Vitalis seemed satisfied. ‘Please give him a message from me. Tell him to remember Warszawa in ’87. Goodbye, Mr Hepton.’

He stepped nimbly from the cab, gave some money to the driver and was gone, walking up High Holborn with the brisk step of a man on his way to work. Hepton thought about following, but the driver was awaiting his orders. Still, he was damned if he’d let him know where he was staying.

‘Green Park,’ he said. He would walk from there.

31

It took Parfit a couple of minutes to come fully awake, and while he washed in the bathroom, he made Hepton relate his story twice more. He seemed unmoved by Devereux’s murder and the near-assassination of Hepton himself, but was interested in Vitalis. He was also interested in the acronym.

‘I wonder if our code-crackers can come up with anything for COFFIN?’ he mused, then shook his head. ‘Tell me about Vitalis again.’

‘Do you know him?’ Hepton asked, admitting to himself that he wasn’t going to get any sympathy for his own traumas.

‘I should say so. We’re old adversaries. He’s not so active these days, of course. His cover is a bookshop somewhere near Holborn.’

‘He’s a Russian spy, though,’ Hepton protested.

‘Yes?’ Parfit didn’t seem to see his point.

‘And you know where he is. Why hasn’t he been arrested? Deported?’

Parfit laughed. ‘Because then they’d just send home some of ours. Besides, it’s nice having him here. It means we can slip him the odd piece. Let him decide whether or not it’s true.’

Hepton shook his head. ‘The more I know, the less sense it makes. What did he mean about Warsaw in ’87?’

‘Oh, we were having a bit of trouble out there. The Polish secret police were cracking down a bit too heavily on our diplomats, being a bit obvious in their operations, that sort of stuff. We could have done something about it ourselves, but we passed on a message to Moscow and let the Kremlin deal with it. They slapped a few wrists, and things calmed down again.’

‘So what does it mean?’

‘It means we’re being allowed to deal with this mess ourselves, without outside interference.’

‘You think he knows what this is all about?’

‘Oh, he’ll have more than an inkling.’ Parfit had dried his face and was now combing his hair. He looked at himself in the mirror and swept a stray strand back behind his ear. ‘More than an inkling,’ he repeated. ‘After all, as you said yourself, Devereux was his man.’ He turned to Hepton. ‘Let’s get Major Dreyfuss and head for my office. If they wanted rid of Devereux, you can bet a shilling they want rid of Dreyfuss too.’

‘But why did they want rid of him?’

‘You mean Devereux? Probably because they realised what his game was, that’s all.’