In the twenty-four hours after the failed seizure, sixteen homes and businesses were raided across Afghanistan. The lorry driver’s brother was cooperating. Police had seized a laptop containing research on fuel-air bombs along with a detailed satellite image of Astana and surveillance photographs of public squares.

I called Reza back.

‘Have any more details surfaced since this report?’

‘Nothing. They came out of nowhere and vanished into nowhere.’

‘I’m going to need you to update me if you hear anything more about Astana or the IMK.’

‘Of course.’

‘What put you on to them?’

‘A woman from your end, the one you introduced me to.’

‘Joanna Lake?’

‘That’s what I was trying to contact you about. Is she kosher?’

I felt a stab of adrenalin.

‘When was this?’

‘About six days ago.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She’d seen plans of some kind, relating to those explosives. Wouldn’t give me a source.’

‘I need to know the exact contact time.’

He checked, came back. It was 11.02 p.m.

‘11.02 in Islamabad?’

‘Yes.’

Then it was a few minutes before she contacted me. In the very narrow window between fleeing the safe house and vanishing.

‘She’s missing,’ I said. ‘Went missing in Astana last week.’

‘Shit. No one’s chased me about that.’

‘What device did Joanna call on?’

‘Cellphone. We’ve run a check: it was clean, it’s now dead. Been dead for days.’

‘I’m going to need your help.’

I sent through a still from the Mega Astana, in case Reza could ID the man in the cap, the probable source for her intelligence. He couldn’t. I promised I’d pass any further information his way, took a final look at the anger raging online, then closed my browser.

Where are you, Joanna? What have you led me into?

She’d called Reza. She knew him as one of the only individuals plugged into terrorist networks in all directions. She put him on to an attack, shared intel. Did that give me some frayed thread of a narrative to set against the one in which she sold us out to Gazprom?

I had my eyes closed, the sunlight red through my eyelids. ‘When was the last time you kissed someone you weren’t trying to recruit?’ she asked.

‘A long time,’ I said, although it wasn’t strictly true. ‘Did you know some people do it because they enjoy it?’

‘Perverts,’ I said. If she was making an accusation of coldness on my part it was neutralised by the summer afternoon. I heard the splash of wine in her cup. Then she said, as if it followed from her previous thoughts, ‘Do you ever think about all of that probing they did when they recruited us? All that cross-examination, interviewing friends and family behind our backs, setting us tests: we thought they were weeding out the corrupt, but what if that was what they wanted? We were chosen because of our flaws.’