An hour ago, Knox had quietly sneaked into his bedroom, where Williams was soundly sleeping, to get to his bathroom and a cold shower. Williams was lying on his front, topless, and the duvet had worked its way down to his waist. Knox recognised the swirl of scar tissue that stretched up his friend’s side—Williams’s souvenir from his time in France during the war—but he was shocked by how pronounced the ridges of his spine were, and the gashes and gouges that criss-crossed either side of them. His whole back had been turned into a patchwork of violence.

The injuries looked old. Knox could tell some had been treated while others had been left to heal on their own. He could also see differences in how they’d been inflicted—when Williams had suffered with clinical precision and when with brute force.

Knox had almost reached out to touch his friend, first to check it really was Jack Williams lying in his bed, and then to gently shake him awake and ask him if he’d remembered any more about who had put him through so much. But he stopped himself. Instead he laid out a dark grey Hardy Amies jumper and some trousers next to him on the bed and continued into the en suite.

When he was done with his shower Knox had found Williams dressed and waiting for him in the kitchen and full of his own questions and reassurances about Knox’s plan.

The office slipped into silence until the telephone on the desk erupted into loud life. Knox let it ring a couple of times before he reached over and picked up the black Bakelite receiver.

‘The director general is waiting for you,’ the cool voice of Miss Albury, Holland’s secretary, said through the earpiece.

‘We’ll be straight in,’ Knox replied.

Holland looked in no way surprised when Knox, Williams, and Bennett stepped into his office a moment later. He did, however, look very irritated.

‘Miss Bennett, how good to see you again,’ he said, transforming momentarily into a genial host. ‘And how are you feeling, Williams?’

‘Much better, sir,’ Williams replied.

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Holland turned to Knox, transforming back into an annoyed master spy. ‘Now, perhaps you’d like to explain why you’re not in Deal, and why Laing is in Guy’s, recovering from two sets of stitches to his thigh and a rather large blood transfusion?’

Knox told Holland about the drive to the coast and the ambush in Dungeness. Then Bennett continued the story about her and Williams waking up in the abandoned warehouse in Haringey, and Williams explained his vision of Kosygin and his belief that the Soviet leader’s life was in imminent danger.