The Old Peoples' Home waits implacably by the sea. Planted in front is a stone boat, swallowed by the shoreline -- a cosy vantage point, a gentle reminder that none of the residents will ever leave. The mansion itself is probably the largest building in the Village (above ground, at least); rows of squinting windows peer down onto the foreshore. On the lawn a group of men toss a ball around, shuffling and feinting in a last attempt at their old athleticism. (Number 6 knows some of them, by reputation; one crushed a political cell which the other had spent fifteen years setting up. Such petty issues have faded in the mists of time, with nothing better to do.) White-coated attendants double as waiters, serving tea, sandwiches, heart tablets, oxygen. A white-haired lady zooms past, giggling with delight as a young attendant races her wheelchair in swishing curves. A pair of undertakers, patiently sipping tea on the front lawn.

This is where old soldiers go when they fade away. Or if they were invisible to start with. People who've outlived their wars, who took part in conflicts which will never be confessed, whose continued existence in public would raise too many questions. A place where the dead go to die.

'Number 13's nice enough,' says Number 18 as they cross the lawn, heading for the side door. 'Talks a lot without saying much that's definite.'

'Occupational hazard.'

'He makes it sound like he was a Minister of some sort. They brought him here like the rest of us, but he was so thrillingly cooperative that in the end they gave him a job. By now he's an assistant manager of the Home.'

'And a close personal friend of Number 2, no doubt,' observes Number 6.

Number 18 shakes her head. 'Oh, that's the thing. They change Number 2's about as often as they change their socks around here. But the Minister... He knows the people who don't change.'

'And this pillar of the community passes you information about his masters?'

'Of course-if it's information that strengthens his position among them.' She makes a face at him, telling him she's not that naive.

'Whatever that position may be.'

'Or whatever he'd like it to be. Here, this way.'

She opens the side door and leads him into a dim back hallway. He watches her squaring her shoulders as she walks; whatever doubts have made her leave such an apparently valuable source for last, they're being overruled by the lateness of the hour. She must be almost out of options.

'--Oh, there he is.'

Ahead a man approaches: tall, grey, sleepy-eyed, apparently relaxed as he wheels an oxygen tank on a trolley. He's casual in his shirtsleeves, penny-farthing badge clipped to a shirt pocket, but gives a sense that somehow this outfit is still a formal suit. He pauses for a moment in his work to smile at Number 18 in greeting.

Number 6 stands, staring at him.

Then he punches him in the face.

The Minister's back crashes into the wall, and he's heaped on the floor, Number 6 standing over him with murder in his eyes.

'How many dead?' barks Number 6.

He's crouching over him now, hauling the Minister up by his collar, shouting in his face. 'How many dead? How many betrayed?'

Now she's pulling him off the Minister, shouting at him, positioning herself between the two of them -- Number 6 a mongoose, the Minister a heavy-lidded cobra.

'For heaven's sake,' she says. 'What are you going on about?'

'You mean you don't recognise him?'

'Should I?'

'Well I did rather make the papers a few years back, I understand,' says the Minister, rubbing his jaw as he climbs to his feet. He adjusts his collar, looking surprisingly unruffled, and gives Number 6 a polite smile, as if he gets this all the time. 'You see, I was his superior.'

'I'm sure you thought so,' mutters Number 6.

'Yours too, probably,' the Minister tells Number 18. 'Assuming you were in the Service at the time. I was most peoples' superior there, even if they didn't know it.'

'And all this time,' says Number 6 in a voice that could rasp flesh from bone, 'He was selling us out to the other side. Every operation, betrayed. Every man, betrayed.'

The Minister shakes his head, gently, grey eyes distant and Oxbridge voice quietly rueful. 'Oh no. To betray, you first have to belong. And I never belonged.'

He rights the oxygen-trolley and wheels it over to the corner, finally settling at the chipped folding table in the anteroom. 'Oh, the establishment was more than willing to make use of my talents over the years. But I was altogether the wrong sort of person for them. Not even the wrong person -- the wrong sort of person.' He pulls out a chair and offers it to Number 18; she takes it. 'And I realised the petty injustices they inflicted on me were but a thousandth part of those the guardians of our society--your society--inflict on anyone they consider to be their inferiors.' He waves a hand at Number 6, watching from across the room. 'Ask him about them. We went to the same school.'

