His eyes smarted and he blinked hard as went down the stairs.

'He's a killer and he's coming here. We're going to ping him. Are you with the good guys, Jonno, or with him?'

'Gecko, could you please power up your laptop?'

He had come from the dunes and lost sight of the camels. He had kicked off his shoes and beaten them together to spill out the sand, then peeled off his socks and shaken them. He had been ignored. The business of the day was finished and the meal was brought from a cold box. He was offered meat, lamb or goat, and two sauces for dipping bread into. There was bottled water, imported from France. The plastic plates and cups were buried, and some of the tribespeople walked a little off to defecate. Another big bird circled them. Natan looked for a sign of their suspicion: he couldn't find it.

The Major had spoken to him briefly but affably; neither Grigoriy nor Ruslan had said a word, which was not unusual. Eventually they had climbed back into the vehicles. He was wedged between the warrant officer and the master sergeant. The air-conditioning was at full power.

The Major's head was turned towards him and the lips moved but Natan heard nothing. He asked the older man to repeat what he'd said. The Major's hand came casually towards him, took his wrist and gripped it, to reassure and comfort.

The voice was louder.

'Gecko, could you please power up your laptop?'

He said he would. He had to bend down with his head between his legs to get the rucksack that was half under his seat. He pulled it up. On top of the laptop were two pairs of worn socks and a pair of dirty underpants. He drew out the laptop. The Major had spoken to him with respect.

With desperation, Natan prayed that his fear was unfounded.

His screen saver was a view of a snow-capped Mount Shikhara, a few kilometres inside the northern frontier of his motherland, Georgia. It was there to remind him of where home had been, his parents and his brother. He never wrote, never phoned, never sent an email, never sought to learn whether the old dog was still alive.

Natan went through the passwords that ensured his privacy. The security of his laptop was a work of art.

What did the Major want? The detail on the arrangements he had in place for their arrival in Moroccan territory. There was a mobile number, and there would be instructions at their next stop. He gave the number, which the Major wrote down.

'And what do we have, Gecko, for Marbella?' The question was phrased as if the answer would be of small importance.

He clicked keys. He said there was a number for a cut-out. He giggled. The fear was waning. The cut-out was a woman, the mistress of a lawyer. The lawyer supervised the contracts and investments of Pavel Ivanov. The Major wrote, held a pencil between thumb and long finger, wedged it above the index stump. He said they also had Ivanov's phone number . . . 'You shouldn't use that number, not ever. I should send a secure email. You know that, Major.'

'Of course . . . and you remind me. You're a good boy.'

He trembled and sweated. He could have kissed the Major's rough cheeks. He was told nothing else was needed and he closed down his laptop. It was extraordinary that a man such as the Major needed a boy such as himself, but each of the crime oligarchs had a Gecko. They had accountants, lawyers, muscle men and bankers, and they had kids who could hack for them and understood the secret channels of communication. In the bottom of the rucksack was the phone he had been given with the one number listed, that of Echo Golf. He was in a desert, stretching towards distant frontiers, and there would be no signal. Strength, slowly, returned to him.

He watched them come. Danie was South African, from the Free State. He had been a helicopter pilot with the air force, and was surplus to the requirements of the new republic so he had moved on. He was in his fifty-second year, and his son Jappie performed better as a mechanic than in his nominal role as navigator and second pilot. To keep the Beechcraft B200 KingAir up and flying, after close to a million miles, required all of Jappie's skill. Danie piloted the eight-seater aircraft, described in the company brochure as of 'civil utility' capability. The family specialised in transporting passengers with a limited desire to be noticed, so many journeys were made out of and into remote landing strips. They had come down some three hundred klicks north-east of Nouakchott. The runway had originally been flattened for an oil-exploration camp, which had foundered. The hut was half collapsed, the windsock was shredded and it was a crap place, but perfect.

He enjoyed his work. His customers paid handsomely in cash, and he went where he was directed. After he had dropped these passengers he had French guys taking crates into the Democratic Republic of Congo. That day his son seemed content with the engines. The flight was 1,100 kilometres and would bring them down at a similarly underdeveloped location between Agadir and Marrakesh. They came closer, the dust spiralling behind them. The heat was fierce and the sun high.

