‘And Avilov, Doctor Leonid Avilov? His GRU goons picked me up in-country, in Mayo.’

‘Ah, yes. The good doctor. He didn’t survive, either. A traffic accident, it seems. The Kremlin has issued a statement. Thrown from a bridge in Moscow during a collision. He was court-martialled a month ago, apparently. They’re denying all official knowledge of his excursions to the Holy Land and our Emerald Isle.’ I flexed the fingers of my right hand. ‘So, uh, all’s quiet on the Eastern Front.’

But there was one thing he hadn’t considered.

‘The computer, Frank. The Russians have built a computer.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded slowly. ‘As far as we can tell – and it’s hard to be certain – that does indeed seem to be the case.’ He took a long draft of the wine, and put the empty glass back on the silver tray, next to the decanter. ‘But then again,’ he smiled, ‘so have we.’

‘Does it work?’

‘No, it doesn’t. Not now, anyway. And you know,’ he said, taking a step closer to me, ‘perhaps that’s for the best. After all, if it did, you and I would be out of a job, wouldn’t we?’ He put his hands in his pockets and went to leave. ‘The general’s batman will show you out.’

We both knew that I could kill him right then and there. The fact that I wouldn’t was perhaps the last guarantee of survival I had. Standing on the train platform in Ashford, I’d thought all bets were off. They weren’t. Frank had never even dealt me in. He’d manipulated me so perfectly that I’d believed all along that I’d been the one in charge.

‘You played me, Frank.’

He hesitated in the doorway; his back still turned to me.

‘No, Max. You played yourself.’

Epilogue: Appointment in Arklow

Saturday 27 January 2018

I pressed my face to the railings. The old Regency pile sat at the far end of the drive, grey beneath a damp Wicklow sky, windows full of clouds. It had rained earlier and the ground was wet, just as it had been twenty-seven years ago. On her eighteenth birthday Rachel had already been teetering on the edge of madness, greatness. All I’d had were stories.

And of all the stories I’d told, the most enduring had been the one I told myself: that the gates to our family house had guarded a prison I’d been lucky to escape. But I’d known, sitting at Polina Yurievna’s table – my mother’s table – that I’d ended up on the wrong side of them.

Hand over hand I hauled myself up over the old ironwork, fingers still smarting, chest and shoulder burning, and dropped down on to home ground.