I looked out to sea. I saw my mother at home, laying her hand lightly on Doc’s arm. During my father’s long absences they would sit together, side by side in the gathering Wicklow dusk, saying little, sharing a drink. And then, out of nowhere, that peal of laughter, light and bright and full of joy, bringing her to life.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think it would.’

‘OK. So, let’s assume Rachel wrote it on the banknote. Maybe not insane, after all then, hmm?’ He left that idea and moved on, aware enough, at least, of the effect of his questioning on my mood. ‘That just leaves Moshe,’ he said. ‘He was right about the money.’

‘What about the money?’

‘About what it’s being used for. Its purpose. Not just your note, though. You said there was more money?’

‘Uh-huh. A lot more.’

In the 1980s, the Lebanese plates had printed over a billion dollars of forged fiat. Frank Knight would have known that, and most likely used the size of Moshe’s run to calculate the numbers he’d quoted in Doherty’s pub. If the Israelis had printed that quantity of fakes then, there was no reason to doubt that the Russians could do the same – or more – now.

‘OK, so we follow it. That’s what they say, isn’t it? “Follow the money.” It’s so Hollywood, huna? Who do you think will play me in the movie?’ Baaz burst out laughing.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What did I do to deserve this?’

‘Heaven knows, but right now you’re guilty of starving a poor Punjabi boy half to death. I could eat a horse.’ Then he looked worried, and added: ‘If I wasn’t a vegetarian, of course.’

Baaz was right. I was hungry again, too. I stood up to fetch a menu, and looked out across the city for a moment, considering what he’d said. It seemed to me there were far more than the three variables he had lit upon. Chief among them was whether or not Frank Knight had known that it was Rachel’s colleague Amos Stein, and not Chappie Connor, waiting for me in the cottage. And finding out what Stein was doing there in the first place didn’t seem likely while I was stuck in the Middle East.

‘I’d give my kingdom for a bloody horse, never mind eating one,’ I said under my breath. ‘Anything to get out of here.’

And then a window opened in my mind and through it I looked back into the Traitor’s studio. And then another, through which I saw Rachel’s office. The images began to run together. Doc patching my shoulder, me turning a quick circle around the corpse in the cottage. There it was. Mane flowing, nostrils flaring, the pale mare galloping across the Irish countryside. There they were.

‘That’s it!’ I said out loud. ‘Baaz, that’s fucking it!’