They were in the air.

The pilot had said, in accented English, that they cruised at twenty thousand feet and had a ground speed of 400 kilometres per hour. There was a cabinet with two bottles of champagne, packets of nuts and glasses.

The woman had bullied him in Constanta and had abandoned him here. He had the warmth of the Major to feed off. He should not have gone to the embassy. The flight was smooth and he was exhausted. His eyes were closed. He did not know that they were coming for him.

Hands gripped his shoulders. Another pair flicked the clasp of the seat belt, and he was dragged upright.

The master sergeant held him from behind, and the warrant officer kicked, punched and gouged him. The door to the cockpit was closed. The Major was in front of him, watching.

Where had he gone in Baku?

Why had he been late for the pick-up in Constanta?

When he had gone to the toilets at the hotel in Nouakchott, who was the woman?

Was she the same woman the camel herders had seen as they crossed the dunes?

The side of his face was a target, and his eyes. He couldn't keep the knee away from his groin. When the pit of his stomach was hit he jack-knifed. His ears were ringing, and his shins were kicked with the toecap of the boot the bastard always wore. His mouth was untouched. He could speak. Soon they would stop and the questions would be put again. Then he would be hurt some more.

The Major went to the cockpit door and rapped on it.

It was opened, and the pilot was spoken to. For a moment, Natan made eye contact, but the pilot turned away and the door closed.

He was hit again and questioned again. Through his teeth, he lied in answer to every question. He was not believed and was hit some more. He lied, and thought that any man who had betrayed the Major would deny and deny and deny. He would try to weather the pain long enough for doubt to creep into their minds . . . or he was dead. He remembered again the kicked head of the dummy. Ruslan pulled him further towards the aircraft's tail. If he had not been held he would have fallen forward as it lost height. Again and again Natan was punched, kneed and kicked.

He lied, and didn't know how much longer he could.

He saw the woman and the girl from the embassy, had nothing else to hold on to. The Major came towards him. The aircraft had slowed and was at a lower altitude, the winds shaking it. He came close and looked once, hard, into Natan's face. Natan saw confusion. The man would have believed he had done well by him. Perhaps Natan saw disappointment, too. And there was comprehension in his battered head. He had been asked for simple answers from the laptop. They did not know the codes and they could not have opened the files. He had been tricked as easily as a pig is taken by a farmer to the shed where the knife waits, and he had given them numbers and schedules held in the laptop's labyrinth of memory.

The Major was opening the door of the cabin. The howl of the wind hit Natan. Far below the sand was featureless. He saw the bitch in the hotel toilets and he saw also the girl in the embassy and thought there had been friendship and admiration for his betrayal. He clung to her face. The gale ripped at him, and the boot was against his back.

It was what they had done, as intelligence gatherers, flying from the air bases in Jalalabad, Herat or Bagram. Two old newspapers and a hotel magazine from Lusaka flew in the torrent of wind rotating in the cabin.

The Major had the door wide. They did it in Afghanistan because the Americans had valued the procedure in the Vietnam war. They had manacled the mujahideen, bound their ankles, and taken two or three up in the Mi-6 or the Mi-8. When they had reached a thousand metres, they had the pilot hover. A crewman would slide back the hatch, and they would choose the one who had, in their estimation, the least to tell and pitch him out. The remaining one, or two, would be close enough to the hatch to see him go down and hear the scream. Before the first man went they did not waste time on questions, but would start when he had gone, maybe as flailing figure hit sand, desert, fields or a mountainside. This method of interrogation produced good results.

Now he eased away from the door and held tightly to the back of a seat. The aircraft shook and he thought that the old pilot and his son would be hanging on hard to their sticks.

Who was she? He didn't know. What had he told her? Nothing. How many meetings had-? None. The master sergeant pushed him hard from behind. Natan would have thought he was falling towards the hole, but he was caught. The urine ran on his leg. Natan's head was twisted with a hand and he was made to watch as the warrant officer tipped up his rucksack. The socks flew with his pants and two clean T-shirts, chewing gum and the laptop. It spilled out, bounced on the floor and came to rest by the Major's feet.

