I pressed send and waited for the double ticks to appear by the message. Talia had given me her contact details. But I didn’t need them. The phone number of the only person I could count on had been seared into my memory for twenty years. Frank Knight might have been unresponsive, but Sergeant Major Jack Nazzar never was. Somewhere on the other side of Europe a very grumpy Scotsman was about to live up to his nickname.

Whoever had released my photograph had known exactly what they were doing. After I’d been exposed in the press, asking for Nazzar’s help again had become impossible. It would have compromised him unacceptably in the eyes of the Crown he’d sworn to serve. As far as Whitehall was concerned, Jack wasn’t off the books: he was on the cover. Besides, there was little, if anything, he could have done that would not, ultimately, have made things worse – for me, and for Rachel.

Calling on him now wouldn’t just do me a favour – it would help him out as well. He couldn’t refuse my request for evacuation – and London wouldn’t want him to. However things stood between me and Frank, no matter what apoplexies General King had been sent into, and irrespective of what Nazzar personally made of my run and subsequent about-turn – it was a fair bet that the only thing uniting us all was an urgent desire to see me, and the intelligence I’d collected, back in Britain as quickly as possible. Nazzar and I had both crossed a line when we’d spoken via Doctor Rose from the hospital in Ashford. His bringing me in would set the record straight – for him, at least. By keeping me close, he’d tell them, he’d kept me on side, inside. What happened then was neither his prerogative nor his problem. But there was no question at all that he’d be the one they’d send to get me.

I didn’t know what would be waiting for me and Rachel on the road ahead. Mystery gunmen were uncannily good at tracking me down. But Avilov was dead, and Arkhangel village apparently hadn’t figured in his equation. I was banking on the GRU having no more idea where I was than Frank did. They would have better luck looking for a needle in a haystack than a Lada in north-west Russia.

I didn’t know what was waiting for us back in London, either. But we had tabs on the banknote and that was all the security we needed. It had kept Baaz, Rachel and me alive this long; and our funerals would be Frank’s failure if he didn’t gain possession of the bill first. Killing us – or allowing us to be killed – lost him everything. In that respect, if nothing else, Commander Frank Knight and Doctor Leonid Avilov had a great deal in common.