As Kate walked down the stairs to leave Downing Street by the back entrance, she was already starting to have regrets. And when she got to the office, Julie had similar misgivings – and then some. ‘Are you out of your mind, Kate?’

They stood around the espresso machine. ‘Andrew will refuse to have anything to do with us,’ Julie said.

‘Of course.’

‘There’s no way he’ll activate contact or permit it on a politician’s whim.’

‘We’re going to parcel it up as a matter of national security. And he’ll have promised Incisor the earth – perhaps even safe conduct to the UK when the time comes – and he’ll have to be wary of going against the prime minister’s directly expressed wish, even if his political future is in the balance.’

‘He’ll stall, he’ll sabotage.’

‘Yes, but he may in the end calculate that it’s worth this single risk, depending on Incisor’s current status.’

‘He’ll claim he only contacts him via a cut-out.’ Julie shrugged. ‘And it’s probably true.’

‘Yes, but there will be an emergency procedure for a face-to-face. We’re just going to have to persuade him to activate it.’ A cut-out was a middle man or woman, used so that handling agents rarely if ever had to make direct contact with the source. A ‘diplomat’ seen to be contacting an architect, or an engineer, or a journalist might not in itself be suspicious – and neither would it be so for that person then to be seen with the ultimate third party.

‘We won’t be able to clean the route on our own,’ Julie said.

‘No, but – whatever he says – he’ll have some facilities, agents he’s confident are clean. Combine that with the two of us and I think we can get him over the line.’

‘It’s a suicide mission,’ Julie opined.

‘Possibly.’

‘If all our original instincts about this were correct, if the prime minister is Moscow’s man in London, then we’re walking into the jaws of the dragon.’

Kate took her coffee and went to sit on the balcony, bathed in bright autumn sun. She felt jaded, even a little sick.

‘Look, let me tell you where I’ve got to,’ Julie said, as she seated herself opposite. ‘And see whether it changes your mind.

‘I went through every bloody entry that Ian and Sir Alan had ever written, in the entire course of their career. And I could find very little beyond what we already knew, apart from the fact that they both file a mean, pithy report, and appear to have had more than their fair share of successes along the way. But I thought there had to be more than that. So then I tried to look at access … I can’t ask Danny for assistance any more, but there is a woman called India in Tech Support I had a thing with once.’

Kate wondered how many people in the organization Julie had had ‘a thing’ with over the years.