Dancers and stagehands turned towards them, their irritation at the two sudden invaders replaced with fear as they saw Knox pull his Beretta from his holster and finally registered the woman who, until moments ago, had been completely invisible to them, as she stepped back from the edge of the wing, one side of her face and body caught in the edge of a spotlight. And then their fear turned into confusion as they watched the woman stride calmly towards the man pointing a gun at her.

‘Stop,’ Knox said again.

And again she didn’t. Instead she started to move faster, unfurling the shawl she was wrapped in. In one fluid motion, she threw it over Knox’s arm, twisting it tightly round the gun, as she also kicked Bennett in the stomach and sent her tumbling back over the plywood set. Then she used her shawl to pull Knox’s gun arm behind his back, putting him in a half-nelson hold so she could ram him head-first into the metal gantry ladder.

Pain shot through Knox’s head, and by the time he’d shaken it off and Bennett had pulled herself up from the floor, the woman was gone. Her attack had lasted less than ten seconds.

‘We need to go after her,’ Bennett said.

‘No,’ Knox said, turning towards the stage. ‘We have to get to Kosygin.’

Bennett was right, but Knox needed to know if they really had been too late. He had to see if the Russian was now slumped lifeless in his chair, his forehead or chest stained with blood from a fatal shot.

He sprinted forward, and it wasn’t until he was barely a foot from the stage that he realised the orchestra was still playing and there was no chorus of screams coming from the audience. He grabbed at one of the wing curtains to stop himself, looked out into the auditorium, and saw that everything was absolutely fine. Nureyev was still leaping from spotlight to spotlight, and Kosygin was still happily watching him from his box.

Bennett appeared next to Knox as he reholstered his Beretta, looking as confused as he was. She was holding the woman’s shawl and something else—a small emerald clutch bag.

‘She must have dropped it when she was whipping our asses,’ Bennett said.

She opened the bag and checked what was inside—a compact, a lipstick, some money, and two stuck-together polished tubes.

‘What do you think that is?’ she asked, nudging it through the fabric of the bag.

‘No idea,’ Knox replied.