In Kaliningrad, Natan had had no attributes that appealed to his fellow students, who specialised in marine matters. He had no girl to usher him into a pretence of social life. He had no time for skiing, sledging, skating or drinking himself insensible. He had no friends in the remote city other than the images he found on his computer. He could have completed a degree in naval engineering or naval architecture, but he had no interest in either, and his course floundered. After eight months of his first year he had been thrown out. He had cleared his room, packed his clothes, his laptop and its accessories. After two nights of sleeping rough, he had walked into a computer-repair business and asked for work.

There was a shopping arcade off the pavement. He broke his stride and looked for a green cross. He slipped inside, collected a packet of painkillers from a shelf and took them to the counter. A woman stared at him with distaste as he paid, and he saw himself in the mirror: dishevelled, dirty, torn clothing. He took the bag, went back on to the pavement and strode towards the flag.

By the end of that year, in Kaliningrad, he had been well known in a community that respected him. They were in American slang nerds and geeks. He was installed in a squat near to the principal fish market, required a couple of fast-food fixes a day, endless cigarettes and limitless coffee, and did a little porno on his screen. Otherwise he fixed computer problems. He was well-enough known to be called out by the city's vibrant Mafiya clans for special work. Then men came for him in big cars, their jackets bulging. He was driven to darkened locations, told what was required, and would hack. He was paid handsomely. Those who called him out must have paid their police contacts well because the militia never came to the squat or the repair outlet. Two years and four months before, his life had changed. He had been at his bench a July afternoon, the temperature in the low seventies when his employer had called him into the office. A folded wad of American dollars had lain on the desk and he realised he had been sold on. He had turned to face those who had purchased him, his new employers, and had thought them to be army people. All three lacked an index finger on the right hand.

The previous evening, in the Trabzon hotel's coffee shop, he had eaten a light dinner alone. He had gone to his room and had sent the encrypted messages, exactly as he had been instructed. He had heard them, late in the evening, come back down the corridor to their own rooms and the suite. He had burned at the outrage he had suffered. They had thought a slap on his shoulder and the pretence of a hug sufficient to erase it.

They had been wrong.

Sometimes they were wary of him, as if he were a stranger, and sometimes they simply ignored him. He accepted the suspicion, but he had fashioned computer systems that meant they were blind without him. On the flight between Trabzon and Haydar Aliyev or Baku, he had decrypted the returning answers to the messages he had sent the previous evening and passed them, in clear, to the Major. He had kept out of earshot as they were discussed, which was expected of him: the future itinerary was in place. He had been given back the laptop state-of-the-art and cleaned it of the exchanges. Then he had murmured something about toothache and the need to find a chemist in Baku. They would have heard him, but only the master sergeant responded with a little flap of the hand. He was not asked how bad his toothache was. They had been met at the airport by the people they would negotiate with. He was given a schedule and told what time they expected to arrive at the hotel into which they were booked.

Natan went through the door into a lobby. At the far end he saw a heavy glass door that he assumed to be blast-proof, a shielded reception desk with a microphone to speak into, and a small air-lock through which documents could be passed. If he had gone to the American embassy he would have been stuck in a booth outside a security perimeter and they would have had small interest in him. It was the British he needed to make contact with. He had information to trade, and would do so with no backward glance. A wave of fear enveloped him. They would flay the skin off his back if they knew, or rip out his nails and teeth. They would wire him to the electricity and slice off his genitalia. He saw a portrait of the British Queen, a poster of rolling fields, a notice inviting submissions for an essay competition and another about the visit of a theatre group. He went to the counter. He tried to find his voice. He felt hands grasping him from behind and dragging him away. On each hand a finger was missing. They would hurt him and then they would kill him. He had betrayed them.

He stammered, 'I want to see a security officer on a matter of intelligence.'

'Course I am. Really looking forward to it.'

'That's brilliant.'

