‘Best to stand up, shake it off. We’ll look less conspicuous if we’re walking.’

I hauled him to his feet and then washed my hands and face in the sticky salt water lapping the sand by his feet. My clothes were still fouled with blood, but the black fabric hid most of the gore. We headed north, keeping the sea to our left.

‘Listen, Baaz. I need to ask you something. You have to concentrate, all right?’ I took his silence for agreement and pressed on. ‘The Azriel Jacobs fellowship. Have you ever heard of it?’

‘The what?’

‘The Azriel Jacobs research fellowship at the Kolymsky School of Computer Sciences. Here in Tel Aviv. Had you heard of it? Before we met, I mean.’

‘No, I hadn’t. Are we going back to the hotel? I’m freezing.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We are. But right now I need you to think hard. Are you sure? It didn’t mean anything to you, nothing at all?’

‘I don’t …’ He looked around, eyes wide, hands shaking. ‘When I read it in the paper online. In Haaretz. That’s the first time I saw it.’

‘OK. You’re sure? When you were researching where to study, applying to university, looking for funding: you never heard it mentioned anywhere else?’

‘No,’ he said, wrinkling his brow. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Think about it,’ I said, quickening the pace. ‘Azriel. Azrael. It’s the same name. Azriel pays her. She looked upon the face of her paymaster and her paymaster is the Destroyer.’ Baaz looked at me, dumbfounded. ‘And it terrified her. Moshe said she was scared, that the money came from bad people.’

‘So, what?’ he stopped abruptly. ‘She’s being paid by the Devil?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She is. Was. Avi Landau, the guy whose number is in this book of matches’ – I took them out of my pocket and lit a cigarette – ‘he didn’t just run the gallery. He ran cash to her. He said it paid for Rachel’s work, her project.’ I looked around. We were completely alone now. ‘Her programme is called Arkhangel. It’s the third variable.’

‘Follow the money, right?’ Baaz’s fingers began to dance in the air in front of him.

Follow the money. Everyone else certainly was, Frank included. Round and round the money goes, but where it starts only a Russian knows. Except now I did, too.

‘It comes from the Akvarium,’ I said. ‘In Moscow.’

‘Now you’re speaking Punjabi. What even is “the Akvarium”?’

I took a long drag on my cigarette.

‘It’s the headquarters of the GRU,’ I said. ‘Russian military intelligence.’