Rachkovsky, replete, eases back into his chair and gives his arms a long, catlike stretch. ‘The story we have is a much older and better one than theirs. We say that the world is what it is. There is order and disorder. Those are real. Freedom and liberty are empty words, Nicolas. Really, it’s the truth. Do you know what it was like here under the Communards? It was a fucking bloodbath. To a nineteen-year-old law student from Lvov, who thinks the Tsar is some kind of Darth Vader with a mask and scars, it sounds like paradise, but to everyone else it was just bloody frightening. You know poor Rimbaud got buggered by a gang of soldiers? Most people aren’t concerned with the coming socialist Utopia. They just want to be able to walk to the end of the road and back to post a letter. Can the elderly leave their homes? Are your children safe? Are your parents safe?’ He pauses meaningfully and looks at Nicolas just long enough to show he knows what happened to his father. ‘These are the questions. Everything else is simply poses. The world is a terrifying place. Humans are beasts who must be restrained with order. Everyone knows this but the young, the zealots like Verzilov, and the Jews. The Jew is prone to a fantasy of melioration, a notion that the world can be improved, that divinity can be negotiated with.’ He refills Nicolas’s wine glass. ‘I know because I had it in me too.’

‘You were a revolutionary?’

‘It sounds so absurd when you say it like that. But these men – they have compelling stories of change and hope. It’s the most natural thing in the world to be seduced by them. I’m a curious person, Nicolas – how frank I’m being with you; Suvorin warned me of your talent for winkling things out of people. I was close to some attractive young enthusiasts. Things went awry. I was offered a choice: Siberia or sharing my information with the authorities.’ He lowers his voice to a growl: ‘I’m not a fan of cold weather.’

After the meal, Rachkovsky walks with Nicolas as far as the street lamp on the corner while his driver brings the carriage to the front of the restaurant. Standing in the pool of lamplight, the spymaster embraces his protégé in farewell.

‘Look,’ Rachkovsky says, a slight sway in his motion and a glitter in his eye the only evidence of all the alcohol he has consumed. ‘I’m not going to waste your talents by sticking you in a green pea coat and having you tail anarchists through Batignolles. You’re in a position to influence public opinion more efficiently: the odd favourable bit of journalism, smiling on Russian foreign policy in your articles for the French papers. Sexing things up a little to suit our interests. But not in an obvious way. The point about you, Nicolas, is that you’re a serious-minded person with integrity.’