Manning slowly circled the room, as if showing it off to Knox. It had been set up as an office. A small desk strewn with a mess of papers, a few boxes stacked in a corner, and an empty bookcase.

‘They’d been pitching themselves all over,’ Manning continued. ‘National Provincial Bank, British Petroleum, even tried to get a meeting at the Ministry of Defence. After they briefly interrupted a BBC Overseas Service broadcast, the director of radio passed on their information to us.’

Knox took another look at what potential evidence the room had to offer. There wasn’t much.

‘They sound like chancers,’ he said. ‘With a couple of clever tricks.’

‘Perhaps, but those tricks were making them rather well known in some circles. People were starting to pay attention to them. Serious people. Then they seemed to drop off the face of the earth. Now we know why.’

‘The coroner estimates they’ve been dead between forty-eight and seventy-two hours,’ said Peterson, stepping through the door, face still as grey as the dead men’s. ‘But he can’t be more precise about time, or cause, until he’s done an autopsy.’

‘Can’t the Watchers give you a smaller window?’ Knox asked.

‘They were on light surveillance. Weekly check-ins only.’

‘Sounds like they weren’t much of a priority.’

‘They weren’t,’ Peterson said, the colour slowly returning to his face.

‘So, my original question,’ Knox said, turning to Manning. ‘Why are you here?’

Manning slid his hands into his pockets. ‘I’m here because of you,’ he said. ‘I need to know what happened to these men, and I need to know quickly. Five is stretched preparing for the OECD conference, but you aren’t.’

In less than a week’s time, London would be hosting the in­augural conference of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. It was a major political event, bringing leaders from nineteen of the world’s most powerful nations together in one city, and the primary reason Whitehall had been so fast to put someone else at the top of MI5. Manning was one of the Service’s longest-serving officers. Like Holland, he’d worked for MI5 through the war and ever since. He’d also gone to Eton and Oxford with most of the cabinet. He was the obvious choice.

‘You also have a personal interest in finding the solution to this little puzzle,’ Manning said.

‘I do?’ Knox asked.

‘I know you think I’m working for the Russians.’

Knox didn’t rise to Manning’s bait. But he also didn’t deny his accusation. Knox had a short list of possible moles operating at the highest level of MI5—people who would have enough access to sensitive information to compromise the Service, and enough power to act without scrutiny and cover their tracks—and Manning was at the top of it.