Jonno hadn't been able to reach her until late last evening she'd said she'd been out with a girlfriend. He'd blurted out the invitation there had been times in the last month or two when he'd almost convinced himself that Posie was cooling on him. There had been a pause when he'd made the offer. He'd sensed a sucking-in of breath, a big decision being weighed. And then she'd said she'd come. It was the morning after, and she'd slipped out from work, having pleaded her own sob story with her line manager. The coffee-house was about halfway between their desks.

'It's going to be good.'

'I hope so.'

She was rueful: 'I've never been there. The rest of the world's been to the Costa, but not me.'

'I haven't either. I don't really know what to expect.'

'Sun, sangria and . . .' There was a diamond touch in her eyes.

Jonno said quickly, 'We'll set the rules when we get there.'

'I rang my mother last night. She gave me the usual stuff a two-week break at this time of year was hardly the road to promotion, that kind of thing. I don't think she's had a day off in the last five years. And she said, ''Do you really want to spend that amount of time with him?'' That's you, Jonno.'

She was his girlfriend. They were a reasonably steady item. He didn't think she was seeing anyone else. Her family lived in the East Midlands, but he hadn't been invited up for a weekend to meet them. He knew what she liked to eat, what films she wanted to see and the music she listened to, but he couldn't have claimed to be her soul-mate. He had never seen her angry, or disappointed, facing a crisis or delirious with enjoyment . . . but the sex was all right, and they seemed good together. When she was out with other girls, he missed her. If they couldn't meet, or if he had to cancel her weekend sleepover at his place, he didn't know how she felt about it.

'We'll be fine,' he said.

'It'll be good,' she said. 'I mean it. Lots of fun.'

'It'll be great.'

'Better than that. Brilliant. Can't wait. One long laugh thanks.'

Their hands were together and they drank their coffee, spearing looks at their watches. They were taking liberties with the time, as they talked through where they'd meet in the morning for the drive to Stansted. He told her about the tickets and she promised to pay him back for hers. They talked a bit about cost-sharing when they were there, and then they stood up. Posie had her arms around his neck and gave him a long slow kiss. Jonno thought that house-sitting with the cat at Geoff and Fran's Villa Paraiso might be Paradise and heaven rolled into one. Other punters in the coffee shop eyed them, one or two laughing. It was a good moment no, a great one.

Out on the pavement they did cheek kisses, and had another hug, then went their separate ways.

The Major dominated the meeting.

He had not come this far, in an executive jet, to exchange small-talk.

The shipping agent they met would have expected a session with the doors closed and the windows keeping out the wind that came off the inland sea. They talked bulk and tonnage. The cargo was opiate paste, or crude heroin, refined in Ashgabat where the factory was cheaper than in Trabzon: Turkmenistan cost a pittance compared to Turkey. He preferred always to meet face to face so that he could watch a man's eyes when they talked business. The Major believed he could recognise half-truths, evasions. Men were dead because they had not taken account of that skill.

The smoke from the shipping agent's cigarettes was whipped away from his face by the gusts off the Caspian. They were outside. The temperature was hovering between fourteen and fifteen degrees, and they sat at tables by the pool, which was drained, and looked out over a patio area, the beach and the water. They were the only people who had ventured outside. The Major did not talk business in hotel rooms or restaurants. He regarded himself as a prime target of the Americans and wanted open spaces. He didn't use mobile phones unless he had clearance from the Gecko. The shipping agent was cold he had worn his best silk suit to the meeting and showed his discomfort. They could not be overheard as they talked money. The deal involved a margin of trust: the shipping agent would build into his price what he must pay to Customs officials at each end of the transhipments across Azerbaijani territory. The Major could not verify the figures but his word was backed by his reputation and the menace of those with him.

He did not cheat those he did business with. He pressed for hard bargains, but good ones. The threat of violence hung over every clinched deal if honesty was not two-sided. It was the same as it had been when he had started out, and the same for all of those who existed in that twilight world and under that particular roof. Authority was backed by violence. He knew of no other way to guarantee control. It was done, agreed.

