Stopover

Meredith was a CI5 operative who was presumed dead. Now he is back, apparently working for the Russians, and his reappearance puts Cowley in a tight spot. The exchange is arranged: Cowley drives alone to a deserted aerodrome to meet the Russian Kodai, carrying a British passport and money. It is a trap, and Cowley takes a bullet that looks fatal. The show kills off its own chief, or seems to, and the shock of that carries the first act.

The clever part comes next. Meredith offers Cowley the name of a highly placed double agent from his past, in return for CI5's protection. What follows is a stand-off between two old colleagues, with Bodie and Doyle moved around like chess pieces. Both men know something about the other, and neither trusts the other an inch, which makes every conversation between them a small duel of its own. Trust, the episode suggests, is the first casualty of a career in intelligence.

Brian Clemens and John Goldsmith wrote it, William Brayne directed. James Laurenson is Meredith, Michael Gothard is Kodai, with Morris Perry as Radouk, Peter Cartwright as Sir Peter Pelham, William Morgan Sheppard as Malenski, Paul Dawkins as Tramp and Frank Jarvis as Dale.

Seeing Cowley shot and out of the action is a genuine jolt, and the episode leans into the unease of it. There is something satisfying about a story where the veteran spymaster is the one taking the risks, alone, without his men to back him up. The aerodrome scene, Cowley standing by himself on the tarmac, is the best image in the hour. Michael Gothard, who plays Kodai, had a habit of turning up in the darker corners of British television, and he is exactly the right shade of unsettling here.

A study in confined paranoia, and all the better for keeping its violence close and personal.