It was a Tuesday in August. Dymore, bleary-eyed at six-thirty in the morning, started to argue with the milkman, who insisted he owed for four weeks’ milk. Then he realised the man was one of Collingwood’s messengers, and that he was in trouble.

          He was. The whole spy network was blown; and Dymore knew he was a marked man. Collingwood said there was only one thing to do: disappear until Friday, when the heat would be off.

          So Dymore disappeared – on a round-the-world flight that caused him to meet all kinds of people and hear all kinds of tales: funny, sad, exciting, macabre.