Bowman kept the speed below thirty miles per hour as he made for the border. For the entire journey he was the world’s most diligent driver. He stopped at every set of lights, obeyed every line of the local highway code. Seguma sat silently in the back, his cane resting on his lap. Mallet punched a set of coordinates into the satnav. The RV point with the UKN. A lay-by, en route to the airport.

There was no border crossing. They simply followed the road signs pointing to Nice, steered into a one-way tunnel bored into a sheer rock wall, and when they came out the other side they were back on French soil. Sixteen miles from the airport, according to the satnav. A forty-minute drive through winding coastal roads and city traffic. Which meant they would arrive at the private terminal building shortly before noon.

Bowman stuck to the cliff road as it snaked around the mountainside, roughly parallel to the coastline. Loader, Casey and Webb tailed close behind in the E-Class. Several minutes later, Mallet’s phone vibrated with an incoming message. He scrolled through a long message, hit Delete, put his phone away.

‘Any word on that jet?’ Bowman asked.

‘It just landed at Northolt. There’s going to be a short turnaround before it can take off again. They need to refuel the jet, procure our weaponry and kit, ferry the diplomats over.’

‘How long before it gets here?’

‘Three hours or so, Six reckons. We should be in the air by three o’clock at the latest.’

Bowman glanced at the digital clock: 11.26. The jet would land in Nice soon after two o’clock. There would be another brief turnaround before they took off again. Then a seven-hour flight to Libreville, followed by a sixty-minute connection to the only international airport in Karatandu. Both countries were in the same time zone as France, he knew. They would touch down in Karatandu at around 23.00.

‘What’s the word on the coup?’ he asked.

‘No news. It’s all quiet at the moment.’

‘Not for much longer.’

‘No.’

Bowman gripped the wheel tightly. ‘Let’s hope this thing doesn’t kick off before we land. I’ve had enough nasty surprises for one day.’

Mallet stared at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Have you got a problem?’

‘I thought we were going in to arrest Lang, not chuck him off a balcony.’

‘The plan changed.’

‘Is that really what happened?’

‘Don’t get shirty with me, lad. The decision was down to Six. We were following orders. There’s nothing more to it than that.’

‘I just want to know what’s going on.’

‘You’re part of the Cell now. This is how we work. You’ve got to stay fluid. React to situations as they happen. Things can change very quickly in our line of work.’

Bowman glanced sidelong at him. ‘The other guys didn’t look too surprised to me.’