He recognized the photograph as one Elise had posted on her Facebook page, so it wasn’t exactly rocket science for them to have got hold of it. She and Luke had already had the conversation about never posting any photos of him on there, though, which made him wonder just how they had connected her to him. Worrying. And annoying. But he would have to let it slide for now if they were going to make any kind of success of this fragile, new-found Anglo-Russian cooperation. Had they done something similar to Jenny? He made a note to ask her the next time they were somewhere they couldn’t be overheard.

Luke closed the door to his room behind him and nodded to the goon in the corridor, who sprang up and – quite unnecessarily – raced across the carpet to press the lift button for him. He was still thinking about the photo of Elise as the lift doors pinged open at the lobby floor. He was damned if he was going to let this rattle him, but he worried about other tricks they might have planned.

‘The route is approximately eleven kilometres and the journey will take us twenty-eight minutes.’ Their GRU escort had twisted round in his seat next to the driver to address them in the back of the car as they moved off. He was young, probably not yet out of his twenties, Luke reckoned, and looked like he spent a fair bit of time in the gym. Smart suit, dark tie, cutaway collar and yet another discreet earpiece. Luke had already studied the city map of Moscow so he and Jenny would have some idea of where they were being taken and by which route. He figured they would either follow the edge of Gorky Park and head south-west or go straight through the centre of Moscow with all its traffic.

‘Eleven k’, he said to Jenny. ‘That means we’re taking the scenic route past the Kremlin.’

Within minutes they were crossing the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge with the majestic expanse of the River Moskva flowing beneath them, lit by the glint of a weak winter sun. Luke had predicted correctly. There, out of the right-hand window, were the impressive walls and towers of the Kremlin, adorned with those enigmatic gold onion domes and fairy-tale red spires. This was the picture-postcard Moscow of travel brochures, but the traffic was light at this time of day and soon they were turning west, leaving the Kremlin walls behind as they sped down New Arbat Avenue past modern skyscrapers and expensive-looking shops. The pedestrians they passed seemed affluent, cosmopolitan, modern. They might have been 2,500 kilometres east of London, but this could have been the heart of almost any capital in Europe.

‘Not what you expected?’ Luke remarked to Jenny.