Small black mounds began to emerge from the snow all around him. The closer he got to the edge of the island, and the less snow there was, the more the mounds became visible, and recognisable. They were shoes.

By the time Williams reached the beach the snow was gone, and he was surrounded by stiff, lifeless bodies that had been hidden under it. There were hundreds of them, thousands maybe, stretching out into the haze.

They all wore the same clothes, and they all had the same face, half grimacing up at him and half gone, obliterated by some violent force that had torn away flesh and shattered bone.

Bennett didn’t take her eyes off Williams from the other side of the warehouse. He stayed curled up in unmoving silence for fifteen minutes before he started to shift and writhe, and his breathing got heavier and less even between low moans and mewls.

Then suddenly he was up on his feet, sprinting straight at Bennett and staring right through her until he collapsed on the concrete a foot in front of her and screamed, ‘Jesus sodding Christ.’

Bennett was frozen in terror. But, as Williams cradled the side of his head in both hands and whispered, ‘Who the hell hit me?’ she couldn’t stop herself answering.

‘The Russians, I think,’ she said.

‘It’s always the bloody Russians,’ he replied.

‘How would you know?’ Bennett asked, with more sarcasm than she’d meant.

Williams dropped his hands from his head, looked up at Bennett through the strand of hair that had fallen across his face, and smiled.

‘Touché, Miss Bennett.’

‘So you know who I am?’ she asked as Williams tipped back off his knees and casually crossed his legs beneath him.

‘Of course I do,’ he replied, still smiling.

‘What else is in that head of yours?’

‘Lots of things. It seems like I’ve finally had some sense knocked into me.’

Bennett wasn’t expecting a joke. Williams still looked frail and a little wild, but his character appeared to have completely changed. She didn’t know if this new—or old—version of him was a temporary reprieve from the rambling, unhinged one she’d first met, but if he was going to be staying around for any length of time, and if they were going to get out of the warehouse, then she needed him on side.

‘I owe you an apology,’ she said. ‘For what happened in Haina.’

She saw a shadow of the cold look she’d seen in the MKULTRA interrogation cell flicker across his face, and wondered if she’d just said a very wrong thing.

‘Did you know what was going to happen to me?’ Williams asked.

‘No,’ Bennett replied, hoping he believed her.

‘Then it wasn’t your fault.’

Bennett didn’t fully trust this sudden forgiveness. But she also didn’t want to dwell on it.

‘What else has come back?’