But at least he now knew. The sense of anticipation had been replaced by a calmness. Now he knew where he stood. He knew for certain he would need to do everything carefully.

The second envelope contained a key and a message from Mitchell.

“Richard, if you are opening this envelope it is because something has gone wrong for me. I left this message with someone I could trust, so they could pass it on to you. This is a copy of the key to my desk (#31). There you will find the remaining instructions. Too bad that we could not work together on this.

You blanked me in Helsinki. Please, you must proceed now. This is the only chance.”

Richard blinked. “Blanked him?” He closed his eyes and tried to remember. For some reason, he put his hand to his forehead and immediately felt stupid and self-conscious about it. He was distracted by the image of himself posing thoughtfully. Suddenly the trees darkening in the distance were the Tulgey Wood in which the Jabberwock lived.

“As in uffish thought he stood.”

He couldn’t remember. There was nothing. No real memory at all of what had happened in Helsinki. He decided that it could not be important anyway. Everything was clear now; now he knew what he had to do.

All of this had taken years, and had been delayed by months by the misunderstanding or miscommunication, or whatever it was, in Helsinki. Now he could not contain his impatience – he wanted to get hold of those instructions immediately. He had to remind himself he needed to do all of this very carefully, but his thoughts were in turmoil. What if I go back to the office with the memory stick and someone asks to see what is on it? Is there going to be anything on it or in the instructions that would be explicit or incriminating? If so, is it better to keep them (the memory stick and instructions) separate to reduce the chances that they will incriminate me?

But the turmoil didn’t end there. It swept around him like a maelstrom: If I have to keep the memory stick and remaining instructions separate, how might I do it? He weighed his options anxiously. He thought of taking the stick home first, before going back to the office, or putting it in a locker in a train station, or hiding it some- where in Hyde Park, or even posting it to himself in an envelope.

But he’d waited years for this and didn’t want to leave it anywhere until he knew what it contained. Now he had it, he somehow couldn’t let go of it, whatever the risk. He was stuck with it, held in its power like Gollum and the One Ring To Rule Them All. It was his “precious”.

He would have to go back to the office. Why was he so worried someone there might ask why he’d come back? Returning to the office wasn’t such an outlandish thing to do. So what if he was carrying instructions that would sabotage the entire banking system? Why on Earth would anyone ask to see what he was carrying? No matter how incriminating the material was, no one would have any cause to ask to see it. Finally, he succeeded in reassuring himself he might as well go back and get whatever it was out of Mitchell’s desk as soon as he could.

◆◆◆

He was back in the tube, on his way back to the office. It was already building up to rush hour. The tube was busy. Richard held the memory stick in a fist made by his right hand and kept it in his pocket. Whenever he became desensitised to it through familiarity with its shape, he would give a little squeeze to reset his perception of touch. As though, if he didn’t, it might really vanish. The idea the whole thing was, in any case, just a dream, also haunted him. Even the preposterous notion some particularly expert pickpocket would be able to steal it from within his grasp nagged him.