As she roared away, Kate made a decision. She pulled up the number for Zehra Sahin and dialled it. ‘Kate,’ the voice said, at the other end of the line. ‘How nice to hear from you.’

‘I need help.’

‘I imagined as much.’

‘We’re in the Belgrad Forest. A potential target has just been abducted. We’re here without back-up, answerable directly to the prime minister for reasons I’ll explain to you one day. In an ideal world, if you can help, I’d prefer not to involve your father, but either way, it’s imperative that nothing is passed back to SIS in London.’

‘Understood.’ Zehra’s father Yusuf had been SIS’s legendary station manager in Istanbul since the 1970s and Zehra was his heir apparent. She was as good as he was, if not better. And, between them, there was nothing and no one they didn’t know in the tumultuous world of Istanbul’s intelligence community. Kate reeled off the make and number-plate of the vehicle, the number of occupants and the identity of the suspected target. Zehra confined herself to a quiet whistle. ‘Let’s keep the line open,’ she said. ‘Hard not to include Dad, but I’ll step into his office and seal us off from everyone else.’

Kate put her phone on the dashboard on loudspeaker. For a few moments, all they could hear was Zehra explaining the circumstances and parameters of the situation to her father, whose response was as calm and collected as Kate would have expected. He and his daughter were two of the most effective operators the Service was privileged to have at its disposal anywhere in the world.

They murmured quietly, tapping away at a keyboard. ‘Looks like a team came in from Moscow this morning. Arrived at Atatürk by private jet via …’ a long silence ‘… Odessa. Eight of them got off the plane.’

‘Two teams?’ Kate asked.

‘I’d say so,’ Yusuf said.

Julie had her foot flat on the accelerator. They hurtled up the slope to the main road. Julie barely touched the brake before they flew on to it.

‘It’s just clocked through a speed camera on the Istanbul highway at a hundred and sixty kilometres an hour,’ Zehra said.

‘What’s the back-up team for?’ Kate asked Julie, but it was only a split second before they had their answer as another black Mercedes van emerged from the siding.

Julie’s instincts were razor sharp: she hit the brakes, swerved right and ducked behind the van so that it only clipped the front left-hand side of their own car. The impact was still shattering and they spun once and spun again.

Then Julie slammed the car back into gear and accelerated away, ahead of the Mercedes. ‘Jesus, fuck,’ Callum muttered, under his breath.

‘You all right?’ Yusuf asked calmly.

‘We found the back-up,’ Kate said, picking up the phone from the floor.

‘Looks like they are headed for the airport,’ Zehra said. There was another long silence. ‘The rooftop camera is a little far away, but I’d say the plane has its engines running.’