Next, Beatrix read the details of the man she had been sent to retrieve. There was nothing on the work that Koralev and his colleague had been doing at Daedalus. It didn’t concern Beatrix. She didn’t need to know the background, and, in some ways, it was better that she didn’t know. There was always the chance that she might be detained during her mission and, in the event that she was questioned, what she did not know could not be revealed. Her training had included hours of simulated torture that brushed up close to the real thing, and she was as prepared for that eventuality as she could possibly be. But that would not insulate her from all eventualities. An interrogator armed with sodium thiopental, for example, could remove her inhibitions and loosen the firm knots that her training allowed her to tie; it would be useless, though, in extracting information that she did not know.

She moved on to the asset who was waiting to assist her. John Milton was an orphan whose parents had been killed in a car crash on the German Autobahn when he was twelve. Upon their deaths, the inheritance Milton received paid for a first-class education that had taken him to Cambridge. He had turned down the offer of a pupillage at the Bar to enlist with the Royal Green Jackets. He had been posted to Winchester and then sent to Gibraltar. He had served in Northern Ireland and was, according to his superior officers, an excellent soldier. He had been persuaded to apply for Selection to the SAS and passed with ease. His career with Air Troop, B Squadron, 22 SAS had been spectacular: he had served in the Middle East, the Far East, South and Central America and had then gone back to Armagh. Milton had notched up multiple kills and had been pegged as a particularly dogged operator; indeed, his name had been added to a list of potential recruits to Group Fifteen. As Number One, Beatrix could remove him from that list as quickly as clicking her fingers. But there were no blemishes on his record. Beatrix could see why he had been chosen.