The outer offices gleam with brass, ivory and polished rosewood. Twisted electrical wires hang in swags along the walls. Technology has moved on so quickly in the almost twenty years since Nicolas was last at Rue de Grenelle that he scarcely knows what he’s looking at. In humming cabinets, reams of data are being transferred to punchcards to have their secrets extracted by patented algorithms. Brass encryption machines ensure that no one can read the department’s correspondence. A bank of Belinograph transmitters spit out whole documents and even images that have been communicated across vast distances by electrical pulses.

‘I read your charming novel about the lost gospel,’ Rachkovsky says, faintly accompanied by the tic-tac sound of a young telegraph-operator entering text on a Baudot keyboard that resembles a piano.

‘It’s not a novel,’ Nicolas replies sharply.

‘Come, come. Remember: I dabble a little in fiction myself.’

Nicolas arrived here determined not to be sidetracked, not be distracted by old conflicts, but now he feels compelled to defend his discovery. ‘If you took the trouble to examine the evidence I presented in the text, you’d find—’

Rachkovsky’s delighted to have provoked a reaction so easily. ‘It isn’t the evidence that I took issue with, in fact. The story might or might not be true, but what it lacked, novelistically, is a certain enchantment. It was too tentative, got moving far too slowly, was far too preoccupied with the fauna and flora of the Himalayas.’ He reaches for a box of Turkish cigarettes and lights one up, blowing curls of perfumed smoke across the desk. He leans back in his chair, cigarette held aloft, left hand cupping his right elbow across his paunch. ‘The thing I’ve realised about you, Nicolas, is that you lack the imaginative gifts to be an artist of the first water. A real writer would have said, “Stuff all that scene-setting.” A real writer would just say, “Fiat lux!” and win us over with the power of his vision. The sad truth is that you lost your real vocation when you turned your back on the Third Section. Though by the look of that lovely suit, business at the department store is good?’

Shaken by the attacks, Nicolas feels his face flush and the adrenaline rise in his body. He has to compel himself to stick to his task.

‘I’ve been in Russia for business. I came across this.’ He shakes it out of his valise onto the desktop, not trusting himself to hold it in his hand without shaking.

Rachkovsky regards it with a shrug of boredom and barely asks: ‘What is it?’

‘The Great in the Small, by Sergei Nilus. But the last section, the Protocols, is the provocation you created with Mulhouse.’

‘And? So what?’

‘This book is being used to stoke anti-Jewish hatred. It’s a death sentence for people like our families, people we grew up with.’