I

Thursday, 1 May 1969, St Paul’s Cathedral, London

‘Sir Colin Templeton was the most courageous, patriotic and decent public servant I have had the privilege of knowing. During his long career, culminating in seven years as head of the organization many of us gathered here today are honoured to serve, he faced this country’s enemies unflinchingly.’

I paused, and as my words echoed around the magnificent building, I glanced up from the lectern and was overcome for a moment by the memory of the last time I’d seen the man I’d come to think of simply as ‘Chief’. The way he had nodded at me when he had seen that my glass needed refilling: no smile, no words, just a tiny nod of the head. I relived, in a flash, the shuffling walk he had taken across the room, the sharp clinking as he had lifted the bottle from the cabinet, the shuffle back to pour me out a measure. Then the widening of his eyes as I had raised the gun and squeezed the trigger . . .

He hadn’t flinched in the face of this enemy – I hadn’t given him the time.

I gazed out at the line of stern faces in the front pew, bathed in the white glow from the windows high above. John Farraday was seated in the centre, dapper and bored. He was acting Chief now, but had already announced that in a couple of weeks he would return to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, whence he had come. He was flanked by William Osborne, owlish in spectacles and tweeds. Once Farraday had gone he would take over, at which point I would be appointed Deputy Chief.

I’d got away with it: I was in the clear. A couple of months ago, this might have filled me with a sense of achievement, even triumph. But in the last few weeks I had been stripped of everything I’d ever held dear, left a trail of blood in my wake, and was now being blackmailed into continuing to serve a cause I no longer believed in. The triumph tasted of ashes, and all that was left was the realization that I had made a monumental error, and that it could never be reversed.

I glanced along the rest of the front row, which was filled out with Section heads and politicians, including the Foreign and Home Secretaries. Behind them, the congregation stretched into the distance, two solid blocks of Service officers, former army colleagues and family members, parted by the checked marble aisle. Several Redcaps hovered discreetly by the entrance, turning tourists away.

It was an unorthodox memorial service. The reading from Ecclesiastes, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ were all standard fare, but the eulogy was being given by the murderer of the deceased, while the men who had plotted the fall of the government a short while ago were brazenly sitting next to Cabinet ministers. And around us all spun Wren’s conception, as it had for centuries, cloaking us in false majesty.

I had washed down a Benzedrine tablet before leaving the flat in the hope it would stave off the remnants of my fever, but while it had succeeded in dulling the pain and heightening my senses – I could make out the grain of Osborne’s tortoise-shell spectacle frames – it also seemed to have filled me with a feeling of recklessness. As I read from my hastily prepared address, I fought a rising urge to blurt out the truth to the congregation. I remembered hearing about Maclean’s drinking in Cairo, and how he had eventually cracked and started telling colleagues he was working for Uncle Joe. Nobody had believed him, of course, and on hearing the story I’d blithely asked myself what could have brought him to such a state. But now, with the enormity of my sins bearing down on me, I wondered if this was where my crack-up was going to begin. It was an oddly tempting idea, like the thought of jumping in front of a train as it came into the platform. It would be a story to fill the Service’s basement bar for years to come: the man who had confessed to murdering Chief in his eulogy at St Paul’s. Perhaps they could get Bateman to make it into a cartoon.

I reminded myself that I was feeling the effects of the Benzedrine. I took in the Corinthian columns, the Whispering Gallery, and higher still the frescos stretching across the interior of the dome, then forced myself back to my address.

‘But for some,’ I said, raising my voice to counter my loss of nerve, ‘Sir Colin was much more than the man charged with securing this country against foreign threats. He was a friend, a husband and a father.’

Christ, what had I been thinking when I wrote this? Other memories sprang into my mind: his delight at catching a large trout that summer in Ireland, after he had insisted on using his ancient ‘lucky’ bait; the way Joan had looked at him when we’d returned to the cottage with the tail of the fish poking out of the basket, knowing he’d want it for supper that night. And Vanessa, of course . . .

I stopped myself going any further down that track. I realized that my hands were gripping the sides of the lectern, and that they were coated in sweat. My voice had frozen in my throat. I couldn’t do this – it was monstrous. My only sop was that it hadn’t been my idea. ‘You knew him best,’ Dawes had said when the arrangements had been discussed. ‘Nobody else was as close.’

I looked down at the rest of the address. It ran through Templeton’s career, from military service to Cambridge to intelligence in Germany and beyond: his friendship with my father in Cairo, then Istanbul, Prague, London. His body in the Thames, thrown there by Sasha and me in the dead of night . . . Not the last bit.

I looked up again and was surprised to see Farraday standing by the lectern. He was fiddling frantically with his tie, whispering urgently.

‘What is it?’ I asked. He mounted the steps.

‘You’re making a scene,’ he hissed, pushing past me. ‘Return to your seat, or I’ll—’

But I never found out what he’d do, because at that moment he fell to the ground, and blood started gushing from the centre of his shirt. The cathedral was filled with screaming, but my mind was now totally lucid. I looked up. The shot had come from somewhere in the Whispering Gallery – and it had been meant for me.

I started running down the aisle.

 

II

I reached the spiral staircase and began climbing it several steps at a time, the soles of my shoes clanging against the steps. From somewhere far above me, there was a further clatter of noise – was the shooter coming down? I plunged my hand into my trouser pocket and wrapped my fist around my car keys, the only weapon I had with me. How the hell had he brought a rifle into St Paul’s? I kept climbing. The noises were fading, and my dizziness was increasing. Some long-buried memory told me there were 259 of the things, but I resisted the urge to count them and pushed upwards, upwards, trying not to think about what had just happened, regulating my breathing and concentrating on the task at hand: get to the top; find the sniper.

I reached the Whispering Gallery, but there was nobody there, not even a Redcap. I glanced down and saw that several of them were heading for the staircase, against the flow of the crowd. I looked around frantically. Had the sniper gone back down another way? Would he shoot again? And then I registered movement in my peripheral vision. It had come from the far end of the gallery: a slim figure, bearded and dressed in black. He had a case strapped to his back, no doubt containing the dismantled rifle. He was heading towards a doorway that led to the next flight of stairs.

I resisted the temptation to stop for breath and ran after him, willing my feet to move faster, using my arms to hoist myself along the narrow iron banister and ignoring the rising heat in my chest, until finally I came out of the staircase and felt the freshness of the morning air on my face. I was at the base of the dome now, the Stone Gallery. My trousers fluttered in and out as the wind whipped against them, and I could feel my cheeks beginning to do the same. Voices echoed in my ears, and they were getting louder: the Redcaps would be here soon. I realized I had to get to him before they did – who knew what he might say if he was taken into custody? If he told anyone I had been his target it wouldn’t take long for them to start speculating why, and having just cleared my name that was the last thing I wanted.

I reached out for a moulding on the wall, and began edging my way around the gallery as quickly as I could. Without meaning to, I caught a glimpse of the Thames far below, a glittering snake swaying in the mid-morning sunshine. I forced my eyes away and continued my journey around the platform.

The dome of the cathedral had been covered in scaffolding for years – structural damage from the war – but all of it had been taken down a few months ago. Or most of it had: as I turned the corner, I saw that there was a ladder lying on the ground, and what looked like a small pile of workmen’s tools. Was this what the sniper had come up here for, something hidden in this mess?

Finally, I saw him. He had climbed onto the balustrade, seemingly oblivious to the wind and the height. He was sitting astride a climbing rope, which he had tied around the balustrade, and was now busy looping it around one of his thighs. He glanced up at me, then went back to his task, bringing the rope across his midriff and over one shoulder. I was just a few yards away, and pushed myself to get closer. If he was going to do what I thought . . . He brought the rope around one of his wrists, and took hold of it with both hands, one above and one below. He pushed himself back and started to fall.

It was now or never.

I surged forward and jumped blindly. He’d gone further than I’d thought, so that for a few moments I thought I’d mis-timed it, but then came the crump of contact as I smacked into his back. I immediately clasped my arms around his torso, gripping as hard as I could and hoping to Christ that the rope was tethered tightly enough and could take the load of two men. The sniper started shaking his shoulders in an attempt to dislodge me, and as the ground approached two conflicting urges were passing through my brain – the physical one, saying ‘let go, you madman’ and the other one, saying ‘if you let go you will die, if you let go you will die . . .’

I managed to hold on and we landed with a crash, the two of us a heap of limbs and bones. My whole body felt numb from the jolt of the impact, but I seemed to be uninjured. I was still trying to regain my bearings when I saw that the sniper had already let go of the rope and was off and running. It took me a few seconds to get to my feet and begin pursuit.

And he was fast, bloody fast, spurting down the narrow road, weaving his way around dustbins and lamp-posts. There was no traffic about, and he rushed across the pavement and darted down a grass-patched alley. I hurtled into it after him, my breathing coming heavily, half my brain still catching up from the fall. There was a thickening burr of noise, but it wasn’t until I made it to the corner of Cannon Street that I saw the crush of people. Two massive placards bobbed above the crowd, reading ‘PEACE AND SOCIALISM’ and ‘ALL OUT MAY DAY – SMASH THE WHITE PAPER’. The latter slogan was also being chanted by members of the column, the words echoing off the buildings.

Of course. The May Day march. It had turned violent last year, when it had been about Powell and immigration. This time Wilson and Castle seemed to be the villains, their crime being to propose trade union legislation. I caught the tinny strain of a loudhailer from somewhere in the direction of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and then there was the wail of a police siren seemingly very close by, and a clump of the column began moving off at a faster pace. The group behind were momentarily caught off guard, and I squeezed past a man in a checked shirt and jeans and squinted up Ludgate Hill, searching for a glimpse of the sniper. A sea of heads stretched into the distance. I looked for any unusual movement within it, for anyone running. Nothing. I turned and saw police and security staff massing around the entrance of the cathedral. Some of the Redcaps had seen me and were heading in my direction. I ducked back into the crowd and checked down Cannon Street again. Still nothing. Where the hell had he gone?

