to my question, her employers do not close their doors early on a Friday. I inform her that I am an old client of Mr Bailey. She says robotically that he is in meetings all morning. I say we are old school friends, but not to disturb him, and I will make a formal appointment for next week some time. I hand her a printed name card left over from my last posting: Commercial Counsellor, H.M. Embassy, Tallinn, and wait till she consents to read it.
‘Where’s Tallinn?’ she asks pertly.
‘Estonia.’
‘Where’s Estonia?’ – giggle.
‘The Baltic,’ I tell her. ‘North of Latvia.’
She doesn’t ask me where the Baltic is, but the giggle tells me I have made my mark. I have also blown my cover, but who’s counting? We ascend two more floors to the cavernous waiting room and take up a position close to the entrance. A large woman in a green uniform with a major general’s epaulettes is sorting wedding groups in line ahead. Jingle bells play over loudspeakers each time a wedding ends, upon which the group nearest the shiny black door is ushered in. The door closes and the jingle bells resume fifteen minutes later.
At 11.51 Florence and Ed emerge arm in arm from the stairwell, looking like an advertisement for a building society: Ed in a new grey suit that fits him as poorly as his old one, and Florence in the same trouser suit that she had sported one sunny spring day a thousand years ago when, as a promising young intelligence officer, she presented Rosebud to the wise elders of Operations Directorate. She is clutching a bunch of red roses. Ed must have bought them for her.
We kiss each other: Prue to Florence, Prue to Ed; after which, as best man, I plant my own kiss on Florence’s cheek, our first.
‘No pulling back now,’ I whisper loudly into her ear in my most jocular tone.
We have barely disentangled ourselves before Ed’s long arms enfold me in a botched manly embrace – I doubt he’s ever tried it before – and the next thing I know he has lifted me to his own height and is holding me chest to chest, half suffocating me in the process.
‘Prue,’ he announces. ‘This man plays bloody awful badminton, but he’s all right otherwise.’
He sets me down, panting and laughing in his excitement while I scan the latest arrivals for a face, gesture or silhouette that will confirm to me what I already know: Prue will not by any means be the only witness to this wedding.
‘Edward and Florence party, please! Edward and Florence party, thank you. Over here, please. That’s the way.’
The major general in her green uniform is marshalling us, but the shiny black door is still closed. Jingle bells rise to a crescendo and fade away.
‘Hey, Nat, I’ve gone and forgotten the ring,’ Ed murmurs to me with a smirk.
‘Then you’re an arsehole,’ I retort, as he pushes my shoulder to tell me he’s only teasing.
Has Florence looked inside Prue’s expensive Japanese lipstick that I planted in her handbag? Has she read the address it contains? Has she looked up the address on Google Earth and identified the remote guesthouse high in the Transylvanian Alps owned by an elderly Catalan couple who were once my agents? No, she won’t have done, she’s too smart, she knows her counter-surveillance. But has she at least read my accompanying letter to them, written small on rolled-up typing paper in our best tradition? Dear Pauli and Francesc, please do your best for these good people, Adam.
The Registrar is a munificent lady, stern in a good cause. She has a pile of blonde hair and marries for a living, year in year out, you can tell by the patient rhythm of her voice. When she goes home to her husband in the evening he says, ‘How many today then, darling?’ and she says ‘Round the clock, Ted’ or George, or whatever his name is, and they settle to the television.
We have reached the high point of the wedding ceremony. There are two sorts of bride in my experience: those who whisper their lines inaudibly and those who belt them out for all the world to hear. Florence belongs to the latter school. Ed takes his cue from her and blurts too, clutching her hand and staring straight into her face in close-up.
Hiatus.
The Registrar is displeased. Her eye is on the clock above the door. Ed is fumbling. He can’t remember which pocket