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about putting a man in. No one’s to know, not even in the Department, no one at all. I though we’d call him Mayfly. Leiser, I mean. We’ll call him Mayfly.’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘It’s very delicate; a question of timing. I’ve no doubt there’ll be opposition, within the Department as well as outside.’
    ‘What about my cover and that kind of thing?’ Avery asked. ‘I’m not quite—’ A taxi with its flag up passed them without stopping.
    ‘Bloody man,’ Leclerc snapped. ‘Why didn’t he pick us up?’
    ‘He lives out here, I expect. He’s making for the West End. About cover,’ he prompted.
    ‘You’re travelling under your own name. I don’t see that there’s any problem. You can use your own address. Call yourself a publisher. After all you were one. The Consul will show you the ropes. What are you worried about?’
    ‘Well – just the details.’
    Leclerc, coming out of his reverie, smiled. ‘I’ll tell you something about cover; something you’ll learn for yourself. Never volunteer information. People don’t expect you to explain yourself. After all, what is there to explain? The ground’s prepared; the Consul will have our teleprint. Show your passport and play the rest by ear.’
    ‘I’ll try,’ said Avery.
    ‘You’ll succeed,’ Leclerc rejoined with feeling, and they both grinned shyly.
    ‘How far is it to the town?’ Avery asked. ‘From the airport?’
    ‘About three miles. It feeds the main ski resorts. Heaven knows what the Consul does all day.’
    ‘And to Helsinki?’
    ‘I told you. A hundred miles. Perhaps more.’
    Avery proposed they took a bus but Leclerc wouldn’t queue, so they remained standing at the corner. He began talking about official cars again. ‘It’s utterly absurd,’ he said. ‘In the old days we had a pool of our own, now we have two vans and the Treasury won’t let us pay the driver overtime. How can I run a Department under those conditions?’
    In the end they walked. Leclerc had the address in his head; he made a point of remembering such things. It was awkward for Avery to walk beside him for long, because Leclerc adjusted his pace to that of the taller man. Avery tried to keep himself in check, but sometimes he forgot and Leclerc would stretch uncomfortably beside him thrusting upwards with each stride. A fine rain was falling. It was still very cold.
    There were times when Avery felt for Leclerc a deep, protective love. Leclerc had that indefinable quality of arousing guilt, as if his companion but poorly replaced a departed friend. Somebody had been there, and gone; perhaps a whole world, a generation; somebody had made him and disowned him, so that while at one moment Avery could hate him for his transparent manipulation, detest his prinking gestures as a child detests the affectations of a parent, at the next he ran to protect him, responsible and deeply caring. Beyond all the vicissitudes of their relationship, he was somehow grateful that Leclerc had engendered him; and thus they created that strong love which exists between the weak; each became the stage to which the other related his actions.
    ‘It would be a good thing,’ Leclerc said suddenly, ‘if you shared the handling of Mayfly.’
    ‘I’d like to.’
    ‘When you get back.’
    They had found the address on the map. Thirty-four Roxburgh Gardens; it was off Kennington High Street. The road soon became dingier, the houses more crowded. Gas lights burnt yellow and flat like paper moons.
    ‘In the war they gave us a hostel for the staff.’
    ‘Perhaps they will again,’ Avery suggested.
    ‘It’s twenty years since I did an errand like this.’
    ‘Did you go alone then?’ Avery asked, and wished at once that he had not. It was so easy to inflict pain on Leclerc.
    ‘It was simpler in those days. We could say they’d died for their country. We didn’t have to tell them the details; they didn’t expect that.’ So it was we, thought Avery. Some other boy, one of