I disguised my IP and logged in to email and bank accounts belonging to my former agent, Rashid bin Talal, browsed the increasing concern regarding his arrest and the swelling of his unperturbed wealth. I had a full suite of passwords obtained over two years by my cybersecurity team. I wondered what they’d make of the CGI clip.

Their chief technician, Stefan Janikowski, technically an employee of Evotec Digital Security, was still stationed in a hotel in Riyadh.

‘What’s going on?’ he answered.

‘I’ve had to go back to London. Are you able to look at a file for me, if I send it over?’

‘I’ve been told no more jobs.’

‘Who says?’

‘Head office. Apparently payments from your side have been cancelled.’

‘When were they cancelled?’

‘I don’t know. A couple of days ago.’

‘Do you know who gave that instruction?’

‘No.’

‘Stay in place for now.’

‘Get them some money or I’ll be back in Bucharest.’

That was a setback. Evotec were the legitimate daylight front of a hacking team that had been known to authorities as Hotel California, a motley and lucrative crew combining cybercriminals and former NSA analysts for the most part, based in Romania. Before they had the office and the business cards, they made their money through ransoms: they’d hack defence contractors and major infrastructure and squeeze money for fixing the situation. I liked Eastern European cybercriminals; they tended to work in small teams – not eccentric loners but still under the radar. The criminal background was good cover, and Six weren’t the only state agency using them. Outsourcing kept things deniable, which was everyone’s favourite word, and a lot of criminals jumped at the chance to work for governments, with the protection it implied. Over the last few years they’d also had increasing employment with big corporates seeking to retaliate against Russia and China over hacks. The legality of fighting back was hazy – which was why the UK government kept arm’s distance – but Evotec were good at hazy. They’d received enough work from me to reply fast to my encrypted communication.

I checked with the Evotec HQ in Bucharest and spoke to the boss there, Marius, a charmingly malnourished, unshaven and business-savvy chainsmoker who I had eventually identified as a former colonel in the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service. The payments for my account with them had been stopped last week, he said. They couldn’t process any requests. It looked like Six had cancelled them even before my operation was pulled.

I looked at the message again: Lottery Win.