She gave her name to the host at the front of the house and followed him to a table in the back. The man she had travelled here to meet was seated in a booth, and he stood and came out to greet her as she approached.

“Mr. Lincoln,” she said.

“Good afternoon,” he said, taking her hand and then waiting as the host helped her with her coat and carried it away to the cloakroom.

There was a second man in the booth, hidden from view by the raised back of the banquette.

“I’m sorry,” Control said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“This is Edward Navarro,” Lincoln said. “He’s worked with me for years. How long, Eddie?”

“Forty? I don’t know. I lose count.”

Both men were old. Lincoln was overweight, with folds of skin that drooped over the collar of his black turtleneck. His nose was squashed against his face, and his cheeks bore the permanent scars of the acne that must have afflicted him when he was a youth. His hair was a thinning thatch of greys and whites, a coronet arranged around a bald spot that exposed blotchy skin. Navarro was slimmer than his colleague, with a wiry energy about him that contrasted with Lincoln’s more indolent bearing. His ears and nose were too large for his head, and his skin was the colour of old leather; Control diagnosed a life spent outdoors and wondered whether he might have served the agency overseas. Control knew that Lincoln’s career had started in Vietnam, and that he was in his mid-seventies today. Navarro looked to be of a similar vintage.

“Please,” Lincoln said. “Sit.”

This was not the first time that Control and Lincoln had met. The American had reached out to her within a month of her appointment as head of the revived Group Fifteen. He was a career spook who had been deputy director of the Special Operations Group for years and then, five years ago, had been promoted to full deputy director. He was a power broker, maintaining links to the SOG that he had run as a personal fiefdom for years. Control knew that he ran it in much the same way as she ran Group Fifteen; it comprised a roster of tightly vetted, intensely loyal operatives who could be deployed at short notice and with scant regard for the usual norms of international relations or national law.

A waitress approached with three menus.

“I’m not going to eat,” Control said.

“Could I get you a drink, then?”

“Water,” she said. “Thank you.”

Lincoln and Navarro ordered water, too, and said that they would eat. The waitress left two menus and went to get the drinks.

“First of all,” Lincoln began, “I want to say sorry.”

“You couldn’t have given me a warning?”

“We didn’t know they were going to attack the camp.”

“Seriously?”