It was late afternoon, a Friday. The sun was still high, the breeze off the Thames was just right, and Knox was drinking beer with his best friend. Soon they’d make a bet about who was going to buy the next round, Knox would lose, and Williams would make it up to him by taking him for dinner at a new restaurant he wanted to try. Then they’d inevitably end up at Bar Italia before stumbling back to wherever in Soho Knox was living at the time or taking a late train to Hertfordshire to spend the weekend recovering from their excesses. It was a perfect memory, and Knox’s mind had no desire to give it up.

Unfortunately, Bennett had no idea how content Knox was. She was just scared that he was now stuck in a coma, just like Holland. There was one thing left she could try to wake him up. She slapped him hard across the face. Twice.

Slowly, and very unwillingly, Knox came to. He was confused to see Bennett in his bedroom staring down at him. Then, as he started to register the pain all over his face and the back of his head, his confusion turned to anger.

‘Hello,’ he said. His voice cracked. His throat was dry from inhaling the smoke-heavy air.

‘What happened to you?’ Bennett asked.

‘I think I upset someone,’ he replied, pulling himself up into a sitting position and delicately leaning his head against the wall.

‘That makes two of us.’

He told her about seeing the aftermath of the fire last night, his visits to White and Sarah Holland, and the attack someone had sprung on him while he was checking the damage to his flat. Then Bennett told him about the man who had come after her in Hyde Park.

‘It sounds like they really want us out of the way,’ Knox replied when she was done.

‘We might need to add another they to our list,’ Bennett replied.

She told him about the missing records in the CIA archives, the file she’d found on Medev, and the conversation she’d overheard in the embassy canteen.

‘I think it might not just be MI5 that’s been compromised,’ she said. ‘Finney could have been turned too.’

Knox had spent years searching for signs of Soviet infiltration of British intelligence, and he was convinced he’d found them. But even he struggled to believe that the KGB could have turned the director general of MI5 and the CIA’s chief in London. He thought for a moment, then asked, ‘Why fly someone over from NASA?’

‘You said why yourself. To find out what they can from Valera before they hand her back.’

‘Maybe.’ A CIA station chief checking out files in the dead of night and the sudden appearance of a NASA scientist in the city were definitely strange, but they weren’t the oddest things to happen over the last week.