‘So do we get the navy to round up some boats before it makes a dash across to our coast?’ Laing asked.

‘No,’ Knox replied. ‘The submarine isn’t coming for Williams. He’s going to go to it. He’s going to fly to France.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I know Jack.’

Chapter 56

Chapter 56

Holland came to somewhere outside London. Lying, hands tied, in the back of his Bentley, he guessed from how warm the leather seat felt under his face, along with the lack of streetlights and a glimpse of the corner of a motorway sign, that he was no longer in the city.

The car slowed momentarily and Holland saw Williams’s shoulders rise in front of him as he turned the steering wheel through a junction. Holland didn’t move his body, but he slowly angled his head up to try to see further into the front of the car.

‘If you’re wondering if I’m armed, I am,’ Williams said.

‘Actually, I was wondering where you’re taking me,’ Holland replied.

‘I’m not going to tell you that.’

Holland shifted his elbow under his side and levered himself up into the seat diagonally behind Williams. It now looked like he was being chauffeured somewhere instead of abducted.

‘I’d rather you didn’t do that,’ Williams said.

‘I’m sure.’

Holland hadn’t sat up to get a better idea of where they were going—the road they were now on was too dark to offer any clues—but to get a proper view of Williams. Holland had been surprised by how calm he sounded, and was equally shocked by how relaxed he seemed. Williams didn’t look like someone who had lost their mind, or who was acting on instinct. He looked like someone carrying out a well-rehearsed set of actions.

Holland twisted and pulled against the tie round his wrists, but it was fastened tight. This wasn’t how he’d imagined the end of his MI5 career—assaulted, abducted, and probably soon to face extremely unpleasant and invasive probing at the hand of, he assumed, the KGB. Not the retirement he’d expected, though he hadn’t given much thought to what even a voluntary departure from Leconfield House might look like, should he ever have that luxury.

He knew all about the idle chatter among his junior officers, who seemed to think anyone over sixty was mere weeks away from digging an allotment or a grave. He’d also heard mutterings coming out of Whitehall that he’d only managed to fight the Cold War to a deadlock, and it might be time for a fresh perspective.