He unlocked the dressing room door, shoved Van Brakel through it and pressed his frail body down onto the stool. He made for the locker, unlocked that too and reached inside. The changing room belonged to a retired police commander who had been a member of the Order for over twenty years. The gun he kept in his locker was a Colt .45 automatic. Maybe confiscated from a drug dealer or liberated from a police armoury. Fitz unclipped the heavy steel handgun from its holster and checked it. The magazine was fully loaded, seven rounds of hard-hitting forty-fives. It had been many years since he’d been an active combatant, before he joined the murky world of intelligence. But he had killed men in the past, and still knew how to use a gun.

Fitz jacked a round into the chamber, thumbed on the safety and tucked the pistol in his pocket. He felt a glow of confidence return. Let Ben Hope come and find him now.

Where he sat slumped on the stool in the corner, Van Brakel was panting and wheezing like a consumptive. The dead-fish skin of his face rippled with fury and hatred. Pointing a bony finger at Fitz he rasped, ‘I’ll have you killed for this, Fitzroy. Thanks to your incompetence a hundred years of tradition and faith have been destroyed. I’ll have you torn apart and your head placed on a spike. I will drink your blood, and crows and rats will feast on your rotting flesh. Do you hear me?’

Fitz turned and stared at him. ‘Yes. I hear you. And do you know something? I’ve had enough of listening to your whingeing and your threats. For years I’ve carried you, protected you, kissed your shrivelled old arse. You and your precious Order would have been taken down a long time ago if I hadn’t been there to watch over your affairs. So you will show me some respect, and you will shut your stinking hole of a mouth, or I will ram this gun right down your chicken neck throat and blow your guts out of your rear end, and I’ll smile doing it. Understand?’

Van Brakel shrank away from him, the fury in his eyes diminishing to pinpoints of fear. Fitz held his glare on the old man for a moment longer, then pulled out his phone and redialled the number for Salter.

The chopper pilot picked up on the second ring. Fitz expected to hear the background noise from inside the helicopter as Salter took the call through his headset, but he could hear nothing. This was bad. His heartbeat quickened with rising anxiety.

‘Where are you?’ Fitz demanded. ‘What’s the delay?’

Fitz’s thumping heart plunged into his shoes at Salter’s reply.

‘Uh, there was a problem with the aircraft. Fixing it now. Hey, these things happen. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

‘Hurry up!’

Chapter 61