‘I’m seeing our friend Vitalis,’ he said. ‘Having dinner with him, actually, just to let him know what happened. He did the same for me after the Polish thing.’

‘Will you tell him everything?’ Hepton asked, staring at the passing scenery.

Parfit thought this over. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘Almost certainly not. It doesn’t matter, so long as he’s told a little of it and doesn’t have to find out for himself.’

‘The special relationship,’ Hepton said quietly to himself, musing. Then he asked the question that had been bothering him for days. ‘How come COFFIN always knew where to find us?’

The question seemed to surprise Parfit. He raised his eyebrows and puckered his mouth. Then he shook his head with slow deliberation.

‘It could have just been Villiers, I suppose,’ he said casually.

‘Or it could have been someone in your organisation. It could even have been you, Parfit, couldn’t it?’

Parfit’s eyes were on the road ahead.

‘It could have been you,’ Hepton repeated, enjoying this deliberate train of thought, ‘because you wanted to get Harry. And because you wanted Harry, you were only too willing to set us up as bait. Catchable bait.’

Now Parfit barked out a laugh, though with a slight, noticeable edge to the sound.

‘It’s an intriguing thought,’ he said. He was on the point of adding something, but he had already given away enough confidences. It would reflect badly on the Service if people found out that Blake Farquharson was in COFFIN up to his mottled neck. There had to be a quiet demise for Farquharson. An accident, perhaps, or heart failure. These things could be arranged. Parfit was, after all, an expert in damage limitation. He couldn’t tell Hepton and he couldn’t tell Vitalis. He couldn’t even tell Frank Stewart, who was so looking forward to being there when Ben Esterhazy was arrested. No, it had to be the Department’s secret … for the moment. The Department’s secret that Blake Farquharson, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, had been a traitor at the highest level; a traitor not to his country so much as, in Parfit’s mind, to his calling. He hadn’t visited the PM that day; he had called from a public telephone kiosk and made his apologies. And he had been ever ready to slip information to George Villiers – his protégé of sorts – and to Harry; as much information as was necessary. God might know why he’d done it; Parfit didn’t.

He squinted ahead into the sunshine. The sky was blue, peppered with tiny high-level clouds. If the sky was blue, how come space was black? He could always ask Hepton. There was a lot he should ask Hepton, but this probably wasn’t the time.