‘If we bring Igor in, the PM will insist the video is examined by experts he appoints and they will conclude it’s a fake. He’ll come out looking like the victim of a wicked plot, not the wretched traitor he may very well be.’

This was injudicious, for Ian, and Kate saw the surprise in Julie’s eyes in particular.

‘It’s a trap,’ Suzy said.

‘Of course it is,’ Ian said. ‘But we still have all the cards. We’ll have Igor. We’ll have the video and evidence of the payments he’s been receiving. If Downing Street wants to play games with this, they’ve chosen the wrong people. Game on.’ He nodded at them with schoolboy enthusiasm and strode away down the corridor. Suzy went after him. Julie and Kate watched them go.

‘What’s got into him?’ Julie asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Kate said. And it was true. Ian’s conversion to their cause was perhaps the most worrying turn of all.

27

27

THE AIR FRANCE flight banked smoothly and straightened as it followed the course of the Mtkvari River on its way into Tbilisi, the ancient Georgian capital that had served for so many centuries as the crossroads between East and West and gateway to the Caucasus and Central Asia.

By the time they disembarked, the sky was a rich dark red beyond an old Russian Tupolev plane silhouetted on the far side of the runway. There was a newer Boeing 747, too, painted white, with ‘Cargo’ emblazoned in bright orange on its side. It looked like some kind of rendition flight. Perhaps, Kate thought, that was appropriate under the circumstances, though the Service certainly didn’t run to hiring a Boeing to fly out a defector.

The old Soviet terminal was banished behind a barbed-wire fence across the apron, so they were bussed to the shiny new gateway to Georgia, which looked like a couple of stacked pancakes. There was nothing but gambling ads for casinos in the baggage waiting area, but immigration was painless – a country that actually welcomes visitors, Kate reflected – and their bags arrived swiftly enough to have them in the car Suzy had organized from the hotel within minutes.

Their driver was a big, burly man, probably younger than he looked. Ian immediately engaged him in fluent Georgian, which he insisted on answering in English, to Ian’s visible irritation. He launched into an unstoppable tirade on the greatness of his nation, its friendly people, its varied landscape – ‘Visitors say Georgia has everything, why would you ever leave?’ – and its courage: ‘We are very, very old country,’ he said. ‘We protect our lands against Turkish people, Iranian people. Many times. Many times.’