‘What of it? Our ancestors, the Khazars, worshipped the sky god Tengri, and left ribbons on trees to placate elves. We’re beyond such fairy tales. You and I are free men. We both realise that God is dead, man is alone, and everything is possible. But that is strong meat which not many people are capable of digesting. Besides, I don’t think of our project as anti-Semitism as such; I see it more as a literary device: the Jew as an allegory of modernity.’

‘Really? That seems a bit sophisticated for its intended readership.’

Rachkovsky laughs. ‘You’re being very pi, dear boy. It’s unlike you. After all, the thing’s a bauble.’

Above their heads, one of the slow-moving clouds drifting to the south takes on the shape of a fish; another thins and momentarily resembles a child with a distended head. ‘My future is not in the Third Section,’ says Nicolas.

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Rachkovsky says. ‘I’d rather hoped you’d reconsider. You’re an excellent agent and could look forward to a stellar and lucrative career.’

‘My mind’s made up.’

‘Very well. That’s your choice. I don’t threaten. It’s not my style. But working for the Third Section imposes life-long obligations.’

‘I understand,’ says Nicolas.

‘Of course you do.’

Rachkovsky has a carriage waiting. He doesn’t offer Nicolas a lift. As he climbs in, his big, linen-covered backside sticks out awkwardly and Nicolas has an urge to kick it.

‘How’s your friend Skobelev doing, by the way?’ he asks. Before Nicolas can reply, Rachkovsky throws his head back and brays like an ass. The sound is loud, jarring and uncannily accurate. The coachman flicks the reins and the wheels move off, clattering over the cobbles. ‘Farewell, Nicolas. And be careful.’ Rachkovsky points up in the air with his stick: ‘It looks like heavy rain.’

The sky is still blue and the clouds white and innocuous, but twenty minutes later a thunderhead rolls in. Having decided to walk to the railway station, Nicolas is at risk of being drenched. He takes cover under an awning where a newspaper-seller is sheltering too. He hands over a two-sous piece for an evening newspaper, thinking he can improvise a temporary umbrella from its pages while he hails a cab. Then he reads the headline.

‘It said, “Murder: Jewish Plot Suspected”.’

General Skobelev’s body was found laid out on a pile of boxes in his hotel room, killed with a single pistol-shot to the head. The paper decribes him as ‘an ardent nationalist and supporter of the Tsar’. The inside pages have a diagram of the crime scene and are full of humiliating details: the hero of the Russo-Turkish War was naked except for his underpants; there was an empty brandy bottle and a book containing ‘the most scandalous photographic images’.