‘How?’

‘You said Incisor works for Igor Borodin’s special unit, among others, arranging travel schedules?’

‘I guess, but so what?’

‘Igor runs agents the old-school way and with the minimum risk possible. But if Dante is the strategist we think he is – and senior enough to have a mind worth picking – then Igor will have wanted to get alongside him every year or two.’

Julie nodded. ‘All right. So if we can find Igor’s travel schedule, we can overlay it on our own files and …’ She trailed off as she considered the implications. ‘Actually, I did check out with Travel who went to Washington or New York during the year Dayton was being negotiated, just to see if anyone else could have been filing those Bosnia reports we were told about in Istanbul.’

‘Sir Alan?’

Julie nodded. ‘Three trips to Washington, but every time he was over there, he came back via New York.’

‘If Sir Alan or Ian was in the same place as Igor once or twice in a decade, that could be a coincidence,’ Kate said. ‘But more than that and we have our man, I’d say. If we can get Igor’s travel schedule, we can nail this once and for all.’

‘That’s smart,’ Julie said eventually. ‘Really smart. But I’m going to come with you, no argument. We’ve been through too much to turn back now.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, Kate. Otherwise it’s no deal. You cannot do this on your own. And we’ll need to take Callum, too. He can do the driving.’

‘Absolutely not. He’s not a pro—’

‘We need bodies on the ground, Kate. He can come in with me and we can give him a limited role, but we need him.’

‘This is my show. I cannot allow you—’

‘I’m not going to negotiate. Not this time. It’s probably suicide as it is, but doubly so if you attempt it on your own. You have no idea what you may or may not find when you get there. You must have more than one of us to watch your back.’

Kate couldn’t fault the logic of this, but she was damned if she was going to let her friend take the risk. ‘I can manage.’

‘No, and that is final. You need both of us.’

Kate sighed. It was unarguable that it would be easier, and probably safer, with someone to watch out for her, though Callum’s inexperience made it questionable as to whether he would prove help or hindrance. ‘I’ve got an Australian passport I was given originally in my days in Hong Kong so I can use that, but you don’t have an off-the-grid identity, as far as I know, and Callum definitely doesn’t.’

‘I’ll sort that for him and me overnight, don’t you worry. And we’ll both need to be on the set-up call with Andrew. We’ll go in separately.’

‘I was thinking Minsk, then by road.’

‘All right. I’ll square Callum and we’ll get to work on a different route and back story.’