He held out his hand, the gesture that pledged his word better than any lawyer's contract. The shipping agent flinched. The Major had watched the man's eyes all through the meeting: they had flitted across his hand, his warrant officer's and the master sergeant's. The missing fingers enhanced the threat. The warrant officer had sat behind the shipping agent, with his back to him, and had watched the hotel building; the master sergeant had a view of the area where the recliners were stacked and into the car park. The shipping agent shook the hand. The meeting was finished.

There was material to be sent from the laptop.

'Is the Gecko back?' He was not.

A shrug.

'For fuck's sake, he only went to buy pills for toothache.' But he had not yet returned.

He led them inside. He would go back to his suite and the girl would be there. She'd had enough time to see her hair fixed the last time he would pay for it. He reminded himself to take back the earrings before they flew.

'Send the Gecko to me when he gets back.'

By her own admission, Liz Tremlett was a bit player in the world of international diplomatic relations. Until that morning she would have bet against herself on negative involvement in intelligence gathering. She had been called by the front desk.

The resident spook, Hugh, was across the border in Armenia on the monthly brainstorm meeting, his PA with him, and the ambassador was home on leave. The first secretary was in the northern town of Saki, opening a secondary school funded by British aid, and the military attache was at home with influenza. Anyway, his home was in Tbilisi, Georgia, and . . . She had reached the spook by open phone and been told what to do. Paramount was that Bear should be with her every inch of the way. She had sensed, down the line, a crackling disappointment that the man was not where she sat.

Among her normal work, Liz Tremlett organised the annual English-language essay competition in Baku. She would have described the boy as pitiful. No spare weight on him, light stubble on his cheeks, an abrasion on his forehead and another on an elbow. His jeans threadbare and faded were torn at a knee and his glasses were bent. They were in an interview room behind the reception and security area but still cut off from the main staircase and lift. She should have been arranging the guest seating for the ambassador's monthly dinner, or a greetings-card list, or working at pre-publicity for a Welsh choir's visit and there was preparation to be done for the Confederation of British Industry seminar . . .

Having the Bear with her was massively reassuring. He was a man of few words, had been a company sergeant major in a commando of marines, and was the embassy's security officer. He was fit, athletic and owned a presence.

What was the visitor's name? Natan. Would Natan, please, stand up? The boy had done so. Would he, please, extend his arms sideways and open his hands? Liz Tremlett had watched the Bear frisk the boy. Opened hands showed he had no explosive trigger device. The Bear had crouched at the boy's feet and slid off the trainers. He had bent them, then put them on the X-ray tray by the metal-detector arch in front of the security door. She had seen the boy shiver and known it was not cold that caused it. Watching the shaking in the shoulders, the tremor in the hands and the slack jaw, she had known that the boy had made a life-changing decision by walking into the building. Would Natan, please, empty his pockets of everything metallic? It was done: belt, spectacles, mobile phone, loose change, everyday paraphernalia. She had led, and the Bear had followed the boy through the door while the machine had scanned his possessions. Liz had reckoned that any sudden movement the boy had made would have been curtailed by a chop, closed fist, on the back of that fragile neck.

The Bear had sat at the side of the table, poised, and she had sat behind it with her pencil and notepad. The boy was on a hard chair in front of her. The Bear had murmured to her that she should keep it disciplined and under control, not allow it to ramble, that a 'walk-in' was likely to be some sad no-hoper with a life history of injustice. A gold-dust moment was unlikely . . . but the possibility existed.

She did as she was advised. Date and place of birth, names of parents. She might have been doing benefits in a small-town social-security office at home. Passport details two were handed to the Bear and he'd glanced at them. A fractional wintry smile had slipped over his lips. She was given the passports and realised that none of the details they carried matched what she had already written down.

