I closed my eyes again, willing the image of the old satellite maps I’d spent so many hours poring over to reassemble in my mind. But all I could see were Rachel’s eyes staring back at me through the inferno in Arkhangel. I blinked. And there in the rear-view mirror, illuminated in the red glow of my tail lights, was the snow-fouled opening of the shortcut through the trees. The entrance to the track was hidden at ground level by a bank of frozen snow, piled up in the wake of a plough. I shoved the gearstick into reverse and rolled backwards, taking the car off the road.

I switched off the engine and looked at my watch again.

Twenty-two thirty.

It had taken an hour to drive eighteen klicks, and the thought of the upcoming trek across country filled me with foreboding. My legs cramped, my shoulder burned, every time I flexed my hands the cuts at the base of my fingers opened and stung. But then, just as I killed the headlights, the outline of what looked like a man flitted across the road in front of me, heading away from the track. I squinted into the snow-swirls and scoured the darkness for any sign of him.

Nothing.

To my right, through the trees, what might have been the porch light of a farmhouse flickered weakly through the snow. Whoever it was must have been heading home. If I’d really seen anyone at all. I was almost hallucinating from tiredness, and I knew it. There was no time – and no point – in chasing ghosts now. Perhaps there never had been.

Come on, Max, keep it together.

I stepped out into the blizzard and stuck the torch into my belt.

The base temperature had risen a few degrees, but the wind chill made it feel like minus twenty. I pulled Aleksandr Denisovich’s cap down and blinked into the white storm swirling unseen in the blackness between the trees. But as much as the weather blinded me, it also blinded anyone trying to follow me. It would be impossible to get a drone or chopper up, and a satellite would be useless. And although a thermal imaging scope would pick me up as easily here as it would have done in Arkhangel, they’d need to get close enough to identify me, not just detect me. At six hundred metres the glow given off by one man looks the same as any other. I hoped not even Russian officers would want to start shooting up their own troops.

Their night vision kit was going to be of limited use, too. It was so dark there was almost no image to intensify, and I was crowded by trees. I’d taken the torch for signalling, not navigation. Switch it on, though, and even in those conditions I’d be painting myself a bright green target.