I stopped and listened, straining to hear above the rounds still ringing in my ears. Metal creaked against metal. Buried deep in the warren of passageways, an engine pulsed on. No shouts. No shots. Blood seeped through the metal grate of the gallery deck, dripping into the chasm beneath. I stepped around the bodies and over the lip of the metal door leading off the walkway and emerged on to the freezing upper deck of a cargo ship.

Waves detonated against the hull beneath me. Everywhere was darkness. Black sky above. Black water below. A point of light flashed above the waves – a single star glinting in a firmament of one. And then behind, above and closing in on each side of me, the thundering of boot heels. I dropped the carbine. I could hear orders in Russian amplified above the drone of the ship’s engines by a loudspeaker.

‘Ostanovite ego!’ Stop him.

I flexed my shoulders. Death by drowning: my mother had chosen water as her way out. Now it was mine. But I had no intention of following her all the way. At least not yet.

And then they were on me.

Tic. Tic. Tic.

Contact left.

I stepped up on to the handrail as the first rounds of my pursuers skipped and skidded off the ship’s metalwork. Braced, bent at the knees, arms out, I pushed forward and fell through the pitch black down into the waves.

7

A deep, penetrating chill wrapped around me, went through me, sent spikes of pain shooting through my fingers, between my temples, down my legs. What bits of me didn’t hurt were numb, unresponsive. Spray soaked me. Wind lashed me. The tearing sea-song of water slapping shingle ripped across me and filled my head with the roar of the flood tide.

Water.

I was still in the water.

I opened my mouth, my eyes, gasping, gulping in air and brine under the grey sky and the gulls wheeling beneath low, rain-heavy clouds.

Still alive.

I got my head up and sat and coughed hard into the white-tipped waves that ran up my legs and broke against my chest. I put my right palm down on to the stones, turned over and forced myself up on my knees. I tried to stand, but I could feel neither my hands nor my feet. Instead I lay prone, face down, propped up on my forearms, still rinsed by the rising water. Hand over hand, elbows down, legs dragging, I hauled myself out of the surf. The beach rose steeply. Stones tumbled past me as I clawed my way above the tide line. Seaweed clung to me. The skin on my chest, arms, feet, chafed on chalk-smeared shards of flint. The dressings Doc Levy had wrapped me up in worked free, exposing raw, bloody flesh.