They moved out with discretion. Snapper did the packing and checked that everything was accounted for, and Loy did the lifting. By the time Snapper had closed the bedroom door, and Loy was on his second trip down the stairs, it would have been hard to know that the room with the window facing the home of the lecturer, the target, had ever been a forward base for photographic surveillance.

The hit had been postponed twice. Sometimes, from a vantage-point, they stayed to watch the armed cordon spill round a property and the guys with the battering rams cave in the front door. Usually they were out and gone before the swoop.

This time a call had come and they'd be going a few hours early, but all the links were in place, the photos had been taken and the associates marked down. Their work would be a jigsaw piece in getting the target a twenty-year stretch.

He'd said they were pulling out because of a call from Winnie's people.

Loy had grimaced.

Already Loy had brought the small white van, with the name of a jobbing electrician on the side, to the back entry. It was always, as Snapper knew, a tense and difficult time for the householder. All right when two active-service police were in the house and protection was on hand if a target had wind of how the house was contributing to a criminal caseload; different when they were gone and there was no longer the reassurance of those footfalls upstairs. Snapper was fond of this lady and grateful for her hospitality. She'd be vulnerable now, and alone. The chance of her having a panic button fitted had been lessened by the cut-backs. He'd try to get back, before any trial, and bring some flowers or a box of decent chocolates.

He wished her luck and held her hand a little longer than was necessary, then was on his way. He sometimes accused himself and Loy of bringing innocent people into the line of fire, exposing them to acute danger. Now his head was cluttered with thoughts of Winnie Monks: the best.

'You can't credit it,' Posie had said.

'Pretty grim, pretty bleak,' Jonno had said.

He'd driven them carefully down the track and past the cameras. They had passed a huge hotel complex: abandoned, left as derelict, its grounds overwhelmed with weeds.

They had left the mountain behind them and reached a road. They had passed the Calle Padre Paco Ostas, a shallow slope, and on its right side a line of apartment buildings except that they had no walls. No one was working there.

'How could that be allowed to happen?' she had asked.

'Someone went bust.'

'Who'd want to come here, and be miles from any action? The beach is an age away, and you'd have to sit on the roof to see the sea.'

Jonno had wanted to give the car a run and let the battery top itself so he'd turned on to the main road and gone west. He'd come off at San Pedro. The place had nothing. It was satellite dishes, handkerchief-sized balconies and English signs. Old Brits were walking with little plastic bags of shopping, using sticks. There was a place where two old men sat and talked, wearing wide-brimmed sunhats and nursing small beers. They came back through a maze of lanes flanked by homes where rubbish had been blown against the gates. Notices proclaimed twenty-four-hour security and warned of guard dogs. Everywhere was 'for sale' or 'to let'. A car went by, a BMW convertible but an old model with tired paintwork. The driver flicked a cigarette out and had a girl cuddled close to him who was young enough to be his daughter, with Slav cheeks and bottle-blonde hair. They saw flowers on a pavement that were already wilting in the heat. Jonno wondered who had died there and why. They nudged along a waterfront road, past cafes that sold fish and chips, and yachts tied up in a harbour. There was an Irish pub and football from England that night.

'It must have been pretty once,' she'd said. 'Then they screwed it. Why?'

'I can't get my head round what's been done.'

They had come back to Marbella, gone north from Puerto Banus and were on a main road. There were, either side of them, closed shops and restaurants, empty showroom windows and apartments. It was as if the world had moved on. In Marbella, they found a supermarket and Jonno was brave enough to switch off the car's engine. They bought what they had to and fled.

They drove back up the hill, the mountain towering above them, dwarfing the empty hotel.

She said, 'It's skin deep, the affluence. Nothing attractive. It's a sham.'

He said they'd find somewhere to dance that night, because he'd promised.

6.

The club was off the Paseo Maritimo, which divided the town of Marbella from the beach. The harbour area had restaurants and moorings the music drew Jonno and Posie.

There was a car park but it was full so Jonno had parked a couple of blocks away from the shore. The approach to the club was poorly lit. He paused on the far side of the road and waited for the traffic to let them cross. Some cars were parked on the far side of the road: one was a blue BMW convertible. He had Posie's arm and thought she looked pretty good, in a short dress, low-cut.

As they waited to cross, her hips started to move. She was chattering and giggling as if she had put the disappointments behind her. He noted the BMW, its colour memory stirred and that it was parked close to the walkway going down to the club.

Because of the dim lighting, Jonno didn't notice that one kerbstone was proud of the others it had not settled well in its grouting. There was movement at the club's entrance and the doors swung open, letting out a blast of high-octane music. He felt Posie's hip bounce off his own.

