‘No!’

He pulled her closer still. ‘Do it. For Fiona and Gus. For us. Or I will never forgive you.’

‘No, Stuart—’

‘Do it!’ The force and passion of his voice propelled her, staggering, away from him.

Kate ran on. Her vision narrowed to the barrier ahead. All she could hear was the rasp of her breathing.

A hundred metres.

She looked back. Stuart had turned around. He stood in the middle of the road, as if he could stop their pursuers by the power of his will. She shouted his name, but no sound came out.

The jeep that had been chasing them finally shunted free and scraped past the abandoned SUV. Within seconds, it was roaring towards them.

Kate ran again. She thought with cold desperation of their children, so far away and about to be made orphans.

There was a cry ahead. A truck sped through the barrier. It was also full of heavily armed soldiers. ‘Kate!’

It was Danny, leaning out of the window.

Kate glanced behind her again. Stuart still stood resolutely in the centre of the road. She stopped, turned and watched in horror.

She shouted his name.

The jeep slowed for a moment. There were shouts, then gunfire. Stuart was hit, first by the bullets, then by the jeep.

He was tossed aside, like a rag doll. The jeep roared on towards her.

But Stuart had done enough.

Kate tried to run to him, but Danny was out of the truck and had his arms around her.

The Georgian soldiers fired a hail of bullets into the air, then formed a protective ring. ‘There’s nothing you can do, Kate,’ Danny whispered, as she stared at Stuart’s inert body by the roadside. ‘He’s gone.’

Danny dragged her into the back of the Georgian vehicle. The Russians were screaming and shouting. One was running towards them yelling dire warnings. The driver of the Georgian truck slammed his vehicle into reverse and they hurtled back towards the barrier.

And then they were across and into the shelter of a car park behind the Georgian Customs post. Danny helped Kate down from the truck, but she fell to her knees in the dirt. ‘It’s over, Kate,’ he murmured, as he held her. ‘It’s all over now.’

33

KATE THOUGHT THEY looked like expectant parents and perhaps that was no mistake. It was a shade after eight in the morning and they had been smuggled by Julie into SIS Headquarters in Vauxhall via the garage entrance. She had escorted them to a small office on the second floor where Danny was waiting nervously by a computer with access to the mainframe.

He had inserted the USB stick Kate had brought back from Russia and now they waited for the computer to run a match with the travel records of every SIS officer of the last two decades.

Kate glanced up at the prime minister, who was flanked by Callum and Julie. He looked as if he was waiting for a judge to pass a sentence of death.