Ben would have been amazed if he hadn’t already half-expected this to happen. He replied, ‘That’s funny. I thought you were retired.’

Roth laughed. ‘Oh, you know, once you’re in the club they never really let you out of their clutches. One thing leads to another.’

‘In your case, those things being Delta leading to the CIA.’

‘We prefer to call it the company,’ Roth said. ‘Sounds cosier, don’t you think?’

‘To me, it just sounds like you’ve been playing me for an idiot this whole time.’

‘Oh, you’re no idiot, my friend. Don’t do yourself down. In fact, you’ve probably got most of this figured out already, a smart dude like you.’

‘It all goes back to the very beginning,’ Ben said. ‘You knew Segal was being coerced by Nazim’s people. And you had a tap on Romy Juneau’s phone, because you thought she might be involved, too.’

Roth shrugged. ‘We didn’t really know about that, for sure. But we did know that we weren’t the only ones listening in. Which kind of suggested that she wasn’t working for the bad guys, and they suspected her. One thing about terrorists, they’re almost as cautious and paranoid as we are.’

‘So you were waiting to see if she’d get hit,’ Ben said. ‘How charming. Whereupon you’d have moved on the hitters.’

‘Or at least known more about who was involved,’ Roth said. ‘Although we already had a pretty good idea. We had a bunch of agents watching her day and night. We were watching when she bumped into you in the street. Your face got twigged instantly. Gave some folks quite a shock, until they decided it really was just a crazy coincidence and that the Brits didn’t have their own spooks on the case. Then, when you turned up at her place and blundered right into the middle of our operation like some damn fool white knight riding in to help the damsel in distress, we were watching that too.’ Roth shook his head. ‘You could have walked face-first into a fucking bullet, you asshole.’

‘I’m so glad we’re having this conversation at last,’ Ben said.

‘Absolutely. What a fabulous rapport we’re having. Why don’t you take a seat, make yourself comfortable?’

‘No thanks. If I get too close I might want to crack this desk in half with your face.’

‘Nice way to speak to the guy who just sprung your ass out of jail.’

‘Keep talking.’

Roth eased back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. ‘So now we had an unwanted witness, and definitely not someone we wanted mixed up in our business. The initial response was that we should intervene to remove you.’

‘As in, kill me.’

‘Sure, but “remove” sounds better.’

‘Good luck with that. It’s been tried plenty of times before.’