They would not have known, any of them, how to open it or how to access the files it held. It was now, for them, a piece of junk, and the boy would never again read anything from it. Treachery from within was what the Major feared most. He would not have believed it of the boy but the evidence had been thrust in his face the lavatory and the camel train, the woman shoved at him until he almost choked on it. A mobile rolled clear, hit a seat stanchion and stopped. It was plain black, a Nokia. He, Grigoriy, Ruslan and the kid used silver Sony Erikssons with a number on the back. His was 1, and the kid's was 4. He hadn't seen that phone, and reached for it.

Natan swung his foot at it. His trainer toe kicked it. It spun across the carpet towards the open door.

The Major could not reach it, and his bellow was pure rage. He could not have remembered when he had last lost his temper so completely. He was a man who controlled himself in crisis and was known not to entertain panic. He yelled because he saw the phone and understood its importance. The boy lunged to kick it again, and the master sergeant had a hand across the boy's mouth. His own yell was beaten away by the scream: blood spilled from the kid's mouth and the master sergeant could not extract his fingers from between the kid's teeth.

Together they kicked the Gecko.

The Major did it on the ankle, and the warrant officer landed his blow in the stomach, and the mouth must have opened because the master sergeant recoiled and slumped in a seat. The Gecko was not held and seemed to glide.

When they had a sector leader of the mujahideen, any man from a front-line fighting unit of the enemy maybe captured because he was asleep when a special-forces team came close in the cover of night and he was lifted up in the helicopter, he did not fight against the drop. He went calmly. The Gecko might have been on a dance-floor with old-fashioned steps as he moved to the door.

The phone went out in front of him. Natan followed. No shout.

The Major lost sight of the phone fast, but watched the kid go down. Grigoriy slammed the door, and Ruslan nursed his hand, whining. He went to the cockpit door and slapped it. The pilot came out and went to the cabin door, checked that it was fastened. The Major was assured that they had not been delayed, and was invited to open a bottle.

The laptop was on the floor, with the rucksack and the garments that had not been sucked out. He did not know whether his journey was compromised whether he had acted in time to preserve his security, or too late.

'It can't happen.'

'Would that be supposition, Gonsalvo, or fact?'

'We talk in our trade, Dawson, of what's possible and what's not.'

'Someone said, "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer." I think you've heard that.'

'Indeed, but it's American, for the training of their military, so we discount it.'

There was honesty between them and trust. They met no more than half a dozen times a year, and always Gonsalvo insisted on an outdoor location and his phone was switched off. They never met at his home or his office and never at Dawson's workplace in the embassy or his own apartment. The Spaniard from the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia was Dawson's most significant source in the local intelligence world, but was not on his payroll.

Gonsalvo was sixty-one and highly regarded for his perceptions by those in authority above him, but had never been rewarded with high promotion. He was believed politically inept. He was quiet: he whispered because his voice had been destroyed by chain-smoking. His composure never slipped, no matter who needled him. He lived just above the poverty line, and helped a son and a daughter two of his four children currently unemployed. His hobbies were limited, as far as Dawson could see, to walking his retriever Bruno in the park before work and after he had finished.

'So, a request for his arrest would be refused?'

'Refused is too blunt. The request would be considered, delayed, shelved. There would be shrugs, apologies and excuses. It would be done politely.'

'He would not be arrested.'

'He would not find himself in handcuffs, with a cell door locking behind him. Delay and prevarication would make sure an opportunity was lost. Dawson, that is the position.'

