He needed a drink. He took off his suit jacket, hung it on the bannister of the stairs leading up to the two bedrooms on the first floor and went through into the sitting room. There was a drink trolley pushed back against the wall and he took a bottle of scotch through into the kitchen and poured himself a generous measure. He looked out of the window into the garden beyond. Night had drawn in properly now, and, as he looked out onto the narrow stripe of lawn and the rear of the terrace opposite, with the slate roofs, the chimneys and the satellite dishes, the sky flashed with a pulse of lightning. He put the glass to his lips and sipped the scotch, the liquid warming his gullet as rain started to fall, lashing the glass, and, in the distance, a peal of thunder rolled across the city.

The cupboard was well stocked with ready-meals. He took out a chicken curry, removed the cardboard sleeve, slid it into the microwave and set the timer for five minutes. The machine hummed as the platter rotated and, soon, the smell of the food filled the kitchen. He would eat and then review the files he had brought home, perhaps with the benefit of another drink. He took his glass and the bottle back into the sitting room. It was almost ten o’ clock, and it was his habit to listen to The World Tonight on Radio Four.

The room was dark and he stooped at the standard lamp.

He was fumbling for the switch when the light on the other side of the room switched on.

The figure of a man was silhouetted in the armchair.

“Hello, Control.”

John Milton was sitting there, unmoving, watching him. His face was cast in shadow by the lamp just behind his shoulder.

His stomach suddenly felt turned inside out.

“You must have known I’d come back for you one day?”

Control couldn’t look directly at him without squinting into the light. Milton would have planned it that way. “I don’t…”

Milton held up a hand to stop him and then leant forwards so that Control could see him more clearly. He was dressed all in black: black jacket, black jeans and a pair of black boots. He was wearing latex gloves on his hands and he held a revolver in his right hand. “Before we get started, let me set a couple of things out. First, I’ve been waiting for you a little while. More than long enough to find both of your panic alarms. They’re disabled now, so don’t think you can call for help. You can’t. It’s just me and you. Second, there was a pistol in the drawer over there, too. This one.” He held up the Jericho 941F semi-automatic. “It wasn’t loaded but I found where you keep the ammunition and it is now.”

Control’s knees felt like water. “Can I sit down?”

Milton waved the gun at the settee.

“What do you want?”

“A discussion.”

“About what? About you?”

He turned his head a little and Control could see that his thin lips had formed a cold smile. “No. Not about me. A few other things.”

“Such as?”

“Let’s start with Michael Pope.”

Control measured that. “Alright,” he said.

The microwave pinged in the kitchen. Control jumped but Milton didn’t take his eyes off him. He caught himself thinking that this must be what it felt like for those men and women that he sent his agents to neutralise. His authority, his position, his years of experience; they were all useless in the face of the hard-faced killer sitting opposite him. And Milton was a killer. Cold-blooded and lethally efficient. No-one knew that better than Control. John Milton was the best assassin he had ever worked with. The absolute best; no-one else came anywhere close. He had been Number One, after all. He was the most relentless, the most ruthless, the most deadly operative he had ever sent into the field.

Milton sat back in the chair and the shadows fell back across his face again. “Do you know what’s happened to him?”

“He was on assignment. South of France. We haven’t heard from him for five days.”

“Who was the target?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Was it Pascha Shcherbatov?”

That took him by surprise. “I–I—” he stammered.

“He sends his regards.”

Control put the empty glass down on the side table; his hand was shaking and it rattled against the wood. He was already nervous and the direction the conversation was taking made him feel even worse. “You’ve met him?”

“A few days ago. Pope is alive. Shcherbatov has him. He used him to get to me.”

“How do they know about you?”

“That I don’t know,” he said, dryly. “But they knew quite a lot. If you asked me to guess, I’d say that you’re employing one of his agents.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He knew Pope was coming after him. And he knew where to find me. Draw the dots, Control.”

“So what did he want?”

“We’ll get to that. I want you to tell me about Beatrix Rose first.”

That surprised him. The conversation wasn’t following a path he could predict and he needed time to think. He absently knocked back the last of his drink. He held the glass up and said, “I don’t know about you but I…”

“Stay there. You need to take this seriously.”

“I am taking it seriously.”

“No distractions, Control. I wasn’t born yesterday.” He tapped his index finger on the barrel of the gun. “So. Beatrix Rose.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I never found out what happened to her.”

“You know the procedure: minimum information. You didn’t need to know.”

He brought up the gun. “And now I do.”

Control waved his hand in the air before his face. “There was an assignment, just after you were transferred, I believe, and she was compromised. She didn’t report afterwards. We assumed what we would always assume in the circumstances: K.I.A.”

Milton leant forwards again to stare at him, the shadows reaching down his face like daggers. “This is going to be so much easier if you tell me the truth.”

He felt panic closing around him. He had no idea what he should say, what Milton did and did not know.

“Let me help you out. I know she’s not dead.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I went to see her after I saw Shcherbatov.”

“Where?”

He smiled and shook his head. “You don’t need to know where. But you might as well assume she told me everything. I know what you were doing then, when she disappeared. I know that you’d been prostituting yourself for years. I know all about the deal you thought you were doing with Anastasia Semenko. I know that you thought that she was an arms dealer looking for a way in with the Syrians. I know that she was introduced to you by the Iraqis that you’d already been working with, although you didn’t know that they were also working with the Russians. I know that you didn’t know that the Iraqis were in the habit of selling useful information to the Russians. I know that Semenko paid you because you said you could make an introduction with Assad’s regime. I know that they had you exactly where they wanted you. I know that the meeting Semenko and Shcherbatov were going to on the day that she died was with you. And I know that you sent us after them because you couldn’t afford to let them live. Shcherbatov told me everything and Beatrix Rose confirmed it. How long did it take you to find out he survived?”

He glared at him with sullen frustration. “We thought he’d drowned in the river but then he popped up again in Moscow a week later.”

Milton chuckled, humourlessly. “Did you know that he was married to Semenko?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You can’t blame him for hating you. He wants to disgrace you. And then he wants to kill you.”

Control felt a bead of sweat as it rolled out of his scalp and traced a slow line down his forehead. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m getting to that,” he said. “Do you want to reconsider what you told me about Beatrix?”

Control looked at the gun in Milton’s hand and swallowed hard. “It’s true about Semenko. They trapped me. They were ready to flip me. Can you imagine how dangerous that would have been for the state?”