Olga guided Maria to the position Buslenko had last given. The roads became narrower and the houses fewer. Maria found herself in a landscape of open fields punctuated with scattered, dense clumps of naked trees. The inky blueness of the darkness outside yielded to a deeper black as she drove, marking the subtle change from late afternoon to true night. The rain stopped.

‘I’ve reached the junction on Provinzialstrasse,’ she radioed in to Olga Sarapenko. ‘Where now?’

‘Take a right and follow the road for about a kilometre. Then you should see the bend Taras talked about and the lane where he’s hidden his car.’

To start with, Maria drove past the entrance to the lane: it was crowded in by dense thorny bracken and she had to reverse to turn into it. After about twenty metres she discovered Buslenko’s Audi. She got out and shivered in the cold winter air. That old shiver. There was something about the lane, about the night, that gave her the darkest form of déjà vu.

‘I’ve found the car,’ she said into the radio, her voice low. She peered in through the rain-speckled side window. ‘But no sign of Buslenko.’

‘Sit tight,’ Olga responded. ‘He’ll still be doing his recon. He’ll be back soon.’

Maria checked her watch. He had said fifteen minutes. It had taken her twelve to get there. Something caught her eye on the passenger seat of the Audi.

‘Olga … he’s left his radio in the car.’

There was a static-crackled pause, then: ‘He said he was maintaining radio silence.’

‘But wouldn’t he have just switched the radio off instead of leaving it here?’

‘Maria. Just sit tight.’