Free Secret Asset by Stella Rimington

had been formed by Dorothy Sayers’s
Gaudy Night
. After a lengthy disquisition from a Physics lecturer seated next to her about the beauty of quarks, Liz was glad to escape with her host and Peggy for coffee to the Fellows’ Common Room, where they managed to occupy a quiet corner by themselves. “I’m sorry about Professor Burrell,” Miss Prideaux said to Liz, who realised she must mean her lunch partner. “When I listen to him he might as well be speaking in Urdu.”
    They chatted on for a while, then, just as Liz and Peggy were about to go, Miss Prideaux suddenly said out of the blue, “I was awfully sorry to hear about Ravi.”
    Liz’s ears pricked up now. “Yes?” she said.
    â€œI know it sounds old-fashioned, but I do think these inter-racial alliances are always more fragile.” When Liz didn’t say anything, Miss Prideaux flushed slightly, perhaps worried that she sounded racist or indiscreet, or both. She made a show of looking at her watch. “Goodness me, here I am gossiping, and I’ve got a finalist in hysterics about her Anglo-Saxon paper waiting for me.”
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    Now, as they stood admiring the view from the top of the Sheldonian, Peggy asked Liz, “What did Miss Prideaux mean when she said she was sorry about Ravi?”
    Liz shrugged. “I’m not sure. Ravi is Judith Spratt’s husband. His name is Ravi Singh; Judith uses her maiden name at work.”
    â€œI gathered that,” said Peggy. “What does he do?”
    â€œHe’s a businessman, from India originally. They’ve been married a long time—I think they met at Oxford. He’s charming.”
    â€œOh, so you know him?”
    â€œA bit. I’ve been to dinner there a few times.”
    Peggy nodded. “It’s difficult, isn’t it? There’s nothing in Judith’s file that says her marital status has changed.”
    Liz sighed. She supposed this was the inevitable downside of investigating your colleagues. “We’d better find out for sure then. Hopefully it’s nothing.” But mentally she made a note to talk to B Branch the following day.
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    Their last interview was in Merton College, which they approached down a narrow alleyway running off the High. The change in tempo from the bustle of a main street to a backwater of almost medieval calm was sudden. As they turned onto the wobbly cobblestones of Merton Street, Liz saw a small churchyard, with a path lined by several magnificent cherry trees. She imagined that this view would not have changed for five hundred years.
    His name was Hilary Watts.
Professor
Watts to me, thought Liz, since he seemed to expect that kind of deference. He was an old-school Arabist with, inevitably, strong Foreign Office connections—he had taught summer school at MECAS, the famous Centre for Arabic Studies in the hills above Beirut, and tutored the more obscure relatives of Jordan’s King Hussein when they came for a final polishing stint to Oxford.
    And he had played a long-time role, in the age before open recruitment, as a talent spotter for MI6. He had taught Tom Dartmouth for his postgraduate degree, and been asked for a reference by MI5 when his ex-pupil had applied. The reference, reeking of a past era of old boys’ network and public-school prose, had been three lines long, written on the back of a postcard from the Accademia in Venice:
Sound chap. Good languages. More than clever enough for the domestic service.
    â€œDomestic service”—once the prevalent Six view of MI5. Small surprise that Watts had not risen when she and Peggy had knocked on his door, but merely called out a peremptory “Come in.”
    Entering, the two women found themselves in a dark room with high ceilings and one vast mullioned window at the far wall, which let very little light in since the curtains—thick velvet