There were two of them. Hawker and Jude. They had no other names. Just Hawker and Jude. They were young, fast, and clever. They worked for EDI, in the European Government.

You know about the Americans' CIA and the Russians' KGB? Well, this was EDI -- the European Department of Intelligence. Big secrets. Very strange secrets. The secrets of the Omega Files. They don't get into the newspapers, and most people never hear about them. Most people don't know anything about EDI.

In the early years Hawker and Jude travelled a lot. Brussels, Strasbourg, Rome, Delhi, Washington… North Africa, South America, Australia… No home, no family, just work. They worked for the top man in the Brussels office of EDI, and only for him. He was called Arla. Nobody knew his real name, or much about him. Some said he was Latvian; others said he was from another planet. He always gave the hard jobs to Hawker and Jude. The jobs with questions, but not many answers. The Omega Files.

When I met them, many years later, Hawker and Jude were about seventy years old. They lived very quietly, in a little white house on a Greek island. They went walking, swimming, fishing; they sat in the sun, and slept a lot.

At first, they didn't want to talk about their work.

"We can't," said Jude. "Our work was secret. It's all in the government files, and nobody can read them."

"After thirty years," I said, "people can read all secret government files."

"Not these files," Hawker said. "It's a hundred years before people can read the EDI files."

I looked at them. "But I don't need to read the files," I said. "I can get the stories from you."

And I did. Here are some of them…