Eventually her curiosity won out and she dared to open an eyelid a sliver. She could see a corrugated roof and a row of thin windows running along the top of a bare brick wall. She couldn’t hear anything but her own, slow, even breathing. She opened her other eye, revealing more of the zigzag roof, but not much else.

She tried to ignore the pounding that came with every pulse of blood into her brain and turned her head, slowly in case some silent person was waiting to smack it again. She was in an abandoned warehouse or stripped-out factory, and she was alone.

A rough concrete floor stretched away from her to another bare brick wall topped by narrow windows. The only thing in the large, empty space apart from her was a pile of old rags in the shadow of the opposite wall.

It was still light outside. Bennett guessed she hadn’t been out very long, which was preferable to the possibility that she’d been un­conscious overnight.

She eased herself up onto her elbows, then shuffled back towards the wall. Her clothes and hands were smudged by the same dust that had coated the inside of her mouth. She felt her arms, legs, and body, but couldn’t find any more injuries than the swollen bump just above her temple.

After she had taken stock of her body, she tried to do the same for her situation.

She had, briefly, succeeded in her mission to get Williams back, though she bet she wouldn’t get a slap on the back from Hoffman any time soon. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever see Hoffman, or Williams, again. She assumed a team of KGB illegals had been behind the ambush on the coastal track, because there was no way MI5 would attack their own—and neither, she hoped, would the CIA. But she knew that whoever had followed her or Knox to Kent could just as easily be working for a Soviet satellite state, or the Chinese, or even a Western ally who had some unknown reason for thinking Williams was a prize worth risking a couple of merce­naries for. Spying was a global business, and it had more than its fair share of expendable freelancers.

Bennett also assumed that Williams had been the primary target. This was mainly because, as she’d been told multiple times over the course of her career, she wasn’t worth a lot in the international intelligence market.