Through the darkened Moscow suburb of Voyevodino they sped along the A105 highway, past tree-shielded dachas and empty parks. Conversation between them was pointless. The driver would have been told to record every word they said and, besides, they were craving sleep.

The Red Square Guesthouse on Serafimovicha Street was exactly what Luke had expected. It looked absolutely nothing like a guesthouse. Instead, they pulled up outside a vast, imposing building on the banks of the River Moskva, with expensive blue lighting in every window and an elaborate colonnaded façade. Once inside, they were escorted straight up in the lift to the fourth floor where a man in a suit sprang up from his seat in the corridor and showed them to their rooms. Luke noticed he had a discreet earpiece.

‘Try to get some sleep,’ Jenny said to him, as they parted in the corridor.

‘You too,’ he answered. ‘See you in a few hours.’

Exhausted, Luke could not be bothered to go hunting around the room for the inevitable listening devices he knew would have been placed there. The room would be monitored, that was a given. On one wall at right angles to the corridor he noted a large, unobstructed mirror. That, he was pretty sure, would be two-way, with some creepy guy in a booth probably observing him right at this minute. Luke got undressed, hopped into the shower, towelled off, then slid naked into bed. It was only then, as he laid his head on the pillow, that he saw the cheaply mounted photograph someone had placed on the bedside table, directly facing him. The colour drained from his face.

It was a framed photograph of Elise.

80

Moscow

Thursday, 17 March, 0812hrs GMT, 1112hrs local

THE PHONE CALLS were infuriating. Twice in the early morning the phone beside his bed had gone off. A wrong number, apologized the receptionist. Sure. Luke knew exactly what this was. Someone in the FSB had told her to make sure he was deprived of sleep. Gaddafi’s people had played the same game, he recalled, when British detectives had gone to Libya to try to find the culprits for the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher years earlier.

But now it was ringing persistently and he could see it was mid-morning already. The voice on the line told him he needed to be downstairs in fifteen minutes: the car was ready to take them to meet Colonel Petrov. Fine. Fifteen minutes. He could do that, although it meant no time to grab a bite downstairs. But Luke was still seething about the photograph at his bedside. This was old-style, unreconstructed KGB tradecraft that had somehow lingered on into the twenty-first century. Show your opponent something that unnerves them. Keep them guessing how much you know about them. Throw them off-balance at every turn. For Pete’s sake, Luke thought, we’re supposed to be on the same bloody side for this one, aren’t we?