‘Look,’ said Louis, ‘he’s talking about you.’

‘People love conspiracies,’ said Harris. ‘They find them reassuring. It’s the consolation that someone, somewhere, might actually have a design in mind. The fearful embrace conspiracies for the same reason they believe in God.’

The Negronis arrived. Harris raised his glass.

‘To great designs,’ he said.

Louis made the slightest of gestures in return, and drank. The Negroni tasted smokier than he was used to, but he thought it might grow on him.

‘As it happens,’ said Harris, removing the earbud and putting the iPad to sleep, ‘my father served under Nixon. Well, he served under people who served under Nixon, which is pretty much the same thing. He told me that he’d never encountered a stranger bunch of men than those in the Nixon White House. He spent one evening watching Triumph of the Will in the basement with the rest of the staff at the insistence of Gordon Liddy, although there was popcorn. Liddy then announced that the Special Investigations Unit, the dirty tricks brigade, was to be code-named ODESSA, after the former SS veterans’ organization, and showed my father the nine-millimeter parabellum pistol he’d acquired from the CIA, just in case Bud Krogh asked him to assassinate anyone.’

Harris tasted his second Negroni, and seemed to find it just as satisfactory as the first.

‘You know,’ he concluded, ‘Nixon’s White House had its share of nuts and crooks, but back then Gordon Liddy wasn’t a nut or a crook. Gordon Liddy was completely batshit crazy.’

‘Is there a point to this story?’ said Louis.

‘The point is that we survived Nixon and his cadre, just as we survived all those who came before them and we’ll survive all those who come after, God willing. Politicians are like hemorrhoids: they’re a torment to be endured. Meanwhile, the greater game goes on.’

‘Not for De Jaager,’ said Louis, who was growing tired of listening to a stranger philosophize at a bar, ‘or those who died with him.’

‘No,’ said Harris, ‘not for them. I liked De Jaager. Ross and I met him together, back in the day.’

‘The Stasi business?’

‘Did Ross tell you about it?’

‘He did.’

‘So much for secrets. We farmed the wet work out to the Israelis, just like we’re farming the Vuksans out to you.’

‘So Ross indicated. Why did the Israelis take on the job, if you don’t mind me asking? That wasn’t entirely clear to me.’