Catherine the Great

An assassin named Rehfuss has slipped into the country, and Craven is ordered to bring him in. There is a catch, and it is a large one. Nobody knows what Rehfuss looks like, and the name of his intended victim is a blank as well. He is described as deadly, and that is about all anyone can agree on. The manhunt starts from nothing, which is the whole problem.

But the hunt runs on scraps. Surveillance teams, informants, a detective sergeant named Isobel Ross, a general called Yqueras, a woman named Helga Moritz, all of them feeding fragments into the machine and hoping the picture resolves before the assassin moves. Every sighting is a false alarm until it is not, and the team learns to treat the smallest detail as the one that matters. John Brason wrote it, Douglas Camfield directed, and the episode keeps a cold, professional mood that suits a story about a man who is, at best, a description.

Tony Beckley plays Rehfuss, and he is the sort of villain the show does well: quiet, patient, never raising his voice. Beckley is probably best remembered as Camp Freddie in The Italian Job, but he is far more unsettling here. George Sewell is Craven, Patrick Mower is Haggerty, Paul Eddington is Strand, Frederick Jaeger is Commander Fletcher, Roger Rowland is Inspector Bill North, Jacqueline Pearce is Helga Moritz, Claire Nielson is Detective Sgt. Isobel Ross, Michael Sheard is Adrian Penfold and Tommy Eytle is General Yqueras.

The episode is a lesson in doing a lot with a little: an enemy with no face and a deadline with no date, and a team that has to act anyway. Pearce and Sheard add the usual period menace, and the episode never lets the audience know more than the detectives do, which is the point of a manhunt without a face. It is the kind of brisk, intelligent thriller this era of the show did at its best.