‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Tell her it’s an old friend calling: name of Paul Dark. I’m at the Palace Hotel on Victoria Island, room 376. Did you get all that?’

She said she had, and I replaced the receiver. Slavin was my first priority, because he was planning to defect and might have more information that could point to me. But Anna could also expose me - she wasn’t volunteering to do so, but she could - so I had to get hold of her, too. She would be unlikely to return to the embassy until the morning, and they wouldn’t have given me her address, so I’d taken the next best option, which was to leave a message to try to bring her to me.

I locked up, and headed downstairs.

‘Everything okay?’ asked Manning.

‘First class,’ I said, fastening my seat-belt.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Tell me what you know about Slavin,’ I said.

‘Slavin?’

‘Yes. Russian johnnie. Was there anything you didn’t mention in the dossier you sent?’

He looked at me blankly. ‘Like what?’

‘How about the woman he mentioned - Irina Grigorieva? What’s their relationship?’

‘I have no idea,’ he replied, irritated. ‘I sent all the information we have.’

I smiled. ‘Just double-checking. I’d like to talk to Slavin - see if I can make him open up some more.’

‘You can do that tomorrow morning. He’s due at the High Commission at nine . . .’

‘I’d like to talk to him tonight.’

He tensed up. ‘Sorry, old chap, I don’t follow.’

‘Tomorrow may be too late,’ I said. ‘Did he have any surveillance on him when he arrived at the High Commission?’ He stiffened, but gave no reply. ‘And when he left?’ No reply. ‘So you see, we have no idea how secure his position is, let alone how he’s handling the pressure of being about to defect. He could already be under suspicion, or he could be getting horribly drunk and about to spill everything to one of his colleagues while we sit here discussing it. Have you put his home under surveillance?’

He shook his head defensively. ‘Too risky. He was quite clear we should make no further contact until tomorrow.’

‘But you know where his house is?’ A nod. ‘Well?’

‘It’s in Ikoyi, near the Russian Embassy.’

‘Near, but not in?’

‘That’s right. Most of the Russians have their own villas, same as us. But I don’t—’

‘Right, then. We’ll go and knock on his door, see if he’s still alive, alive-oh, and then you can head off to your party and I back to my little rat-hole.’

He frowned. ‘If he’s under surveillance, we could blow him.’

‘If he’s under surveillance,’ I said, ‘he’s probably already been blown. London told you to hold my hand, and that’s precisely what you’re going to do.’