Sarah knew her husband’s life was built on secrets, but they’d never kept any from each other. Apart from the one he shared only with Knox.

‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘That’s not your decision to make.’

‘No, it was James’s.’ As soon as the words left Knox’s mouth he knew he’d made a mistake.

Sarah’s face set hard, her tiredness and worry finally turning to rage. But she didn’t explode at Knox. Instead, she got up, kissed Holland on the forehead, and straightened his gold-rimmed glasses that sat next to his wedding ring—a thin band of bronze shaped like a belt buckle—on his bedside table.

She smoothed down her dress, picked up her handbag, and walked past Knox.

‘Say goodbye,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘And don’t come back.’

Then she left.

Knox didn’t say goodbye to Holland. He didn’t say anything. He just sat with him, going over and over his encounters with Manning and Sarah in his mind. His reason for not breaking his pact with Holland and telling Sarah where he had been was that it could ruin both his career and her husband’s. But, if Manning was now permanent director general and Knox’s professional life already lay in tatters, how much did it really matter?

After several, silent hours he decided to go up to Highgate and tell Sarah everything. It might not bring her husband back to her, but perhaps it would make her feel better to know that even if he had kept something from her, it had been to protect her.

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Knox’s London had almost been destroyed twice. Once by the Luftwaffe, and once by his parents’ deaths. Now, with Manning in control of MI5, his world was on the brink of collapse again. What no one knew was how his parents’ deaths were connected to his mentor’s coma. No one apart from Knox, Holland, and, soon, his wife.

Knox left Guy’s, walking back along Southwark Street towards Blackfriars Bridge. Rush hour was over, but there were still plenty of people about. The man who Knox had noticed following him since he’d turned out of St Thomas Street may just have been making his way to the tube and home after a long day in the office. But that didn’t explain why he was wearing the international uniform of street muscle—a large, black leather bomber jacket and a flat cap tilted low over his eyes in the middle of summer.