I left her weeping and went up the stairs and found the bedroom. The former MI5 agent, who had earned for himself the not particularly flattering nickname of the Stoat, was still slumbering. He was on more hit lists than it was possible to count. Three different factions of the IRA wanted him dead, so did a dozen other terrorist organizations; the French, Italian, German and Dutch Secret Services would have given their back teeth for a pot-shot at him, and if they all failed, there was many a person inside MI5 who would have paid good money to have had his head in a cross-haired sight.

I crept into the room, my gun in one hand, and walked over to the bed. I ripped the bedclothes back, and rammed my gun into his naked stomach. ‘Wakey wakey!’

He tried to sit up, but I pushed the gun further into his stomach. ‘Sorry to remove your bedclothes, Harvey, I wanted to make sure you didn’t have your tool wrapped around a trigger.’

‘Flynn?’

‘You got it in one.’

‘What the hell do you want?’

‘Got a little assignment for you.’

‘Oh no. I finished with all that. Remember?’

‘Yes, I remember. I remember how you near as dammit got me killed sending me into a goddam booby-trapped house, because you’d been out fucking a woman instead of doing your job – or was it perhaps that you wanted me to get blown up?’

‘So, you’re still alive. Don’t get so uptight – and get out of my room. I got a deal from the British government whether you like it or not, and that deal sticks.’

‘The government gave you a golden handshake because it believed that you had become a prime target for the Russians, not to mention half the rest of the world. That’s why it let you retire at forty with a new identity and gave you enough money to set up your antique business. It didn’t expect you to go promptly and make your peace with the Russians, and start to flog them secrets.’

‘You’re mad. This is rubbish.’

‘Two months ago a KGB officer defected. His name was Anatole Mijkov. He told us all about you. Happier?’

Sparrow scowled. ‘So you’ve come to tell me the picnic’s over? You think this is a fucking picnic – here in this God-forsaken dump with a manic-depressive wife? Is that what you think?’

‘You make your bed, you’ve got to sleep in it.’

‘That’s what I was trying to do.’

‘Canada’s obviously good for you, Sparrow, it’s given you a sense of humour.’ I lifted the gun from his stomach and tossed his bedclothes back over him. ‘You’ve got a horrible body, Sparrow, I can’t stand looking at it any longer.’

‘Nobody invited you to in the first place.’

‘I’ve got an assignment for you, Sparrow,’

‘You can stuff it.’