Headlines slipped on to her pages. Communications/hacker/encrypter. She found his voice hard to understand. Russian-based crime boss. The English was what she might have called 'lazy', a sort of vernacular and electronic shorthand. His employer was Petar Alexander Borsonov, he whispered. She had to strain to hear him. The Major. Associates were the warrant officer/the master sergeant. They did drugs, and money washing, and trafficking, and killing . . . state killing.

They did state killing and they were protected by a roof. Liz Tremlett, earnest, enthusiastic, a young woman who read every Foreign Office advisory that came to her screen, had no idea what a roof was. The question must have shown in her eyes, and it was answered. She flipped her notepad page, scribbled again.

They kill for FSB. FSB is the roof. The roof protects. The roof is the state and the state protects. They kill for the state. They cannot be harmed as long as they are the servants of the state.

She was out of her depth now. She caught the eye of the Bear and murmured, 'Heavy stuff, if true,' and the Bear mouthed that it was Six work or more likely Central Intelligence Agency business. She felt a brush of annoyance, as if a prize had gone beyond reach. Still the boy shivered, and she sensed he was restless, as if time had slipped too far and the fear grew in him. He'd glanced twice at his wristwatch. She understood the enormity of what he'd done, the scale of his treachery. It was true betrayal.

She said quietly, 'Natan, I really appreciate that you've come to us with your story, and we take very seriously the allegations you make, but this is far above my level and- Look, where can you be contacted? What numbers can I pass to the relevant people?'

He was slight enough, and seemed to shrivel further. 'We are gone tomorrow. We go to Constanta. You think I would allow a stranger to call me? You think I would expose myself? At five o'clock tomorrow, I will try to be in a bar in Constanta. That is Romania, where we go to do more business. Do I trust you? Perhaps, a little. Do I trust you enough to give you my life? What do you think? I thought it too difficult to go to the Americans who hide inside their fortresses, their embassies, but I thought it more of interest to the British. In Constanta, I will speak to an intelligence officer, which you are not.'

'I can only repeat, Natan, what I said. We take very seriously what you've told us. It'll be passed on, higher and-'

It was the first time the Bear had spoken directly to him. 'Natan, why is it of more interest to us?'

The boy's head turned. He spat, 'He killed your man. Enough? He kicked your agent until he died. The Major did it, all three of them. Once we stopped near to Pskov and they wanted to piss. The lay-by was a dump, and there was a shop-front dummy, full-size there. They pissed and they kicked the head of the dummy, and they laughed. They were shouting, excited. I sat in the car and I heard it. Before I joined them . . . It was a Briton, an agent, and it was in the darkness. It was in Budapest. It was an entertainment, to kick the head from the dummy in the lay-by. It is why I came to you before the Americans.'

'Bloody hell,' the Bear muttered.

With some perception, Liz Tremlett said, 'You hate them.'

'Very much.'

The Bear gripped the boy's arm, just above the raw flesh. 'The bar in Constanta, tomorrow at five o'clock local. Its name?'

She wrote it down.

He stood, and the Bear rose with him, dominating him. He might have realised his movement was intimidating, so a ham of a fist touched the boy's arm. The gesture was shaken away. Liz Tremlett read it: the boy wanted no favours, only the righting of a wrong, a version of vengeance. Her mind was awash with images of wrongs that could be righted only by such a degree of betrayal.

They shook hands briefly with the boy, rewarded with a loose grip, devoid of emotion. There was no bonding. They saw him walk feebly across the lobby. The plastic bag, from the chemist down the street, swung from his hand.

He didn't look back. They went to the door, stood inside the glass and saw him shambling off. The Bear said, with certainty, that the spooks would 'have a bloody wet dream fantasising about a walk-in like that', then shrugged as if she should take that as an apology for his vulgarity.

She knew the answer, but asked, 'What would happen to him, Bear, if they knew what he'd done?'

'Just get on with the paperwork.'

