Victoria was riding up front with her husband. Milton had watched the two of them holding hands. He wondered whether he would ever see her again. It seemed unlikely. He was pleased that she had found happiness, a state of affairs that had seemed beyond her when they had known each other before. It would have been easy to feel jealousy for the settled life that she had been able to stitch together. It seemed idyllic: a charming husband, a job that was undemanding and remunerative, an employer who allowed her to live and work in paradise. Victoria was complicit in the work of the Group, but only in the most tangential way. If she had blood on her hands, she had managed to wash it off. Milton knew that he would not be so lucky.

He would have been much happier if Jean-Michel had let them make their own way to the harbour, but both the Frenchman and his wife were having none of it. Milton didn’t know Jean-Michel’s brother, and Jean-Michel had explained that trying to arrange a pre-meeting on such short notice had not been possible. Milton didn’t like it—being dependent on the actions of others was not something that he would ever be comfortable with—but he knew that he had no choice. He looked out of the tinted windows in the rear doors and saw the lights of the port. Not far now. He felt Sakura’s hand sneak into his and entwine their fingers together.

The van pulled to a halt. There was a brief conversation between Jean-Michel and another man in Indonesian, then the sound of relaxed laughter, and the van pulled away again into the main port area. They drove on for a few hundred yards and then the van came to a halt again.

“Nearly there,” Milton whispered to Sakura.

She squeezed his hand in response.

Both front doors opened and Milton, hearing a conversation in French, assumed that Jean-Michel’s brother had arrived as he had promised. He heard footsteps coming around to the rear of the vehicle and then the sound of the lock being turned. The doors opened. The light of the port washed into the gloomy interior. They were inside the port. The area was industrial, lit with orange sodium lights that flickered and gave the landscape an ethereal quality. Victoria and Jean-Michel were standing next to a third man. He was stocky and tanned, heavier-set than Jean-Michel but unmistakably his sibling.

“This is Pierre,” Jean-Michel said. “My brother.”

“Bonsoir,” Pierre said.

He extended his hand for Milton to shake. His hand was calloused and his strength was obvious.

“I’m John and this is Sakura.”

“Good to meet you. Your ship is ready to depart. We need to hurry—it is this way.”