Then I saw him: a dark figure running up Ludgate Hill to Farringdon Street. Was he heading for the station? I pushed forward and began chasing him, calling out as I did in the hope that someone might stop him, but my throat wasn’t working properly, and neither were my legs, and by the time I’d reached the end of the street he had already vanished. If he got on the Tube and I wasn’t there with him, that would be it.

The drumming in my head and throbbing in my chest were telling me to stop to take some rest, but I forced myself to keep going and even made up enough ground to see him heading into the station entrance. I reached it less than thirty seconds later, and raced into the booking hall. He’d vanished again. And now I had to make a decision: under- or overground? The Underground seemed the better bet, as trains left much more frequently. There was a queue at the ticket office, but a quick glance told me my man wasn’t in it. I couldn’t see any inspectors and I guessed he had jumped over the barrier, so I did the same, pushing past people to try to catch sight of him.

As if by telepathy, he looked back at me the moment I spotted him. He was already on the footbridge, and I made my way towards him, keeping my eyes fixed on the rifle casing on his back. Behind him, a field of grey sky spread across the glass roof.

I reached the bridge and saw that he had ducked to the right, heading for the eastbound platform. I followed, shouting: ‘Police! Stop that man!’ This time the tactic worked. People stopped and turned to see who I meant, and the sniper slowed to avoid the attention. But he was confused, and an old lady with a bag of shopping bumped into him. There was a group of people coming across the bridge, and I noticed that they were carrying banners: reinforcements for the march, I guessed, or perhaps they’d had enough and were going home, but there was a crush and we were both finding it hard to get through. If only I could get a few steps closer to him . . .

A train started rumbling into one of the platforms below, and I looked down. It was the eastbound. I called out ‘Police!’ louder, pushing my way through until I reached the staircase, but it was like swimming in mud. The train grated to a halt and as I reached the foot of the stairs the doors juddered open and a crowd of people moved forward and into it. I couldn’t see the sniper, but I had to gamble that he would get on board. My feet hammered down the platform and made it through the doors as they were closing.

I took a second to recover my breath again, my chest heaving, and then looked around. I saw him at once. He was in the next compartment, just a few yards away from me. He was standing there quite casually, partly obscured by a woman reading a paperback. I pushed the doors apart and stepped into the compartment. He looked up, and a smile broke out across his face, almost a leer. His right hand was thrust into his jacket pocket, and I could make out the outline of what looked like the barrel of a pistol. Just inches away, a man wearing a fisherman’s sweater, canvas trousers and boots was seated next to a young boy, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, who was dressed almost identically in miniature. The boy’s head was directly in the line of fire. The sniper raised his eyebrows at me and I nodded to show that I understood: not a step nearer.

This was my first chance to examine the sniper at close quarters. He was a youngish man, in his mid to late twenties, wearing a black suit with a dog collar – so that was how he had managed to get into the cathedral. He was of average height, but well built: unsurprisingly, considering the acrobatics he’d just pulled off. He had a wolfish look about him: a long handsome face, olive skin, thick shoulder-length hair, greasy with pomade or something similar, and a wild beard. The Christ-meets-Guevara look. No doubt it went down well with female revolutionaries, but he looked fake to me, like a fashion photograph. Despite the fixed smile he was sweating profusely, and I didn’t think it was entirely due to physical exertion – every couple of seconds the muscles in his jaw twitched. Was he injured somewhere? Got it: his jacket was torn just below the left shoulder, a sliver of half-dried blood just visible against the dark fabric. Probably where the rope had burned him – I wondered how his hands felt.

I looked around the carriage, and saw that most of the passengers were clutching banners or sheets daubed with slogans. They weren’t the students and flower children you typically saw on protests, but labourers and factory hands. A man in a boiler suit and boots caught my glance, and stared at my suit with open aggression.

‘Been on the march, ’ave you?’

I shook my head, and looked intently at the sniper.

‘’Ark at ’im!’ the man announced to the carriage. ‘’Is Lordship ’ere don’t want nothing to do with the likes of us.’

‘I’ve been at a funeral,’ I said coldly. The man went quiet and started looking at the toothpaste advertisements.

The sniper smiled softly to himself. If he were to show his gun, panic would ensue and it would probably be to his disadvantage: the train would be stopped, transport police would board. But he knew I would try to avoid him taking that route, so as long as he kept his threat discreet he had the upper hand. Perhaps I could pull the emergency cord – that would flush the bastard out. I thought better of it. The gun could end up going off. On the other hand, if it were an automatic it wouldn’t be able to cycle in his pocket, meaning that for the moment it would be a one-shot gun. I put it out of my mind: I had no idea whether it was an automatic or not, and one shot was too much to risk anyway.

I turned my attention to his intended targets. The man had a ruddy face, calloused hands and a broken nose: a docker, I thought. The boy, no doubt his son, looked like he’d already spent a few years on the docks himself. He was skinny, gangly-legged, with sunken cheeks and a glazed look in his eyes. At his age I had been wearing a tweed jacket and tie at boarding school. Father had been in Singapore then, and I’d never worn long sleeves before, let alone a jacket or tie, but I had soon got used to it . . .

I wondered what they were doing on the Underground. Perhaps the boy had been too weak to make it through the march? Then I noticed that the father was wheezing every few seconds. It wasn’t that he was looking after the son, but the other way round.

The fluorescent lighting panels in the ceiling started flickering – and then, just like that, they went out, and we were plunged into darkness. The train screeched to a halt, and there was a collective gasp from the passengers, followed immediately by groans of frustration and anger and the murmuring of voices. Someone near me swooned and a few people lunged forward to help them – Blitz spirit and all that. I didn’t have time to be chivalrous because the sniper might try to do something. He couldn’t open the doors, but he could move between the carriages.

I made to step forward, but as I did the lights flickered back on. The train started moving again and the carriage returned to normal. Someone gave the woman who had fainted a thermos flask and she took a drink from it, gulping it down.

I turned my attention back to the sniper. He didn’t look Russian, I realized. There was something about the way he was staring at me – he was enjoying it. There was also a bravado about him, and I put him down as a southern European. His enjoyment sent a fresh wave of anger through me. I had given Moscow more than two decades of my life, and now they had sent this thug to shoot me down like a dog. If he were taken in for questioning, he might reveal I had been his target, so I needed to kill him, and soon.

But first I wanted some answers.

The clacking of the train began to slow. The boy squinted up at the Tube map on the wall of the carriage, talking to his father. It looked like the incident with the lights had scared him, and they wanted to get off at the next stop. They started to busy themselves – they had a hold-all with them, presumably for drinks and sandwiches.

The boy helped his father up and they moved to a spot in front of the door. The sniper took a step back, but kept his aim fixed on the boy, at his midriff. I glanced at his face: he was watching me watching them. In some situations I might have tried to rush him, counting on the fact that he would hesitate before killing an innocent child. But this was not such a situation: this man had just killed the head of the Service in a very public place, and would stop at nothing to get away from me. The boy was expendable to him, and I had to act with that in mind.

We came into Barbican, and the doors opened. People rushed forward to get off the train. I made to move, but the sniper was fixing me with a frantic gaze, his nostrils flaring. The father and boy were oblivious to the danger, and were not moving. Had they simply got up a stop early to prepare? No, the father was leaning down to adjust the hold-all – it wasn’t entirely closed.

He stood up, and as the boy held out his arm to help him off the train, the sniper made his move. He leapt onto the platform and took the boy under his arm, then started running, dragging the startled boy with him. There was a shout from the father, from others on the platform. For a moment, I froze. Then I jumped forward, too, but the doors were already closing. I squeezed through and onto the platform, but the two of them had disappeared among the passengers emptying from the other carriages, and I pushed past people, furious with myself for reacting so slowly. A mother was trying to get her pram off before the doors closed and people were helping her, blocking off the entire width of the platform. By the time she had made it out I had lost several valuable seconds. I looked up the platform. There they were, at the far end of it, the sniper running towards the tunnel we had just come through, the boy’s head cuffed under his arm.

I followed, but then the sniper did an extraordinary thing – he let go of the boy and ran down a ramp at the end of the platform and into the tunnel. For a moment I thought it was suicide, but then I remembered that there was some space next to the tracks for the Underground staff to use. As I reached the end of the platform, I could see that he was running down it. The boy was standing there, frozen in shock. I told him not to worry, to stay where he was and his father would reach him soon, and then ploughed down the wooden ramp and into the tunnel, following the sound of echoing footsteps ahead.

I had been running for only a few seconds when I stopped. The bastard had disappeared again! Up ahead, I could see the tunnel curving away towards Farringdon, but he couldn’t possibly have reached the bend already. Was he hiding somewhere in the tunnel, waiting for me? I peered into the darkness, but all I could see were occasional pillars and columns at the side, and the faint glimmer of the tracks running down the middle.

Then I heard footsteps again. They were distant, but recognizably the same rhythm. He was running down a tunnel, but it wasn’t this one: he was parallel with me. I ran back a few yards and searched the walls. There it was: another train tunnel leading off to the left, the entrance a dark chasm. I jumped over a fence at waist height and started running down the tunnel. The sound of footsteps became louder. There was hardly any light at all here, and the walls felt clammier, the air staler. The tunnel was clearly disused, but where did it lead? I put the question out of my mind and kept running, peering ahead to see where the sniper was heading. But now I couldn’t distinguish any movement or sounds apart from my own breathing and the crunch of my shoes on the gravel. Had he taken another tunnel?

I registered the glint of metal a fraction of a moment before he kicked. I tried to move but I had no chance, and he caught me full square in the stomach, sending me flying to the ground. I couldn’t see straight but I knew I had to keep moving whatever happened because the glint was the gun and he intended to shoot me at close range. I rolled into the wall, scratching myself against something, and screamed as loudly as I could, hoping to distract him even fractionally, because a fraction could make all the difference.

