‘What about bribes? Do you think he would have succumbed to those? The promise of a good apartment, a lucrative salary with plenty of perks, the best laboratories and brains. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Betty said. ‘I doubt it. He always said he was a man of principle. He never did anything to excess.’

‘Emotional levers?’ the major went on. ‘Kidnap of his surviving daughter would have been a strong incentive to persuade him to come over to them, whatever his principles.’

It had never occurred to her there could be more to this.

‘Why is he here now?’ Her voice was weak. She knew the answer. John had said as much. Kidnap.

‘They wanted his secrets.’

She blinked, stared out of the window, at the plane trees beyond. Two-way mirrors. That’s what they were. Two-way mirrors.

‘Did my father know?’

The French windows had been open. Had he wandered into the garden first, talked to the pansies, said farewell to Mutti? Not bothered to lock the door behind him? Had he been thinking of Betty as he sat in her chair and tipped the powder into his mouth? Or had he had a visitor? Perhaps he hadn’t been alone.

‘We will never know,’ James Goodfellow said. ‘He left no note. But your liberty may well have been in danger. Or…’ He looked at her, studying her face. They all were, monitoring every twitch and flutter, every turn of her body. Why had she thought they were sympathetic?

‘What was your contact with Vasily?’

‘I never made contact.’

‘Not through CND?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she said. ‘This is nonsense. CND?’ She edged forward in her chair, readying herself to leave.

‘Do you have sympathies for the Russians?’ the major said, leaning back again, chair tilting on two legs. ‘I remember the butter-before-guns argument between the wars,’ he went on before she could answer. He nodded at his colleagues either side of him and ran his tongue over his lips so they glistened with spit. He narrowed his eyes and looked at her, half leer, half sneer. ‘Yellow-livered pacifists. If they’d been in charge, we’d all have been under the jackboot.’ The chair slammed forward as the major propped his elbows on the desk, leaning towards her. ‘If we disarmed, the Soviets would overrun us in a blink.’ Spittle gathered in his mouth. She’d heard the argument before, was weary of it. ‘Is that what you want? To be under a dictatorship hell-bent on supremacy?’ He blew through his mouth, pulled out his handkerchief from his top pocket and wiped away the dribble. ‘Against everything we hold dear. Christianity. Democracy. Freedom…’ His voice trailed away.

‘That’s not the point,’ she said.

‘And what is the point?’ Cullis said, his lip curling.