It paid to be cautious with King. He was as much an outsider as I was, and his upper-class affectations just that: an act. Hungarian by birth, ruthless by nature: not even the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service could outplay him. Never mind aces and eights – to play at King’s table, and survive, you needed a fistful of jokers. One slip with him and you’d vanish without trace. I kept my mouth shut and my ears open.

Boynou had unseated me fifty metres from the Estonian frontier, and then dragged me to the NATO front line. I came to in the helicopter, oxygen mask over my mouth, medics working on my chest. Then I understood that it had not been Azrael swooping down on me, but an altogether grumpier angel. Jack Nazzar had received my message and tracked my progress. The dense fog shrouding the final moments of my escape was not the wings of the Destroyer come to get me, but smoke pouring from canisters dropped inside NATO territory by the Wing.

The wind had carried a solid white blanket out across the ice long enough to get me clear. In the end Nazzar’s complaint wasn’t that I’d interrupted his weekend but that he’d not managed to ‘slot any Russkies’. His Revolutionary Warfare mob hadn’t fired a single shot.

On the Special Duties flight back to Brize Norton I’d given him a rundown of what had happened – and asked a favour: it was a straightforward breach of protocol, but I wanted to be taken directly to see King.

‘I don’t fancy my chances in Ulster right now, Jack,’ I’d explained.

I didn’t have to spell it out. Nazzar knew better than anyone the parlous state of my relationship with Frank. He knew, too, that General King’s displeasure cut both ways. If he was not against you, he was for you: the blessing of Director Special Forces, however hard won, was a literal lifesaver.

‘Aye, all right, son,’ he’d agreed. ‘But your lifesaver’s right here, no’ in bloody Whitehall.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I owe you.’

‘Aye, that too. But I’m no talkin’ about me, ya daft prick. I’m talkin’ about this.’

He’d handed me Talia’s cell phone. I propped myself up on the stretcher and stared at it in the dim glow of the C130’s cabin lights. It was pierced through by a piece of shrapnel – a two-inch chunk of steel, sides sharp as razors. The tip of it had broken the metal casing on the back of the phone, tearing a hole through my passport and gouging a lump out of my chest. But I’d been spared what otherwise would have been a fatal wound to the heart.

‘I saw it once before,’ he said. ‘In Bosnia. Some glaikit cameraman’s wallet stopped an AK round.’