They had met on the Calle de Alcala, seemingly by chance, then had strolled through the Plaza Puerto del Sol and down the Calle del Arenal, talking solely about Bruno, the mange in his ear, then had crossed the Plaza de Oriente. They had not bothered to glance at the fine facade of the Royal Palace and were lost in the the Jardines Sabatini. The dog was important. The relationship between Dawson and Gonsalvo had been sealed one afternoon by the friendship between Bruno and Christy. Christy had been Dawson's. He was now in Edinburgh with a former wife Araminta as was an eleven-year-old son, Archie, whom Dawson had not seen for seven months: she was a professor's daughter and now had an economist husband. His work for the Secret Intelligence Service provided Dawson with a lifeline to which he clung. He missed his wife a little, his son sometimes, and was bereft at losing his dog, a chestnut-coated cocker spaniel. His appearance gave no indication that he was lonely: he wore that day a good suit, a striped shirt and a silk tie. His shoes shone, his socks were orange and scarlet, and his hair was impeccably parted. The impression he gave was of confidence and superiority. In Hanoi, Araminta might have had an affair with a French-born tennis coach. From Madrid, two summers before, she had gone home to see her parents, then sent the 'Dear John' by email. She had returned to Madrid to collect her clothes and the dog. Human Resources at the FCO and the ambassador's wife had suggested he took home leave, but he'd declined, burying himself deeper in his work.

'That's what I expected, but thank you for confirming it.'

'The British have few friends.'

'A talent we've developed to an art form.'

'Our magistrates are interested in headlines, news-bulletin stories. Corruption proven against a town mayor outweighs the possible extradition of a Russian gangster. Who cares?'

'We do.'

'Why? We are tired of reading that the so-called "head of the Russian Mafia" is held in a swoop, that "a devastating blow has been delivered" against organised crime. Millions are spent, the accused walks free and the evidence founders. The UN's Office of Drugs and Crime, reported recently on the growth of organised crime to the level of a transnational superpower. It says nation states are guilty of "benign neglect". I cannot disagree. What did he do?'

'He beat one of our men to death. It was a scandal on an epic scale.'

'I liked her, the lady you brought. Thrust, drive, aggression. A fine woman, Dawson.'

'I'll tell her that the local legal system will consign her to punching a concrete wall. My love to Bruno.'

He stopped. Another cigarette was lit. Their hands touched and they turned in opposite directions to leave the maze garden. He had already told Winnie Monks, but would now tell her again that the mission was well and truly wrecked.

Always sad when something of worth was abandoned.

She was in a good mood, and the brickbats slung at Winnie Monks seemed not to have damaged her.

She was on the scrambled phone. 'Yes, I think I have that . . . It's fuck-all to do with any imagined shortcomings at your door . . . What do I want you to do? Hang about . . . Of course I realise you have other matters to concern yourself with . . . I'm asking you to hang about, and if I call, come running . . . Am I packing up? Not yet. Will I be pulling the mainland crowd out? At some stage but not sure when . . . Thanks for what you've done. You've achieved fuck-all, but thanks all the same.' She rang off.

Kenny and Dottie were studying her. Both seemed confused. They might have expected her to be at her desk, with the view over the cemetery and the runway. The call from Dawson in Madrid had come an hour after the link with Xavier.

'Your assessment. Is this idiot going to do real damage? If not, what's the problem? Is he going to blow them out of the fucking water? Is he one of those midget submarines with a hold full of gelignite? If he's not, he doesn't matter. Xavier, I accept that the boy's rationality is hard to judge . . . You'll not be held accountable. Keep close.'

She went to the window, opened it wide and lit a cigarillo. Plenty at Thames House, given the calls coming through to her office, would have crumpled. It didn't matter because Snapper was an expert in slopping oil on rough water. He'd handle it. It didn't matter much more that Dawson had come up with final negatives from his soundings in Madrid. Neither had Caro Watson's news dampened her spirits.

'Just remember that shit happens, Caro. It's happened to you before and it will again. It would have been a luxury to know the exact route and time of arrival . . . No, Caro, you aren't to blame. You extracted the basics we needed from him. I reckon you had pretty much everything that was of value . . . So, the kid showed out. Others have and others will again. It's an unhappy world for those who ditch their loyalties. It might have been different if you'd been allocated more resources, but you weren't. This bloody thing is on the cheap. It's not your problem we can live with it. Safe home.'

