Page 53 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

‘Ezekiel Puck is one of our dirty secrets, Poe,’ Locke said. ‘He was someone we sent out into the world to do . . . things on Her Majesty’s behalf.’

‘ Her Majesty?’

‘He’s long retired.’

‘What things?’

‘Bad things, Poe.’

He stopped. Let Poe draw his own conclusions. Poe did, and quickly.

‘ How bad, Alastor?’ Poe asked. ‘Because, forgive me for being blunt, your entire life is secrets and lies. It’s what you buy, steal and sell.

And because you have the unattainable goal of keeping us safe in our beds, you can’t hold your nose at the methods you choose to achieve this.

If I did a sniff test, everything would smell bad. ’

‘I’m—’

‘And that’s fine,’ Poe cut in. ‘It’s as it should be.

We need a security service and we need their methods to remain secret.

And if rules have to be bent, the occasional Chinese burn administered, then I’m not going to lose too much sleep.

You have a country to protect. But when you say Ezekiel Puck did bad things, I sit up and pay attention.

Because forgive me, Alastor, if you think this guy was bad, the rest of us are probably going to think he’s dia-fucking-bolical. ’

Locke took his time responding. Eventually he said, ‘And the rest of you would be right.’ He reached into his briefcase and retrieved a thin file. He opened it but didn’t glance at the top page.

‘Ezekiel Puck, because if he’s permanently going by that name now, we should probably use it as well – and I suppose the fact he took the name of Shakespeare’s trickster as his codename tells you everything you need to know about him – was born Raymond Addy.

He’s forty-nine years old and he grew up in Edinburgh.

He joined the service directly from Cambridge, and after extensive training he was assigned to a very small, very secret department under my purview. ’

‘Would I be right in thinking this department didn’t find its way on to any paperwork that the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament could check?’

‘Good Lord, no. My budget came out of the discretionary fund of the discretionary fund of the discretionary fund, and so on.’

‘There was no oversight then?’

‘We aren’t a lawless service, Poe. There was no statutory oversight, but there was oversight. Every operation was authorised. All methods were approved. No one went rogue.’

‘Did this department have a name, Alastor?’

‘Of course. They had to be paid. They had to exist . Officially they were Department 17, a small unit attached to the much larger counter-proliferation division.’

‘And un officially?’

‘Unofficially, they were known as “the mischief makers”.’