Need to Know

Arresting a double agent should be the end of it. With Andy Drake, Cowley's former protege, it is only the beginning. Drake is held on suspicion of spying for the Chinese, and that makes him valuable to everyone. The KGB want him sprung on the way from prison to court, because he knows things about Chinese security that they would love to get their hands on. Everyone wants a piece of him, and nobody wants him to talk to the wrong people first.

Cowley wants him sprung too, for his own reasons. His real target is the mole inside CI5 who has been passing information to the Russians, and he is willing to use Drake as the bait. The snatch becomes a three-way race, with Doyle and Bodie in the middle of it and everyone pretending to be someone they are not. The episode keeps its cards close, letting suspicion fall on Cowley himself for a while, which is a brave way to treat the show's own patriarch.

Brian Clemens and Christopher Menaul wrote it, William Brayne directed. Norman Jones is Drake, Patrick O'Connell is Manton, Karin MacCarthy is Sara Ryan, with Niall Buggy as Gorky, Simon Oates as Tully, Richard LeParmentier as Ivan and David King as the Ambassador.

The title tells you the theme. Need to know: the whole episode is about who gets told what, and how much damage a trusted man can do when he knows too much. It is a talkier hour than usual, more about patience and misdirection than gunfire, and it is the better for it, even if the pay-off asks the viewer to keep several threads in the air at once.

Watching Cowley run a double game with his own people watching him is one of the best uses of Gordon Jackson the series found, and it rewards a second viewing.