‘Just like New York,’ I said in Russian, tapping the partition. From behind the wheel his eyes caught mine in the rear-view mirror.

‘Da,’ he nodded, and carried on his conversation through a hands-free rig with someone I guessed was either his wife or his girlfriend.

I also had a phone. Talia had left me a burner with a clean Russian SIM and one number in the address book: hers. As soon as we’d got airborne, I’d switched it off and taken the battery out. Carrying it at all was like being tethered to a personal locator beacon. But so far Talia had been good to Ezra’s word: I was still alive.

But sending me to Moscow wasn’t just a cute way of getting me out of her hair. Her personal imperatives notwithstanding, either I’d manage to unravel what had happened to the Israelis’ disappeared scientist or Russian intelligence would take grateful delivery of their number one suspect. Whatever the case, Talia would emerge smelling of roses. Less so me. Once the GRU found out I’d sent its money man to meet his maker, then Talia’s motives would be the least of my concerns.

I thought about Moshe, and about Avi’s girl, Sveta. Despite the drugs and the fear, she’d have to be able to identify me and had probably listened to her sugar daddy spilling the beans. Even if I’d become an increasingly reluctant executioner, someone was taking care of business behind me. But who? The signature heart-shot that had done for Moshe was chilling. If the same assassin had dispatched Sveta, too, then I wasn’t a day ahead of anyone: he’d had the drop on me all along.

I recalled what old Colonel Ellard had said at Raven Hill once, after a job had unravelled on me: ‘There’s no use worrying about things over which you have no control.’ I stretched the flight out of my legs and tried to relax. Cars crept past the tinted passenger windows. Long gone were the old Volgas and Ladas – now it was all SUVs and foreign imports. A smart new Range Rover inched past: Moscow mafia chic. Few traces, if any, of my mother’s city remained. Although the roads were clear of snow, progress was slow. We ground on south-east down the M-11, crossing the Moscow Canal and then over the sprawling intersection with the Central Ring Road towards the Marfino district, before dropping due south, bound for the city centre.

And then what?