of his. ‘All that hard work in the gym, no doubt. Prue well?’
‘Fighting fit, Dom, thank you. Rachel?’
‘Marvellous. I’m the luckiest man on earth. You must meet her, Nat. You and Prue. We’ll make a dinner, the four of us. You’ll love her.’
Rachel. Peeress of the realm, power in the Tory Party, second wife, recent union.
‘And the kids?’ I ask gingerly. There had been two by his nice first wife.
‘Superb. Sarah’s doing marvellously at South Hampstead. Oxford squarely in her sights.’
‘And Sammy?’
‘Twilight time. He’ll be out of it soon and following in his sister’s footsteps.’
‘And Tabby, may one ask?’ Tabitha his first wife and, by the time they broke up, a neurotic wreck.
‘Doing nobly. No new man in sight so far as we know, but one lives in hope.’
It’s my guess that there’s a Dom somewhere in everyone’s life: the man – it always seems to be a man – who takes you aside, appoints you his only friend in the world, regales you with details of his private life you’d rather not hear, begs your advice, you give him none, he swears to follow it and next morning cuts you dead. Five years ago in Budapest he was turning thirty, and he’s turning thirty now: the same croupier’s good looks, striped shirt, yellow braces more befitting a twenty-five-year-old, white cuffs, gold links and all-purpose smile; the same infuriating habit of placing his fingertips together in a wedding arch, leaning back and smiling judiciously at you over the top of them.
*
‘Well, congratulations, Dom,’ I say, gesturing at the executive armchairs and Office ceramic coffee table for grade threes and above.
‘Thank you, Nat. You’re most kind. Took me by surprise, but when the call comes, we rally. Coffee at all? Tea?’
‘Coffee, please.’
‘Milk? Sugar? The milk’s soy, I should add.’
‘Just black, thank you, Dom. No soy.’
Does he mean soya? Is soy the smart man’s version these days? He puts his head round the stippled-glass door, engages in stage banter with Viv, sits again.
‘And London General still has the same old remit?’ I enquire lightly, recalling that Bryn Jordan had once described it in my hearing as the Office’s home for lost dogs.
‘Indeed, Nat. Indeed. The same.’
‘So all London-based substations are nominally under your command.’
‘UK-wide. Not only London. The whole of Britain. Excluding Northern Ireland. And still totally autonomous, I’m pleased to say.’
‘Administratively autonomous? Or operationally too?’
‘In what sense, Nat?’ – frowning at me as if I’m out of court.
‘Can you, as head of London General, authorize your own operations?’
‘It’s a blurred line, Nat. As of now, any operation proposed by a substation must notionally be signed off by the regional department concerned. I’m fighting it, practically as we speak.’
He smiles. I smile. Battle joined. In synchronized movements we taste our coffees with no soy and replace our cups on their saucers. Is he about to confide some unwanted intimacy about his new bride? Or explain to me why I’m here? Not yet, apparently. First we must have a jaw about old times: agents we shared, I as their handler, Dom as my useless supervisor. First on his list is Polonius, lately of the Shakespeare network. A few months back, having Office business in Lisbon, I had gone to see old Polonius in the Algarve in an echoing new-build beside an empty golf course that we had bought for him as part of his resettlement package.
‘Doing all right, Dom, thank you,’ I say heartily. ‘No problems with his new identity. Got over his wife’s death. He’s all right, really. Yes.’
‘I hear a but in your voice, Nat,’ he says reproachfully.
‘Well, we promised him a British passport, didn’t we, Dom, if you remember. Seems to have got lost in the wash after your return to London.’
‘I shall look into it at once’ – and a note to himself in ballpoint to prove it.
‘He’s also a bit cut up that we couldn’t get his daughter into Oxbridge. He feels all it needed was a nudge from us and we didn’t provide it. Or you didn’t. Which is the way he sees it.’
Dom doesn’t do guilt. He does injured or he does blank. He opts for injured.
‘It’s the colleges, Nat,’ he complains wearily. ‘Everyone thinks the old universities are an entity. This is wrong. You have to go from one college to the other, cap in hand. I shall chase it’ – another ballpoint note.
Second on his list of topics is Delilah, a colourful seventy-something Hungarian woman member of parliament who took the Russian rouble then