Knox almost couldn’t believe that Williams was actually in Kemp House. He’d had fantasies of them drinking late into the night in his flat, sprawled across his sofa and lounger reminiscing about older, even more drunken evenings spent stumbling from bar to bar in Soho, or scrapes they’d got into for the Service where they’d snatched triumph from the jaws of defeat. Instead, he was listening to Williams repeat what he’d told Bennett on their short drive from Haringey about the twisted face that had haunted his nightmares and was on every body in his dream of Santo Domingo. The face of Aleksei Kosygin.

‘Who do you think wants Kosygin dead?’ Knox asked.

‘The KGB,’ Williams replied, without any hesitation.

Knox frowned. He couldn’t see how that made sense. And he said so.

‘I think it does,’ Bennett countered. ‘We know how fragile Kosygin, Brezhnev, and Podgorny’s troika is. Brezhnev’s hungry for absolute power and he’s been stacking the KGB with supporters. If Kosygin’s assassinated here, Brezhnev will get what he wants, and Britain will be thrown into political turmoil.’

‘But Wilson is sympathetic to Russia,’ Knox said. ‘Surely the Soviets would rather keep a left-wing government in power here than let the Conservatives back in?’

‘Russia wants the West running in circles,’ Bennett said. ‘If he’s killed here the election won’t matter. Whoever wins will get the cold shoulder from President Johnson, along with the rest of NATO. Simple divide and conquer.’

It was dark logic, but Knox could follow it.

‘You’re sure?’ he asked Williams.

Williams nodded. ‘I don’t know why, but it feels like things are finally starting to fix in place in my head. I think the KGB were holding me, I somehow found out what they were planning and escaped, or was helped by someone who wanted to stop all this from happening.’

‘In the Caribbean?’

‘It’s not impossible,’ Bennett said. ‘The KGB likes to move their most valuable prisoners around, and Cuba is only about sixty miles from the Haitian and Dominican coast.’

That sounded a bit far-fetched to Knox, but then so did everything else.

‘And now?’ he asked.

‘The same thing. Someone wanted us locked up. Maybe someone else didn’t. Someone who doesn’t want Kosygin dead. It feels like a big game is being played here and we can only see a corner of the board.’

‘What about you?’ Knox asked.

‘I’m here with arms open and olive branches in both hands,’ Bennett said. ‘Plus, I’m way past my window for redemption with Hoffman,’ she added with a smirk.

‘If it reopens?’

‘I’m not interested. And after the last couple of hours I think Jack’s right. This is bigger than all of us.’

‘We need to go see Holland,’ Williams said.

Knox thought for a moment, then said, ‘No, not yet.’