This tactic seemed to work, because he fired blindly. The shot nearly deafened me and sent a great scatter of dust and debris and Christ knows what into my eyes, but I was alive, and I had a sliver of time on my side. He was still dealing with the recoil when I grabbed his wrist. I had to get the gun away from him, because I might not be so lucky a second time and now we were very close to each other and it was very dangerous, so I didn’t scream because I didn’t want to panic him. I wanted him alive a little longer – I needed to know who he was and why he had been told to kill me, so I kept the pressure on his wrist and fended away his other arm as he tried to punch me, and eventually it was too much for him and he jerked free. The gun fell to the ground and I tried to follow its trajectory but it spun into the darkness, and the sniper stumbled away and the chase was on again, only now I was closer, and my blood was up, and I felt I could get him.

There were no lights, but my vision was adjusting and the tracks had a dull sheen to them. I didn’t dare move into the centre of the tunnel – I didn’t trust the sniper enough to know whether or not a train could come whistling down here and carry us both off to Never-never-land – but the walkway was becoming narrower. There was the sound of dripping water close by, but I could still make out the faint echo of his footsteps ahead of me, and I focussed on them.

I had been running for about five minutes when the darkness began to lift fractionally. Soon, I was entering a cavernous space, which I guessed had been some kind of goods depot. There were small trolleys and wagons filled with sacks, but everything smelled dank and part of one wall had fallen away. As I came through, I saw the sniper at the far end, racing up a cobbled ramp. I reached it a few seconds later and as I did I realized where we were: Smithfield Market. He must have taken a tunnel that had been used to transport the meat here. The familiar open space of black and green ironmongery rose in front of me, almost like a cathedral itself, and the vista of the city’s life returned as I glimpsed white-coated butchers through the archways and pillars.

It was icily cold here, and I realized we had come out at an alcove away from the main body of the market – some sort of storage area. Frozen carcasses lay slapped on top of one another in metal trolleys, glowing under the neon lamps. The sniper was bounding ahead of me, but he seemed to be flagging now. He crashed into one of the carts, sending the contents flying, and I slipped on a carpet of livers and entrails. He took the opportunity and grabbed me, dragging me through the slops and the sawdust. In the distance, a butcher shouted out his last prices. But that was another world away.

The sniper kicked me several times, and then began to choke me, his hands sticky and warm. I started seeing double, Christ and Che swaying above me, and I knew that I had only a couple of seconds left before I blacked out. I had to get him away from my throat. I lunged desperately with my left arm, and caught him on the ear. His grip loosened for a fraction of a moment and I used the momentum to topple him and reverse the hold, so that I now had my hands clasped round his throat. He kicked beneath me, but I was in a strong position now and I kept pressing down. He was trying to grab something with his arm, and I realized we had moved closer to one of the metal trolleys. My eye caught sight of an object on the lowest shelf: an electric saw. I placed my knee over the man’s throat and reached out for the saw with my left hand. I flicked it on. The whine had an immediate effect on him, and the sweat started pouring off his face like a waterfall. I screamed at him to tell me who had sent him and why, loosening my grip the tiniest of a fraction for his response. After a few moments, he began repeating the same words over and over. I leaned down to catch them.

‘La prego non mi uccida . . .’ he said, and his face was creased with pain. ‘Madonna mia, non mi uccida, non mi uccida . . .’

He wasn’t getting any further than that, so I slapped him, hard, and screamed at him again, but he couldn’t hear over the sound of the saw, so I switched it off and tried once more, directly into his face this time, but his jaw muscles suddenly tightened and then went slack and as I watched the fluid dribble from his mouth, I realized he’d bitten into a pill and I’d failed. His eyes froze. He was gone.

*

I searched his pockets, but found nothing in them. Dazed, I staggered out of the alcove and through the market until I came to the front gates, where there was a call box. I dialled the emergency contact number, waited for the pips and then thrust sixpence in the slot. Nobody picked up. The sweat started to cool on me, and I began to shiver. I tried the number again, and then the second number, but there was nothing, no answer, nobody home.

After a while I gave up and called the office instead, telling them to send a squad down and to look for the man in the storage area with a rifle strapped to his back. I left the booth and stepped into West Smithfield. It had begun to drizzle, and a newspaper vendor across the way was dismantling his stand. I looked up for the familiar sight, but it wasn’t there. Panicking, I ran down King Edward Street, desperately searching the skyline. It wasn’t until I’d reached the end of the road that I saw it: the dome hovering above the city, just as it had always done. For a moment, I’d thought it had disappeared.

 

III

‘So you will take the job?’

‘It doesn’t look like I have much choice, does it? If they offer it to me, of course.’

‘But you said they had already—’

‘It still has to be approved. The formalities won’t take place for at least a couple of days. They’re holding a service for Templeton in St Paul’s on Thursday, and they’ll push through the new appointments after that. Does that satisfy you?’

He nodded, and replaced the negatives in his pocket . . .

As the Rover skidded through the streets, I remembered my last conversation with Sasha, just three days earlier. I had told him. I had bloody told him where to find me.

‘And he was definitely Italian?’ asked Osborne, interrupting my thoughts. He was staring through the passenger window, looking rather pale and drained, as I imagined I did, too.

I followed his gaze. It was raining heavily and storms had been forecast: England’s green and pleasant land was suddenly looking rather grey and sinister. The Cabinet had raised the alert level to Four: much higher and we’d have been taking the train out to Corsham, the underground city near Bath – but that was strictly for when we were facing an imminent Third World War. Political assassination didn’t require a subterranean command centre, but it did require an immediate meeting. I prayed it wouldn’t go on too long. I was in desperate need of a shower, something to eat and a long kip.

Osborne had asked me about the sniper’s nationality several times, perhaps because it was all we had to go on, or perhaps because Italy was a NATO ally and he was wondering about the diplomatic ramifications. I told him again that I was fairly certain of the nationality because he had spoken fluent Italian on the verge of death, at which point instinct tends to take over. But it was baffling me, too, albeit for very different reasons. Had he just been a hired thug, untraceable back to Moscow? I ran through the scene in my mind for the hundredth time: Farraday’s head jerking forward, the shot ringing out. There was no doubt that I had been the intended target – if he hadn’t suddenly stepped in front of me, the bullet would have gone straight through my chest. The fact that nobody had picked up either of my emergency numbers confirmed it: one of those lines was supposed to be manned around the clock, without fail. I had been cut off.

‘How did they know about the memorial?’ Osborne asked. ‘We didn’t announce it.’

He was like a schoolboy heading into an exam he hadn’t prepared for, and I was the swot he was desperately hoping might help him out.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps Fearing will have something.’ Giles Fearing was head of Five, and had also been invited to the meeting.

Osborne nibbled at a fingernail. I suspected he was torn between wanting any information he could get his hands on and hoping that he wouldn’t be shown up by our rival agency. Five were responsible for domestic threats, while the Service dealt with everything overseas. That could be another reason he wanted to be sure of the sniper’s nationality: it offered a chance for us to head up the investigation.

If so, he’d have to manoeuvre himself sharpish, because Five had a head-start. They’d been all over the cathedral when I’d returned from Smithfield: a team had already begun examining the building from top to bottom. Farraday had been killed instantaneously – the bullet had entered just above his heart. His body had been taken to the nearest morgue, while most of the congregation had retreated to their offices to contact colleagues and plan a course of action. The corpse of the sniper had also been removed from the market.

After telling them most of what I knew, I had taken a cab to Lambeth, but Osborne had already been leaving for Whitehall when I’d arrived, so I had climbed in and was now debriefing him on the way. He was biting his nails for good reason. For two Chiefs to be murdered within two months looked worse than a lapse in security: it looked like a declaration of war. And, of course, Osborne was now worried that there might be someone training their sights on him – not for nothing were we travelling in one of the bullet-proofed models. I had even asked if we should travel separately, as the formalities had been overruled and I was now acting Deputy Chief and he Chief. I wished I’d kept that thought to myself, though, as it had made him even jumpier.

I was also jumpy, but trying to keep my head. The sniper had been Italian, but the whole affair had Moscow’s fingerprints all over it. I had been so intent on avoiding the suspicions of my colleagues in the Service that I hadn’t noticed the threat looming from the other flank. But I still had no idea why they wanted me dead. This should have been the pinnacle of my success, with their long investment in me finally paying off: even Philby hadn’t made it this far. I thought back to my conversation with Sasha on Monday evening. He had told me that the Slavin provocation in Nigeria had been the work of the KGB, and that for the last two decades I had, in fact, been working for the GRU: military intelligence. I’d come away with the impression that the KGB hadn’t wanted to give up control of me. Could it be that they now wanted to take revenge for my having messed up their operation? It seemed far-fetched, but there had been no mistaking the trajectory of that bullet. And Slavin had been one of their agents; perhaps they blamed me for his death. But why try to kill me in public, then, rather than simply ambush me at home? Perhaps the GRU had been behind it, after all, and someone had simply decided that I had served my purpose and had come too close to being exposed. I had taken Sasha at face value when he had told me that I was the hero of the hour, but perhaps he had just been stringing me along, keeping me sweet until a sniper could be found to deal with me. If the bullet had found its intended target, it would have made me a martyr in the eyes of the Service – and extinguished any questions about my loyalty once and for all. The Service would have closed the book on Paul Dark, and remained oblivious to the extent that I had compromised them. But as long as I was alive, I could be exposed, and if that happened I might crack under interrogation and make a list of everything I had handed over, rendering most of it worthless to Moscow in the process.

Or perhaps it was even worse than that. What if someone in the higher echelons of the GRU had decided, as a result of the events in Nigeria, that Sasha’s entire network should be closed down? Or not just closed down, but terminated? What if Sasha and his whole crew had all been killed – and I was the only one left standing?

On reflection, the motivations for doing me in seemed almost infinite. But one thing was for sure: someone wanted me dead, and they’d gone to a lot of trouble to try to make it happen. As the car came into Whitehall, I wondered when the next attempt would come.

*

The conference room was large and well appointed, with the usual Regency furniture and chandeliers, but the blacked-out windows and whey-faced stenographer in the corner deadened the grandeur somewhat. In the centre of the room, three men were seated around a large polished teak table. Fearing was fair-haired and stoutly built, with heavy jowls; Pelham-Jones, his deputy, was a few years younger and two stone lighter; and finally, there was the Home Secretary, Haggard.

