Beatrix remembered all of that as she thumbed through the phone for the second number that she needed.

“Beatrix,” Chisholm begged. “Please.”

“Your husband. Robert Chisholm. Royal Anglians, First Battalion. Set up Manage Risk’s London office with you. Shall I take him out, too?”

“No. He has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Hypocrite.”

“Rose . . .”

“Goodbye.”

Beatrix called the number. The BMW remained intact for a fraction of a second, raised up off the ground by the unfolding viciousness of the detonation beneath it, but an instant later the fuel tank ruptured and it was consumed by a terrific blast. The quicksilver expansion of the hot gasses from the explosive created a pressure wave that would have crushed Lydia before the tank burst, but immolated fragments of her body and the car were thrown for hundreds of yards in all directions. The boom echoed around the village and out into the valley beyond, bouncing off the slopes of the ridge and echoing back again like a peal of distant thunder. Every window in the Chisholms’ house and the houses nearby shattered. There was a terrific tumult for a moment, and then all fell silent. The peace did not last: the pigs in the pig field started to squeal in panic, the horses in the paddock whinnied and bucked, and there was a loud wail from the house as an alarm sounded.

Beatrix felt numbed. She didn’t feel any sense of triumph nor even satisfaction, but then she hadn’t expected to, either.

Three down.

Three to go.

Chapter Two

Captain Michael Pope, newly appointed as Control, had arranged for an agent to work as a barista in the Covent Garden branch of Starbucks. It was simple tradecraft and yet as effective today as when Somerset Maugham had met his old butter-woman in a Geneva marketplace. Beatrix had palmed her a note after receiving her latte and had received a reply in the same fashion when she dropped in for a coffee the following day.

Pope would meet her at Gatwick.

He was waiting for her in the seats arranged across the large hall that preceded security. She bought a coffee and watched for a moment to check that he was not observed. Beatrix had no history with Pope, and so she had to be careful. He had been cooperative so far, but then he had little choice. She had evidence that would cause significant damage to the government if it were ever released. Pope’s predecessor was a very bad man, and he had been using Group Fifteen and its cadre of assassins as his own personal hit squad for years. That kind of information would be very destructive if it ever got out into the world.

She had to tread lightly. Pope seemed like a good man, but she was not naïve enough to think that he was immune from manipulation by the mandarins who pulled the strings above him.

He was reading a copy of the Telegraph, the large broadsheet spread wide and obscuring his face, and as she approached, Beatrix could not help but notice that the front-page story below the fold recounted the unexplained murder of a security analyst outside her Wiltshire house.