows that if he hangs about too long, he could attract attention, so he’ll wait ten minutes. What do you do?”
    “Shake the tail,” suggested someone. Munro shook his head.
    “For one thing, you’re supposed to be an innocent diplomat, not a Houdini. Lose the tail and you give yourself away as a trained agent. Secondly, you might not succeed. If it’s the KGB and they’re using the first team, you won’t do it, short of dodging back into the embassy. Try again.”
    “Abort,” said another trainee. “Don’t show. The safety of the unprotected contributor is paramount.”
    “Right,” said Munro. “But that leaves your man with a package he can’t hold onto forever, and no procedure for an alternative meet.” He paused for several seconds. “Or does he ...?”
    “There’s a second procedure established in the event of an abort,” suggested a third student. “Good,” said Munro. “When you had him alone in the good old days before the routine
    surveillance was switched to yourself, you briefed him on a whole range of alternative meets in the event of an abort. So he waits ten minutes; you don’t show up; he goes off nice and innocently to the second meeting point. What is this procedure called?”
    “Fallback,” ventured the bright spark who