Haggard lived up to his name: a giant skeleton of a man with dark circles under his eyes and a cigar perpetually glued to his thin lips. He was considered the Prime Minister’s closest ally – the two of them had risen through the party ranks together. His public image was of a straight-talking man of principle, and he was warier of spooks than everyone else in the Cabinet, with the possible exception of the PM.

As soon as Osborne and I had seated ourselves, Haggard stubbed out his cigar, scraped back his chair and walked over to one of the alcoves, from where he surveyed us like a hawk might a small cluster of overfed mice. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, not bothering to make it sound even remotely sincere. ‘As you may know, John Farraday was a good friend of mine, and godfather to my eldest daughter. I also strongly recommended him for the position of Chief, and so view his murder not only as a national but as a personal tragedy.’ He stepped forward and looked at us all in turn, and his voice rose fractionally. ‘I also view it as a cock-up of monumental proportions. As you will remember, when the idea was mooted to hold this service in St Paul’s rather than the Foreign Office chapel, my immediate concern was security. And I was assured that the place would be under closer scrutiny than the Crown Jewels.’ He reached out and banged the table with the palm of his hand, making the glasses jump. ‘Well, it was hardly the Crown fucking Jewels, was it, gentlemen?’ he shouted, his face flushed.

He glared at us, daring anyone to reply. Fearing looked like he was considering it for a second, but then thought better of the idea. Haggard adjusted the knot in his tie and took a long, deep breath.

‘The PM is currently suffering from gastroenteritis,’ he said, his voice reverting to its usual chilly calm, ‘so he can’t be with us this morning. However, he has been fully apprised of the situation and has called a Cabinet meeting for his bedside at two o’clock, at which time I will report on the results of this meeting. He is already not best pleased with your lot as a result of the incident in Nigeria, and I need hardly remind you that John’s murder came while we were mourning the death of the last man to occupy his position. So . . . can anyone tell me why I shouldn’t recommend that he sack the whole bloody lot of you?’ He picked his glass of water from the table and took a few gulps of it, his Adam’s apple bobbing wildly. ‘I want an explanation for this,’ he said, sitting down again, ‘and I want it now.’

Osborne glanced across at me and I debriefed for the third time, taking it from the moment of the shot until the sniper’s death in Smithfield.

‘What a pity you couldn’t bring him in alive,’ said Haggard once I’d finished. ‘A capsule, you say?’

I nodded. ‘He bit down on it within moments of my reaching him.’

‘I see.’ He took another cigar from his jacket and lit it, and a spiral of smoke wafted across the room to clog itself in the curtains. ‘At any rate, thank you: we all owe you a debt of gratitude for at least trying to apprehend the killer. Perhaps your colleagues from Five can now tell us how this was allowed to happen in the first place?’

Fearing bristled at the scarcely veiled accusation. ‘We took all the usual precautions and more,’ he said. ‘We had sixteen Redcaps stationed inside the cathedral—’

‘Who were a fat lot of use,’ said Haggard.

Fearing paused for a moment and decided not to pursue it: ‘And we conducted a thorough sweep of the building before the service began. There was no indication—’

‘“A thorough sweep”?’ Haggard jumped in again. ‘How on earth did the sniper get in, then? And what about the climbing ropes Paul’s just told us about – how did he manage to bring them in unnoticed?’

Fearing’s nostrils flared. As the head of Five, he was unused to being given a carpeting. But he deserved it: it had happened on his watch. ‘We’re looking into the first matter urgently, sir,’ he said. ‘But he may simply have walked in during the service.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Haggard quietly, ‘but did you just say that he might have walked in?’

‘Yes. He was disguised as a priest. We did consider the security situation extensively, but St Paul’s is a public place of worship. If we’d closed it off completely, we would have created an enormous problem with local parishioners, so some access was a condition of holding the service there, as it has been in the past.’ He glanced at Osborne to make it clear that he had raised these issues beforehand. ‘The Redcaps turned tourists away at the door explaining it was a private funeral service, but there was still some toing and froing. As for the climbing ropes, the scaffolding was taken down from around the dome last year but there were still a few bits and pieces on the galleries. We checked with the Dean beforehand that this was all in order, and he told us to leave it. But it appears that he had hidden his ropes among these—’

‘Pathetic!’ Haggard snapped. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this tripe. You should, of course, have taken the Dean or whoever was responsible up there to check. And as for creating problems with parishioners . . .’ His shook his head. ‘Pathetic. Do we at least have any idea who was behind it? Paul said he was Italian – are we sure of that?’

‘I think we can be reasonably confident, minister,’ Osborne broke in. ‘He spoke the language fluently as he was dying, at which point instinct tends to come into play.’

He had a good memory, Osborne; I had to give him that. Probably why he’d made it so far.

‘But why on earth would the Italians want to kill John?’ asked Haggard.

Pelham-Jones took it. ‘The sniper may just have been a gun for hire, sir. We don’t have anything further on his identity yet, although we’ve shared a detailed description with Interpol to see if they can help. But we have had a claim of responsibility.’

Osborne and I both looked up. ‘Really?’ I said. ‘When was this?’

‘About two hours ago. A call to Holborn police station from a group calling themselves the “Movement for International Solidarity”.’

‘Credible?’

Pelham-Jones nodded. ‘There is no way of concealing that something happened this morning – there were simply too many people involved, and it will get out whether we like it or not. But this was still a very quick response, and at the moment we’re inclined to think it was genuine.’

‘I wish you’d told us this before the meeting,’ said Osborne, and I felt his shoe kick against mine under the table. I glanced across at him but he was making notes intently on his pad. I squinted at the scrawl at the top of the page: KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS OUTFIT?

‘We’ve been rather busy,’ Fearing said icily.

I picked up my pen and wrote NO on my pad. It rang a bell, vaguely, but I didn’t have any facts at my fingertips.

Osborne scribbled again. EDMUND MIGHT.

He asked Haggard if I could briefly be excused to check whether or not we had anything on the group in our files. Haggard agreed, and I asked one of the private secretaries to show me to a telephone. It took a while to get hold of Innes, but once I had I quickly explained where we were. He perked up as soon as I told him the name of the group.

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,’ he said. ‘I think I might have something.’

When I came back into the room, Pelham-Jones was handing round dossiers. I nodded at Osborne, who looked relieved, then picked my copy off the table. It was titled ‘INTERNAL SUBVERSION: ANARCHIST AND COMMUNIST GROUPS’.

‘If you turn to page twenty-six,’ said Fearing, ‘you’ll see the chaps we think we may be dealing with.’

I turned. The page was largely taken up with a photograph of a hand-scrawled note, which read: ‘Yankee fascism all over the world – no to racism – freedom for American negros!’

Haggard snorted. ‘An educated bunch.’

‘Quite,’ said Fearing. ‘This was found in Grosvenor Square when the American embassy was machine-gunned two years ago. They managed to ruin three of the glass doors. As you can see, it’s signed the “First of May”, but we think John’s assassination may have been carried out by a breakaway faction from that group – perhaps even more fanatical. The First of May have sometimes claimed to operate under the banner of something called the International Revolutionary Solidarity Movement, which was founded back in ’61 by some anti-Franco Spanish militants. We think the Movement for International Solidarity may be a new version of that. As best we can tell, they seem to be mainly made up of anarchists and Maoist Communists, several of whom have been involved in trying to stir up violence at Vietnam demonstrations and the like.’

I wondered if this was the information Innes was racing over here to present triumphantly to the Home Secretary as our contribution to the investigation.

‘All very interesting,’ said Haggard, grinding the remains of his cigar into an ashtray, ‘but flag-burning and chucking Molotov cocktails about are one thing, political assassination quite another. Are you sure this lot are capable? It’s a long way from occupying the LSE.’

Fearing smiled tightly. ‘This isn’t a lot of student rebels, sir. There are some very dangerous people in this bunch. Some may have “graduated” from other movements, such as the CND, the Committee of 100 or the Spies for Peace, but we’re talking about the hard-core well beyond the peace movement. Perhaps you remember last autumn, when we were warned that extremists were plotting to use home-made bombs and the like to take over sensitive installations and buildings during one of the London marches?’

‘Yes – nothing came of it, though.’

‘Indeed, but only because Special Branch set up barricades at strategically important points, and because we leaked enough material to the press to scare them off. Anyway, this is the same collection of people. We think they may have also had a hand in blowing up one of the pipes carrying water to Birmingham in December. But yes, in answer to your question, this would be their first assassination. They probably had outside help.’

‘Any idea who?’

‘I’ll leave that to my colleagues,’ he said, nodding towards Osborne and me.

Haggard turned to us. ‘Well?’

Osborne fiddled with his tie and made eyes at me.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Let’s look at how it was done. His rifle was some sort of custom-made job, and he picked off his target with one shot at a distance of over a hundred yards, which I’d have found difficult fifteen years ago. We know he hid the ropes on the Stone Gallery, but when and how did he do that – was it this morning, or earlier, disguised as a workman or some such thing? Either way, he ran circles around our security measures. He was also extremely fast on his feet and knew how to lose a tail, or at least try to – I was very lucky to catch up with him. Finally, he had a capsule on him, and he used it. So I don’t believe he was some two-bit revolutionary, but an elite special forces operative – and my money is firmly on Moscow.’

Osborne took a sip of water and smiled coolly at Fearing. I had decided to go hell for leather in pinning the blame on Moscow because I knew they’d come to that conclusion themselves soon enough anyway, and it might be useful to be able to remind them later that the idea had come from me first, especially if there were any renewed suspicions about me. I also wanted to stress my expertise on Soviet affairs so I would be put in charge of the entire investigation. The next step was to undermine Five.

‘I think the climbing stuff also gives us a possible angle of enquiry,’ I went on, looking at Fearing and Pelham-Jones to make it clear that by ‘us’ I, in fact, meant them. ‘He was clearly an accomplished abseiler: it’s quite a height, and he didn’t use a harness or any other equipment – just a rope. I wonder if he might have been a night-climber.’

‘Is that a euphemism for something?’ said Haggard.

