I parted the blinds a fraction. The wind was picking up. Grey clouds piled up on the horizon. There would be rain later. I pressed the back of my fingers to the window glass. It was cold, too. Not far off freezing. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but the city was already seething. Monday morning and everyone was back to work. Me included. I’d been awake for hours. Waiting. Listening. Just because I couldn’t see them didn’t mean I wasn’t surrounded. The French army and the police, Russian hitman and random gunmen, snipers and bike riders, and, of course, the Russian doctor: they were all out there. Somewhere.

I withdrew my hand and let the slats snick shut.

The room was spacious and well heated, with high white walls that rose to a lofty, corniced ceiling. At either end stood a tall window covered with blinds. Beneath each window sat an iron radiator, adorned with my drip-drying socks, gloves and jacket. In between them, pushed up against the front wall, was a massive wooden table laden with three large flat-panel displays, a wireless keyboard, two laptop computers and sheaves of paper printed with what looked like equations and calculations.

I picked up the nearest set of notes. They’d been crossed out with deep slashes of a blue biro. At the top of the page, written in the same blue ink: Shor is God.

I pushed the papers to one side and made space among the mess to set out the remainder of my kit:

Grach MP-443 pistol and fifteen rounds of ammo.

Pepper spray.

Pozidriv screwdriver.

Lukov’s wallet, driver’s licence, credit cards and French identity card.

Greek passport in the name of Maximilianos Ioannides.

Waterproof watch.

Two thousand euros in fifty-euro notes and a couple of hundred in smaller notes – courtesy of Lukov.

A lighter and unopened packet of French smokes – also from Lukov.

From the ticket pocket in my jeans I produced the tightly folded, damp hundred-dollar bill. A little battered and worn along the creases, but it was still in one piece. The scrawled Russian letters on the reverse that spelled out Arkhangel hadn’t faded, either. I spread it out to dry on one of the pages of equations.

‘Miraculous,’ I said out loud.

‘There are no such things as miracles.’

I turned around to see Baaz backing in through the swing-door to the kitchen, which wafted a rich smell of fried onions and spices into the living room as it fanned shut. In one hand he carried a bowl of steaming beans, and in the other a plate laden with a stack of parathas, hot out of the pan.

‘Although my auntie’s tarka beans are pretty close to divine.’