‘I’m on leave,’ I said. ‘Talbot thinks I’m still burned out from my last deployment. Told me to get some good air and to stop thinking about things that might cause me to become distressed. I swear, if there ever is a revolution, he’ll be the first I put up against the wall.’

‘Is it ready?’ he asked. ‘We can go straight there?’

‘I have a friend making preparations. Will you be taking the train or driving? I’ve booked two sets of tickets in different directions for myself, but the sleeper should get me close enough to drive the last leg. There’s just the two of you, yes? I can arrange a vehicle …’

‘We’re already on the motorway,’ he said, with a smile in his voice. ‘Tell your friend to cater for four, as it happens.’

‘Four? Walt, I need you to tell me … sorry, you’re already on the way? How did you know which way …?’

That laugh again, and something affectionate in his tone. ‘I can still read you like a pop-up book, Hinny, don’t ever forget it.’

I hung up, feeling jittery. Unnerved. I had so much time for the Walt who had first identified me as somebody worth his time, but the old, sickly-looking man who had handed me a strip of film and promised to provide evidence of a massacre was proving harder to trust. I had questions aplenty but I could tell he was only going to answer them when they served whatever purpose he had identified as the real goal.

I stepped back out into the bustle of the city and pulled up my collar against the wind. I was involved in something that felt like it mattered more than anything had in years but I couldn’t even work out what I wanted to happen or how the world should reshape itself to my satisfaction. I’d been made aware of something that was irredeemably wrong. I’d been made a witness, by extension, to acts of genuine evil. And to all extents and purposes, if I wasn’t to oppose it then I could only be complicit and that was something I couldn’t stomach. In a choice between conscience and country, I know what matters more. If you don’t, it’s not up to me to help you.

I didn’t see the sod on the motorcycle. All those training courses, all those lectures in evasion and counter-surveillance and I was too caught up in the moment to even look in the mirror of the black cab as we headed for King’s Cross. I’d come to regret that. I’d regret far more, before all was said and done.

FELICITY

Transcript 0020, recorded November 30, 2016