They didn’t drive to the CIA apartment block in Miramar. They headed into the middle of the city, to an area of bigger buildings and grander houses that had become Santo Domingo’s diplomatic district after the civil war. There were still some signs of the fighting that had raged through the streets here, but more of them had been paved or painted over.

Even if the base he commanded was mostly a secret, Gibson was still the highest-ranking American intelligence officer in the Dominican Republic, and that meant he got to live among the other senior diplomats and spies in the capital. Bennett wasn’t supposed to know which house was Gibson’s but, of course, she did.

She got out of the cab, gave the driver more notes than she needed to, stalked up the stairs to the front door of Gibson’s two-storey colonial home and banged on it. And she kept banging until it was flung open by a very angry-looking Dominican woman in a thin cotton nightdress. She glared at Bennett for a second before Gibson appeared behind her in a vest and trousers he’d clearly just pulled on. The woman wasn’t Gibson’s wife, because Gibson’s wife lived in Bloomington, Indiana—another thing Bennett wasn’t supposed to know.

‘We have to hand him over to the British,’ Bennett said past the woman to Gibson.

Gibson didn’t need to ask who ‘he’ was. And the woman apparently decided she couldn’t be bothered dealing with someone who was clearly Gibson’s problem—she disappeared up the stairs that climbed up the side of the large living room and left Gibson and Bennett to fight out whatever they needed to.

‘We don’t have to do anything,’ Gibson said, gesturing for Bennett to come inside out of view of any prying neighbours. ‘No one knows he’s here and no one’s missing him.’

‘I know someone who is,’ Bennett replied.

Gibson crossed the living room into the kitchen. A moment later he reappeared with a single glass containing three ice cubes that were already wet and translucent after a few seconds in the un-frigid evening air.

He poured himself a Scotch from a bottle that had been left on a side table and asked, ‘How is that possible?’

‘Because I know who he is. He’s not the Wolf.’

‘Of course he isn’t.’ Gibson swirled the Scotch around the ice cubes.

‘He’s an ally, and we can’t subject him to—’

‘We know,’ he said, cutting off Bennett’s tirade before it could really get going, and then taking a sip of his Scotch. ‘And we’ve got everything we can from him, so I don’t really care what happens to the guy now.’