There was one last avenue left for me to pursue. I was loath to go down it, but I knew it had to be followed to its conclusion. It was the Valderano link. The reason I was so hesitant was because I felt I could anticipate the outcome already. It did not augur well for British complacency.

My mood had been induced partly by a wicked cartoon from the New Yorker. It was a brilliant drawing, instantly recognisable as an aging James Bond (the original Sean Connery version). He was shuffling away in dressing-gown and slippers, with the aid of a Zimmer-frame. There was a redoubtable middle-aged female nurse in attendance in starched uniform - unmistakably Miss Moneypenny. The caption read:

‘No, Commander, we are not going to Islamabad, we are going to the bathroom.’

I suppose it is nothing more than the update of an old joke. Every dog must have his day. The 18th Duke of Valderano’s day had been long, long ago. It had to be all of twenty years since Michael Ivens had suggested introducing us.

So far as I could remember, Valderano had gained his formidable reputation for insight into terror, insurgency and guerilla warfare alongside the partisans in the north of Italy towards the end of the Second World War. This was before he had assumed his many Italian and Sicilian titles, as they would have been unlikely to cut much ice with the mostly communist partigiani. His more prosaic name was Ronnie Waring.

He had gone on to valiant deeds in the early, tense days of the Cold War. This, in turn, had led to his appointment as an instructor at the NATO War College near Lisbon. With the 1974 revolution in Portugal, he was moved on to lectureships in Rome and London, as well as the United States and Brazil. Other countries of special interest to him were Angola, the Congo, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. At much the same time, mid-1970s, he set up a Research Foundation for the Study of Terrorism. One of my special interests as a consultant to the Boeing Company at that time had been the subject
of the hijacking of civil aircraft and that was to have been our common ground. Valderano’s Research Foundation was to attract any number of august names but, unfortunately, a lesser enthusiasm for funding.