‘It’s a sport,’ I said, ‘popular at Cambridge. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it, Giles, what with you being a King’s College man. Don’t you remember those undergraduates rusticated a couple of years ago for placing an anti-Vietnam banner between the pinnacles of the chapel? If I might humbly suggest, why don’t you call up some of your old chums and get hold of whoever runs the society? See if they’ve had any Italian members in the last few years, or if they know of any similar clubs in Italy that do this sort of thing. That sort of knowledge is fairly specialized, and there can’t be many people who know how to do it.’

Fearing was flustered now. ‘But he used a rope, you said. I thought the whole point of night-climbing was not to use any equipment at all? And the society is anonymous. How do you propose we find out who runs it?’

‘Oh, sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought you were the Security Service.’ He scowled. Careful, or he’ll explode. I softened my tone. ‘It’s true that they don’t use ropes, but many of them go on to become mountaineers. Perhaps start with the Alpine Club or the Mountaineering Council, then, and work back.’

I was about to suggest he also contact London Transport to see if they’d had anyone suspicious working on the freight line that led to the goods yard under Smithfield Market – it couldn’t have been closed that long, and he hadn’t looked twice running in there. But, thankfully, Innes arrived then, a little out of breath but clutching a briefcase.

*

We all made room for him, and he unclasped the case and took out an impressively thick wedge of papers. He was halfway to the projector when Fearing told him that it wasn’t working.

He stroked his moustache. ‘Never mind. I’ll do it the old-fashioned way.’ He was a dapper little man, bespectacled and balding; he tried to hide the latter by arranging his few remaining strands of hair carefully across his pate. He looked like an Edwardian banker, but he was as sharp as a commando dagger. He headed up Western Europe Section, although he’d also been holding the fort at Soviet Section while I’d been away.

He laid his papers on the table and cleared his throat.

‘As you have no doubt just been hearing from Giles, the Movement for International Solidarity is an offshoot of a group that has also operated under the names the International Revolutionary Solidarity Movement and the First of May.’

Osborne smiled: Innes knew his stuff. We were in the lead again.

‘This group has several splinter groups across the Continent, and they seem to be particularly active in Germany and Italy. This is partly the result of wartime allegiances: some members of the younger generation are rebelling against their parents’ devotion to Hitler and Mussolini.’ He turned the page on his notes. ‘One of the group’s first attacks took place in Rome three years ago, when they kidnapped the Ecclesiastical Counsellor to the Spanish embassy to the Vatican. In August ’67, they machine-gunned the American embassy in London, which I imagine you’ve covered . . .’ He looked up at Fearing, who nodded. ‘Right. And, eighteen months ago, they claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on the Spanish, Greek and Bolivian embassies in Bonn, the Venezuelan embassy in Rome, a Spanish tourist office in Milan, and the Spanish, Greek and American embassies in The Hague. Quite a shopping list. Communiqués received after those attacks indicated that they were all in protest at what they called “fascist regimes” in Europe, and in solidarity with guerrillas in Latin America.’

‘I’ve heard enough,’ said Haggard wearily. ‘Paul seems to think they’re Moscow-sponsored. Is that plausible, and if so why are they targeting us?’

‘I’m getting to that, sir, if you’ll give me a moment,’ said Innes, gloriously oblivious to the tensions that had been building in the room. ‘The man who shot John appears to have been an Italian, and Italy is currently experiencing a huge amount of this sort of activity. There have been fifteen attacks in public places already this year. Two of them took place in Milan just last week, with bombs going off at a trade fair and the central railway station. Nobody has claimed responsibility yet, but we believe the First of May and factions associated with it were involved in both attacks, along with Italian Communists.’ He flashed a little smile at Haggard, which was not returned. ‘Between October ’67 and last May, three members of the Italian Communist party travelled to Moscow for what we think was a four-month training course with the KGB in clandestine radio communications. We have reason to believe that other Italian party members have been trained by Moscow in how to prepare forged documents and other espionage-related activities.’

Haggard had turned a few shades paler than usual. ‘Are you saying that the official Communist party in Italy is working hand in glove with terrorists?’

‘We’ve no hard proof of it, but we suspect some members of the party may be, yes. Our colleagues in Italy are worried that Communists and sympathizers may be planning a campaign of attacks across Western Europe to force a sort of “wave of revolution”. The idea would be to bring down governments – including our own, I might add – through violent means. The student movement would get caught up in it, and before you’d know it there’d be anarchy.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Which would suit Moscow down to the ground, of course.’

‘Do the Italians have any evidence for such a plan,’ said Haggard, ‘and if so why haven’t I heard of it before now? It sounds fairly extraordinary.’

Innes smiled sweetly. ‘Well, this is just informal intelligence-sharing. It’s something that’s been a background concern of theirs for a while, and it’s why we have stepped up our own interest in this area. About six months ago my Section started looking at a faction of the First of May in Italy called Arte come Terrore, or “art as terror”. The name is taken from the title of a series of articles that were published anonymously in a magazine called Transizione last year, which argued that violence against the state was a form of performance art that cleansed society, which was in sore need of cleansing. Some of the ideas espoused were simply nuisance provocations along the lines of those in Holland a couple of years ago, but others seemed to be much more serious, which is why we were interested.’

‘Do you mean to say that John’s murder may have been intended as a piece of . . . performance art?’ He looked as though he were about to choke.

‘Possibly, sir, yes.’

Haggard looked around the room. ‘I’ve heard some nonsense in my life, but this takes the cake, gentlemen. We are being outgunned by a bunch of art students!’

‘Hitler was an art student,’ said Pelham-Jones.

Haggard ignored him. ‘Do we have any idea who the leaders of these jokers are?’

Innes cocked his head: he was coming to that. ‘Rome Station has recently managed to infiltrate an agent into Arte come Terrore, a man called Barchetti, and he’s given us an outline of the basic structure. It seems there’s a central committee made up of a dozen members, all based in Rome. This is the leadership of the group nationwide, of which there are a few hundred members – we’re not sure how many exactly. There are several people who we either know or strongly suspect are members of the group, but Barchetti hasn’t been able to discover the identities of the leaders – he’s not yet trusted enough with that information.’

Haggard slapped his hand on the table again. ‘Well, he’d better bloody hurry up and become trusted enough!’

‘Yes, sir. In fact, he seems to have made something of a breakthrough. Last night he filed a report, via dead drop, in which he said he’d heard rumours that a faction connected to the group were planning something big – imminently.’

‘Obviously a warning about this morning,’ I said.

Innes shook his head. ‘He mentioned attacks “across Europe”.’

There was a brief silence as we took this in.

‘Christ,’ whispered Haggard. ‘That’s all we need.’ He took another slug of his water and scraped back his chair.

‘When is Barchetti next due to report?’ asked Fearing.

‘First thing tomorrow morning.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Not Edoardo Barchetti?’

Innes looked up. ‘Yes. Do you know him?’

I nodded. I had run him when I’d been stationed in Rome in ’64. I hadn’t recognized the name at first because he’d been known to everyone as ‘Bassetto’, Italian for ‘shrimp’, on account of being about five foot tall. He had worked for the Service since shortly after the war, and I’d inherited him from my predecessor. He had hung around the fringes of Rome’s underworld for years, mixing with thieves, gangsters and the sort of criminal not too scared to get his feet wet in the spy business. Sometimes he had picked up snippets of information on blackmailed politicians and suchlike, which he’d passed on to us, no doubt after some judicious elaboration on his part. He hadn’t been terribly useful, but I had liked him: he had been lively company and I’d always looked forward to meeting up with him. But it was one hell of a move from occasional source to deep-cover penetration agent.

‘How long has he been infiltrated, and how has he been coping?’ I asked. When I had known him, Bassetto had been a heavy drinker, and had been so scared of being discovered passing information by one particular mafioso that it had sometimes taken hours to arrange meetings with him just to receive the tiniest scrap of gossip. I struggled to imagine him as a plausible anarchist agitator.

‘He’s holding up well,’ said Innes, and Osborne gave me a fierce look – we were ahead on points, and I was in danger of sabotaging the victory. ‘Apparently he always wanted to do this sort of job.’

That was even more worrying, if he’d wanted to do it: a Walter Mitty type. I didn’t like the sound of any of it.

‘You seem familiar with this man,’ said Haggard.

‘I ran him five years ago,’ I said, ‘but as an informant.’

Nobody said anything. I looked around the room and wondered who would break the silence. Then I realized that they were all looking at me. They had to be joking.

‘It sounds as if he’s in very deep, and I don’t think sending in someone new at this stage would help. Besides, my face is too well known in Rome.’

‘Not by these people,’ said Haggard. ‘And it’s an advantage that you already know the city: you know how it works. We need to find out whatever it is Barchetti knows. What if John’s death is just the start of something much bigger?’

I didn’t give a stuff about Farraday, and if there had been a project to assassinate intelligence bureaucrats across the globe I’d have been all in favour of it. But I knew that there wasn’t, and that Farraday had been killed in my place. I didn’t want any of them to discover that fact, so I needed to stay here and manoeuvre myself into taking over the investigation. If I were in Italy, Christ knew what they might dig up.

‘Of course I care,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid I’m under doctor’s orders not to travel anywhere for the next two months. I only came out of isolation a few days ago.’

‘Yes,’ said Osborne, ‘Paul picked up some dreadful disease in Nigeria. Have they figured out which one yet?’ I shook my head. ‘He’s not fully recovered, and I agree it would be extremely dangerous to send him out in his current condition. We also need him here. We need to reorganize in the wake of this, and I’ll require his help.’

Haggard leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles together. ‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to require much more than this to take to the PM,’ he said, gesturing at the dossier in front of him. ‘What we need is action. If these people are connected with John’s death, I suggest we do something that hits back at them.’

‘Were you thinking clandestine or covert, sir?’ said Osborne.

He squinted at him. ‘Remind me of the difference.’

Osborne smiled softly and spread his hands along the table. ‘Clandestine is when you don’t want anyone to know what you’re doing; covert is when you’re pretending to do something else. Helping to instigate a coup is usually clandestine; sending an agent into a country and calling him an embassy official is covert.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Haggard, ‘as long as it can’t be traced back to us. Perhaps send in the agent under diplomatic cover, as you say, and then get him to work clandestinely – is that possible?’

