LUKE NOSED HIS battered Land Rover out of the underground car park beneath their Battersea flat and drove eastwards towards the green and sandstone building that had served, since 1994, as the headquarters of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6. With Elise’s final brittle words still ringing in his ears, he was glad to be heading into work. And there was urgency today. He had been summoned to a briefing with the directors on the third floor. Beside him, on the ripped leather cover of the passenger seat, lay the actual documents he had lifted from the makeshift Arctic lab. He had at least been able to get the pair from Porton Down to screen them for him before they left.

Luke swerved out of the busy traffic on Albert Embankment and pulled up at the heavy steel barrier, waiting for the cameras to swivel towards him. His eyes flicked up to the sad, twisted, leafless branches of wisteria that spread out above the entrance awning, and above that to the pale yellow of the walls and finally the cluster of communications antennae crowded together on the roof. Then the dark green gates slid open, and there was another pause as the black-uniformed security men checked over his vehicle. When they gave him the nod he drove it, ever so slowly, into the ground-floor car park, then used the electronic fob on his lanyard to key himself into the building. He passed the plaque on the wall commemorating the official royal opening and the large SIS emblem in the foyer: the crown, the unicorn, the lion rampant and the motto ‘Dieu et mon droit’. He nodded a greeting to some of the night shift as they passed him heading in the opposite direction and checked his watch. Not quite 0855. Was there still time to grab a coffee before he went into the briefing? He certainly needed one. But, no, that might look a bit too casual, given the urgency of the situation. He pressed the lift button and rode up to the third floor. This, he guessed, would be an ‘exploratory meeting’. It was the Service’s way of deciding what to do about something they simply had not seen coming.

Outside Briefing Room B Luke stopped for a moment, composing himself as he went through exactly what had happened up there in that cold, dark house in Svalbard. The one he had been helicoptered out of just fourteen hours ago. Were they going to haul him over the coals now about Kristian’s death? And Skeet’s? Probably. He expected nothing less. He could hear the questions already in his head. ‘But, Luke, were these actions necessary and proportionate? To whom did you refer for authorization?’ He bet it hadn’t been like this in his uncle’s day, and for a moment he found himself wishing he had been born a generation earlier.

He knocked once, then pushed open the door without waiting for an answer.