Provo

Jacobson would not be there. Jacobson had been on the way up last time, would have moved on years ago.

‘Who wants him?’ There was no detail of the establishment he was calling and no confirmation that Jacobson existed. The same as last time, Quin thought, the alliance as unholy as they came, but something in it for both of them.

All games were dangerous, but that on which he was about to embark was more dangerous than most.

‘Tell him Joseph wants to speak to him.’ The biblical reference had amused them both. ‘I’ll phone tomorrow for a number.’

The telephone message from the man calling himself Joseph was logged at 3.56 PM, at 4.04 the codenames Jacobson and Joseph were run against the MI5 computer at Lisburn. Both files were blocked. At 4.18 it was passed to Farringdon and from Farringdon to Cutler. On the Dol’s instructions the names were run again through the computer and the files – if any files existed, other than as simple acknowledgements that the codewords had once been used – were confirmed as blocked. At 5.18 PM, one hour and twenty-two minutes after Quin had made the telephone call, his message was passed to London.

In all except one detail, what had happened in MI5’s offices in Belfast was now repeated in Gower Street. The two words Jacobson and Joseph were computer-run, and both files – again if they existed as more than codenames – were found to be blocked, with the single additional point of information that any reference or enquiry concerning the two should be made to T Department. At 5.53 the duty officer in T was informed and ordered a check to be run against the department’s own computer system. The files were again blocked, with the instruction to refer any enquiry to the DDG.

Michaelmass was informed at 6.17.

John Petherington Michaelmass (Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford) was 53 years old, tall, dark hair with the first traces of silver. After Oxford he had spent two years in the States, then returned to Britain to work with ICI. Three years later he had been loaned to the security services to assist in an enquiry in an area in which he was considered a specialist, and had remained. Like all intelligence chiefs he had the ability not only to absorb a considerable quantity of information, but to identify the strands or themes which might run through it. He was married with two children, a daughter who had graduated the previous July, and a son now in his final year. He lived in Kensington, with a country house in Buckinghamshire, both afforded by family money on his and his wife’s side rather than his Security Service salary.