Osborne inclined his head, thinking about it. ‘It depends on what you want done.’

‘I want whoever was responsible for this to be found and killed, as quickly as possible,’ he spat out. He nodded at the stenographer. ‘Leave that out, please. I will inform the Prime Minister myself later today. I’m happy to take the consequences. John was a dear friend of mine, and you have my unquestioned support to do whatever it takes to find those responsible and . . . act.’

I looked at him. Had he gone quite mad? The target was widening by the second. ‘Is that wise, minister?’ I said, and I could sense the others’ anger directed at me as I said it. ‘I’m all for justice, too, but if these people are planning further attacks, surely it’s best to find out as much as we can about their actions first, rather than go in with all guns blazing?’

‘Don’t give me that! Where are your balls? The head of your outfit has just been murdered in cold blood, in front of your very eyes, while you were worshipping. Are you going to take it lying down, or are you going to retaliate? You have a man infiltrated into the Italian division of this group, and even know the identities of some of its members. Let’s find out who the leaders are, send in a hit-man, and pay the bastards back.’

‘It’s not quite that simple, sir,’ said Osborne. ‘First of all, discovering the identities of the leaders is no easy task – it may take years before Barchetti is trusted with that information. Secondly, we don’t have “hit-men”, and haven’t for some time. There’s the SAS, of course, but I hardly think—’

‘What about Paul here?’ said Haggard, puffing out his waistcoat and looking me over as though I were a gladiator he was considering sending into the arena. ‘Can’t you do it? You chased down John’s killer, ran this agent in Rome. And the report I read on the Nigerian affair said you single-handedly managed to stop this Red Army sniper getting the PM.’

I coughed into my hand. ‘Stopping a sniper and doing the sniping oneself are very different jobs,’ I said. ‘And I got rather lucky in Nigeria.’ But it was no use – I could see he thought I was being the modest English hero. I tried another tack: ‘I think it’s perhaps not a very good idea for us to risk too many senior officers at this juncture.’

‘Nonsense! They won’t see it coming, will they? Element of surprise and all that. Go out to Rome under diplomatic cover and the Russkies will sit back and relax: a fact-finding mission from the top brass. Little do they know, our top brass is rather lethal with a telescopic lens and – bang! – you give the little Eyetie who planned this whole thing a bullet to his brain. An eye for an eye. No messing. They’ll get the message then, all right.’

There was an uncomfortable pause.

‘If we could find the leaders,’ said Osborne finally, ‘it might well be an idea, sir.’

 

IV

‘There’s no need to be like that,’ said Osborne once we were in the car heading back to the office. ‘Nobody seriously expects you to go out and kill anyone – he only put it in those terms because he was upset.’

‘Quite understandable,’ said Innes. ‘We all are.’

I didn’t reply. Haggard hadn’t been in the mood to be dissuaded, I knew, but Osborne’s intervention had really landed me in it. The meeting had ended with the decision that I would leave for Rome at once, subject to medical approval. I wasn’t sure which would be the worse result to get back: that I was still suffering from a potentially fatal and highly contagious tropical disease that nobody was sure how to treat yet, or that I was healthy enough to be sent on a wild-goose chase of a mission to slaughter an as-yet-unidentified terrorist leader in Italy.

I had wanted to be put in charge of the investigation, but this hadn’t been quite what I had in mind. Even ignoring the half-cocked assassination element, I didn’t like it. Parachuting an outsider into an operation was fine: that sort of thing happened occasionally, and could help speed things along. Someone with Italian experience made sense, too. But I had last been in Rome under diplomatic cover, meaning that there was no choice but for me to go in that way again or risk being easily blown. That meant that, despite Osborne leading Haggard on, the potential for clandestine activity was, in fact, extremely limited – I wouldn’t even be able to take a weapon into the country, for instance. And even if there had been any opportunity for me to take part in that sort of thing, I didn’t believe there was anything I could do that couldn’t have been performed with greater ease and efficiency by the local Station.

There was no way around it, though. Haggard had handed down his ruling, and to refuse to go now would only raise suspicions about my motives. Perhaps the worst thing about the development was that it took me away from London at a crucial moment. Because the other conclusion of the meeting had been that Innes was now to investigate whether or not there were any links between the deaths of the two Chiefs and ‘the business in Nigeria’. That filled me with dread: given the run of Registry, and with me out of the country and unable to influence matters, there was no telling what he might dig up.

The office was in a state of turmoil, and Osborne and Innes both ran off to try to calm their respective troops, while I told my secretary to get onto Urquhart’s to set up an immediate appointment, giving her the emergency authorization phrase. As I flipped off the desk intercom, there was a knock on the door of my office and Barnes poked his head around.

He was a quiet Londoner of indeterminate age, with greying close-cropped hair and a heavily lined face. After stints in Kenya and Malaya, he had become one of the Service’s bodyguards, most recently for Colin Templeton on weekends in the country. Templeton’s insistence that Barnes live in the neighbouring village rather than be installed in his home, as he had been urged when he had been appointed Chief, had given me a free hand on that crucial night five weeks ago. I would never have risked killing Templeton if Barnes had been in the house that evening, and as it had been the only action available to me to head off my imminent arrest, I had a lot to thank him for.

‘I’m your protection, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll be accompanying you to Italy.’

‘Under what cover?’

‘Third secretary, sir. It’s already been arranged.’

My desk intercom buzzed: it was Mary, saying that Urquhart’s were expecting me. I told Barnes to get his coat.

*

I sat in the waiting room in a very expensive but uncomfortable leather and chrome chair, flicking through a copy of Country Life and wondering who still lived it. Barnes was engrossed in a cheap paperback biography of Churchill he’d brought with him: he had told me on the way over that he was a lover of military history. I’d refrained from mentioning that he had probably lived through most of it. He was more talkative than I’d expected, and had spent much of the journey trying to reassure me that Templeton’s death had been a once-in-a-lifetime lapse and that I was perfectly safe in his hands. It hadn’t cut a lot of ice, because he hadn’t seemed to notice the navy-blue Ford Anglia three cars behind us, driven by an intent, squat-faced man. I’d managed to lose him somewhere in Battersea, but that hadn’t done anything to calm my nerves. They knew I was alive now, and that meant they could try again.

The receptionist walked over and gave me her best Harley Street smile: ‘Doctor Urquhart will see you now.’ Barnes followed, and the receptionist nodded at him – presumably she was used to such nonsense. I wasn’t: it was like having a bloody dog.

Urquhart had been a medic with the Service during the war, and when he had set up his practice afterwards he had bagged the prestigious and, I suspected, rather well-paid job of looking after most of its senior staff. Some of his patients were bankers and barristers, but the Service was his bread and butter, and as a result there was a certain discreet level of security about the place – we had come through an unmarked entrance from a side street, and would leave by another one.

So far I’d been dealt with by his assistants, but today the man himself was there to look me over – I was definitely moving up in the world. I remembered him from previous check-ups as somewhat wizened, but he was looking almost obscenely healthy, with a glowing tan under his white beard; he looked a little like Father Christmas. I asked him if he’d been on holiday, and he surprised me by saying that he’d been to Jamaica.

‘I go every other year,’ he smiled. ‘I love the vibrancy of the place – and the music.’ I tried not to imagine Urquhart in the nightclubs of Kingston, and mentally cursed myself again for not choosing an easier, more profitable profession. Jamaica in May. What a life.

He tested my reflexes and took some blood, then gave me a test tube and asked me to go behind a screen and fill it. Barnes made to stand up to follow me, but I gave him a look and he sat down again, somewhat sheepishly. Urquhart covered the awkwardness by asking Barnes when he’d last been out to Gosport, which was the Service’s training establishment. Barnes started gassing back immediately, and I peed in peace.

Urquhart took the tube from me and walked to an adjoining room. Barnes lapsed back into silence, and was no doubt hoping to get back to Churchill’s preparations for D-Day.

After a couple of minutes Urquhart came back in, smiling. ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘It looks like you’ve made good progress. You’re not entirely out of the woods, mind you. Have you had any muscle pain since you were last here, or sore eyes?’

‘Quite a lot of muscle pain,’ I said. ‘And my eyes sometimes throb.’

He nodded.

‘How about your hearing? Have you had any more bouts of deafness?’

‘No, but . . .’

‘Good, good. When any of the symptoms return, take one of these.’ He handed me a plastic tube containing several small blue capsules. ‘Don’t take more than two a day, though. And if you lose your hearing again, stop whatever you’re doing, get to a hospital and contact me through the Service switchboard. I’ll let them know what to give you.’ He picked up a clipboard from his desk and peered at it. ‘I also see from your file that you’re a smoker – a thirty-a-day man.’

‘I’ve cut down,’ I said.

‘ To . . .?’

‘About twenty,’ I admitted.

He grimaced. ‘Better make it ten. And go easy on the booze as well, if you can. Otherwise, I think you’re basically in good shape.’

I stared at him. ‘Is that it? You’re clearing me for active duty?’

‘Yes. It’s a bit touch and go, admittedly, but I had a call from the Home Office earlier outlining just how important your work will be in Rome and I certainly don’t think you’re in that bad shape. In fact, I’m sure you’ll be fine.’

Of course – Haggard had fixed it. Urquhart gave me a couple of swift jabs with whatever medication they were trying this week, before ticking off all the necessary forms for the Italian embassy. Then I drove back to the office with Barnes to let them know I had the all-clear, stopping off at my flat for a few minutes to throw some clothes and a toothbrush into a hold-all. The office had quietened a little, and Mary booked the tickets and made all the necessary arrangements, with Smale supporting her by speeding up the red tape with Accounts and Personnel. It was all very efficient – lots of bowing and scraping. Partly the promotion, partly the order from the Cabinet, and partly, I supposed, a desire to avenge Farraday’s death, or at least get to the bottom of it. But somehow the likes of Smale kow-towing made me feel even more uncomfortable, and I realized that in an odd way I missed being under suspicion, because I deserved that and could concentrate on getting through it. Now that I was in the clear, the extent of my deception was getting much harder to take. Smale was almost looking up to me – and it was a little chilling.

