Tom dropped his phone back into his pocket. He was on the forecourt of his hotel, just a few feet from the revolving doors, when he was halted by an unfamiliar voice.

‘Tom!’

He turned to see a stunning young black woman, dressed impeccably, if a little warmly for the weather.

‘Alicia. UNHCR, Baghdad. Remember?’

She had a British accent and a beautiful smile: not the sort of combination a man would easily forget. He smiled back. ‘I’m sorry – who?’

She laughed. ‘You really don’t remember me?’

She was moving towards a side-street. As he rifled through all the faces he might have remembered from Baghdad, and that was a lot of faces, he followed her. She turned and came up very close as if she was about to kiss him, and as she did so her expression changed. Something made contact with Tom’s thigh and he heard the sigh of compressed nitrogen. He couldn’t do anything except take the pain as the Taser barbs embedded in his flesh and the force of the electric shock slammed him into the ground. Apart from fifty thousand volts, the only thing that went through his mind was the idea that he should try to curl up and protect his head as he tumbled off the kerb.

As he tried to retake control of his legs, a blacked-out MPV screeched to a halt at the kerb and two men jumped out.

They bundled him into the vehicle as easily as if he were a child and accelerated away.

Tom had no energy left for any of this – whatever it was. ‘Look, it’s been a long day and I’m fresh out of moves. Could we just cut the foreplay and I’ll call you in the morning?’

Tom turned to find himself in the centre well of the MPV. The memorable Alicia sat up front with the driver, and with their backs to them, facing the rear, sat two compactly built young bloods in shades, with blandly inoffensive faces, like shop dummies but with less personality. They looked alert and fresh from a good night’s sleep; just gazing at them made him feel weary.

‘Buckingham, listen up. Look at me.’

Opposite them was the talker, a tall, patrician man with neat silver hair, the sort who might have been a prefect at his old school.

‘You are Tom Buckingham?’

Tom struggled. ‘Who wants to know?’

The patrician bent down and thrust his face close to Tom’s. ‘Don’t be tiresome, Buckingham. We’ve had the FBI on our backs, wanting to know why you’re here. They seem to know things we don’t and that’s not how we like it.’

‘Sorry, I can’t help you.’

‘They know all about Bastion.’

‘Yeah? Apparently so does everyone. Have you honestly got nothing better to do than swoop out of nowhere with – Ant and Dec here and bother a private citizen on his holidays?’