Until it looked like it might be a success, Kate thought, at which point you were all over Borodin. But she made her tea in silence. Ian indisputably had a point. ‘So what alliance do you propose?’

‘Come on, Kate.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘You know Sir Alan is Dante. Who else could really have pulled this off over so many years? He spotted the vulnerability created by your relationship with Sergei years ago and tipped off his paymasters so that they could start to work out how to exploit it. Who else could have so skilfully manipulated the passage of events so that I would emerge as a key suspect?’

You did that all by yourself, she thought.

‘I know what you’ve been doing, Kate. I can see how it looks. My career takes off after that period in New York. I request an unlikely posting to Santiago and Menov lands in my lap, arguably the best agent inside the Kremlin we’ve had in modern times.’

‘You have to agree it looks suspicious.’

‘Of course, but now I’m going to tell you something that I bet you don’t know. Who was it, do you think, who first encouraged me to apply for that posting in Chile?’ There was a long silence as this sank in. ‘Yes, Alan Brabazon.’

‘On what basis?’

‘Oh, he dressed it up well enough. He’s much too smart to leave any hostages to fortune. He suggested we play squash in the RAC Club and he took me for a drink in that wood-panelled bar in the basement afterwards. Had I heard about Santiago, he asked. Always good to be one of the first into a new station, the chance to really make your mark. A bit out of the way, I suggested. I was worried I’d be seen as a B-team player of limited ambition, tagged with a preference for the dreaded “lifestyle” postings. No, no, he said. That was to misunderstand the Service. The way to get noticed was to make a true success of an unlikely prospect. Besides, Chile was one of the chief’s new ideas – make a go of that and you’re set for rapid and certain promotion.’

‘Which is pretty much what happened.’

‘Yes. He had plans for me, as the debacle over the German finance minister and that fake sex video was to demonstrate. But since he’d encouraged me into that debacle, too, I started to be more wary and suspicious of his enthusiasm for me.’

‘Yet he’s gone and you’re here.’

‘Yes. I’m pleased to say he underestimated me.’

‘And your political skill?’

‘If you want to put it that way.’ He stood. ‘I’ve said enough, Kate. I’m not asking you to sign anything in blood. I’ve called off the dogs. You probably won’t believe it cost me a fair degree of Whitehall capital, but I’ve done it. The Security Service have re-nosed their investigation and you’re in the clear. I’m just asking you to consider keeping me in the loop. If we work together, we can finally close the net on him and start to limit the damage he’s caused to the Service and the country.’ He put his mug by the sink. ‘Thank you for the tea.’