I grabbed a quick lunch of gristle-laden beef and boiled potatoes in the canteen and then Mary came in with the tickets, and Barnes and I headed for Heathrow.

*

We were booked on a BEA flight out of the newly opened short-haul terminal. As we sat in one of the cafés on the first floor, I wondered how long it would be before the immaculate Conran furniture would be sticky with grease and lollipop stains. At least the coffee already tasted as reassuringly foul as it did in all British airports. A Pakistani cleaner placed our cups and saucers onto his gleaming chrome trolley with a clatter and moved off, his mind elsewhere. Barnes was reading his paperback, smoking one of my Players – he didn’t seem in a rush to buy his own, I’d noticed.

I replaced the dossier in the hold-all by my feet. Its seven pages contained everything the Service had on Arte come Terrore. Part of me had wondered how much Innes had been showboating, but while the evidence against them was mostly circumstantial, it was also fairly overwhelming.

In July 1962, there had been an explosion at St Peter’s in Rome – no one had been injured, but the base of the monument to Clement X had been chipped. Nobody had claimed responsibility for the incident, however, and the investigation had soon dried up. Then, three weeks ago, there had been another bomb scare at the Basilica, and this time two men, Paolo Rivera and Giuseppe di Angelo, had been picked up in the course of routine enquiries. Rivera and di Angelo were suspected by Italian military intelligence of being members of Arte come Terrore: the excerpts from their dossiers that had been shared with the Service showed that both had long histories with Marxist and similar-minded groups. Both had been released without charge, but subsequent investigations had revealed that di Angelo had also been in the area of the Vatican on the day in question in July 1962, and that Rivera had visited London six times in the last year and had attended an ‘International Anarchist Commission’ in Tuscany in August.

The Pope had responded to the bomb scare by calling for calm and the need for brotherhood. So far, it wasn’t being heeded. Since the start of the year, the Italian press had been predicting a wave of industrial action, and it seemed to be coming true, with dozens of strikes, prison riots and street clashes across the country. Last month had seen a major strike at a tobacco factory near Salerno following rumours that the place would be closed down, and the police had shot and killed one of the strikers, and then a schoolteacher who had been unlucky enough to see it happen. The government had claimed provocateurs from outside the city were trying to foment trouble, while the media had pointed the finger at Maoists and anarchists. But the authorities were still taking the brunt of the blame, and the Communist party had proposed legislation to disarm the police while on public order duty. As a result, there had been strikes against police repression in both Rome and Naples. The Communists’ bill had been due to be debated in Parliament on April 28th, but on the 25th – Liberation Day – there had been the two explosions in Milan that Innes had mentioned in the meeting: one at the Fiat stand at the city’s annual trade fair and another at the bureau de change of a bank in the central railway station. Twenty people had been injured, and the Italians strongly suspected Arte come Terrore’s involvement.

So, the group looked to be both involved in attacks and interested in cathedrals. None of it would stand up in a court of law, perhaps – but it was enough. I looked out at a jet taking off and shivered inwardly. I usually enjoyed flying, but today the idea didn’t appeal at all. As well as the fact that the dossier seemed to confirm that Moscow was trying to kill me through a proxy Italian cell, I was sitting here about to leave the country while Innes was rummaging through the files in Registry with those long pale fingers of his.

And there was the small matter of the tail: the man in the dark green suit and scuffed brown brogues sitting at one of the other tables, reading Le Monde a little too intently as he devoured a cheese and ham sandwich. The suit was a size too small for his paunch, which along with its colour gave him a striking resemblance to Toad of Toad Hall. It was the driver of the Anglia that had followed us to Harley Street. I hadn’t seen him on the way here, but he’d evidently managed to follow us.

His presence was precisely why bodyguards tended to be a waste of time in this business. I had no doubt that Barnes was a tough nut, and useful to have on one’s side in a fight, but he was pure muscle, and hadn’t the first idea about surveillance. He wasn’t acting, either, trying to make me think he wasn’t switched on or some game of that sort; I’d watched him for several minutes now, and he hadn’t looked up from his book once. It just wasn’t in his training. He wouldn’t know a Russian spy if his life depended on it.

And the man was unquestionably Russian, despite the paper he was pretending to read. It wasn’t just the cut of his suit; even his face was unmistakably Russian: a pasty complexion from too much potato in the diet, blue-grey pupils glinting through narrow eyelids, a pugilist’s nose and the mouth of a coelacanth. Straight out of Central Casting. He was from one of the northern republics, I thought, Lithuania or Byelorussia. Was he going to try to kill me here, in the airport? He hadn’t tried to do anything on the road, but perhaps he had been waiting for the chance.

I pushed back my chair and told Barnes I was going to the lavatory.

He made to stand up and I stared him down. ‘Right you are, sir,’ he nodded. He went back to Churchill.

I followed the signs to the Gents’ until I was out of sight of Barnes, then headed for the WH Smith stall and took up position behind a stand of paperback thrillers. It was a perfect spot: I could see the whole concourse, so would have ample warning of his approach, and there were two entrances, so I could make my escape whichever way I chose, depending on the direction he came from. I wondered what he would be thinking now. He could either sit it out and hope I would be back shortly, or come and investigate immediately in the fear that I had spotted him and done a runner.

It took him less than a minute. He ambled over, pretending he was looking for a bin to dispose of the wrapper of his sandwich. I slipped out the other exit to the gallery of duty-free shops, stepping into the aisles of alcohol, tobacco and perfume laid out to tempt. I glanced into a display of Swiss wristwatches to see if I could catch sight of Toadski in the reflection. He was at the same thriller stand at Smith’s I’d just vacated, apparently engrossed in the selection.

I turned and walked into another shop, selling overpriced knitwear. Toadski suddenly lost interest in Margery Allingham and came bumbling out into the gangway. He looked around frantically, trying to see where I had got to, and then he caught sight of me and our eyes met. He looked down, embarrassed, then tried to mask it by glancing at his watch and feigning distress that he was late for his flight. An announcement was being made, and he made a show of listening to it. He started to scurry away, but I leapt in front of him and grabbed him by the arm. A few yards further along there was a door marked STAFF. It was slightly ajar, and I caught a glimpse of a mop handle. I looked around, and saw that the cleaner was still circling the restaurants. I shoved Toadski inside and stepped in after him. There was an overpowering smell of bleach. I grabbed him by the throat and quickly searched his pockets. He was unarmed.

‘What do you want?’ I said. ‘And make it quick.’

He gulped, his Adam’s apple throbbing wildly. I loosened my grip a little.

‘“The chairs . . . are being brought in . . . from the garden.”’ His accent wasn’t bad, sort of stockbroker London. But he still looked like he’d just stepped out of the Minsk Players.

‘Why am I a target?’ I snapped at him, but he merely looked at me with glazed eyes and repeated the Auden line.

I removed my hand. He didn’t know anything. He was a messenger, that was all: he had given me the arranged code-phrase for ‘Danger: keep a low profile until further contacted.’

‘Tell Sasha to screw himself,’ I said. The shot had missed me by less than an inch and he thought he could reel me back in by sending this buffoon to tell me I was in danger? What the hell did he take me for? I was going to need a little more information before I turned up for a meet and risked having my head shot off by the next sniper hired for the job.

I pushed Toadski back out of the door, smiled at the Pakistani cleaner as he came rumbling towards us, and smoothed myself down.

*

Barnes was waiting for me outside the lavatories. ‘There you are, sir,’ he said. ‘I was getting worried. Our flight has just been announced.’

‘Thought I’d have a look at the duty-free liquor,’ I said as calmly as I could. My heart was still thumping from the fury I’d released. ‘The prices didn’t seem anything special, though.’

Barnes smiled and we set off for the departure gate.

 

V

Thursday, 1 May 1969, Rome, Italy

My heart rate didn’t have much of a chance to recover once we were on the plane: we sat for over an hour while the ground crew worked on a frequently referenced but unspecified technicality. We eventually touched down in Fiumicino at just after seven. The air was still warm on the skin as we trooped across to the terminal building, and despite the circumstances I had to admit that there was something pleasing about being back in Italy. Perhaps it had been the double Scotch I’d had once the plane had finally taken off.

Fantasy turned to reality again the moment we stepped inside: the queues snaked around the entire Customs area.

‘Doesn’t look too good, sir,’ said Barnes unnecessarily, as a trio of small boys in sailor suits ran straight towards us, shooting each other with toy pistols. We sidestepped them and walked towards the queue that looked the shortest, but as we were taking up position behind an extremely noisy German family, someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned and was greeted by a beautiful young woman: a late-period Modigliani in a green blouse and a maxi skirt. She had a badge identifying her as an employee of the Italian airport authority.

‘Signor Dark?’

I nodded, and gestured at Barnes to hand her our passports, which he did. She inspected them for a few moments, then handed them back.

‘Da questa parte, prego,’ she said.

It had slipped my mind that there were compensations to travelling under diplomatic cover, and that this was one of them: you didn’t have to waste time going through the usual checks. We followed her over to a bench, where our bags were already waiting. She briskly chalked them, before giving us each a chit to sign and handing them over.

‘Enjoy your stay in Italy,’ she said, flashing perfect white teeth, and then her hips were swinging away from us and she was gone.

We walked through to the main concourse and were immediately accosted again, this time by a tall, fair-haired man in a dark blue suit: Charles Severn. He was a little broader round the belly, but otherwise looked much the same as I remembered: a good tan, slightly ruddy, a firm jaw and an open, earnest look about him. The only wrong note was his eyes, which somehow didn’t fit the rest of his face. One expected them to be blue, but instead they were a peculiar grey, like the colour of gunmetal.

‘Buongiorno, Paul,’ he said, taking a grip of my hand. ‘Long time no see.’ He gestured that we head towards the exit. ‘We should send a letter to The Trusty Servant,’ he said. ‘“Two Wykehamists held a hot in Rome airport . . .”’

