‘OK. And the British, they are trying to kill you, too? For this?’ Lukov rarely asked questions to which he didn’t already have the answer. His interrogations were intended to corroborate what he already thought he knew.

I shrugged. He shook his head.

‘But … why?’ He sounded genuinely, uncharacteristically confused.

‘I don’t know, Sergei. Truly. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s the note. Maybe it was the hit.’ There isn’t one damned straight line in any of this, I thought to myself, and I wasn’t about to lay out everything I knew for Sergei Lukov. ‘The last week has been, uh, unpleasant. The note, that note, is the only thing that links a series of very unfortunate events.’ I picked up the cigarette and drew on it again. ‘That note, and me.’

‘So …’ He picked his words carefully. ‘The golden boy of MI6 is here to see Sergei, how shall we say, in a personal capacity?’ I nodded again, and pushed the note towards him. He laughed and picked up the bill, turning it over in his hands – and flinched. Not even Lukov could mask his surprise at seeing the single Russian word scrawled across the back of the note. ‘Ebah mu maikata,’ he swore. ‘What is this?’

He held the note up so I could see what I already knew was written on it.

‘It’s what makes it personal,’ I said.

‘What, Max McLean is on the side of the angels now?’

I smiled at that.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. You’ve seen the photo?’ I asked him. ‘In the press?’ Lukov choked on his cigarette smoke and held his hands up – Gauloise in one, hundred-dollar bill in the other – as if to say, Of course. ‘So? What do you hear?’

Lukov dropped his hands and his expression and pushed the note back across the table towards me.

‘Sergei hears,’ he said, ‘that you tried to do the Russians a favour.’

‘How so?’

‘By completing their contract for them.’ He stubbed his cigarette out. ‘But he also hears they lost something very valuable in the process.’ He pointed to the hundred-dollar bill on the table. ‘Maybe that is half the mystery solved, nali?’

‘Their contract? I don’t understand.’

‘Max McLean,’ he said, pausing to drag hard on his cigarette, ‘are you just talking or are you buying now, too?’

‘Buying. Fifteen per cent on the note.’

‘Twenty.’

‘Fuck.’ I rubbed my face. ‘OK. Twenty. Which contract?’

‘The old man.’

‘What old man, exactly?’ I said, choosing my words carefully.

‘The old man in the, uh, v kashtata?’ He fished for the right words in English. ‘In the cottage?’

‘Got it,’ I said, though I hadn’t. ‘The Russians and the Brits both wanted Chappie Connor dead?’