‘André, I’m sorry.’ I spoke as if no one else were in the room. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t protect you well enough.’

‘Eloïse.’ He said my name the way he used to when we were children, with the emphasis on the first syllable. ‘You did everything you possibly could.’ He smiled a sad smile at me. ‘Considering I tied one hand behind your back.’

The Russian who had dumped me down the companionway descended behind me and pushed me over to the bench beside his fellow countryman.

‘Sit!’ he shouted.

I sat and felt the boat rock under me in a sudden swell. ‘Major Dirke.’ The American officer didn’t look at me. ‘You are not the kind of man I thought you were.’

‘You and your brother are fighting for the wrong cause,’ he responded angrily, though it seemed to me that I was the one with cause to be angry. ‘The only way we can maintain peace in this world is by keeping an equal balance of power, so yes, you may rant and rage about treachery but I am passing technical information to the Russians for a very good reason. Otherwise America will ride roughshod over the whole world with its commercialism, backed up by its H-bombs.’

I wasn’t here to argue; it was too late for that.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said, ‘what terrible forces you are unleashing on the Western world by enabling American expansionism to spread unchecked. You haven’t experienced it close up the way I have.’

I turned away from him with a shudder and spoke to my brother. ‘I lost you, André, I no longer know where your allegiance lies. Are you working for Russia? Or for America? Judging by that concrete block at your feet it seems the Communists have already made up their minds to that question.’

‘I told you to trust me, didn’t I? But I didn’t make it easy for you, I know. The only reason I told you that Bertin and Piquet were MGB Soviet agents was to keep you away from them. To ensure you stayed safe, Eloïse. I couldn’t bear for you to get hurt.’

‘But why? Why keep me away from them if they were CIA agents and no danger to me?’

‘Because I didn’t want you killed, my courageous little sister.’

I frowned in confusion. ‘Who would want to kill me?’

‘Me, of course, chérie.’

At the top of the companionway stood Clarisse.

*

‘How many times, chérie, did I ask you to return to Paris? To get away from here?’

Clarisse had raised her voice to compete with the rain thundering down on the cabin roof and shrugged off her bright orange oilskin. She was dressed in black, black for grief. That is what she said to me. ‘I don’t want to watch you die. It breaks my heart,’ she murmured.