Buslenko gave Stoyan a gestured countdown. On one, Stoyan rushed out of the lodge, across the drive and down the river bank. He ran crouched low but fast. Buslenko waited. No gunfire. Stoyan indicated the all-clear and Buslenko gave Olga Sarapenko the order to cross, then Belotserkovsky. Still no attack.

It didn’t make sense. Now would have been the time to pick them off. It seemed as if they were running from ghosts. Maybe Belotserkovsky had a point. Maybe it was one of them. But there was no one in the remaining group that he could have imagined taking out Vorobyeva with such ease. Certainly not the woman.

Buslenko scoured the fringe of the woods with the night-vision scope he had attached to his Vepr. Finally, he bolted across the snow-encrusted track and down the river bank.

9.

Maria spent three hours searching for the BMW. She had been sure she would find it slewed off the road, the Ukrainian slumped over the wheel. She was vaguely shocked at her lack of concern for the driver. She could be pretty certain that she had just either killed another human being or seriously injured him. But, there again, he had tried to kill her and death was something these people traded in. Maria backtracked to check for turn-offs she might have missed: there were none. He had got away. She checked the fuel gauge: she was running low and she was not entirely sure which way would lead her back to the autobahn and Cologne. And it was as if she herself was running out of fuel; the leaden, aching tiredness of her system was draining the adrenalin that had flooded it during the chase. Eventually she came to a junction which indicated Düsseldorf, Cologne and Autobahn 57. She turned onto it and headed back towards the city.

10.

They had covered five kilometres in the last hour, by Buslenko’s reckoning. Not bad considering the terrain and the darkness. There had been no booby traps, no ambush. And, Buslenko was beginning to believe, no enemy waiting in the woods. The woman, Olga Sarapenko, had done particularly well, considering she hadn’t had to go through the same rigours in training as the rest of them.

‘Take a rest,’ he ordered them.

‘I’m telling you …’ Belotserkovsky dropped down next to Buslenko, resting his back against the frozen river bank. ‘There’s no attacking force. It must have been one of us.’

‘Where are you going?’ Buslenko called across to Stoyan, who had started, crouching low, to climb up the river bank.

‘I’m going to take a look around, boss. I’ll be careful. Then I’m going to take a leak.’