He rubbed at his face again, pursing his lips as if he were tasting the questions. He screwed up his features again; a grimace of genuine pain. ‘I’m not a well man, Cordelia,’ he said, and his voice sounded a little more like his own. ‘I won’t still be here when you all reap the benefits of my manoeuvring. I’ve spent a lifetime working in the shadows, hiding secrets, forcing people to betray their better natures, preying on people’s vulnerabilities, their weaknesses, their vices – I’ve placed people in danger in the pursuit of freedoms that do not truly exist and I have taken lives to defend a way of life that I do not condone.’ He looked at me with those glassy eyes, his features sorrowful; lugubrious. ‘I have done great and terrible things in service of the Crown, Cordelia. I have asked for nothing in return other than a sense that I was corrupting myself, and others, in service of a greater good.’

‘You’re the one who told me that patriotism is absurd,’ I said, bitterly. ‘When did you ever act like a nationalist? When did you ever hold up British ideals?’

He looked straight through me. I felt, for an instant, as if there were somebody behind me – somebody holding a blade or a gun, seeking approval to stop my impertinence.

‘I don’t mean patriotism, Cordelia,’ he said, tiredly. ‘I mean humanity. I mean the sanctity of life – the freedom of each individual to at least try and reach old age without becoming collateral damage in the war between ambitions and ideologies; nations and ways of life. I hold no ideology up as superior to another. Communist or capitalist – they are two scorpions in the same upturned glass. My duty, as I saw it, was to do something that might be considered “good” as opposed to “evil”.’

‘You sound like Ronald fucking Reagan,’ I said, scorn twisting my lip. ‘Moral superiority? A force for good in the world? Service to humanity? Jesus, Walt, were you always out of your mind or have you hit your head?’

I didn’t see the blow coming. The back of my head exploded in a riot of clanging bells and fireworks as something hard struck me right on the top of my head. I saw stars. Oozed tears. I’d have thrown up were there anything in my stomach. I fell forward, slack, spit dribbling from my mouth, waiting for the great thudding agony to pass.

‘Please,’ I heard Walt say, tiredly. ‘Please, a little compassion, yes? She will come to understand. I give you my word, she will understand.’