The jeans were down to his buttocks, the shoulders drooped and his hair was tousled. The boy, Natan, went round a corner, and they lost sight of him. Liz Tremlett didn't wait for the lift but went up the stairs two at a time and hurried to her desk. She slapped the pad down, then started to prepare the message she would send.

'Where is he?' the Major asked, annoyed, holding sheets of paper with scribbled messages. The warrant officer went to find him. The girl was in the bedroom, doing her nails. He paid the Gecko well. All men of influence and authority had a Gecko on their payroll. They were young, without social skills, initiative or women, but they had extraordinary computing ability. They knew the inner secrets of what was planned, but they were welcomed only when their work was wanted. The Gecko did not eat or drink with them when they were away, and sat apart from them on a plane. He was in the front of the car and his opinion was never asked, unless they wanted the intricate details of computer security. The Major would have been unhappy not to have him close. He thought the boy gave him a 'firewall' of protection.

He was brought in must have been intercepted in the corridor because he carried a small plastic bag. He was dirty and scarred.

'What happened to you?' Not that the Major had much interest.

The boy said he had tripped on the pavement. He was not asked whether he wanted to go and clean up or whether his toothache had gone. He was given the notes. He could interpret the Major's writing, knew the codes and ciphers to be used, and where the messages should be sent. Before he was out of the suite they were talking among themselves, and he was ignored.

'I've typed the message,' Liz Tremlett said. 'What now? I'm still shaking. What do I do?'

'It'll go to the cipher room and the clerk'll shift it he'll know where to. I'll run it down to him.' The Bear smiled.

She might not have been the brightest star in Foreign and Commonwealth's firmament, but she was not stupid. She realised that the old marine, for all that he had done combat, was as excited as he had been at any time in his career. Her printer was spilling the pages.

'Did we do all right?'

'I'd say, Liz, you did a bit better than ''all right''. You did well. My take on it: he made an earth-moving decision to come in off the street, with his future, his very life, hanging on it. He expected to find an intelligence guy, a professional, but likely the questions would have come like a machine-gun firing at him and he might have run. You didn't threaten him and you started him down the hill. Now he's in free-fall and the proper people can leech on to him. He won't be allowed off the slide. You did well.'

It was said gruffly, and she blushed, then scooped up the four typed sheets and gave them to him. He had the disk in his hand that held the photo images of the boy in the lobby. The Bear went out. She could see, from her desk, the corner round which Natan had walked. He had seemed so vulnerable. She had wormed into his confidence, and doubted she'd ever hear of him again. She sat for a long time, very still, and wished she smoked. It was like it had never happened. She wondered how many others it would touch, when her signal hit VX, the eyesore by the Thames.

Late morning, and the sun shone on the gardens of the Villa del Aguila. He wandered slowly, contemplatively, across his lawns and avoided the area where the water spray played. Pavel Ivanov now lived far from his ethnic roots, and his new life left him with few regrets. A half-dozen passports carried his photograph Russian, Bulgarian, Israeli, Australian, Paraguayan and Czech. They were stored in the cellar safe, along with title deeds, more than a million euros, three automatic pistols and two machine-guns, with the documents that made legal the presence in Spain of the forty-four-year-old who had once called St Petersburg home. It was where his wife and son were. They were permitted, twice each year, to join him for a holiday on the Costa.

He thought his garden looked well. Pavel Ivanov was a multi-millionaire but not yet a euro billionaire. Huge success and vast wealth left one constraint, not negotiable, on his behaviour. He should not humiliate his wife. He should not behave in any way that would cause her to be sniggered at. Their marriage, nineteen years before, had brought together a wing of the Tambov gang with a limb of the Malyshev group at a time of internecine feuds and killings over the valuable gasoline and heating-oil contracts that dominated their lives. They were more important than drugs, weapons and the protection industry, which provided businessmen with roofs. She came from a prominent limb; his wing had less influence. The match, though, had opened doors, provided big opportunities. He had been ruthless, had gained authority, had earned the name 'the Tractor'. Had Pavel Ivanov belittled his wife, Anna, by flaunting a mistress he would have invited assassination. He did not flaunt the woman who analysed investment opportunities in his lawyer's office, or his affluence.

