They parted at lunchtime, just as the park was filling with mothers with prams taking advantage of the sudden mild early-spring weather. By agreement, Luke left first, then Janulis ten minutes after that, each departing in a different direction. Luke chose a circuitous route back to the safe house: it was a habit drilled into him by his years of military service that he never returned the same way he’d set out. At the corner of two streets he stopped by a shop window, using its reflection to check behind him that there was no tail. Just standard counter-surveillance. There was no tail. Vilnius’s Old Town was the largest-surviving medieval quarter in Eastern Europe, a quaint step back in time, interspersed with boutiques doing a brisk trade selling amber jewellery and Lithuanian cheese and wine. But these delights were lost on Luke as he started to compose in his head the contact report he would need to send to Vauxhall based on what he had just learned from Earl Grey. Perhaps because he was so focused on this, it didn’t trouble him that when he turned left, down a narrow, cobbled street flanked by low, crumbling, terracotta-coloured walls, he found he was suddenly alone. This street was deserted.

He heard it before he saw it. The deep-throated roar of a car engine being gunned into overdrive. Luke whirled round to see a black Mercedes A-Class, with tinted windows, accelerating down the street in his direction. For a brief, fleeting moment he thought he was being over-cautious. A half-second later the vehicle had mounted the kerb and was on the same pavement he was. Too late, he realized he had entered a street where there was no barrier between road and pavement, nothing to shield him from the oncoming Mercedes that was closing on him with terrifying speed. This was no Sunday-afternoon joyride, this was a targeted hit. On him, Luke Carlton. The Mercedes was being driven so close to the wall next to him its sides were practically scraping against it. There was absolutely nowhere to run to. And not a soul to witness what was about to happen to him.

In desperation, he glanced around for an escape. Anything. An alcove, an open doorway, a flight of steps. Nothing. The sides of this cobbled backstreet offered him no way out, only blank walls and closed doors. Luke braced himself for the seemingly inevitable, bone-splintering impact as 1,500 kilograms of unyielding metal crushed his body against the wall.