He got another gulp of air, then tried the driver’s-side window switch. This time the window slid all the way down, but the flow of water into the car increased to a torrent. He held on to his final breath and tried to wait patiently for the car to fill up. It took longer than he had hoped, but when it was full, the pressure of the incoming water equalized, and he was able to get his legs through the open window. That was as far as he could go, because his feet now rested against a large rock.

In desperation, he tried again to kick out the windscreen and failed again. Air began to leak from his nose, and he knew he was done.

Then there was a loud noise—metal against metal, he thought—followed by whining and scraping sounds and the movement of the car. The water now reversed itself and began to flow out the windows, but it was too late for him. He slipped into unconsciousness. There was no tunnel and no light at the end of it; instead, a kind of peace as he gave way to inevitability.

He woke up again, freezing and coughing up water. He lay on a roadway—no, a bridge—next to a large military vehicle, the front bumper of which contained a winch and a cable; beyond that lay the crumpled car. Oh, Christ, he said to himself, I’ve totaled Felicity’s Aston Martin. Then he fainted.

—

He woke again—this time from a sleep. He was in a hospital bed, partially cranked to a sitting position. A nurse, he thought, there has to be a beautiful nurse in this place. Instead, an angry face filled his vision. It rested atop a Royal Marines uniform, which wore a colonel’s insignia of rank: a crown and two pips.

The face screamed at him, “What the fuck do you think you are doing, Barrington?”

Stone did not like people screaming into his face. He groped for the bed control, found it, and moved the frame until it was fully upright, all the time pushing the angry face away from him. “I’m recuperating!” he shouted back. “And I don’t need you yelling at me!”

“Do you know what rank you are shouting at?” the colonel demanded.

“Certainly,” Stone shouted again, “and I outrank you! I’m a civilian!”

The colonel, taken aback, took a step away. “Calm yourself,” he ordered, “and tell me what happened to Dame Felicity’s car.”

“I believe it found itself upside down in a river,” Stone replied, more calmly now. With his new perspective he pointed at a white lump at the foot of his bed. “What is that?” he asked.

“It’s a boot,” someone to his left said. This one wore a white coat over his uniform, but Stone couldn’t see the insignia.

“I’ve got a broken foot?”