LUKE ROLLED OVER in bed and killed the buzzing alarm, his badly needed power nap already over after less than an hour. He padded into the bathroom, splashed some cold water on his face and regarded his reflection with disapproval. He looked haggard and bruised. The strain of flying up to the Arctic and back, then heading straight to the Baltic and fending off that attack in the cell, must be catching up with him. He had been on the go non-stop since that call had come through while he was at the Royal Opera House. And that had been barely four days ago. How many times, in all those years in the Royal Marines, had he pushed himself through the pain barrier, carrying on when every sinew in his body was begging him to stop? But he had to face facts: he was a lot closer to forty than thirty now, and if he went on at this pace, sooner or later his body was going to let him down when he needed it most.

Jenny’s parting act, before disappearing off to the airport and a flight back to London, was to fix up his meeting with the facilitator, the local contact provided by Vilnius station. Her name was Lina, Jenny told him. She’d be wearing a green US Army-style jacket with a red scarf and they were to meet in Lekutis café at the end of their street at 7 p.m. That was it. When Jenny closed the door of the hotel room behind her, trundling her small, compact suitcase down the corridor, Luke was suddenly aware that the mission here was now down to him, and him alone. Orphaned at the age of ten when his parents had died in a car crash in Colombia, he knew that deep down he probably had latent abandonment issues. For twelve years he had immersed himself in his surrogate family: ‘the Corps’. The Royal Marines had been his home, whether it was in barracks or out on operations in the badlands of Helmand province. Yet now, waking up alone after dark in this fancy hotel, he was experiencing something completely unfamiliar and, briefly, it rattled him. Luke felt a pang of loneliness.

He dressed, checked his phone for messages and got to the rendezvous point early. He positioned himself in a corner of the café so he could watch the door while he sipped a cappuccino and pretended to scroll through his phone. Funny, he thought, you fly a thousand miles east, to practically the edge of Europe, yet this could be almost any upmarket café in London, Manchester or Edinburgh. A young, well-dressed clientele, mainstream music, mainstream drinks. And here, bang on time at 6.59 p.m., came his contact.