Dead Reckoning

Stefan Batak is a Bulgarian who has been spying for Britain, and his reward is a place in an exchange of agents. CI5 get the job of keeping him safe and working out whether the information he carries is even genuine. The plan is to keep his arrival quiet, which fails immediately, because the Bulgarians who sent him seem intent on making his movements as public as possible. A man who was supposed to arrive in secret is suddenly the most visible person in the operation.

Then someone poisons him, slipping it into his bloodstream, and the case turns into two puzzles at once: who killed him, and what part did his daughter Anna play? Anna is a concert pianist, a music student, and possibly not his daughter at all, which gives the investigation a nasty domestic edge on top of the espionage. The accounts of his death conflict, and nobody involved is telling the whole truth, which is exactly the sort of muddle CI5 hate.

Brian Clemens and Robin Estridge wrote it, Dennis C. Lewiston directed. Derek Godfrey is Stefan Batak, Carol Royle is Anna, with Alan Tilvern, Milos Kirek as Paul, Michael Hadley as Michael, Sally Harrison as the Chauffeuse and Gabor Vernon as Vashunin.

The family angle is what lifts it. A dead spy is standard stock for this show, but a daughter who may have helped kill him, or may be an innocent being framed, keeps the attention on people rather than plot machinery. CI5 end up suspecting a concert pianist of murdering a double agent, and the absurdity of that is part of the charm. The espionage frame gives the story its shape, but the drawing-room suspicions are what stay with you.

It is a satisfying piece of procedural work, and the secrets kept inside a family turn out to be every bit as dangerous as the ones the spies carry, which is a lesson the show returns to whenever it gets the chance.