It was an unusual feeling.

She presumed that she had felt the same way when she had flown out of London into exile, but she could barely remember those days. The cause was easy to identify: the time left to her was starkly finite, and every day that she spent away from her daughter hurt like a wound. She stared into the cloak of pure midnight darkness that arched overhead. Those absent days hurt, but they were necessary. She had to keep moving.

They knew that she was back now, and they would be desperately trying to find her.

They had used Isabella to protect themselves once before, and she was sure that they would try and repeat the trick.

She would not let that happen.

She had downloaded as much information on Manage Risk as she had been able to find, and as the plane levelled off and the cabin crew began the preparations for supper, she took out her iPad and started to read.

Manage Risk had been established by Jamie King, a former Navy SEAL who had attended the Naval Academy and graduated from Hillsdale College. King sought to offer private security services to the governments and other companies operating in dangerous parts of the world. Its first major assignment was to provide thirty men with top-secret clearances to protect the CIA headquarters and staff engaged in the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Other clients included communications, maritime, petrochemical and insurance companies. The company had grown quickly and was organised into ten separate divisions, each dedicated to a separate area of business. It was registered in Mauritius, with minimal oversight of its accounts or corporate governance. Unsubstantiated rumours suggested it had contracts worth in excess of one hundred million pounds a year. Its website advertised its ability to provide “personnel from the best militaries throughout the world,” and its tasks ranged from “personal protection to large-scale stability operations requiring large numbers of people to assist in securing a region.”

At some point after she left Group Fifteen, Lydia Chisholm had been invited to join the board of the company, and she had established its affairs in the United Kingdom and Western Europe. Joshua Joyce and Bryan Duffy had been recruited, too, taking senior operational positions. It was estimated that the company employed five thousand soldiers, many of them with a background in Special Forces.

A small army.

“Good evening, madam.” The steward was smiling down at her. “Would you like a drink?”

Beatrix looked at the trolley.

“Whiskey, please. Rocks.”

“Certainly.”

The steward opened one of the miniatures and poured it into a glass. Beatrix thanked her, and then, when she had moved down the aisle, she took out the blister pack of Zomorph and popped out two of the tablets. She swallowed them, washing them down with the whiskey, and then put the iPad away and settled down to try and sleep.

Chapter Ten

Bryan Duffy was a big man. He was in his early forties and bristled with muscle from the time he spent in the gym that he had installed in his house in the upscale part of Basra. He was an ex-soldier, like the other mercenaries who worked for Manage Risk, and like many of them, he wore a big hillbilly beard that reached down to his sternum. An array of tattoos was visible on his arms and neck. He wore a black T-shirt and olive-green cargo pants, and there was an expensive diving watch on his left wrist. He was an impressive man with a lot of presence.