‘No. Ashdod,’ Knight replied. ‘Your man here is queuing to board a cruise ship bound for Piraeus. His ticket was booked last Wednesday.’ The date stamp on the video grab read 07:00:06 19-01-2018. Friday morning. ‘According to the ship’s manifest he was due to disembark at Alexandria on Saturday morning.’

‘And then what?’ I asked.

‘And then he vanished, McLean. No one has seen or heard anything of Bhavneet Singh since.’

That beautiful, brilliant boy had stepped out of the shitstorm, pocketing the one thing we’d all wanted. Whatever his motivations, it was a stunning achievement. That much I had to admit. It would have been a coup as magnificent as it was monstrous – were it not for one defining fact: he’d jumped ship too soon. Unless his mind proved equal to Rachel’s, without her final calculations all he’d escaped with was precisely one hundred United States dollars. King took the printout from me and walked towards the door.

‘He’s all yours, Frank. The best of bloody luck to both of you.’

General King stalked out of the dining room, swatting away the attentions of the lance corporal whose undesirable job it was to wait on him. Frank and I stood staring at the floor, waiting for their footsteps to recede. When the only sound left was the distant hum of traffic creeping along Whitehall, Frank looked up at me.

‘Well done. Not often you see the old bugger lost for words.’

‘Well done?’

‘The cottage was burned out and all the evidence destroyed. All anyone on the circuit abroad knows is that Her Majesty’s Government wanted you to kill a dead man – and I don’t need to tell you, of all people, how easy it is to lead the press. As usual, the great British public will believe exactly what we want them to: 77th Brigade has been on it for days. All things considered, I think it went rather well.’

‘But the banknote. The …’

‘What banknote?’ Frank interrupted me. ‘There is no banknote. It washed out to sea. Remember?’ I opened my mouth to contradict him, but thought better of it.

‘There was a shooter, Frank. There was a gunman waiting in the bloody cottage.’

‘If you say so, Max. Though as things stand, you might want to think twice before putting that to King. But I did take the precaution of doing as you suggested and checking the sat feed. You were right. We’d have seen a runner clear as day.’ He helped himself to a glass of King’s wine. ‘There wasn’t one. Goldilocks must have fried.’

‘Show me, Frank. Show me the satellite images.’

‘As you well know,’ he said, ‘those images are classified. So I’ll say it again, Max. All the evidence has been destroyed. You vaporized it.’ He turned to face me squarely. ‘I expect exactly what happened in Donegal will remain permanently, uh, how shall we put it? Unknown.’