‘What do you mean, “Miss Li has met with an accident”?’ Luke demanded.

For the first time he could see the man in front looking uncomfortable as he stared hard at him. The officer held up his hand as he took out his phone, pressed a key, then spoke to someone on the other end. Luke could see his brow furrowing. When he put the phone away the officer said simply, ‘The colonel will see you in his office.’

They pulled up in the forecourt of the GRU building on Grizodubovoy Street with a squeal of tyres. Car doors opened and slammed shut. Men were running into the building and shouting. For a brief moment Luke found himself completely alone in the back of the vehicle, frantically rubbing the joint of his missing finger with anxiety as he thought of Jenny Li. Something had definitely happened and he needed to find out what.

The three GRU men escorted him into the vast, cavernous lobby, past the portrait of the President on the wall, down a corridor, cramming themselves into a lift, then riding up in silence to Petrov’s office on the second floor. The door was open and they stopped just short of it, gesturing for Luke to go in.

The colonel was standing in the middle of the room, his posture braced and upright, hands clasped behind his back. But it wasn’t the sight of Colonel Petrov that caught Luke’s attention. It was the fact that he was flanked by two medical orderlies in white coats.

Of Jenny Li there was no sign.

87

Vauxhall Cross, London

Thursday, 17 March, 1738hrs GMT, 2038hrs Moscow

FOR ANGELA SCOTT, the news brought a dreadful sense of déjà vu. It seemed like only yesterday that the night duty officer had taken that early-morning call from Bogotá informing them that their Colombia station chief had been found murdered in the jungle. Angela had been part of the team that had deployed Luke Carlton to go out there to investigate, with painful consequences for him. Now, less than five years on, Carlton was once more ‘at reach and at risk’, as their partners in the SAS were fond of saying. He was in Moscow and the apparent success of his mission had come at a terrible cost. Angela took a deep breath before knocking on the Chief’s door.

‘Something has happened to Jenny Li,’ she told him, with no preamble, as she stood on the carpet facing him. ‘She’s been infected with a virus. In Moscow. It’s possibly deliberate, we don’t know yet. The Russians are keeping her in isolation.’

Sir Adam Keeling looked up sharply. He was wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit and a pale blue Cambridge tie tucked into the top of his waistcoat. Impeccably smart at all times, his demeanour seemed frayed, the strain of the last few days definitely showing.