Gordon Carrera

They can't go out, can they?

They really are house guests.

They are house guests.

They're not leaving the house to go do some sightseeing.

They're basically staying in.

I mean, it's hard.

They cook and they drink.

I think this is captured slightly in the film.

They drink quite a lot of John Sheardown's liquor stockpile.

which is which which i know is there because the canadians had planned to host a big kind of embassy party but it's been cancelled and uh i guess you stockpile that stuff just in case but it's going to get filled with bottles which becomes a problem doesn't it how they're going to get rid of all these empty bottles because you can't you know one of the problems is if you've got a load of house guests you can't make it look like you've got a load of house guests whoever takes the

trash the bins, the garbage out.

Yeah, because it's always an issue, isn't it, with embassies in that you always have locally hired staff and in residencies as well.

And you have locally hired staff.

And it's a classic thing.

You know, if you think about people who lived in Moscow, the local, you know, drivers, you know, cleaners.

cooks, gardeners are often recruited by the KGB or the local security service to spy.

So that is an issue here, isn't it?

I think particularly there's a gardener that they're worried about might have ties to the revolutionary committee, so they need to keep him in the dark.

So it's really tense and really difficult to try and keep the secret that these people are in these different houses.

Yeah, so you have that pressure, which must be intense if you're in that house and you're aware of what's going on, because of course you are hearing through the ambassador, through Sheardown, about events.