Beatrix had gone to bed at nine. Milton hadn’t returned to the room, but he had been there when she had risen for a drink in the early hours. He was asleep on the sofa, lying on his back with the covers pulled back to reveal a tattoo of an angel’s wings across his shoulders. She had paused close to him; she thought that she could detect the faint smell of alcohol, and his breath was deep and even, a rattle in his throat that was close to snoring. She couldn’t tell if he had been out drinking, but, if she had been asked to guess, she would have said that he had. He made no reference to it when he awoke, and, after a shower, he was fresh and ready to work.

He had hired a Opel Vivaro from an agency in Caracas. It was new, and he still hadn’t removed the tag that hung down from the stem of the rear-view mirror. It had a sliding door in the side that offered access to a generous cabin. It was a good choice. They would easily be able to get Koralev inside, assuming that Milton’s report about his routine—and particularly the assumption that he didn’t have close protection—proved to be accurate.

Beatrix sat in the back as Milton drove them out of the city. It was half past six in the morning and the roads were quiet. Beatrix had the Glock on the seat next to her. She made sure that it was unloaded and then disassembled it so that she could check its workings and ensure that everything was clean.

“How long?” Beatrix said.

“Twenty minutes,” he said.

The sun was almost all of the way above the horizon now, and the early warmth promised a hot day. Beatrix put the weapon back together again and then tested the trigger. The Glock needed a long trigger pull, with a heavier weight to trigger a round than she preferred. Her favoured weapons employed crisp and clean triggers, and the Glock did not offer that. It wasn’t ideal, but that would only become a factor if they needed to fire and, from what Milton had suggested, that shouldn’t be necessary.

She pushed the magazine into the grip, racked the slide to load a live round into the chamber and holstered the weapon. She leaned back in the seat and waited.

They drove through Cortada de Maturín. It was a sleepy village with a collection of buildings gathered on either side of the road. Milton drove on to the private track that he had mentioned, paused there for Beatrix to assess it, and then turned around and retraced their route. They stopped again to the south of the hamlet, on the other side of a sharp bend that would give Koralev very little time to react once he realised that the way ahead was blocked.