‘More, I think. But this is my home, my true home. And it is my indulgence. As my father says, you cannot take it with you.’

‘The art, or the money?’

‘Both. Can I get you something to drink?’

‘What have you done with my children?’

‘Nothing. They are with Stuart, as Alexei should have told you. They are quite safe and I will return you to them within the hour, however this conversation progresses. I give you my word.’

‘Your word’s not worth a great deal.’ Mikhail Borodin was the son of Russia’s former intelligence chief, Igor. They had history from Operation Sigma, and not of the good kind.

‘Well, let’s see. I am sorry for the guns and the strong-arm tactics, but I didn’t think you would come otherwise. Now, can I get you a drink?’

‘Just get on with it.’

He gestured at the sofa. ‘Please, sit . . .’

‘I’d rather stand.’

‘Come on, Kate, please . . . I am not going to hurt you.’

Kate did as she was instructed. Mikhail poured a glass of water from a jug filled with ice and fruit on the table. ‘Cigarette?’ He offered her a silver case.

‘I’m trying to give up.’

‘Wise. How have you been?’ Perhaps it was Kate’s imagination, but he seemed nervous suddenly.

‘You’ve just kidnapped me in the heart of a European city. You’re on very thin ice. So get on with it – and whatever you have to say had better be good.’

‘Oh, so it is like the time you filmed me having sex with a man I had met in a bar and then tried to blackmail me?’

Kate didn’t answer.

Mikhail swirled the water in his glass. ‘As you can probably tell, I am here on my own. My wife, my son and my father are all in Moscow.’

‘So what?’

‘Well, there is a reason for that. They are being prevented from leaving.’ He leant forward. ‘I’ll cut straight to it. There has been a coup in Moscow. The GRU has finally seduced the president and got what it has always wanted. Control.’

Kate kept her eyes locked on him. The rivalry between Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR – successor to the notorious KGB – and the GRU, the country’s military intelligence organization, was legendary.

‘Durov has been suspended,’ Mikhail said.

‘When?’ Vasily Durov had been hand-picked by Mikhail’s father, Igor, to succeed him as head of the SVR.

‘Last week. He is being interrogated at an old KGB summer camp outside Moscow. Yesterday my father was supposed to join me here with my wife and son. They were all prevented from boarding the aircraft in Moscow.’

‘Why?’

‘No reason has been given. They were allowed to go home, but they are under house arrest and are being watched around the clock.’

Kate kept her eyes on Mikhail, who was sweating now. His father was a long-standing friend of the Russian president, so she didn’t think it likely he had been suddenly cast out from his inner circle. So unlikely, in fact, was it that it might just be true, however. ‘How did Vasily and your father fall out with the president?’