Huang Yiyi was busy rushing around the room, making tea and hunting out some biscuits. She had even managed to find some really expensive cigarettes, which at that time were very difficult to get, and said she had bought them specially for me. She pulled one out of the packet and gave it to me, saying that she liked the smell. I lit the cigarette and then said through a cloud of smoke, ‘Do you think I should try writing again to Anderov?’

She said at once, ‘Oh my God, you really are annoying sometimes. We’ve done nothing but talk about work all evening. Can we please talk about something else!’

I asked her what she wanted to talk about, and she looked at me curiously and suggested that I tell her about being a spy and about my wife, Xiaoyu. I told her a bit about what I had done in the Soviet Union, and a few things about Xiaoyu. Naturally I said nothing at all about what she had really been doing there. Those were the rules, and I obeyed them.

Suddenly Huang Yiyi asked me, ‘In films spies are all really romantic figures. Female spies always seem to use sex to carry out their covert operations, so were you ever seduced by one?’

‘I had Xiaoyu with me, so of course not!’

‘So people knew that you were married?’

‘Even if people hadn’t known, I wouldn’t have done it!’

‘Not even if it was necessary for your work?’

‘That is never necessary for work. That kind of behaviour is corrupt and degenerate.’

‘It’s not degenerate, it’s romantic. Don’t tell me you’ve never been romantically involved with anyone?’

‘I’ve told you before: during all those years of warfare and unsurpassed hardship, we relied on the optimistic spirit of revolutionary romanticism to conquer every difficulty and danger, gaining victory after victory.’

She caught hold of my hands and said, ‘Why are you so selfless? Don’t you realize that the more you’re like that, the more I love you? Do you understand how much I love you?’

I gently freed my hands and got up to go.

She didn’t try and stop me, and without moving from her seat she said quietly, ‘Just now you mentioned several times wanting me to give you a second choice, but in fact I already know what your second choice is; it’s the fourth possibility. That would break all the usual rules, using all the possible ancient encryption methods to create a single cipher.’

I could only admire her insight. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Because, as you said, Sivincy is a cow and completely unprincipled, so she’s very likely to overstep all boundaries and pull some weird trick on us.’