I watched the main restaurant through the doorway: white-shirted men with chopsticks and Breitlings and thick windows between them and the world. Lives lived thirty floors up. Downstairs I’d got another look at the entry procedure for the building, the cameras and stairways; Evotec had managed to access an original planning application for the block including architectural drawings that gave us the server room in the basement. All this was habit, but so was distrust.

I checked my phone. Online a story had started trending: two young Kazakh men who’d fought in Ukraine on the pro-Russian side had been sentenced to five years each. Heroes jailed. They’d actually been sentenced last year, but the story had gone viral again. Meanwhile someone had painted ‘This is Kazakhstan’ on a hillside in the north of the country in white letters ten feet high. I was wondering how much effort and paint that would take when Walker returned with a laptop case branded ‘Astana 2018’.

‘This is what you asked for,’ he said. Inside was thirty grand’s worth of paper money divided equally into plastic wallets of dollars, tenge and rubles.

Like most cases of money, it felt dirty, dangerous and very useful.

When I was in my car I called Stefan.

‘Are we playing?’ he said.

‘I’ve got the money in cash.’

‘Okay.’

‘I want you in the Astana’s Hilton Garden Inn. I’ve booked a room. Target will be directly below. His name is Callum Walker. He may be running counter-surveillance, so move gently. I’ll give you more when you get here.’

I called Geoff Purvis and we established procedures for a quick escape.

On my way back to the hotel I stopped at a hunting shop and bought bullets and cold-weather gun lubricant. I drove out to the desert to test-fire the gun but struggled to find anything to aim at, eventually firing once towards the horizon before my fingers went numb.

TWENTY-NINE

I checked out of the Lion Hotel and into the Ramada Plaza. It was more in keeping with the Bell cover, and I had a superstition about sleeping where I’d been arrested. The Ramada put a lot more grey-carpeted corridor between me and the world, even if I knew it was a false sense of security. An eager bellboy, no older than nineteen, helped me with my cases.

‘Where’d you learn English?’ I asked.

‘Here. I like to talk to people.’

‘Follow the football?’

‘Of course. My team is Chelsea.’

‘Abramovich.’

‘Yes.’ He grinned.

‘Know Astana well?’

‘Very well.’

‘Where did you grow up?’

‘Shymkent.’

‘Deep south. Isn’t that what they say? I heard it’s like the Wild West down there.’

‘It is different. The jobs are here.’

‘Well, you’ve earned this.’ I folded a couple of notes into his hand. Loyal bellboys were a godsend.