It was five years, shy of three or four weeks, since Pavel Ivanov had first arrived in Marbella and been shown the villa. He had walked in the garden, sat on the patio and seen the view, the privacy the location guaranteed. He had been told its name, had had it translated the Villa of the Eagle and had not queried the asking price. The owners accepted five million euros and the deal had depended on the paperwork going through in a working week. In the holiday complexes to which the tourists came, it would have required three months to get more than a sniff of the keys. He was at the main patio now, built around the pool, and there were kids' water toys. He had known of the big villa close to his at the time of purchase, that the owner was a banker of old wealth and modern discretion, resident most of the year in Madrid.

He had heard the throb of a veteran engine through the line of pines and high shrubs that marked the eastern boundary of the property. Alex had been with him Marko had stayed to protect the open doors on to the patio and they had gone off the lawn, through the bushes and trees to the concrete wall that had tumbler wires and coiled razor wire. Pavel Ivanov had climbed on to Alex's shoulders to peer over the top like the Berlin wall, before it had come down. He had laughed. An old man, in drill shorts, a sweat-stained shirt and a colonial hat, was behind a motor mower that coughed and spluttered. His immediate neighbours were Flight Lieutenant and Mrs Geoffrey Walsh, and their home was a small bungalow. That evening he had sent Alex round to collect the mower and bring it back for servicing in the garage, beside the two Mercedes. It had been returned in a week and worked a dream. The old couple existed in poverty.

It was said in Marbella, most particularly in the office of Rafael, Ivanov's lawyer, that the views from his patio and from the main windows in the ochre-coloured villa were the most sought-after in the district. He would have thought himself at peace there, except that an email had come earlier that morning. A visit was planned. Marko appeared from the side of the villa with Alex's wife. They went down the steps and towards the garage. The electric gates were opening. He did not have to look about for Alex, who would be armed and watching the gate.

The visit he had been alerted to was not one he could refuse lightly. The prospect made the only cloud in a clear sky. He watched the Mercedes, black, with privacy windows, slip out of the gates, which closed immediately after it. The visit would be, almost, a return to old times.

The two Serbians, Marko and Alex's wife, were recognised at the school gate. It was a good meeting place, and the street that ran up the hill between the schoolyard and the Guardia Civil headquarters was well filled. There was a babble of conversation and the squeals of children. Cigarette smoke hung over them, parents admired their children's art work, and they were acknowledged, as they waited for the two little ones to emerge. It was hot, and Alex's wife wore a halter top that exposed her arms, shoulders and much of her back, her only protection a small-brimmed hat. Marko wore a poplin windcheater there was no threat of rain but he needed something to cover his left armpit, where the CZ99 semi-automatic handgun nestled. It was now three years since his son and Alex's daughter had been enrolled at the school.

That date had marked a major change in the lives of the Russian organised-crime leader, Pavel Ivanov, his two permanent bodyguards, their wives and children: their breakout from life inside the Villa del Aguila.

Men, most of them unemployed because of the economic crisis, greeted Marko and asked his opinion of the Malaga football team, and women talked cheerfully to Alex's wife about the price of cooking oil and whether the chicken-pox epidemic would spread west from Fuengirola. He kept the windcheater zipped to the middle of his chest and held a folded newspaper over the left armpit. There were more children from eastern Europe in other Marbella schools, and down the coast at Puerto Banus, Estepona and Mijas, but no more at this school opposite the Guardia Civil barracks.

