Robin was at the entrance in a guard uniform, the security wand in his hand.

‘Excuse me, madam, if you don’t mind.’ He waved it over my black dress with a theatrical flourish. ‘Please go in.’

I took a glass of champagne from a hovering waiter and looked around the library.

Six-foot-high red scrolls with beautifully calligraphed black Chinese characters had been hung from the ceiling in each corner of the library.

I was one of the first to arrive. Frederick was already at the back of the room talking to the Foreign Secretary. He was clearly well-connected. I wondered how much was on his own merit or down to the school he’d attended and the privilege he’d been born into.

I shook it off. How was it relevant? I continued to scan the room.

For Robin’s modified security wand to read Peng’s GPS tracker card, he needed to hold it over it for five seconds. Not an easy task when he couldn’t know for sure where exactly it would be. We knew that Minister Peng never carried a handbag, meaning we had to presume it would be in one of her pockets.

There was now a steady trickle of people arriving. I recognised another cabinet minister and two opposition MPs. I spotted at least another five security staff members within the room. The suits, the stance, the not speaking just watching. They were easy to pick out.

Minister Peng walked in. She was thickset with greying hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a ready smile. She was wearing a blue trouser suit and large black pearls. Robin greeted her in Mandarin and continued to talk as he held the security wand over Peng’s right jacket pocket. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Peng laughed. Maybe Robin was funnier in Mandarin? Peng clapped hands with Robin, shaking them vigorously.

‘Bingo! We’ve got it,’ Geraint announced in our earpieces. The wand had successfully cloned the GPS tracker. Geraint was monitoring from our van outside the museum. Now we just needed to retrieve the receiver box from the Etch A Sketch hidden in the Marine Invertebrates room and we were home free.

A waiter came up to Peng with a tray of canapés and she pointed to a spring roll.

‘Are there nuts in here?’ she asked the waiter brandishing the tray. She spoke clearly with a faint accent. I remembered from her file that she’d lived in England for a year while doing a Masters degree in Buckingham.

‘There is a small amount of peanut sauce inside.’

Peng waved the tray away. ‘No thank you.’

‘G-Force, Peng could have a nut allergy.’

This could be a disaster. If the Coyote was looking for an easy way to kill her, spiking anything and everything with nuts was a simple form of attack. Policing it would be near impossible.