But Kate was rooted to the spot. She leant against the wall and watched the tugboat, trying to suppress a wave of nausea. She glanced left, then right.

There was no one here.

Why was it so deserted?

She could hear Julie’s voice screaming in her head now. For God’s sake, Kate, abort.

She finally dragged herself upright again and, with leaden feet, she continued on her route.

She couldn’t abandon him, not now. What if he’d been delayed and was hurtling towards her?

Kate knew she needed to leave the path, to swing left and hurry out of the park to the rendezvous with Grove, after which she had to leave Russia by the swiftest route possible. She thought of how calm and collected Grove had been. Had she set them all up here?

Kate was on the verge of doing as the voices in her head so urgently demanded when she spotted Incisor emerging from behind a line of trees. He was alone, walking swiftly, his gait rigid.

He hurried towards her, before she could panic enough to run. ‘Have you got a light?’ he demanded, his eyes wide with fear. She took out the lighter, he held up his raincoat against the wind. The handover was clumsy – a left hand shoved hard into her inside pocket.

She steadied him, lit his cigarette. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘Good luck.’

And then he was gone. She resisted the temptation to glance over her shoulder.

With each pace beyond him, she was seduced a little further into the belief that this had worked – that burning a hole in her pocket was, finally, the evidence she needed to get her life back.

She breathed a sigh of relief, closed her eyes, tilted her head towards the sky and felt the rain on her cheeks.

There was a cry. Before she could prevent herself, she swung around. Two men in leather jackets were looking over the wall to the river, but there was no sign of Incisor anywhere.

The men shouted for assistance. One was speaking into a radio. FSB, she thought. We’re blown.

Much later, Kate would find it hard to describe the events of the subsequent minutes. Some atavistic mixture of fear, instinct and long experience took over and propelled her out of the park to the cut-through off Leninsky Prospekt where Grove was supposed to be waiting.

And when she realized that Grove wasn’t there, she didn’t miss a beat. She just kept walking, with the ease of a woman strolling to the shops. She thrust her hand into her jacket pocket and, with long, nimble fingers, installed both the new SIM left there for this purpose and the battery. She called her daughter. Fiona answered, her voice sleepy. ‘Mum …’

‘Hi, Fi, I need you to do something for me. Please don’t ask any questions. Text Dad right now and tell him Mum thought I should let you know I’m feeling pretty under the weather.’