Angela had been a field operative, and a station chief in Mexico City, so she knew all about risk and betrayal. She knew from bitter experience exactly what it meant when an agent’s identity was revealed or when a case officer’s cover was blown. And she recognized this situation now as one that her Service would euphemistically call ‘highly unstable’. The tech team from GCHQ had been unable to pinpoint Niamh’s location on the other end of the Viber call because her people had been savvy enough to use a succession of proxy servers and firewalls. The team in Thames House were effectively blind.

‘So our driver dropped Luke Carlton off here.’ One of the case officers was using her laser pointer to indicate the car park of the Crown and Anchor pub. ‘He managed to squeeze off a couple of low-res photos of the man who made the RV in the car park, then watched them leave. He got the licence plate, but he couldn’t risk tailing them after that in case the Bravo spotted it was the same minicab that dropped Luke off and got spooked.’

‘And the vehicle?’ someone asked. Angela looked from one person to another in the room. She knew almost no one there. Yes, they were all professionals, but she would have felt a lot more comfortable sending Luke out there if she knew the team who were running this op.

‘We’ve done the checks on the plate,’ the case officer replied. ‘It’s a black Toyota Prius registered to a Mr Jankauskas, a Lithuanian. We’ve housed him as living on the outskirts of Reading. But that’s where the lead goes cold. We’ve pulled up Border Force records and they show Jankauskas as having left the UK two months ago on a flight to Vilnius. So either he’s slipped back into the country illegally or that’s not his real name. All of which means …’ she let out a short sigh ‘… that right now Luke is in the hands of these people and he could be anywhere in these grid squares.’ She gestured towards the digital map on the screen behind her. ‘For all we know he could be drinking tea with them … or face down in a ditch with his hands tied behind his back.’

Angela let out an involuntary gasp. This was Luke Carlton being discussed here, her own protégé whom she had nurtured and promoted up the ranks of the SIS career ladder. And she did not appreciate the cavalier way they were referring to his current status.

The SIO had clocked her reaction and waded in. ‘Yes, right, thank you, Patricia. Let’s not get too morbid here. Luke is in-play and that’s what matters. He’ll make contact as soon as he can.’

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,’ the case officer apologized. ‘I guess we’re all running on empty here.’