“Not for long,” I said.

They could have found me in five minutes, wherever I was, since I’d come in this morning.

“What were you doing in Monitoring?”

“Keeping an ear open.” We’re not supposed to wander about on the fourth floor unless we’re on call or briefed.

I looked down at the Telegraph again, just for a second. They’d got a picture of the train, empty and with the doors open. The headline was across the three right-hand columns: Murder in London Underground.

I turned away from it and looked at the rain on the windows.

“Time is very short,” Parkis said thinly.

“Then let’s get it over.”

He said in a moment: “I have a question for you, Quiller. How many men have you been obliged to kill, in the course of a mission?”

“What? God knows. Not many. Half a dozen.”

Bangkok. East Germany. Warsaw. Tunisia. Hong Kong. The States.

Other places.

“Half a dozen,” he said tonelessly. “Possibly more.”

“Possibly.” Zade had taken one or two with him, in that jet.

Parkis swung round and said with soft fury, “Do you think that gives you a licence?”

“Not really.”

He waited to see if I was going to add anything. I let the silence go on.

“This man Novikov,” he said at last.

“Is that his name?” I looked at the paper again.

“Yes. His cover name was Weiner.”

“I didn’t know.”

There must have been someone else there. Or they’d -

“You didn’t know his name?” he asked sharply.

“No. I only — ”

“But you knew who he was?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Parkis, I don’t go around doing that sort of thing to strangers. If you — ”

“Very well. I am now asking for your explanation.”

I took a breath and wondered if there was any point in giving him some carefully-considered lies. I didn’t think there was. And some remnant of human faith was averse to my playing Judas to the dead.