What he was asking was that she put her head in the dragon’s mouth. It was so far removed from her daily life she might as well be watching it in one of those films it wasn’t like, and even there at the table she could feel her innards contract, her thighs grow watery. She’d wobble when she stood, she knew she would. And she ought to tell him he’d picked the wrong girl, a nobody, who couldn’t be relied on. She’d dissolve into panic at the worst moment. She wasn’t icy cool and she wasn’t super-hot. He’d plucked her from a crowd, and really, it would be sensible to let her subside back into it, and lose herself among the traffic.

But if she said that she’d see disappointment cross his features, that strange mix of the ugly and the sad on which she’d come to depend.

And besides . . . And besides, what he was asking of her was important. For Queen and country, he’d have said in the old days, though here in the modern world it was more tangible than that. What he was asking her to be was a cog in a larger wheel, on whose turning much depended. He was giving her the opportunity of helping ensure that something did not happen. That there was a fundamental anonymity to this—success measured as an absence of event—did not faze her. Anonymity was her natural setting, her personality’s screensaver. Just ask Meredith.

“Good, then. Good.” He fished about in his pocket.

For all he’d said about not being James Bond, Maggie had still expected something flashy, in a silver case perhaps, moulded to fit. But instead he’d handed her a very ordinary flash drive, the size of her thumb. It was black, with a white label so its contents could be indexed. This was blank, of course. When she reached to take it from him, he held it over her palm for a moment.

“But listen. Whatever happens, you mustn’t let this fall into their hands. They mustn’t know you’ve got it, mustn’t know you’ve used it. Once it’s done its job, you have to either get it out of the building, or hide it somewhere it won’t be found. And they will be looking.” His gaze was intense. She imagined this the look men used when sending other men to war. You might not come back. But I will remember you. “If they find you, if they know you’ve been there, they’ll be looking for this. And they mustn’t find it. I can’t tell you how crucial that is.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

She could only nod.

He let go of the drive and there it was, on her palm.

Maggie made a fist round it, keeping it safe.