There were ironies and Marko a forty-two-year-old with a hard, chiselled face, a man who oozed strength, had throat tattoos and a skull shaped like a hammer head was not blessed with the humour that would have pointed to them. Threats stalked them at the villa on the hill. Few of the deals Pavel Ivanov had struck in the last three years had involved the transhipment of drugs, weapons, girls, or the laundering of money at which he had become a supreme expert. His business had been cleansed and he had achieved almost legitimacy. Threats came from others who were less successful burglary, mugging or 'protection' demands. The children could have been kidnapped for ransom. Ivanov had the household's security down to a minimum but enjoyed the loyalty of the two Serbian families. Matters involving the police, prosecutors and the specialist UDyCO team he could handle, but criminals made him anxious. So his men were always armed and well trained in the use of firearms.

The children came. He did not lift either of them, or hold a small fist, but let Alex's wife do that. There was little point in holding a child's hand when his own should have been dragging a handgun from its shoulder holster. They hurried to the car. It was only when they were inside the bulletproof, blast-proof vehicle, the doors were locked and the engine running, that he listened to the kids chatter about their morning's classes.

The MV Santa Maria was now five days out of the Venezuelan port of Maracaibo and was seven days from berthing in the cargo harbour of Cadiz, on the extreme south-west of the Iberian landmass. She was Liberian-registered, listed at 10,000 tonnes, had a crew of eighteen, and her holds were filled with aluminium ore from the Los Piriguajos mine. She was in calm seas and her speed would average 14 knots on a 3,840-mile journey. Personal fortunes and futures rested on two containers forward on her decks, the contents listed as 'hardwood furniture products'. Those who had raised the money, payment up-front, from backers for their purchase had no reason to doubt they'd made a sound investment.

A message had gone via relays on Cyprus and the Rock of Gibraltar, to the building overlooking Vauxhall Bridge. It was annotated with the code of a sub-station at Baku, and passed to a deciphering section. From there it went to an analyst, who moved it on to the Russian specialists. There, like a pebble carried downstream, it was snagged and was held for four hours. When an answer did not throw itself into a specialist's face, he tended to move on and find material more readily accessible. A remark to a colleague, an older man, challenged by the electronic age: had he heard of a UK agent killed by Russians, somewhere abroad?

The older man knew. 'The poor relations, the crowd across the river, he could have been one of theirs. Five years ago, I think. They had no local co-operation in Budapest hadn't asked for it. They didn't deign to tell us what they were doing and were burned. Fully deserved to be. Best I can do.'

The message went on its last journey, from south of the river to north, a rider attached: 'We would not want to intrude on private well-justified grief.'

'Caroline, you deserve a sight of this.' The deputy director general had come from his inner office and held the sheets of paper over Caro Watson's desk. 'You were a part of it, as I recall, the Damian Fenby business.'

He let the sheets fall. She clicked on her screensaver and could not answer him. She had been a broken reed when her hair dry she had received the call from the hotel front desk and gone down. There had been policemen with long faces. She had been driven to the hospital and had identified the body before its transfer to the morgue. Then she had roused the Thames House night-duty staffer, and had started to choke through the detail on her phone, encrypted. She believed that some in the office regarded it as a duty of care to continue to employ her but she was of precious little use to her colleagues. The first two years had been pitiful and her effectiveness at little above zero; the third year had been an improvement. For the last two years she had been a woman with a set, humourless face and moods to match. She did her work with almost manic intensity and allowed no colleague close to her except one. The opportunities for her to have 'quality time' with Winnie Monks were rare. She found her old boss once every six weeks on the bench at the back of the gardens. Now she read at speed, and the knot tightened.

He said, 'I've just come off the phone to Winnie. They're going to do their business up in the north tomorrow or the morning after. She doesn't need to be there. She's driving back tonight. You'll see her here late this evening. We're sorting out your travel schedule and you'll fulfil the rendezvous agreed to. You'll have a two-man escort and your safety is of paramount importance to us. It may be that false information's been thrown at us or that we're confronting a breakthrough that has so far eluded us. I don't want to sound like a scratched gramophone record, but there won't be an army of the SRI at your shoulder. I hope they'll remain in blissful ignorance of your short spell in that God-forsaken country. Why you? I don't think, Caroline, that anyone in this building with the sole exception of Winnie is better equipped to hear what the boy has to say.'

