But instead of winking back, Knox took the opportunity to put her on the spot.

‘Who sent you?’ he asked, point blank.

‘What?’ she replied.

‘You heard me.’

‘No one sent me,’ she said, her voice turning as hard as his.

‘Really? You just turned up at the right moment saying all the right things to get me to come on this jaunt with you?’

‘And you just couldn’t resist the little lady stroking your ego?’ she shot back. ‘I didn’t force you to come. I needed help, so I asked for it. It’s not my fault everything went south.’

‘Things went south as soon as I started to trust you. Are you even CIA?’

‘You’re going to believe a KGB agent trying to destabilise a situation? If you’re that easy to manipulate I should’ve just told you I found out Stalin was alive and well and living on a fishing boat on the Stockholm docks.’

She sounded genuinely hurt, but Knox knew she was evading him. ‘Do you work for the CIA?’ he asked again.

‘Give me some credit.’

Bennett turned away from him, staring out at the North Sea, now thousands of feet beneath them. Suddenly she looked very young to Knox, like a child who had been sent on a long journey alone.

They sat in silence for ten minutes. When Knox spoke again, his voice was softer.

‘I need to know,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she replied, refusing to take her eyes off the dark, churning waves. ‘I work for the CIA.’

‘Doing what?’

‘File clerk.’

‘Christ.’ Knox barely mouthed the word, but she still heard it.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she spat, finally turning back from the window to face him. ‘Is this embarrassing for you? Have I taken you away from all that important work you were doing drunk off your ass on suspension? Let me get you a drink or three to make up for it.’

Knox tried to defend himself, but she cut him off before he could get a word out.

‘Nothing I told you was a lie. Nothing. I work for the CIA. I see everything that comes through London, including all the intelligence my bosses choose to ignore. We’d been watching Bianchi and Moretti. We knew about their deaths before the ink was dry on the autopsy report. But no one cared, it was none of our business. I didn’t buy that, but when I went to my boss he laughed at me. Told me not to worry my pretty head and go back to doing the filing.’

‘So you ignored his orders?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘That’s different.’

Of course it is. You’re a man. You can break all the rules and just get a slap on the wrist. You live in a world where you’re right even when you’re wrong.’