Bennett was a believer. She kept it quiet, and she’d tried to resist it, but the myth of the Wolf had been too compelling. For years, she’d quietly trawled through the mission reports and vague snatches of intelligence she’d been tasked with archiving into oblivion, and filed away in her head the odd stories she’d overhear or see in the middle pages of newspapers—the unexplained deaths or curious events that, with a little imagination, could be connected to other equally strange things that might have happened months ago and thousands of miles apart.

The sceptics said there was no way one person could be responsible for everything that had been pinned on the Wolf. So much death and violence was attributed to them it was almost impossible for one man—and any discussion on the subject always assumed they were a man—to be behind it all. But, the way Bennett saw it, every Western intelligence agency should pray it was all the work of one man, because if it wasn’t that meant there was a whole pack of wolves out there.

The man standing in front of Bennett didn’t look like a killer but, in the second she had to process his sudden appearance and sober herself up, she decided that if he really was a Soviet super-agent he probably wouldn’t look like one.

‘How do you know who I am?’ she asked.

The man’s eyes were still on Bennett, but she realised they were glazed, milky and unfocused.

‘I-I don’t know,’ he said.

‘How did you find me?’

His hands gripped his arms tighter. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Do you know where you are?’

Another pause. ‘No.’

‘Jesus,’ Bennett said to herself.

Her shoulders, which had been up somewhere close to her ears, started to drop. There was no way this man was the Wolf. He was some drunk or addict who had been kicked off a cargo ship and given a couple of pesos to trick her.

The only person she’d talked to about the Wolf in Santo Domingo was Warren, in a brief post-coital attempt at conversation when the combination of alcohol and orgasm had made her lower her guard. He must have been waiting for a chance to throw it in her face, and she’d given him one tonight. The whole block was probably at their windows waiting to laugh at her.

‘Okay,’ she said to the man. ‘Well, you tell Tripp that you’re both real funny, but I’ve had a long day and I’m going to bed.’

‘Please,’ the man said, the milkiness starting to clear from his eyes. ‘I need your help.’

‘You need someone’s, but not mine.’