“It was delicious. I’ve had a good day and now I’m having a lovely evening. It’s just a pity…”

“What is?”

“You know. The circumstances. Now. The job.”

She stopped, warned by a blank look on Milton’s face.

“That’s just the way it is,” he said. “Orders. You’re doing what you’ve been told to do.”

He paused and turned his head to the window again. The conversation was becoming more intimate than was appropriate. There were some subjects that Milton would not discuss, with anyone, and she had an open and inviting manner that made it easy to forget his boundaries. He had already said too much. He chided himself: she was a Russian agent. He was only here — in Hong Kong, having dinner with her — because they had a gun to his head. A man he owed a blood debt to had been arrested, beaten and was being held God knows where, having God knows what done to him. That was the only reason he was here. Pope was the only reason that he hadn’t already abandoned her, blended in with the multitude and disappeared from view again.

He was having dinner with her under sufferance and not through choice. Unfortunately, however many times he told himself that, he knew it wasn’t really true.

The rest of the meal went well. The food was excellent and the conversation was good. Anna loosened up even more after her gin and then she ordered a couple of glasses of wine with her main course. She became a little more indiscrete about her work although Milton was sure that some of it was calculated; passing on a little harmless gossip here and there in an attempt to inveigle herself into his own confidences.

She excused herself between the main course and dessert and Milton took his chance. He had prepared earlier, before they left for dinner: he had popped three of the temazepam tablets from their blister pack, ground them together swept the fine powder into a folded triangle of paper. Now, he reached across the table for her unfinished glass of wine and, after checking that he wasn’t observed, tipped the powder into it. It dissolved quickly and without any sign of residue.

She returned to the table and asked him to talk about his background. Assuming that she knew it all anyway, he did. He told her about the peripatetic early years spent following his father’s career around the oil states in the Gulf, his parents’ death, the largely unsuccessful time at private school and then his years reading law at Cambridge. He explained how he had eschewed the career at the bar that had seemed mapped out for him and how he had joined the Green Jackets instead. There was his first posting in Gibraltar, the time spent in the Gulf for the first Iraq war and then the Provinces. Talking about that brought him right back to Pope again and, not wishing to dwell on that tonight, he had been glad that their desserts were finished and cleared away and Anna proposed that they return to the hotel.

Anna summoned the waiter, asked for the bill, paid it in cash and left a large tip on the table. She rose, suddenly a little unsteadily.

“I’m afraid I’m a little drunk,” she said.

“Here.” He offered her his arm and, with her clinging onto it, he led the way out of the restaurant and onto the street outside. It had started to rain again; gently at first, a fine gossamer mist that dampened the face, but then, as they stood waiting to flag a taxi, it fell harder and harder until it was drumming thunderously on the awning above them. Milton took out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one. She took it, ducking her head to accept his light and exposing the nape of her long, white neck.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“A little — fuzzy. I…I…” She stammered for the words and, slowly, a frown that might have been realisation broke across her face. “You…you…” she started again, but the words fluttered away, the thought incomplete and unexpressed.

A taxi pulled up. She was asleep on his shoulder before it had even pulled away.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Milton awoke and reached out for his watch on the bedside table. He scrubbed the sleep from his eyes and checked the time: it was nine. He let his head fall back on the pillow and closed his eyes again. He was tempted to go back to sleep but it was already later than he had intended and he had plenty to do. Anna was still in her bed, and he got out of bed slowly and deliberately, careful not to wake her. She was lying on her front, the sheets pulled halfway down her back. Milton had laid her there, still dressed. Her breathing was deep and very relaxed. He wasn’t sure how long the effect of the Temazepam would last but he figured that he had a little while yet. She would be able to guess where he had gone but he would have a head start, at least. He hoped that he could find Beatrix Rose before she could get there.

He went into the bathroom, dressed and then quietly left the room.

He took a taxi to Chungking Mansion and made his way to Syed Bukhara again. It was ten when he took a seat at the same table in the restaurant as before and started what he suspected would be the first in a series of cups of tea.

But he didn’t have long to wait.

“Hello, Milton.”

He turned: there was a woman behind him, and, for a moment, he didn’t recognise her. It was eight years, that was true, but even so. She was thin, the structure of her bones easily visible through a face that had far less shape than Milton remembered. Her skin looked brittle and dry, like parchment, and her eyes, which had once been bright and full of fire, were dull and lifeless, obscured by a film of rheum. She looked ill.

“Number One,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not any more. And not for a long time.”

There was a wariness in her face as she regarded the few other diners in the restaurant. She moved gingerly, as if it gave her pain, and, as she came around the table and passed directly in front of him, Milton saw with dismay that the emaciation in her face was symptomatic of a more general malaise; she had been beautifully curvaceous before but that was all gone now. She was wearing a flimsy blouse with short sleeves and as she braced her arms on the table to lower herself down into the seat he could see the bony protuberances of her elbows and the shape of the bones in her wrists. She moved with deliberate care, as if it gave her pain. It was as if she had aged thirty years in the space of ten.

She had a bag with her and, as she sat down, she arranged it in her lap and slid a hand inside.

“I’ve got a gun,” she said. “It’s aimed right at your balls. Ten seconds, Milton. What the fuck are you doing here?”

Point blank. She wouldn’t miss.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Five seconds.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Did Control send you?”

“No,” he said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“This has nothing to do with him. Or the Group. You have my word.”

“Better make me believe that, Milton. I’d rather not shoot you.”

Milton was calm. “Control doesn’t know where I am,” he said. “He doesn’t know where you are, either. If he did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? I would already have shot you.”

She chuckled mirthlessly. “No, Milton, you wouldn’t. I’ve been following you since you came here to look for me yesterday. I’m disappointed. I taught you to be observant and I’m very out of practice. Go on, why are you here?”

“I’m here of my own accord. I’m out of the Group. I quit. I told Control a while ago. Can’t say he took too kindly to the idea. He’s already tried to kill me twice.”

“Keep going.”

Milton didn’t demur. He told her everything that had happened. He started at the beginning, all the way back to what had happened in London after his last assignment in the Alps, because he knew she would need to have the context to understand what had happened next. He told her about his argument with Control.