“Before we start, there’s something you should know. When an action like the one we are currently undertaking is mandated, a certain amount of administration occurs. Acceptable limits are signed off on. Mission parameters defined. What I’m saying, John, is that the worst-case scenario has been budgeted for, so I’m not looking at reputational damage if things turn sour this morning. Nor is Richard. I thought it might help if you were in possession of that information. There’s no need to acknowledge your understanding. You don’t get to sign a waiver or anything. What happens, happens.”

John thought, All this, really? He’d been expecting some kind of bureaucratic retribution, but this melodrama? An empty office, a sinister warning? And yet it was working, because he was scared.

Edward nodded, confident his words had hit home. He tugged at his lapels, straightening his suit jacket. “So let’s get down to business, shall we? Benny Manors, John. What can you tell me about Benny Manors?”

Well, okay. He hadn’t been expecting that.

John Bachelor was Service, had been all his adult life. So by any fair calculation, he ought to have been comfortably settled by now: not a Desk, obviously—reaching Desk level required drive, ambition, contacts, dress sense and at least a glimmer of sociopathy—but enjoying cubicle status and a pension. Instead, he was on the margin; downgraded last year to “irregular,” which meant part-time, with an accompanying reduction in salary. When he’d complained to HR, the rebuff had been comprehensive. If the Service operated a zero-hours contract, it ran, that’s the level he’d have been pegged at, so he might as well stop trying to make waves. Even making ripples was above his pay grade. They were barely aware, to be frank, that he was in the pool at all. Putting the phone down after this illuminating chat, he’d felt as if everything had become a little looser: the buttons on his cuffs, his shoelaces, his sense of self. What made it worse was its inevitability. His life trajectory resembled one of those puzzles in the Saturday papers: What is the next number in this sequence? He’d been counting down to zero for years.