Marshall’s aim was perfect. His fifth bullet struck McCormick exactly where he had pointed, and sheared through the muscles of his heart.

McCormick felt like the centre of his chest had been hit by a car. All strength left his body – his torso did not even bother to tremble – and the sensations in his nervous system began to fade. His time on Earth would only last as long as the oxygen in his brain, which his halted bloodstream would not refresh.

This is it… no going back now.

A voice echoed in his ears. Marshall, stomping back and forth after his moment of madness, was yelling.

‘Whatever your plan is,’ he screamed, with globs of saliva flying from his angry mouth, ‘it won’t do anything! Your war will be lost when the shield goes up, no matter how much of the Citadel you destroy! Don’t you get it? However many labs and archives you burn to the ground, the computer around you will still be active. It’s the only computer that has any control of the shield, and nobody in your team has ever come within half a mile of it!’

He’s almost right.

None of them except me.

Even though his brain was running dry, McCormick was astonished by how much information could pass through it.

His first wave of memories focused on the final week of his life. He remembered his guilt at the pack of lies he had told his friends outside Oakenfold. No bombs had been planted on his visit before Christmas.

He remembered his delight as he had snatched the acid grenades in the HPFC, and how his destruction of the Central Power Generator had allowed him to pass to Floor B with nothing but a physical search. The X-ray machine on Floor D would have cost them the war.

He remembered how he had spent a whole night arguing with Lorraine Shepherd about the true nature of his operation.

His seizure at Spitfire’s Rise had looked convincing enough. The cyst had been a convenient excuse for an operation, and one he could provide evidence for. But the only woman capable of operating had hated the idea of sealing their supply of NPN8 plastic explosives inside his abdomen.

Grant had called him fat the moment he had laid eyes on him. McCormick had hidden the extra weight from his friends under several layers of clothing, and carried the NPN8 inside his body for three days like his own destructive baby. Not long ago, the world’s most powerful dictator had stood two feet away from a bellyful of high explosives.

The plan had always been to get out alive, and perhaps even reverse the operation. But McCormick was dead the moment Roth found him, and he had been smart enough to know it.

He hoped that Kate would one day forgive him for telling her the code, and asking her to kill him.