Maria slipped her radio into her coat pocket. She made her way back along the lane to the road, the mud yielding beneath her boots. Once out onto the road she checked, her body still concealed by the bracken, for cars coming in either direction. She heard nothing, but the chill breeze rustled as it stirred the naked branches. She made her way along the road to the bend. On the other side she could see an exposed field with a barn-type building at one edge. There were two cars parked outside. Maria felt the nausea well up inside her again and her heart hammered in her chest. The scene she looked upon was like some landlocked version of the field and barn near Cuxhaven. The place she’d last encountered Vitrenko. She found herself looking up at the starless, cloud-heavy sky and at the winter barren field as if to assure herself that she had not travelled back in time. No stars, no swirling grasses. Maria crouched low as she ran back along the road, the lane and into her car. She slammed the door shut and gripped the steering wheel tight. She looked at the keys in the ignition, still with the label of the garage she’d bought the car from attached. She could turn that key, reverse out onto the road and in minutes she’d be on the autobahn heading for Hamburg. She could put it all behind her. Start again.

Maria snapped open the glove compartment with a sudden decisiveness and took out both her service SIG-Sauer automatic and the illegal 9mm Glock and slipped them into her pockets. She reached over again, grabbed her binoculars and headed back out on foot along the lane.

There was no cover in the field. It would be almost impossible to cross undetected. Buslenko knew what he was doing. Vitrenko and his team certainly knew what they were doing. But Maria didn’t have the kind of training for this kind of stealth. She moved quickly and quietly to the corner of the field where a thin, wind-bowed tree and some leafless shrubbery offered meagre cover. She scanned the field, the parked cars, the barn with her binoculars. Nothing. No guards, no signs of life. There wasn’t even any hint of a light inside the barn. And no sign of Buslenko. She sat down on the damp grass, leaning her back against the tree. Apart from the wind, there was no sound. No hint that another human being shared Maria’s dark, frightened universe. She took one gun, then the next, and snapped the carriages back, placing a round in each chamber and snapping off the safety. She put her service SIG-Sauer back in her pocket. She could see the fumed ghosts of her hard, fast breathing in the chill air.