‘Surprised, Sam?’ Bland asked. ‘Surely not.’ He paused for thought. ‘I don’t want you to think that you’re in any way unappreciated, you and your, ah, friends. You have a, ah…’ He smiled again. ‘A good right fist. But you didn’t honestly imagine…’ Now he allowed a bit of sharpness in his voice. ‘You didn’t honestly imagine that you were going to outthink the Secret Intelligence Service?’

A pause.

‘You didn’t imagine,’ Bland persisted, ‘that you would outmanoeuvre MI6, did you, Sam?’

Sam felt the blood rising to his face as Bland sat down next to him. The MI6 man carried with him the faint whiff of aftershave; Sam was immediately aware that he must stink.

‘If you’re such a bunch of fucking geniuses,’ Sam retorted, ‘then you don’t need to speak to me.’

‘Oh, please, Sam. Let’s, ah, let’s not be unpleasant with each other.’ He stood up again. You’re nervous, Sam thought to himself. You’re trying not to show it, but you are. ‘Miss Corbett told us everything, Sam: that she had foolishly told you the contents of her ill-informed article; about your brother being in the training camp. She was really quite, ah, talkative. So please do me the courtesy of not pretending that you travelled to Kazakhstan without the express intention of compromising the mission. Do me that courtesy, Sam.’

Sam jutted his chin out.

‘Was he there, Sam? Did you see him?’

Sam refused to answer and a shadow of frustration passed over Bland’s face. ‘I would find it quite unpalatable,’ he said ominously quietly, ‘to have to force this out of you, Sam. But your file tells me that your field investigation techniques are quite specialised. So you know the sort of things we might do to, ah, loosen your tongue.’

The threat hung in the air. Sam took a deep breath. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘All right. I recognised Jacob at the briefing. I went out to stop the guys putting a bullet in him.’ He looked directly at Bland. Fiercely. ‘Maybe you’d do the same for your brother. But Jacob wasn’t there. No sign of him. We eliminated the targets and came home. End of fucking story.’

Bland nodded and for a moment he appeared satisfied. He came and sat down again.

‘I’m afraid, Sam, I’m not entirely sure that I believe you.’

‘Well that’s your problem.’

‘It is indeed,’ Bland murmured. ‘It is indeed my problem.’ He stared straight ahead. ‘You do realise, Sam, that Miss Corbett got quite the wrong end of the stick, don’t you?’ As he spoke he looked directly at Sam, who couldn’t help a flicker of interest registering on his face. Bland feigned surprise. ‘Oh,’ he muttered. ‘Oh, dear. Well, she is a most appealing young lady. I can, ah, I can quite understand how you might have fallen for her charms.’

‘She was fucking terrified of you,’ Sam replied hotly. ‘If it was you that put the frighteners on her and bumped off that contact of hers.’

‘Did I frighten her?’ Bland asked. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I might have done. It seems to be an occupational hazard. I would prefer not to. But then I don’t have the advantages of your youth and vigour, Sam. I’m afraid I have to be a little more robust to get what I want.’

Sam ignored him. ‘I think Clare was telling the truth.’

‘No doubt about it,’ Bland replied. Sam blinked. ‘At least there’s no doubt that she believed she was telling the truth. But believing you are right and being right, these are two very different things, are they not?’

‘You tell me,’ Sam replied. His voice was surly, but he couldn’t help it.

‘I am telling you, Sam. Clare Corbett, alas, was misled. It’s not her fault, of course. But she was misled nevertheless by her…’ He struggled to find the phrase. ‘By her “red-light runner”.’

‘You telling me they don’t exist?’ Sam demanded hotly. ‘You telling me that we didn’t just eliminate a load of them in Kazakhstan?’

Bland shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘They exist. Very much so. Intelligence agencies are extremely adept at drawing profiles of people from, oh, an astonishing variety of sources, Sam. It would be an easy job for me to pull up all sorts of information about you, for example, that you wouldn’t even imagine we’d be interested in. Which supermarkets you shop at, your taste in films, your taste in just about everything. Should we be of a mind to, you understand. Clare’s red-light runners fitted a very precise profile. The sort of people that someone at least would have a use for.’

‘So why are you killing them?’ Bland’s wordiness, his roundabout way of talking, was beginning to get on Sam’s nerves.

‘Of course,’ Bland replied enigmatically, ‘you and I both know that we are called upon to do questionable things in the course of our duty.’ As if that explained everything. ‘I’ve learned a lot about your brother in the last few hours, Sam. A very great deal. He had a most distinguished service record, did he not?’

Sam didn’t reply.

‘And then, what can we call it? A moment of madness? You were there, weren’t you? In Baghdad. You saw it all happen.’

‘It was an accident,’ Sam seethed. ‘Jacob stepped in to…’ He stopped himself. What was the point? This guy was going to believe what he was going to believe.

‘A cover-up,’ Bland continued, as though Sam hadn’t even spoken. ‘Jacob Redman was, ah, cut a deal to avoid embarrassment to the MOD. Everything brushed under the carpet to avoid a scandal, but Jacob to be RTU’d. An embarrassment too far, Sam, wouldn’t you say? And so he left the army. Left the country. Cut off all ties. I would say, in circumstances such as this, that a man might become, ah…’ He searched for a word. ‘Bitter?’

‘If you’re trying to say something,’ Sam whispered, ‘why don’t you just say it?’

‘Treason, Sam,’ Bland announced with sudden force. ‘It’s not a terribly fashionable word, is it? Smacks a bit of the Gunpowder Plot, doesn’t it? But it’s very apt, Sam, for what’s going on at the moment. Very apt indeed. I believe Jacob to be guilty of treason, Sam. And if you don’t help me find him, then you will be guilty of it too.’

Once more a smile spread across the older man’s lined face. Sam shut his eyes and as he did so, his brother’s words echoed in his mind. They’ll tell you things, Sam. Things about me. Don’t forget that you’re my brother. Don’t believe them. And he remembered the red-light runners, butchered in their beds by the Regiment’s weapons, and how easily one of those could have been Jacob.

‘You’re insane,’ he told the old man. ‘You’re totally fucking insane.’

Bland’s gaze flickered over to where Toby was standing. Clearly he didn’t like being spoken to like this in front of a subordinate, but if he was angry he managed to keep a check on it.

‘What if I were to tell you, Sam, that the red-light runners were being trained not by MI5, but by a foreign intelligence agency?’

‘Who?’

‘I, ah, I think I might keep that information to myself for the time being, Sam. Though if you think about it, I’m sure you would come to the same conclusion as me.’

‘Then why did you kill Clare’s contact?’

‘We didn’t, Sam. We didn’t need to. He was, ah, taken care of by the time we reached him.’

‘Who by?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘But he told Clare he was working for Five.’

‘Indeed he did, Sam. Indeed he did. Because that was what he believed.’

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he tried to work out the implications of what Bland was saying.

‘You see, Sam,’ Bland continued, ‘Miss Corbett’s red-light runners are exactly what she thought they were. With one difference. They thought they were working for MI5. They thought they were patriots. But they weren’t, Sam. They were stooges. They had been duped.’

His words rang around the room.

‘With the red-light runners trained, primed and reinserted into the UK, their handlers had a secret network of operatives willing to do their bidding. We have no idea how many of them there are out there. Tens? Hundreds? Just waiting to be activated. Just waiting to be given the order.’