'No we didn't.'

The Minister shrugs. 'Even if we didn't, it was still the same school.' The corner of Number 6's mouth twitches at that. The Minister continues, with his most amiable smile. 'I don't need to tell either of you about the ways in which the established order enforces itself, from the first head-boy's sneer to the last colonial crushed underfoot. Suffice it to say I decided I wanted to help 'the other side' turn this world upside down.'

Now Number 6 closes in on the table. Each footstep, each cold measured word, ticks across the polished floor like an inexorable grandfather clock. 'And friends of mine have rotted in foreign jails, or stood in front of firing squads, because of you.'

The Minister shrugs again. 'They chose to get into the game.'

'Not all of them.'

'Well if they were forced in, that's down to the system as well. My conscience is clear.'

Number 6 smiles, baring his teeth. 'Like an empty window-frame.'

He's leaning across the corner of the table, towering over the Minister. Losing patience, the Minister finally looks him in the eye. 'You were part of the covert enforcement arm of a self-interested government propping up an unjust society,' he tells him, flatly. 'You yourself decided that you couldn't be part of it any more. You walked away. So did I. But when I left, and even before, I did everything I could to bring it crashing down behind me.'

'You didn't leave,' declares Number 6, that tiny smile creeping back onto his face. 'You just changed sides. And you managed to choose the one option that was worse.'

The Minister starts to shrug, blandly, but before he can riposte Number 18 inserts herself between them. 'Yes. Anyway. I know it sounds surprising, but I didn't actually come here to assault you and talk politics.' A glance back at Number 6, warning him off; then she settles into the empty chair opposite the Minister, meeting him on his own level.

'I take it you've heard about my Observer?' she continues.

The Minister nods. 'Remarkably effective of you, I must say.'

She doesn't smile. 'I need evidence he was stalking me. Something that could convince them, for whatever that's worth.'

Number 6's voice is low. 'You'd believe him as a source? Even knowing who he is?'

She locks eyes with him, ice-hard and certain. 'I'd work with Stalin himself if it meant I could get out of here with my mind intact.' Then she loosens her grip on Number 6, and turns to the Minister, her voice barely lightening. 'I'd wait till afterwards to tell him where he could go.'

'He's betrayed and lied to more people than you can count,' says Number 6. Chipping away relentlessly. 'Even 'his side', he abandoned to work for the Village.' A mocking eye to the Minister. 'Unless... he knows something?'

'Oh no.' He's got a snaky smile. 'You see, that's the funny side of it. These people grabbed me on the day I finally defected -- just when I was waiting to meet my contact to leave the country. So you see, I don't know which side got me in the end.'

'Didn't stop you cooperating with them,' observes Number 18.

'Well of course not.' With a foot he pushes a chair out for Number 6, who remains standing. 'After all, if it's my side -- my actual side -- I want them to know everything I've done. And if it's your side, well, they already know what I've done. Either way, I've got nothing to lose, and quite a lot to gain.'

Pleased with his own cleverness, he settles back in his chair. Number 6 gives a sideways look to 18: 'You trust this?'

'Well of course she can -- if it's to my advantage to be trustworthy.'

'And where is your advantage in this?'

'Oh, I like to keep my options open.' He folds his long fingers. 'You're a rational man, Number 6, think about it. If I were out to feed you bad information for my own ends, what's the first thing I'd have to do at this point? Actually feed you some information. Unfortunately... I can't. I never worked with your Observer. I don't know what he was up to or who ordered him, if anyone.'

Slowly he stands, leaning on his chair. 'So much for my illustrious career as your double agent. Or would it be triple? I think I've lost count.'

Number 6 smiles, catlike. 'Work for that many masters, and it's hard to know what counts.'

'Oh, I tend not to have masters any more,' says the Minister softly.

'I'm sure I can think of at least 1.'

Number 18 sighs. 'I think we're getting off the subject here.' She tugs Number 6 to his feet. If you can't help us, then we're just wasting each others' time.'

The Minister stands up-even gives her a gentlemanly half-bow. 'I hope I can be of assistance in future.' They both feel his eyes on their backs as they leave.