The sound of cicadas through the open window was suddenly deafening.

‘You appear to have gone very silent, Kate,’ the PM said.

2

KATE HAD TO fight the urge to get up from the table and run, hard, into the night. Neither the prime minister’s nor Grove’s gaze had left her face. She took another sip of wine and stared out of the open window at a vineyard that sloped gently down the hill.

Grove broke the silence. ‘Isn’t it what you always suspected, Mrs Henderson, that there was a traitor right at the top of MI6? If someone at the heart of your organization had been helping orchestrate this from the start, it would explain why Moscow has always seemed several steps ahead of us.’

Kate didn’t answer immediately. ‘Agent Dante,’ she said. ‘It certainly would be neat.’

‘What do you mean, “neat”?’ the PM asked.

‘If everything I once thought was true …’ Kate stared right at him ‘… by which I mean that you were a Russian-controlled asset, or agent of influence, then wouldn’t you and your friends in Moscow cook up something like this to clear your name?’

He didn’t appear to take offence at her directness. ‘Yes. And that is why I need you to get to the bottom of it.’ The PM reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of Silk Cut cigarettes. ‘You still smoke? I seem to remember you were once … partial.’

‘I’ve given up.’

‘So have I. Want to step outside and join me?’

The PM stood. Grove got up to go with him, but he forestalled her. ‘We’ll be back in a minute.’

Against her better judgement, Kate followed him on to the terrace that directly overlooked the vineyards, brightly lit now by the stars. She looked up. The sky down here was startlingly clear. He offered her a cigarette and she shook her head. He held the packet a moment longer and she weakened. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said, and lit it for her.

For a moment, they smoked in silence. ‘What can I do to persuade you to join me in this quest to prove my innocence?’

‘Nothing. I’m done with all that, as I think I made clear.’

‘I am innocent, you know,’ he said ruefully. ‘I mean, guilty of plenty of things, of course, but not this.’

She was impervious to that schoolboy grin now. ‘I’m sorry you’ve wasted your trip.’

‘Oh, I haven’t finished yet.’ He’d adopted a new tone, shorn of the playfulness. ‘I need your help.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because you have no vested interest in proving my innocence. And we require someone who knows every street and back-alley within MI6, but who is currently outside the system.’

‘Call MI5.’

‘I said outside the system. Besides, if you come to believe in my innocence, so will everyone else.’

Kate sucked the smoke deep into her lungs. ‘No,’ she said, as she exhaled. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. After Igor Borodin’s supposed defection went wrong and those Albanian monsters kidnapped my children, I promised them I’d walk away for ever, and I meant it.’