They were in the research and development department in Leconfield House. Williams was leaning against the side of one of the Atlas mainframe towers, which quietly hummed and beeped as it waited for someone to give it something to compute, and White was sitting at the table he’d spent most of the last week leaning over, and which had finally been cleared of its stacks of maps and reports about the disappeared ghost submarine. They’d spent the time Knox and Bennett had been following Kosygin around the city going over everything Williams could now remember.

‘Then what happened to me?’ Williams asked.

‘Hypnosis is a cheap circus trick,’ White replied. ‘True mind control is a fantasy. But trauma is very real, and someone put you through the wringer.’

‘The Russians.’

White gave a mix of a nod and a shrug. ‘What you’ve described certainly fits their modus operandi. They like to keep their prisoners disoriented, shifting them round Russia and elsewhere while they pump them full of psychoactive drugs and try to extract whatever information or confession they can.’

‘God knows what I might have told them.’

‘Best to not focus on that now,’ White said. He didn’t want to add any more to the stress Williams was already under, plus he knew that at some point a very long debriefing process would eventually uncover whatever old secrets he might have divulged.

‘But what if we could find out? Repeat what made me start remembering things?’

‘For one, we wouldn’t know how,’ White said. ‘We might stumble on the way to unlock more of your memories. Or we could end up driving you insane and shutting them all away forever.’

Williams looked like he was about to argue that it would be worth the risk, but instead he took a deep breath and asked, ‘How’s Richard?’

‘You know him better than me,’ White answered, surprise in his voice at the abrupt change in subject.

‘Not recently,’ Williams said. ‘We’ve talked a little, but I can tell he’s putting on a brave face. How was he after the Surcouf?’

‘He survived.’ White paused for a moment, then added, ‘But possibly only because he never really let go of you.’

Williams nodded and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could a telephone attached to one of the small stretches of wall not hidden by an Atlas tower began to ring. It was Miss Albury, informing White that Holland was requesting their presence in his office.

Holland was waiting for them when White and Williams reached the fifth floor, along with Knox, Bennett, and Laing.