She laughed, a warm sound that always drew me in and made me want to hear it again. Her light-brown hair was swept up in an effortlessly elegant chignon and she was wearing the same dove-grey dress she had on the first time I saw her. She had taken me on in her chic Saint-Germain office exactly a year before when I was fresh out of the Sorbonne and found that neither the French Intelligence service nor the American CIA were remotely interested in making use of my talents.

So how did I end up here? It was one of those strokes of luck that you can never plan for. I was seated at a pavement café with my friend Nicole from university, hunched over a small round table with a metal ashtray spilling out discarded cigarette butts. We were smoking like hardened Parisians and consuming too much coffee, both of us edgy and frustrated by our lack of success in finding jobs we wanted, now that we had finished university. Nicole was a scientist with curly auburn hair and a shining determination to become one of France’s leading physicists.

I was in the opposite camp, a language graduate. Thin, broke and depressed. Being rejected by the CIA despite my fluent Russian and English had knocked me off-balance. I’d been so sure that my future lay alongside my brother’s that I felt as though I’d stepped on a patch of ice, my feet skidding from under me. Nicole and I were moaning to each other as we watched the struggling street artists painting in the hustle of the Place du Tertre and vaguely I was aware of an elegant female who smelled nice taking a seat at the table next to us. After ten minutes she removed her sunglasses, leaned over and tapped my arm with the corner of her business card.

‘Here,’ she said and dropped the card on our table. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing. If you’re serious about looking for a job, ring my office. Make an appointment. I have a position that might interest a bright kid like you.’

Surprised, I inspected my benefactress. A perfect heart-shaped face, flawless make-up, a wide mouth curved into a warm smile, and green eyes as intense as emeralds.

I nodded, trying to disguise my enthusiasm. I picked up the card. ‘Why me?’ I asked.

‘Because you’re a prickly young arsehole who sounds ready for a bit of excitement.’

I laughed. She had me with the words arsehole and excitement.

‘Why study Russian?’ she had asked when I came knocking on her door that first rainy morning.

‘I thought it might come in useful,’ I’d said.