‘Hopefully they’ve been warned off. But if not, it’d still be better if they were hunting us while you’re busy with Kosygin.’

Knox, Williams, White, and Sarah all waited for Holland to decide what was going to happen next.

He looked down at the oak tabletop, his eyes following the grains in the wood as if they were different paths laid out before him. Then he looked up at Knox and said, ‘Deal.’

Ten minutes later, White left Wytchen House, with Stella in tow.

After Holland had given his blessing once more for Knox to go to Kent, Sarah had taken Williams to find another change of clothes, and White had given Holland and Knox his assessment of Williams’s mental condition, which was why he’d really been summoned across the heath from his home in Hampstead.

‘I’m as much of a psychologist as a doctor, but from what I’ve read, the things I’ve heard about the interrogation techniques the CIA and KGB are experimenting with, and what I’ve just observed, I’d say he’s been subjected to intense, prolonged trauma. Possibly for as long as he’s been missing.’

‘Is that why he’s suppressing his memories?’ Knox asked.

‘Probably,’ White replied. ‘It’s a natural defence mechanism. Like flinching away from fire after you’ve been burned. The brain doesn’t want to go near anything that could hurt it.’

‘Even if that thing’s in your head.’

‘Especially then.’

‘Do you think MKULTRA has been at him?’ Knox asked.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ White replied.

‘Could they have brainwashed him, or erased his memory somehow?’

White and Holland both snorted at Knox’s question. Both men knew about MKULTRA and some of the things it had achieved through distinctly questionable means. But they disliked the rumours that swirled around it and seemed to credit it with almost magical abilities to play with people’s heads.

‘I think what happened to Williams is most likely just plain old human cruelty,’ White said.

‘So, what does he need?’ Holland asked.

‘Therapy, drugs, probably both,’ White said. ‘But mostly time. A lot of the mind is still uncharted territory. It can’t be rushed.’

Once White had gone but before Sarah finished helping Williams get ready for his journey to the coast, Holland took Knox into the living room. Knox expected the director general to tell him again not to do anything that might rock political boats, or be too willing to believe whatever sliver of memory or dream worked its way out of Williams’s broken mind, but he didn’t.

‘Are you sure you can take care of him?’ Holland asked quietly once he’d closed the living-room door behind them.

‘I’m not going to let him go again,’ Knox replied.