She smoked, hacked. Later, when more pieces had been slotted, she would ring her chief, and get him up to speed 'fly it by him', in the jargon of management. He would be told what he needed to know, and nothing he did not wish to hear. It was unlikely, she reflected, that any other team leader was allowed such rope: in the face of spectacular failure, then the rope was long enough to hang her.

She asked Kenny if she could have more coffee.

She flicked ash to the ground, brought her head inside and told Dottie to call a factory outside Leamington Spa so that a process, already in place, could be activated.

They would think, both of them, that she should be on the floor, squirming. They might struggle to comprehend that these events had been anticipated and that 'contingency' plans were in place. The smoked cigarillo was dropped and died on the paving. She eased back inside. She waited for the coffee, then told Dottie and Kenny what would happen. They gaped.

Dottie made the call. She spoke good Russian, interpreter-level German and Italian, useful French and passable Spanish. She could also talk with the accent of her childhood in the north-east, or with the tone of southern England private education. For the former officer, at the factory, she chose a familiar privileged pitch, which amused her. She needed amusement because the plans set in motion by her boss were extraordinary, dangerous and, had there been a betting shop inside the base and had there been odds given on tactical implosion, she might have bet the small change in her purse. Her star was pinned firmly to Winnie Monks. If the Boss went down, so would Dottie. There was nothing in her life but the Boss.

She was connected.

Deep breath. She said she was authorised to call for a plan to be executed. Winnie Monks had no man or woman. Neither did Dottie. She had watched over the Boss and knew of the failures. There had been a City lawyer, Giles something, who had led a team doing an organised-crime seminar that the two of them had attended. He'd taken her twice to dinner but it had all gone sterile. There had been a Special Branch man, who had led the Boss as far as a hotel room. Then he'd sat on the floor and begun to chunter about his wife. Dottie had no one and no other life.

She dressed plainly. She made little of her hair, less of her lips, and wore the sparsest jewellery a small crucifix on a gold chain and stud earrings. There were plenty of plain women, from young to middle-aged, at Thames House. Lack of decoration tended to keep male predators, married, never going to ditch the wife and kids, at arm's length. Work, almost, compensated. She appreciated that if the Boss's plan was activated, and failed, she would go down in the slipstream, with no shoulder to cry on.

The voice answered. 'The Dragunov, yes? As in the letter you brought to us. The SVD Dragonov 7.62mm, yes?'

'That's what she wants, the Dragunov on the move.'

'It's not the easiest rifle to use effectively. Has your man sufficient ability?'

She answered brusquely, 'If he hadn't, she wouldn't have asked for it.'

The chief executive officer took it, and volunteered a young man from the sales staff, an ex-Green Jackets officer, to drive him south.

At the factory they made a standard sniping rifle for use by select units of the British Army, special forces only. The Dragunov, with the stock folded on its hinge, was less than a metre long, encased in polystyrene, and had a tinfoil interior that would deflect most levels of security X-ray equipment. The PSO-1 sight, with quality magnification, was detached and housed in a customised slot in the packaging, as were twenty rounds of ball ammunition.

The young man waited until they were on the motorway, travelling at speed, before he broke his silence.

'Am I allowed to ask where it's going?'

'If I said the Falklands, that Pebble Island is overrun by albatross stocks that need culling, would that do?'

'I only asked. What's its history? Why do we have it?'

'Manufactured in 1980 at the Kalashnikov factory, used by the interior ministry forces, and when they had newer versions they were sold off, shipped to Iraq. We picked up mountains of junk in the first Gulf war, and this one came our way when Marksmen's Training at the Commando Sniper School wanted something more modern. Surplus to requirements twice over. Do me a favour and don't ask me where it's going or why because I don't know. What I can say is that it isn't an easy weapon to handle, and the guy using it has to know his business. Range is terrific, accuracy is good, but it requires a high-grade marksman if it's to do the business.'

'And the ammunition?'

'In with that stuff we bought from Bulgaria last year. More modern than the weapon because it has to work.'

'Do we get it back?'

'I'd like to think so but you never can tell with her.'