I closed my eyes and tried to bring Rachel’s face into focus, but all I could see was the half-smile of the Shabak agent. When I opened them again the glass of beer sat perspiring in front of me. I ran my index finger from the rim to the foot and then gripped it, gulping it down in one long draft.

Going up against the GRU was not good news. As far as intelligence agencies went, it was the envy of the Western world – blessed with an exceptional degree of autonomy and unquestioned, unbudgeted financing – but with this caveat: so powerful was it that not even the Russian president himself could ever really be sure if it prospered owing to his magnanimity, or he to its mercy.

So far it seemed that Avilov had tried hard not to kill me. I couldn’t count on that continuing. GRU operatives were masters of applying extreme, targeted violence in order to achieve their aims – even at their own personal cost. I wasn’t unknown to them, either. Our paths had crossed on countless jobs in the past. So far I’d come off on top. And I wasn’t keen on a grudge match.

‘So what the fuck,’ I said to myself out loud, after sucking the foam off my upper lip, ‘are you going to do now?’

‘Buy me a drink?’ came the reply from directly behind me.

I froze.

It’s not possible.

I turned slowly on the stool, right hand drifting behind my back towards the SIG as I did so. But apparently it was all too possible. Standing before me was the irrepressible turbaned bundle of misplaced enthusiasm that was Bhavneet Singh. I had to give it to him, I had not seen that coming.

‘Baaz,’ I asked him, half-laughing despite myself, ‘what are you doing here?’ He smiled broadly. I was lost for words for a moment. ‘How are you even here?’

‘I caught a plane from Charles de Gaulle after you left. EasyJet. Simple, really.’

‘You followed me? Here? From Paris?’

‘Of course. We’re partners, right?’

‘Yeah. No. But … we’ve been through this. In detail.’

There was a duffel bag at his feet and his skin had the sheen of someone sweating out the grease of a cheap airline meal. He must have just arrived from the airport. I rubbed my face and smelled the alcohol on my breath. I regretted the beer and immediately wanted another.

‘But I mean here,’ I repeated. ‘Right here. How did you find me?’

‘Talia,’ he said. ‘At the airport.’

It was unlikely that the operator who’d intercepted me at Rachel’s office had also met Baaz at Ben Gurion – the times must almost certainly have overlapped. Either the Shabak had a better sense of humour than it was credited with, or that was how all its female agents introduced themselves.