“No,” I said loudly. “Wolf hated that word. Moles make molehills, he said. There is no subtlety in that. What Englishman doesn’t notice molehills on his beautiful lawn? Wolf preferred to think of this as his cryptic egg scheme, which is something that kuckucks do. I’m sorry, cuckoos. A cuckoo is a brood parasite. It lays an egg that’s just like all the rest in the host bird’s nest, to persuade it to bring up the cuckoo chick as its own. Wolf’s idea was that you could equally be persuaded that you had been bringing up a cuckoo chick all along.” I shrugged. “Well, now you know the truth. Hollis was your egg, not ours.”

“If what you say is true,” said the monk, “then perhaps you know of other cryptic eggs in our service.”

I lit my second cigarette with the butt of the first, which I stubbed out in a glass ashtray the monk had shoved in my direction. On purpose I didn’t put it out very well and, to his irritation, the cigarette butt continued to smoke for several more minutes.

“The HVA is a new service,” I said evasively. “It takes time to lay an egg like Hollis. So far, only the GRU and the KGB have had the opportunity to do this. I daresay Wolf is recruiting people in your service as we speak. But they won’t hatch for a while.”

“How about Russian eggs,” said the monk. “Perhaps you heard a mention of someone’s name when you were last at Karlshorst.”

I thought quickly, recalling the names of the two men I’d overheard Sinclair and Reilly mention while I’d been eavesdropping on their conversation on top of Maugham’s roof, and wondering if the old man had told them about that. Perhaps not if he really had suffered a minor stroke. This was the moment I’d been hoping might come along—when the British, already paranoid about Soviet agents in their service, would ask me for names. But I had to play things carefully now. If I was too reluctant to give them any names, they might decide I knew nothing; but if I was too eager, they’d assume I was making it up.

“Perhaps,” I said carefully.

“Maybe you’d care to share a name with us now.”

“In return for what?”

“We could make a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?”

“The kind of immunity deal that gives you back your liberty, perhaps.”

“How do I know I can trust you to keep your word about something like that?”