He dropped the rucksack, removed the binoculars, and swept the cliff tops, as though admiring the view. Then he took direct aim at the cottage. One of the cars was unoccupied, but in the other sat two men. Quinn scanned the windows of the cottage. The shades were tightly drawn.

“We have company,” said Katerina.

“I see him,” said Quinn, lowering the binoculars.

“What do we do?”

“We walk.”

Quinn returned the binoculars to the rucksack and the rucksack to his shoulder. Then he and Katerina set off again in the same direction. A hundred yards ahead, a man was walking toward them along the cliff tops. He was no ordinary hiker, thought Quinn. Disciplined movements, light on his feet, a gun beneath his dark blue windcheater. He was ex-military, perhaps even ex-SAS. Quinn felt the Makarov pistol pressing against the base of his spine. He wished it were more readily available, but it was too late to make a change now.

“Start talking,” murmured Quinn.

“About what?”

“About how much fun you had with Bill and Mary last weekend and how you wish you could afford a place in the countryside. Maybe a little cottage in the Cotswolds.”

“I hate the Cotswolds.”

Nevertheless, Katerina spoke with passionate enthusiasm about Bill and Mary and their farm near Chipping Campden. And how Bill became flirty when he drank and how Mary was secretly besotted with Thomas, a good-looking colleague from the office whom Katerina always thought was gay. It was then that the ex-soldier came upon them. Quinn fell in behind Katerina to give the man room to pass. She slowed long enough to wish him a pleasant morning, but Quinn kept his eyes on the ground and said nothing.

“Did you see the way he was looking at us?” asked Katerina when they were alone again.

“Keep walking,” said Quinn. “And whatever you do, don’t look over your shoulder.”

The cottage was now directly ahead of them. The coastal path ran behind it, along the edge of a green field. A slight differential in elevation allowed Quinn to peer innocently over a protective hedge and glimpse the faces of the two men sitting in the parked car. Katerina was speaking rather judgmentally about Mary, and Quinn was nodding slowly, as though he found her remarks unusually perceptive. Then, approximately fifty yards past the cottage, he stopped at the cliff’s edge and gazed down into the cove. A man was casting a line into the heavy surf. Behind him a woman walked along a stretch of golden sand, trailed by another man whose windcheater was the same color as the one worn by the ex-soldier on the cliffs. The woman was walking away from them, slowly, aimlessly, like a prisoner taking her allotted exercise in the yard. Quinn waited until she turned before lifting the binoculars to his eyes. Then he offered them to Katerina.

“I don’t need them,” she said.

“Is that her?”