‘Hars!’ he exclaimed, aspirating the initial letter. ‘But that is in Turoktsiya.’

‘Turkey.’

‘Yes, Turkey.’

‘We need to be there by five tonight. Earlier if we can.’

‘Timing no problem,’ Sasha said confidently. ‘It is three-hour flight, not more. Plane also no problem. We get small military jet. The difficulty is diplomats. Do they give permission to enter Turkish airspace?’ He spread his hands and stuck out his lower lip.

‘Maybe Anna can help on that.’

‘No!’ He bridled. ‘I arrange it through my own bosses.’

‘Think you can manage it?’

‘Zheordie – for you I arrange anything: even to become beautiful!’

When Anna swept in at 7.30 she brought good mug-shots of Usman Gaidar, aka Akula, the Shark – a mean-looking fellow, in his forties, with short, dark hair, heavy eyebrows, lean, hollow cheeks and a prominent jaw. In the photos his teeth and gums seemed to protrude, pushing his lips out – hence his name, maybe? Anna said the man was obsessive about protecting himself, and kept a private army of at least a hundred men to guard him.

She’d also brought telephoto pictures of the house he’d been building – a tall, pale building with a steeply pointed roof, set into the side of a hill.

‘It looks Scandinavian,’ I said.

‘You’re right.’ Anna turned the picture round on the table so that it faced her way. ‘It was designed by Finnish architects. No expense spared. Marble floors at ground level. Fitness room and sauna lined with birch wood in the basement. Whole building air-conditioned. Bullet-proof windows. It’s not confirmed, but we have heard that he’s building a nuclear shelter in the grounds by drilling into rock in the side of the mountain and lining the cavity with concrete and steel.’

I came within a micro-second of making some stupid joke about getting a nuclear device for his nuclear shelter, but pulled myself up just in time and said instead, ‘The satellite imagery should show that, if the site’s still fairly raw.’

When the pictures came over from the States, through the Satcom and our secure computer, they proved brilliantly sharp, and a perfect supplement to the telephoto shots. What the satellite revealed most clearly was the layout of the house and its defences. The building stood on a forested hillside inside a perimeter fence, roughly square, with sides some 400 metres long. The line of the fence showed as a pale gash through the trees, as did the single road running up to the house from a cluster of other buildings on the bottom edge of the compound. The villa was slightly off-centre – closer to the top fence than the bottom – and above it, towards the north-western corner, was a circular helipad. There was also another cleared area, nearer the house, which we assumed was the site of the shelter. A wider shot, of a bigger area, showed the river passing to the south of the site and, away to the right of it, the outskirts of Samashki village.