Eight had been in 22 SAS, B Squadron, until Control had plucked him out and offered him the chance of a career with far more excitement than even the Regiment could offer. Weaver had reviewed his file and had noted that the headshrinkers in the basement had observed an occasional impatience in his character. It was a small blemish on an otherwise spotless report. Eight’s physical prowess was exemplary, as one would have expected from a member of the SAS. More to the point, he had shown nothing in his psych evaluation that would have disqualified him from membership in the Group. The screening process included a variation of the Milgram experiment, with possible recruits measured for their willingness to obey an authority figure when asked to perform acts that conflicted with their consciences. The files that Control would hand down for action often contained instructions that could be said to be—at best—ethically questionable. Eight’s results had indicated a degree of psychopathy in his makeup; far from striking his name and pulling him from the process, Control had instructed Weaver to fast-track him.

“What time were they supposed to be here?”

“Fourteen hundred hours,” Weaver said. “We’re early. They’ll be here.”

Weaver had been in Colombia for three months, handling the pointy end of an operation that had required a very specific kind of diplomacy. He had served in Colombia before, all the way back in the nineties when the country had been ruled first by Escobar and then by the Gentlemen of Cali, with the government locked in battle with the cartels and the communist guerrillas who terrorised the south of the country. The CIA and MI6 had nudged and prodded the Colombian government so that it did not stray from the path the West had chosen for it. The communists had become a serious problem, and it had been decided that the country could not fall; it was a bulwark against communism, and, if it went, then all of South America might easily go with it. Weaver had operated in the grey spaces behind official British policy, working with—and often against—the Drug Enforcement Agency’s efforts to destroy the cartels in an attempt to enforce the War on Drugs started by George H. W. Bush and then continued by Bill Clinton.

The cartels were important to the functioning of the state and its maintenance as a bulwark against opposing ideologies. They owned the government, with ministers and even the president bought and sold like chattels at the market. If the cartels went down, the government would go down, too; a void would be created and chaos would ensue. Weaver had helped to hold back that chaos, and he was still holding it back now. Twenty years later and nothing had changed.

“Eyes front,” Six said.

Weaver looked out of the windshield, squinting into the bright sun as a Jeep rolled to a stop on the other side of the road.