She looked temporarily lost. ‘He expects a hundred and ten per cent.’

‘And total loyalty.’

She smiled emphatically. ‘Mm.’

‘So he’d be pretty pissed off with you if he found out you were working for someone else.’

She closed her eyes and gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘God, yes.’

‘But you’d tough it out, wouldn’t you – if he accused you?’

She stared at him with an amused smile, as if she was pretending to enjoy not knowing where this banter was going.

‘And you’d be very plausible. You’d challenge him on it – insist he backed up the claim.’

She took a much bigger sip of her mojito.

‘Well?’

His whole demeanour had changed. Not overtly threatening, just a cold, penetrating stare.

She put her glass down and positioned it on the coaster. ‘Yes, I would.’

‘And if I went to him and told him that you couldn’t have seen my name on any list because the MoD never lists the movements of the SAS, and that my phone number is privileged, is never on anyone’s file . . .’

Her calm and seductive serenity was starting to fray. Tom suspected that inside she felt as though she was clinging to a very slippery windowsill.

‘. . . and that therefore I’ve been set up . . .’

‘I’m sorry, Tom, but I really don’t understand what you’re saying.’

A last-ditch attempt. She was off the windowsill, falling to her doom. A bit of him felt sorry for her – she was only doing her job. But mostly he was angry. He’d been played in Afghanistan, humiliated in front of senior officers, made to carry the can for a brutal murder. And now someone else was manipulating him.

He leaned across the table and put his lips very close to her ear. ‘Take out your phone and call your case officer. Say you’d like him to join us for a drink.’

Chapter 34

34

‘This is all rather awkward.’

Tom said nothing.

Woolf’s eyes had a slightly desperate look, like that of a man who had had a stroke and was thinking far more than his features would allow him to express. He and Tom had met before, on the Eurostar hijacking: Woolf had been MI5’s man on the ground when the SAS had gone into the tunnel. Unlike the suits and mandarins, who had rushed in after it was over to claim their slice of the credit, he had taken a back seat. And for that Tom had reserved a molecule of respect for him – until now.

They were seated in a private room in his father’s club that Tom had commandeered for the meeting.

Phoebe, looking fragile, stared hard at her nails as she waited for her boss to explain himself.

‘Sorry to hear about the business in Bastion.’