‘I can’t do that. I can’t tell what I’ll do until I know.’

‘I want to live here quietly. I’m not going to take part in the French civil war. I’m not going to be used by you.’

They had reached a stand-off. Theo could think of no way of persuading the obstinate man beside him to speak. There was nothing Nikola wanted, except to live in his French dacha without interference.

Nikola was moving round the room, picking things up and replacing them amid the chaos. He trimmed the lamp on the table, opened the cupboard and took out another bottle, two more glasses.

Theo held up his hand. ‘I couldn’t, thank you.’ He lifted himself out of his chair, his brain turning in his skull, stabilising itself in its new position moments later, like the point of a compass coming, with some wavering, to rest.

‘Sit down, sit down. These are my cherries in marc, from the last year before the war. You’ll have some before you go.’

Theo sat down again and took the proffered glass, sensing a change of heart. The Russian sucked sulkily on his cherry, like a child with a sweet. He was obviously disappointed not to have been cajoled into continuing his story.

‘You can work it out anyway,’ he said. His tone was still argumentative, carrying on the debate that Theo had refused. ‘You know what happened.’

‘Nobody else was there. I’ve not heard the story from someone who was there with Henri.’

Nikola spat out his cherry stone, took another fruit.

‘How many were you?’ Theo asked, as if he were debriefing him.

‘On our side? Nineteen with Henri and me. All Secret Army, note that.’

‘How many survived?’

‘Five plus me, two of us wounded. Henri and five others were captured and executed in the square, along with one of the guys we’d been trying to rescue, Pierrot Rouget, who’d been caught that afternoon in Lepech. Seven were killed there on the track and so was Philippe Boysse, who’d also been taken prisoner in Lepech. The Germans had made him drive the lead car. That tells you something, doesn’t it, putting him in the line of fire.’

They had scrambled down the escarpment above the Bonnemort track, so that they would be facing the arriving German vehicles as they climbed up the road. It wasn’t an ideal spot for an ambush because the slope was too steep, but there was plenty of cover in the rough undergrowth and they were above the sight line of the driver. Henri took up a position low down. Beside him was Richard, one of the best shots in the group. Nikola placed half a dozen of the others on the slope and the rest on the top of the hillock, ready to attack when the lorry was brought to a halt.

‘We heard them coming, two of them, a car first, a truck following. I thought that our guys would be in the second vehicle, and I hoped that even if they were handcuffed, they would be able to save themselves once we’d engaged. I saw the German staff car. I’d hoped it would be the Hispano-Suiza, then we would have been sure it was the major. The car was notorious in the whole area: Madame Ariane’s car. The evil tongues said that she gave it to him, as a bribe or a gift …’ He suddenly recalled to whom he was speaking.