Sublime

Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke, RA, the man who was to become the éminence grise of WW2 strategic deception, seemed a conventional enough colonel, with his left-parted hair brushed back from the widow’s peak, and his courteous manner. He liked to appear in rooms, or disappear from them, silently, and his pale oval face, with quick glances from

Lancelot frowns. ‘We’re not going to the Department?’ ‘Ah, no,’ says Marlowe. He clears his throat. ‘As I said, there have been one or two changes.’ ‘Such as?’ ‘Well, the whole sector’s been privatised. Musty old intelligence agencies broken up and sold to US private equity firms. That sort of thing. The services previously provided by the

Briefly Carleton considered the other man, of whom he’d made such a study he might have been appointed professor of Thomas Studies at the University of Essex. He knew, for example, that Thomas was a confirmed bachelor, as they say, never seen in the company of a beautiful young person or a stately older one; that he had about him the melancholy

company builders, not financiers. We

‘Oh, Dr Archer, people rarely say what they truly mean. It’s one of the first lessons of spycraft.’

I’ve Got a Secret