Vectis was black-hat. Set up by Callum Walker, former SAS, former SovOps desk in Six. I knew this because he’d tried to recruit me a couple of years ago. We’d met at one of those posturing, closed-shop conferences that spies get invited to, where CEOs and former foreign secretaries mingle. Walker seemed to know a bit about me. Out of curiosity and habit I agreed to drinks at the Special Forces Club the following evening. I figured that an open channel to Vectis would be as useful to me as I was to them. At the very least we could avoid treading on each other’s toes.

I wasn’t interested in going on their payroll, but I liked Walker. He had a blunt, straight-talking style rare in the intelligence services. He seemed more at home in the private sector. He enjoyed showing me the club, hidden behind an unmarked door in Knightsbridge, photographs of fallen comrades across the walls. Now he was putting surveillance on me.

I called Vectis as Robert Carter’s PA and got client levels of deference. I said Carter was heading to Astana and wanted a point of contact. I was told Callum Walker was there now, staying at the Hilton Garden Inn. They wouldn’t give more than that but said they’d ensure he got in contact asap. I hung up and began to move.

I paid to go into the spa, reversed my jacket, exited through staff doors. No sign of the tail when I got down to my car.

The Hilton was smart without being ostentatious, stretching the length of a central block just north of Lovers’ Park. As far as I could tell, the park got its name from a bad statue of two lovers in its centre. Current conditions weren’t going to sustain flesh and blood romance. The hotel gazed optimistically across it. In a few months the view would thaw.

A young receptionist was smiling as soon as I’d cleared the doors.

‘Has Callum Walker checked in yet?’

She consulted her computer.

‘Yes, he checked in yesterday.’

‘Which room?’

‘Two zero three.’

I went up. A Do Not Disturb sign hung on the doorknob. No answer when I knocked. I took a glasses case from inside my jacket and removed a device the size of a phone battery that had made my life a lot easier on several occasions. The beauty of globalisation meant that one firm produced 60 per cent of hotel card locks. And every single Onity key-card lock has a DC power socket on the base, a small circular port beneath the lock used to charge up the battery and program the lock with the hotel’s own site code. Which means when you plug into the socket, you can read the key from the lock’s stored memory, play it back and turn the handle.