He was gone. She heard the door to the inner office close. Her hands shook, and she could barely restrain them.

The gratitude expressed for the tray of tea and biscuits was sincere.

They were not founding directors of a firm of chartered surveyors, lawyers or tax accountants. Known to all in their limited and highly specialised trade as Snapper and Loy, they were a photographic surveillance partnership. They were much in demand and their time was bid for at priority auctions by Thames House and Anti-terrorist Command. The elderly lady accepted their thanks and backed out of the front bedroom they now occupied.

The older man's name was on a score of files, but in the trade he was known as Snapper. He sat on a hard chair with an upright back, and the curtains were drawn across the bay window in front of him. He'd borrowed a card table from the house owner and his main camera lay on it. His preference was for the Canon model, EOS 5D Digital, with an 80400ml lens attached. His tripod was extended but not used, and 840 Swarovski binoculars hung on his chest. He dunked a biscuit in his tea and nibbled it, but his eyes never left the front door across the street. The 'plot' was a suburban 1930s pebbledash semi-detached home, and the 'subject' was a thirty-two-year-old mathematics lecturer. Snapper was a big man, not obese but overweight, and he was used to supplies of tea and biscuits; quite often cakes were made for him in a downstairs kitchen. Snapper did not exercise. He did not spend days and nights in farm ditches and undergrowth, fighting hypothermia and aggressive dogs. His employers were the Metropolitan Police Service, and he had the rank of detective constable. When he was in demand and hired out to Five, the MPS made a good profit. At heart he was a policeman, with their culture and disciplines. His eyes were only off the 'plot' when he briefly catnapped. Then Loy did the watch.

They were a team. Loy short for Aloysius was smaller, younger by twenty years, and powerfully built. He carted the gear, went over garden fences, climbed ladders and was the pack-mule and the errand boy. The relationship between them was such that Loy could anticipate what was needed and have it ready.

Their talents were many. Snapper could turn up at a front door in a utilities uniform and, once inside, could charm a resident into allowing their home to be used as a surveillance platform in the fight against terrorism. He could rustle up an image of decency and honesty to make that householder join the fight and not feel the risk of subsequent consequences. As a senior had once said, he'd 'charm his way into a Rottweiler's kennel, that one, and have it licking his face'. Loy never made a sound, never dirtied a carpet or took paint off a wall when shifting the kit, and was always punctiliously polite. He didn't doze during the rare hours that Snapper slept, and was scrupulously tidy. When Snapper and Loy had left a surveillance job, many had mourned the loss of friends.

The 'subject' had started, abruptly, to visit a mosque in the town. The word was that the elders at his previous place of worship had found him increasingly strident in his condemnation of the 'Crusaders' who sent their armies to the Middle East and the sub-continent; there was intelligence that the 'plot' was used for meetings. Snapper photographed Loy logged each visitor and their car number plate and was building a portfolio with the hand-held camera. He had the tripod ready but rarely used it: he reckoned a camera on a tripod made a photographer lazy, that it was more likely a ray of sunshine, a streetlight or a car's headlights would catch a lens if it was tripod-mounted and reflect back from it. Little details mattered in his trade. There were five white families left in that Asian-dominated street, and among them Snapper had found the widow of a prison officer. He had done the chat while he was shown the scrapbook featuring her husband in uniform and the plastic-protected commendations for meritorious service. He would hang on in there until the next morning, or the one after, and would only slip away with Loy loaded up when the sledgehammer brigade and the search party turned up.

The door across the street opened. Snapper stiffened, lifted the camera, did fast focus, captured the image of a visitor hugging the lecturer, then hurrying away. The 'subject' would likely do a minimum of twenty years and his children would be grown-up by the time he next walked down the street with them.