I lost my grip on the reins and tumbled backwards, falling free of the saddle but not the stirrups. My left boot caught fast as Boynou bolted. My head, hands hit the ice. I twisted on to my back. I put my palm to my sternum and burned my fingers on the steel stuck there. I’d taken a direct hit to the chest. Boynou dragged me, his hooves pounding inches from my head. I flexed my foot, but I was wedged tight.

I squinted at the snow-blurred sky. I was beginning to lose consciousness. All around me the lake whited out. I thought for a moment it was snow powder, whipped up by the wind, but it was too dense. All shape, substance dissolved. Above, the night sky disappeared beneath the white wings of an angel swooping down to engulf me. The wounds in my chest, arms, shoulder, thigh tore apart.

This is how it ended – dragged through a world stripped bare of everything I held dear, from Ireland to Arkhangel. Doc Levy shot in his chair; Rachel consumed by fire; all the dead laid out behind me – engulfed by an inferno of my own creation. I strained and looked up into the fog, searching in vain for Jacob’s Ladder. But there was nothing to see except an infinite emptiness. It was too late to ask for mercy. Whatever happened next, I had it coming. My eyes dimmed.

‘I’m ready,’ I said.

But my words were swallowed by the tattoo beaten out by the bombs and Boynou thundering across the ice. And then the strength went out of me and the bright white world went black.

36

‘I have to hand it to you, McLean. It was a brilliant story.’

Major General Sir Kristóf King, Director Special Forces, leaned over and charged two glasses with red wine from a lead crystal decanter.

‘Convincing that Bulgarian chap I’d sent you on some damned fool mission to shoot a terrorist who was already dead. Quite the ruse. No one gets hanged for killing a ghost, what? Least of all you or I.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘L’Chaim.’ King raised his glass in a toast. ‘That’s what the Jews say, isn’t it? To life.’

‘I believe so, sir.’

I nodded at him and drank deeply. He sipped from his own glass and set it down on the old oak table that separated us.

‘Château Musar, 1988. So hard to get the genuine stuff from the Lebanon these days. I remembered how much you liked it.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

We were sitting in General King’s private dining room in Whitehall, all polished wood and oil paintings. His reflection glinted off the tabletop, white skin taut across his skull, black eyes lost in the beeswax shine. It was dark outside. The room was lit by a single chandelier.