A man in a grey suit and a small woman in a plain dress were frantically looking round them, trying to work out what they had walked into and desperately searching for something. Instinctively, Anna knew that something was her.

Anna had come close to being caught more than once during her long career working for Line Z, and she knew how to spot an enemy. Unfortunately for whoever these people were and whoever they were working for, they were too late. And even if they weren’t, Anna was sure she’d be able to handle both of them and complete her mission without much worry.

So she didn’t try to hide or run. She reached into her clutch, pulled out the small double tube, took a step forward to the very edge of the wing, raised the weapon to her eye, sighted her target, and fired three times.

Chapter 51

Chapter 51

White had left the fifth floor a few minutes after Knox, Bennett, and Sarah, leaving the director general, Williams and Laing to view proceedings at the Royal Opera House on the television Holland usually kept shut away in a cabinet in the corner of his office.

Williams and Laing were still on the sofa, but Holland hadn’t joined them—he preferred to remain behind his desk for the duration.

In the middle of the preamble on the BBC, with none of them able to do anything other than watch events unfold and wait to hear from Knox, Holland had instructed Williams to open another cabinet and pour them all a large measure of Remy Martin XO cognac. Laing sipped on his tentatively, his free hand pressing on his good leg to stop its constant, nervous tremors. But Holland and Williams had almost finished theirs as the television screen showed the opera house’s curtains start to rise.

‘Which one’s Nureyev?’ Laing asked, a few minutes into the performance.

‘None of them,’ Williams replied immediately, to the slight surprise of all three men. ‘The joker’s the starring role in Card Game. That’s Nureyev’s part.’

After another five minutes of groups and duos of dancers showing the audience what they could do, Nureyev made his entrance. His first, giant leap caught the BBC’s cameramen off guard and the top half of his torso sailed above the screen, but they were soon keeping pace with the Russian as he literally and effortlessly danced rings around everyone else on stage.

The three audience members in Leconfield House all unconsciously moved nearer the edge of their seats as they succumbed to the spectacle of Nureyev’s preternatural talent. They sat in quiet awe as his body propelled him through the air, spinning and arcing over and over again, a childish, gleeful smile fixed on his face.