They knew so much and no more. Operation Birdcage. SIS took the photos. John delivered them. Until the day he was given two instructions, one for MI6 and one for himself, and he knew that they knew he was a double agent. He’d panicked. After all, Major Goodfellow had spelled out what would happen to him if the Russians rumbled him. Best to keep them on side, so he gave them the information they wanted, slid his carbon copies between the pages of the Deutsche Volkszeitung alongside the false information from MI6. The Russians returned the copies the following week, and he filed them away in their proper folder in the proper drawer of the proper filing cabinet with no one the wiser. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done, and he’d only done it the once. He wished he could say it was for a higher motive, a cause he believed in. It wasn’t important information, he knew. The Russians had been testing him. He’d done it out of fear, and that was no defence.

Espionage. Was that a capital offence? Did MI6 know? Possibly. They’d pulled him out sharpish after all, packed him off to Nuremberg. They must have had people in Russian intelligence, monitoring what John was sending. What if MI6 didn’t know he’d double-crossed his own side? That was the sort of insider information the GRU would know. And use. The Soviets kept close tabs on them all, sometimes even the ones who’d turned, held at arm’s length, ready to be reined in or reused when the time came. Or left to the wolves. The British did the same. Only in his case, John knew, his father’s name had protected him then. For God’s sake, he hadn’t even come of age, was still a minor in the eyes of the law. He was on his own now, in a place he never wished to revisit. This was a subterranean world of bottom feeders and if he rose to the surface, he’d be fed to the sharks. MI6 wouldn’t come to his rescue, not this time. He thought he had escaped it all, pursuing the quiet life of a nondescript schoolmaster, albeit one with war damage. Nothing that tilted at mental illness, though, just enough to garner sympathy and not the sack.

‘We were a little unsubtle before,’ Anatoly said. ‘We didn’t win you to our cause.’

Murder and blackmail. Not good arguments.

‘I take it you have not double-crossed me this time?’ he said. ‘Because if you have, that would be a very foolish move.’

John shook his head, eyes fixed on his glass.

‘We are impressed with your commitment to peace,’ Anatoly went on. ‘Your activities with CND, for instance. The Direct Action Committee.’

John swallowed hard so his Adam’s apple grated against his collar. He coughed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand.