Each of the men in the room turned to look at one another. Faces creased in confusion. Mouths twisted, brows furrowed; the military man started to stand. Pelletier crossed to the window and twitched aside the curtain. He pulled a lighter from his pocket – the insignia on the side the same as Walt’s. He ignited it once, a single flame in the absolute dark. There was an immediate ripple of gunfire, a sound like a tree-branch suddenly snapping in a dozen places at once. I heard the tinkle of falling glass from an upstairs window.

‘You’re insane,’ said Cranham, his hand at his mouth. ‘This is England, you halfwit! What kind of a man brings trained killers halfway around the world in the name of the greater good?’

Walt started laughing. It was an ugly sound, a strange snuffling that caused him to break into a bout of coughing. He turned away as it got worse but I saw the smear of blood on his chin before he wiped it away; caught the whiff of iron and corruption coming off him.

‘You’ve got a man out there with an automatic, have you?’ asked the American. ‘Clever. Theatrical. But if you think I’m going to suddenly start actively working against US foreign policy because you’ve tricked a few diplomats into a gathering in this godforsaken place, you genuinely are as insane as we all feared.’ He turned to the American with the bad teeth. ‘How did you get yourself caught up with this fool, Bateman? God, this is what happens when you let the hippies cut their hair and put on a suit …’

Pelletier stepped forward again. Stopped, suddenly, hand raised. Something seemed wrong. He put a hand in the pocket of his coat. I looked at John. His eyes were closed.

The world seemed to slow down. Pelletier reached into his pocket and retrieved the bug that John had slipped there when he was still in charge of his thoughts. There was a little red dot blinking on the top. Pelletier looked at it as if he was holding something magical. He glanced at Walt, whose face seemed to freeze in a moment of absolute horror. Pelletier looked down at John, making sense of it. Closed his eyes as if trying to contain a rage that could overwhelm him completely.

‘No,’ said Sera, and threw herself down on him.

‘Stop,’ I whispered, though it was more to myself than to anybody else.

And then the shooting started in earnest. Machine gunfire followed by the perfect ‘snap’ of a rifle. A bullet whizzed through the top of the windows and thudded into the wall. The men at the back of the room grabbed for their guns while the enforcers and Pelletier shouted for them to stop, to stop, it wasn’t what they thought …

The windows came through in a burst of gunfire, an explosion of glass and bullets and noise.