A Question of Loyalty

It starts with a row in Warsaw. Mike Wallace, one of the Sandbaggers, has a run-in with the Head of Station out there and a mission goes badly wrong. Back in London he is called on the carpet, and the question of who is to blame splits the office clean down the middle. Burnside accepts Wallace's account and puts the botched operation at the door of the local station. The Deputy Chief insists on a proper investigation.

What Burnside does next is the whole episode in miniature. He backs his man anyway, at real risk to his own career, and sends Wallace straight out again, this time to Stockholm. There the trouble is a different shape. Pat Bishop, the number two at the station, has been passing information to a British businessman with known KGB connections, and both Sandbaggers are set on him. And then Bishop changes his routine, suddenly, and suspicion swings inward as everyone starts to wonder whether the leak is inside their own ranks. The uncomfortable thing is how quickly the suspicion lands on colleagues rather than enemies. Only by retracing Bishop's movements does Burnside piece together what has actually been going on.

The episode was written by Ian MacKintosh and directed by Michael Ferguson, first shown on 18 February 1980. Roy Marsden anchors it as Burnside, with Michael Cashman as Wallace and Richard Vernon's C glowering from the top of the building. Ray Lonnen, Jerome Willis, Brian Osborne, Bob Sherman, Jana Shelden, Patrick Godfrey and Charles Hodgson fill out the ranks.

A Question of Loyalty is a quiet episode, all procedural suspicion and no gunplay. I like it all the better for that. What stays with you is how cheaply trust is spent in this world and how expensive it is to rebuild; Burnside pays for his loyalty in his own coin, and the episode never lets you forget it.