He doesn’t smile. ‘At what time do we ask ourselves whether the price we are paying to preserve our way of life is one actually worth paying, Cordelia? The things we’ve done – the blind eyes we’ve turned. Is it really about security if we’re trampling over the liberties of half the world’s population? Is there a greater good to be considered when our allies are slaughtering innocents in their thousands?’

He shakes his head. Looks at the tip of his cigar and swallows as if feeling nauseous. He presses his hand to his chest, suddenly looking unwell. He presses the tip of the cigar to the sole of his damp grey shoes and slips the butt into one of his many zip-up pockets. When he looks at me again I’m horrified to see that his eyes are damp.

‘Walt,’ I say, in a voice that fairly dribbles with regret. ‘I’m not who you think I am. I know you think of me as the northern lass who loved to read George Orwell, but for all that fight – all that I was, that sense I was changing the world – I’m just an analyst. Your old networks, your contacts, they don’t talk to me the way your people talk to you. The people upstairs don’t listen. They don’t want to hear things that deviate from the party line. It’s all political.’

He wipes a drop of moisture from the end of his nose. Blinks, slowly, and lets some cheer bleed back into his features. ‘If I had something …’ he says, cautiously. ‘Something real. Something that would actually make people stop and say no, we can’t do this, we can’t support people who do these things …’

‘People don’t care, Walt,’ I say, and I regret it at once. He looks at me as if I’ve just held up a picture of the two of us together and ripped it right down the middle.

‘People do care,’ he says quietly. ‘Perhaps they care about the wrong things but they deserve to know what we are doing. We’re supposed to be a land of integrity. Does nobody think of shame any more? Is there no honour left anywhere? Yes, of course we have to resist the threat of Communism but Reagan is standing next to a genocidal maniac and we’re colluding in the pretence.’