I groaned inwardly. We had been in the same house at Winchester; he was a few years below me. He had joined the Service after the war, and our paths had crossed a few times over the years, in Istanbul, in Paris, briefly in London. I never much enjoyed encountering him. He was bright and efficient, and generally rather charming, but he could also be very brash. I hated our shared past: the fact that he had stood next to me at Preces, knew the nicknames I had been given and so on. The Trusty Servant was the school paper, and it often featured inane letters from old boys re-enacting ‘hots’, the school game’s surreal brand of scrum, in exotic and therefore supposedly hilarious locations. My pleasure at having made it through Customs so smoothly suddenly evaporated.

We walked out to the thick warmth of the street, where a throng of recent arrivals were negotiating fares with taxi drivers to take them into the city.

‘You must be Reginald!’ Severn shouted across at Barnes, the first time I’d heard anyone use Barnes’ first name. ‘You were in Nairobi, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir!’ he shouted back. ‘Among other places.’

‘Capital. Wonderful to have you here. I’m afraid my car’s a two-seater so there’s not room for all of us – would you mind too much catching a taxi to the embassy and we’ll meet you there?’

Barnes gave me a questioning glance, and I nodded my assent to the scheme. He asked Severn for the embassy’s address, repeated it back to him, then took my bag from me and headed into the fray of the taxi queue without another word.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Severn, as we crossed the street, now Barnes-less. ‘No pool cars were available. How was the flight? Shame about the delay, but you know what they say: Bastards Eventually Arrive.’ I forced a smile at the stale joke. ‘How are you feeling, by the way? I heard you came down with some awful bug in Nigeria.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Got the all-clear just a few hours ago, in fact.’

‘Quite a turn-up, all that, wasn’t it? I heard they even suspected you of being the double at one point – what on earth were they thinking?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was unfortunate.’

‘Desperately sad news about the Templetons. Although the last time I saw Colin he gave me a bollocking for daring to talk to Vanessa!’

I gave a tight smile: it wasn’t quite how I remembered the incident.

‘And everyone’s very sorry about John, of course,’ he said.

I doubted many out here had known Farraday, and if they had they probably wouldn’t have liked him much. But I noted that Severn’s diplomatic skills appeared to have improved over the years.

His car was parked precariously on a verge, although calling it a car seemed something of a disservice: I’d never seen anything like it. It was an Alfa Romeo, almost absurdly low slung and streamlined to perfection. The front window merged seamlessly into the roof, giving it the appearance of a prototype spacecraft. Instead of the traditional rosso corsa, the bodywork was British racing green.

‘New toy?’ I asked.

‘Just delivered,’ he smiled, unlocking an extraordinary pair of doors that swept up vertically, meeting in the middle like the wings of an enormous metal butterfly. ‘Isn’t it a beauty? It’s a “33 Stradale” – only a dozen or so have been built. It’s nearly identical to the racing version: top speed 175 miles per hour.’ He climbed in and patted the white leather. ‘Custom-built coachwork.’ He opened a compartment and pulled on a pair of matching kidskin gloves.

I made some appreciative noises, and remarked that he seemed to be doing well for himself.

‘Look who’s talking,’ he laughed. ‘Deputy Chief at forty-five!’

I manoeuvred myself into the front passenger seat.

‘Forty-four,’ I said.

For a moment I wondered whether he was on the take in some way, but immediately dismissed it: he was from an old banking family, and he’d always been a flashy bugger, even at school. As he brought us out onto the street, he veered out behind a rusty-looking Fiat, then brought the wheel round and squeezed through the gap to overtake it moments before a lorry came hurtling the other way. It was a terrific piece of driving but he hardly seemed to notice, and even accelerated. I looked on in admiration. Although the coachwork and exterior of the car were beautiful, there were few creature comforts: no radio, no carpet on the floor, no luggage space. It was a pure, brutal speed machine, and it certainly replicated the feeling of being in a race car. It took me back to Father’s sorties round Brooklands. I’d done a bit of racing myself in my teens, but had never really developed the taste for it: there didn’t seem to be enough of a purpose.

As we approached the centre of the city, Severn finally switched down a gear and I asked him for a situation report, which he gave as fast and as fluently as he drove.

‘There have been no further attacks,’ he said, ‘but the police took a call on Monday from someone claiming there was a bomb in the Finance Ministry – nothing was found, though. In Milan, the carabinieri have questioned fifteen anarchists and trouble-makers about the bombings there, and they’ve charged eight of them, including di Angelo and Rivera.’

I looked at him. ‘I thought they were based in Rome.’

‘They were both in Milan a few weeks before the bombing. The Italians think they might have been scouting around.’

‘I see.’ Well, that put paid to Haggard’s little idea, at least – I could hardly storm Milan’s police station and bump off a couple of their prisoners.

‘But it’s hardly over,’ said Severn. ‘Tensions are rising all over the place, and strikes and protests have now become almost the norm. Teachers, civil servants and railway workers have been on strike for the last few days, and a few hours ago several thousand Maoists stormed a Soviet May Day celebration and all hell broke loose, apparently. There are also rumours flying around that there’s a coup in the works. It’s a fairly explosive situation.’

I looked out of the window. An Agip dog whipped past, and then I started noticing the trees: ilexes, pines, even the occasional palm. In the blocks of flats lining the street, bougainvillea caught the evening sun in the highest trellises, and as we approached the next set of traffic lights I spotted a market stall selling fruit and vegetables in one of the side streets. Not much seemed to have changed in Rome, and I wondered if there was anything particularly out of the ordinary in Severn’s summary. Analysis this close to events was often prone to exaggeration, and he was, of course, trying to show me he was on top of things. Coups were forever being rumoured in Italy – one had very nearly taken place when I’d been here last – and I’d just seen London’s May Day march at close quarters, and that hadn’t been pretty, either. Britain had more than its fair share of strikes at the moment, and army units had even been posted to Northern Ireland after a recent spate of firebombs . . . One could probably give a similarly grim sit-rep for most Western European countries, if one chose.

‘And Barchetti?’ I asked. ‘When’s your next scheduled meet with him?’

‘Oh-ten-hundred tomorrow. The National Gallery of Modern Art.’

‘Good. You can brief me over breakfast.’

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I tensed.

‘There’s good news and bad news,’ he said. ‘Which would you like first?’

I didn’t reply.

‘The Italians say they have more information about Arte come Terrore, and are happy to share it with us.’

‘And what’s the good news?’

He laughed. ‘That was the good news, Paul!’ I glanced at him. ‘Marco Zimotti wants to brief you at dinner this evening.’

‘Dinner? Not on – I need to get some kip. I’ve had rather a long day.’

He smiled at the understatement. You don’t know the half of it, I thought.

‘I’m afraid Lennox is insisting – visiting dignitary and all that.’

Christ, that was just what I needed. Lennox was the ambassador, a pompous fool I’d encountered several times before, and Zimotti was the new head of Italian military intelligence, Giacomo’s replacement. I had never met him, but knew him by reputation: a tough customer, by all accounts. It sounded like he’d strong-armed his way into a meeting once he’d heard I was on my way. Still, if he did have anything useful on Arte come Terrore’s plans, I might be able to tie up everything for Haggard and get back to London faster.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Dinner it is, but let’s try to make it fast, shall we? But tell me about yourself, Charles – are you enjoying Rome?’ I didn’t care, especially, but it might help to show I was friendly: I was invading his turf, and he’d naturally be a little nervous.

He beeped at a passing motorcyclist and made a face. ‘Can’t say I do, much,’ he said. ‘The summers are too bloody hot and the winters aren’t much better than London. Nobody ever gets anything done and, frankly, once you’ve seen the monuments there’s not a lot to do, other than get hassled by beggars and cats in the street. One might as well be in Africa. Didn’t you find?’

I smiled. I suspected that in a few years’ time he would be attacked by a pang of longing for the place, and would have forgotten all about the beggars. I considered telling him about what was going on in at least one corner of Africa that I knew of, but decided it wasn’t worth it.

I looked out of the window again. We were approaching the centre of town now, turning into Via Cristoforo Colombo. Traffic was light on account of it being Primo Maggio, and I spotted a few students with banners wandering along the pavement. We passed a bar, and for a moment I caught the eye of a pretty young girl, who flashed a mouth full of gleaming teeth at me. It was an infuriating country, no doubt, and God knew I didn’t want to be here on Haggard’s wild-goose chase while Innes was asking awkward questions in London. But there was something about it I couldn’t help liking. It was carefree, even in the face of political strife and bloodshed. There was something living about the place, and you could feel it pulsing around you, in the tooting of the horns, the policemen strutting about in their spotless uniforms, the mothers slapping their children around the head. Cooped up in that office in London I’d forgotten what living was. I’d remembered it in Nigeria – there was nothing like nearly losing your life to make you appreciate it all the more – but this was more like it. This was a place where life was appreciated. Perhaps it was time to get out, retire, buy a little villa somewhere in the south . . .

I caught myself and laughed inwardly. It was a line of thought I might have pursued a few months earlier – not any more. I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see if the girl was still visible, and it was then that I spotted the tail. It was four cars behind us, a small white Fiat with Rome plates. The driver was wearing a pair of oversized dark glasses, but it was definitely him: Toadski. I looked across at Severn, but he didn’t appear to have noticed, and I wasn’t about to set him right.

What the hell did the man want now? And how had he got here? I’d checked every seat on the plane. Presumably, he had watched Barnes and me walk off to our gate at Heathrow – careless of me not to notice – seen where we were headed and taken the next flight out. He’d had a stroke of luck that my flight had been delayed, but then again I had flown BEA so perhaps it wasn’t so much luck as fate. But what did he want? It was a long way to come to tell me to keep a low profile again. He hadn’t looked like an assassin, but perhaps I’d misjudged him and the message had been a diversion. I should have drowned him in a bucket of bleach when I’d had the chance.

As Severn drove through the embassy gates, I looked in the mirror and saw the Fiat pulling up to park about halfway down the street. Severn slipped into a space at the top of the driveway under a palm tree, and I opened my door and stepped out.