‘Community,’ he said again, testing the edges of the word and still finding it ludicrous. ‘They are Mayans, I believe, yes? Not much more than cavepeople. Blow darts and tree frogs and ritual dances to the tree gods, that sort of thing? The last departmental memorandum warned that we cannot use certain words any more but if the price of freedom is the death of a handful of … let’s be frank here, savages … then I will not fall to pieces. Look at the Falklands, girl. Look what we have to do to stand against our common enemy. The Americans are our allies and they would not thank you, or me, or even our sainted prime minister, for putting down on paper that which we would all rather not know.’

I finished the brandy. Looked through him. ‘I have a source,’ I said, quietly. ‘A genuine source. Willing to tell us what they saw. I have the promise of footage, sir. The frame I attached to the briefing document …’

He reached into a pocket and pulled out a strip of film. Four negatives in a row. Walt had given it to me as a gesture of faith. He knew that the Service would need proof that what he was selling was worth the purchase, even if only to burn the thing before it caused any trouble. ‘Too dark to make anything out,’ said Talbot, shrugging. ‘I’ve had it to my eye and it could just as well be one of Attenborough’s blasted nature programmes as a clip of a massacre. It’s jungle and darkness and a couple of shanty huts. Really, Hemlock, I had thought of you as a realist. A pragmatist, even. God knows, your arrangement with your husband suggests that you know the value of a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach to matters of discretion.’

I couldn’t reply. My throat felt dry and there was a tingling in my skin. My husband had been moved up to the House of Lords eighteen months earlier and he had some vague oversight brief regarding the intelligence services. We weren’t yet divorced but we lived separate lives – his permitting him to continue his endless succession of romances with waiters, gym instructors and swarthy young chaps from North Africa. He had the highest possible clearance level and yet I’d never told him I worked for the Service, happy to continue with the lie about the position in the United Nations. There’s no doubt that he knew, but he, in turn, had no enthusiasm for altering a status quo that permitted him to move through life as a family man. For it to be thrown in my face during an operational briefing had felt like a punch in the throat.

‘All I wanted …’ I began, my throat hoarse.