If the lieutenant had been smart enough to recognise Tokorev’s half-quoting one of the greatest poetic works about the futility of war then he might have been in trouble—there were things even the Soviet Union’s most decorated submarine captains couldn’t get away with saying—but he wasn’t.

‘Exactly,’ Starikov said, stiffening in his increasingly sodden uniform in a gesture of earnest, patriotic sincerity.

That elicited another smile from Tokorev as he peeled back the waxed sleeve of his heavy coat and checked his watch. The twenty minutes were up. He flicked the butt of his cigar out into the murky black sea and, without saying anything else, finally turned round to face Starikov, walked past him and started to climb down through the turret access hatch.

Thirty seconds later the submarine slipped back below the surface.

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

White, of course, was right. Knox was moping. When he called it a day after sitting in his office reviewing Laing’s extremely comprehensive reports and then absently staring across the roofs of Mayfair for a couple of hours, he left his Jaguar in the basement car park of Leconfield House, in its spot next to Holland’s dark green Bentley S2, and decided to walk into Soho.

He took a circuitous route, heading east along Curzon Street, then dropping down onto Piccadilly, which would take him to Shaftesbury Avenue and then Rupert Street, which led up to Kemp House, the tower block his flat was perched on the top of.

It was the same walk he took every time he came back to London after being sent abroad. His reintroduction to the sights, sounds, and smells of the place that had been his home for most of his life. But today he didn’t feel any echo of the heady glee that used to rush through him when he spent his childhood nights sneaking out of his grandmother’s house in Bethnal Green and pounding the pavements of the city. Or the happy memories of summer days spent working and evenings spent drinking with Williams. Or even the dark thrill of noticing a lingering car or recognising a stranger’s face in the crowd during the short years before the Cold War started heating up and the idea of the city being swamped with foreign intelligence agents became an assumed fact of life.

Knox barely registered the cabs and buses racing each other towards Piccadilly Circus. Or the crowds of office workers jostling with tourists under the endlessly flashing lights of its billboards. Or the market traders on Berwick Street who seemed intent on barricading the entrance to Kemp House.

It all washed past him in a slow, grey blur. It was like his senses had been dulled. And that was a problem. Because a spy without keen senses was a dangerous thing.