‘Where’s Stefan?’

‘He’s fine. He gave us this. I thought you might want to see.’

‘We’ve got minutes before another attack. It’s vehicle-borne, using a stolen ambulance. Target’s Independence Square, I reckon.’

Cherenkov took a second to digest this, then relayed instructions to the men around him: communication channels to open, combat preparations to initiate. The guard showed him Joanna’s laptop and Cherenkov nodded. It was passed to a second man, a technical specialist of some kind in civilian clothes who took it out of sight.

Door locked. Just the two of us. A well-upholstered interrogation room.

‘Perfect Vision’s a large-scale psychological operation, set up to hit back at Russia,’ I said. ‘Developed by MI6 after you invaded Ukraine. The idea’s to inflame issues between you and your allies, China in particular. Kazakhstan’s being used for that.’

Cherenkov absorbed this information expressionlessly.

‘And the oilfield? How long have they known about Conqueror?’

‘There is no Conqueror. No oil. Just an attempt to get Russia muscling into Kazakhstan, to set China on the defensive, introduce a crack in that special relationship. Get Russia mired in Central Asia again, distracted from the Middle East, discredited among the ‘Stans. My theory is that it wasn’t originally intended to go this far. What started as an attempt to sow discord gathered a momentum of its own. Some people were wise enough to try and close it down, but there’s no monopoly on starting wars any more. When the British government got cold feet it just got moved into the hands of people with more resources. A lot of people left MI6 around that time. Vectis soaked them up. Robert Carter and his billions kept the operation afloat.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m proof that it’s real. You know what my presence means. You know my history. I suspect they kept all this from Joanna. She got uneasy about what was going on. She would have known she wasn’t being given full access to the scheme, so she used Ruslan Batur to hack in. Then she saw clips of me. Tried to save my life, and paid the price.’

‘You really don’t think she knew?’

‘No.’

‘I have to say, you played your part well.’

‘Ruslan Batur was shot by GL5. They would have shot her too but she escaped. The files she saw also contained information about a planned attack, the final straw that forces Russia’s hand. She almost got to the explosives.’

‘And the attacker’s using an ambulance?’

‘Yes. Loaded with two tons of plastic explosives. He’s probably on the move now.’

A guard returned, spoke to Cherenkov; he showed him a laptop with a satellite image of Astana. Cherenkov instructed him to bring up a connection with Moscow and got to his feet.

‘There’s one other thing you should know,’ I said.

‘What?’

I hesitated.