Kate pointed at the café she’d frequented earlier and they crossed the cobbles to sit beneath an awning that shielded them from the sun that had finally broken through the noonday cloud. They ordered. ‘I have never been to Prague before,’ Nina said. ‘But now I wonder why not.’

‘You’re based in Moscow, I assume?’

‘Yes. But I spent most of my career in Europe – France, Germany, Brussels.’ She smiled. ‘Not what you might call hardship postings.’

It was difficult to guess the woman’s age, but Kate placed her in her late thirties or early forties. She had an easy, calm manner, perhaps why she had been chosen for this task in the first place, and a lopsided smile that lent her a certain charm, which had been more or less entirely absent from every other SVR operative Kate had ever encountered. ‘We’d better get to business,’ Kate said. ‘Some of my former colleagues have been watching me here in Prague.’

‘Yes, we saw.’

‘This morning?’

‘We have not seen them today. We naturally wanted to be sure you were here without the cavalry, so were out yesterday. What were your colleagues doing on your tail?’

Kate weighed what to say, despite having thought of almost nothing else all morning. ‘We’re hunting Agent Dante. I’ve been brought back to head an external investigation, reporting directly to the prime minister.’

‘Who is Agent Dante?’

‘I think you know the answer to that. And if you don’t, your superiors in Moscow certainly will.’

Nina tilted her head to one side, as if considering how much to admit. Her gaze never left Kate’s face. ‘Please carry on,’ she said.

‘We’ve narrowed the search down to two final suspects. But both men – and possibly others at the heart of what we might loosely call the British establishment – would find it easier to have the woman who was ultimately hoodwinked into starting this ball rolling as a public scapegoat.’

‘You? If true, it makes this meeting a risky one.’

‘A calculated gamble.’

Nina nodded slowly. For the first time her gaze left Kate’s face as she swept the square from one side to the other and back again, much as Kate herself had done earlier. ‘What do you want?’ Nina asked eventually.

‘Ten million, new identities for myself, Stuart and the children – and a new life somewhere outside Russia in a country of my choosing.’

Nina nodded again, as if this was more or less what she had expected. ‘And in return?’

‘My flight will ensure I’m identified and publicly exposed as Agent Dante. The British establishment will have its scapegoat and you will see a threat to your source removed. In addition, you will have access to every piece of knowledge about the Service and its operations that I have accumulated in my career.’

The waiter brought their coffee. Nina lit a cigarette and offered one to Kate, who had to exercise a lot of self-restraint to resist the temptation. ‘The issue we have with this offer,’ Nina said, ‘is that every single psychological assessment we have of you on file suggests that you would be the very last known officer in SIS likely to succumb to any proposal we might make.’