He followed my gaze, then looked back at me, his lips still for once. ‘You are right. I had forgotten. I have been here too long, I am too familiar. But you, how could you—’

‘I was here.’

We stared at each other in a long silence, but for the hiss of the snow. Those three words, three simple words, sunk into him like stones in a pond. Who were the prisoners, the real prisoners? And how could I be a senior official with a ZiL and furs? I took the cigarettes and the remaining coins from my pocket. He dropped his stick in the snow and held out his cupped hands. He was still staring, uncomprehending, as my car pulled away.

At the foot of the original Russian text was a handwritten note in English, in Badger’s characteristic forward-sloping hand and his usual brown ink: So you see, Charles, we are all prisoners really, even the guards. Tell your people who doubt my motivation – is this not enough?

Charles closed that volume of Josef’s file and put it with its mate. Then he picked up Badger’s file, a slim single volume also buff-coloured but this time with a red stripe, a different number system and a white stick-on label with heavy black lettering saying, ‘Closed. Do not digitise.’ He had stuck that on himself years before, proof of rare premonition. It meant the case had remained secret and, unlike digitised files, was fully recoverable.

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Deep Blue

Alan Judd

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Judd is a novelist and biographer who has previously served in the army and at the Foreign Office. Chosen as one of the original twenty Best Young British Novelists, he subsequently won the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award, the Heinemann Award and the Guardian Fiction Award; he was also shortlisted for the Westminster Prize. Two of his novels, Breed of Heroes and Legacy, were filmed for the BBC and a third, The Kaiser’s Last Kiss, has been filmed as The Exception, starring Christopher Plummer and Lily James. Alan Judd has reviewed widely, was a comment writer for the Daily Telegraph and writes the motoring column for The Oldie.

Also by Alan Judd

Fiction

A Breed of Heroes

Short of Glory

The Noonday Devil

Tango

The Devil’s Own Work

Legacy

The Kaiser’s Last Kiss

Dancing with Eva

Uncommon Enemy

Inside Enemy

Slipstream

Deep Blue

Shakespeare’s Sword

Non-Fiction

Ford Madox Ford (biography)

The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (biography)

First World War Poets (with David Crane)

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