From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 41)

I’ve never seen my service personnel report. I’d like to think it’s blank, because I’m such an enigma, but I suspect it says things like ‘maverick’ and ‘doesn’t play well with others’. It should also, if there’s any justice in this world, note that I’m a prodigious linguist, an expert practitioner of various martial arts, and although my methods are not always orthodox, I get things done. I think that’s a more than modest assessment of my worth.

Though, it may well say something entirely different - which is why no one will ever let me see it. But then, what is such a thing really worth? I have always shirked working in a team environment, so how they can judge me, except on my results, I have no idea.

When I entered the service, most spies were loners. However, the majority of us from that time are either dead or disgraced over one thing or another. The types of personalities who are attracted to spying, especially those who prove to be competent at it, are generally unstable individuals. We need a sangfroid attitude, a dash of devil-may-care, and absolute loyalty to the British Empire. Your moral outlook is required to be flexible, but to always snap back into being a decent English gentleman at the end of the day.

All spies have their own reasons for not wanting to be part of the general herd, but regardless of whether we admit it or not, the main reason is a desire to work outside the confines of rules. We are the kind of people who not only see how corners can be cut, but then do so, if we believe it’s for the greater good. It’s a difficult moral position to maintain. You are constantly tempted to overstep - from doing yourself a good turn (the appropriation of enemy commodities) to taking matters into your own hands and hastening justice. Of course, from there on, the only progress is downward, toward the Devil’s own abode.

I have more than once executed an individual in the field. Fortunately, this gives me no pleasure and I only do this when I believe there is no other option. So far, after the fact, the service has agreed with me, but we both know that if I had sought permission beforehand for many of my actions, it would have been denied.

My secret is that I have always reigned myself in, and clambered, all be it reluctantly, back to the side of right. I may not like my colleagues in general, but I have always sought to take care of my assets, in a most avuncular manner. People who work for me are unfailingly treated well, unless they cross me. I will go to Hell and back to rescue an asset if there is the least chance of doing so. My people know this, and while I doubt any of them see me as a friend, they do trust I will take care of them. I like this. I like being a sheepdog rather than a sheep (or, rather, as I like to think of myself as a wolf in a sheepdog’s clothing).

Euphemia is the only other officer I have ever desired to work with. She entered my life at a point when my moral compass might not have slipped exactly, but I did have a tendency toward self-indulgence. Without her direction, I might have ended up the way most of my generation of spies did. By contrast, her daughter, Hope, makes me want to flout rules all the more to protect her. I often felt I was protecting Euphemia, but in many ways, it was the other way around. It is only now, working with Hope, to whom I taught much of my philosophies and my skills, that I realise what a bounder I could be without Euphemia’s tempering influence. Hope is, while not entirely estranged, not exactly close to her mother. She has relied on me largely for moral guidance, and that has been a great error on both our parts.

Her father, who could have taken on the role of moral mentor, and I fell out a long time ago. We smile, and are civil to one another, for the women’s sake, but we both secretly abhor the other. I have inadvertently taught Hope to think of her father’s views as naïve and insular. I am now concerned as to how she sees the world. She is about to enter spying as a career, and I wonder what I have created. Will she be able to withstand the many temptations and sense of superiority that our role inevitably offers?

If she had been my own daughter, would I ever have considered myself as her sole moral guide? She has become too much like me. I can only hope that the curious characters she currently keeps company with will help keep her feet on the ground. Harvey will help her if she lets him. As for Bernadette, I don’t doubt her affection for Hope, but I doubt almost everything else about the wretched girl – although, it must be said, her connections are most useful.

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