A man came out, exchanged words with the bouncers and started up the walkway. Jonno remembered him: he was the man who had flicked the cigarette out of the blue BMW convertible. He was with the same girl. She had on a gold halter top, with nothing underneath, skimpy gold shorts and high heels. Jonno thought she was just over the age of consent. He felt Posie flinch. Perhaps the man who had come past her had elbowed her. They were about to cross the road, but the man was already halfway over. He was going towards a shadowed place where the gutter, the kerb and the pavement were hard to see. He was reaching behind him, his light leather jacket hitched up, feeling in the waistband at the small of his back.

In front, the BMW owner lit his cigarette. The glow from the Zippo illuminated thin lips and a pale complexion. His eyes were hidden by shades Plonker, thought Jonno and he tugged the girl's arm to keep her moving.

Ahead of them, the man in the leather jacket had a pistol in his hand.

The breath choked in Jonno's throat.

The hand kept the pistol hidden, pressed against a black shirt. Where had Jonno seen a pistol before? School, the Combined Cadet Force some of the kids played at being soldiers and the 'officers', who came from the Territorials place in Bristol, had had pistols on lanyards. And he had seen a pistol in the belt of the man who had helped them with the car. This pistol was hidden from the owner of the BMW convertible, who walked briskly towards it.

His back was exposed to Jonno. It was unprotected. He heard Posie stutter something, as if she wanted to scream but couldn't. She ducked her head and ground her face into Jonno's shirt.

The man in front seemed to freeze, and the girl swayed on her heels. The gunman stepped across the gutter, the kerb and the pavement.

'For you, you fecker, King.'

The pistol was up.

The man tripped. The man fired. Two shots. The BMW owner didn't fall. It seemed to Jonno that he had tripped. The target went sideways. The girl was left. She must have flung back an arm the movement had unhitched the shoulder strap on one side of her top. Jonno saw her breast, then looked for the target and saw only blackness.

The gunman spun.

They had eye contact. The pistol was in his hand. Jonno stood in the way that the man would flee, was an obstruction. The man had a pistol and likely had loaded it with more bullets than the two he'd already fired. Jonno grabbed Posie's arm and pushed her down. She squealed as she hit the road, and Jonno went down like a lead weight on top of her. She was under him and hidden. He was no threat. He held his breath. One of the man's feet was on his shoulder, then gone. There was traffic. Horns blasted, someone was yelling, and the two bouncers were bawling. He could smell the scent of gunfire. He let his weight shift to his knees and Posie half sat up. The target came out of the shadows, grabbed the girl and threw her into the BMW. Then he was into the driver's seat, gunning the engine.

The car accelerated. The man was King. The gunman had been Irish. They said in the papers when there were street shootings that it had been the 'work of a professional assassin'. It had been a crap effort, third grade, Jonno realised. Posie was shivering beside him, terrorised. Jonno remembered that there had been a moment when the gunman's back was turned to him, and he could have intervened. He had not. His shoulder hurt where the foot had trodden, and the smell was still in his nose.

The BMW convertible had gone down the street.

Did he want to be a witness? Did he want to hang around? Jonno said, 'Come on, Posie, let's get the hell out.'

He had his arm round her as they turned their backs on the place and headed for the car.

It was a day of disruption in the life of Pavel Ivanov, once the Tractor.

It had begun in fine sunshine, the temperature twenty degrees. Warmth played up off the patio and the cover of the pool. Long ago he would have rearranged the face and body of any low-life guy seeking to mock him. Respect had followed him, and the few who despised him had stayed well clear. Different times. His day was disrupted because the wives of Alex and Marko were returning to Belgrade, with the children. The husbands fathers would drive them to Malaga airport, and he would be alone for three hours.

He waved from the door and the cars nudged forward. The windows were down and small hands waved. To them, he was not the Tractor but Uncle Pavel. They were gone and the gates closed. It was almost unthinkable that he would be without the protection of one of his minders. So many had died in Moscow and St Petersburg, in Perm, Ekaterinberg or Novosibirsk because they were big men and envied. Enough were in danger of kidnap here on the Costa from gangs of criminals, and of being dumped on the hillside. Now that Alex and Marko had gone, he would go down into the basement, unlock the steel-faced door and take out an assault rifle, with ammunition. He would sit on the patio, his back against a wall, with the weapon on his knee. He would glance often at his watch to see how much more of the three hours remained.

He should have been preparing for the visit of the man from Pskov, who sent messages in a code Marko and Alex could read. The man would drag him back towards old routes long abandoned. To have refused to meet the man would have been madness because now he had no powerful roof to protect him.

The sun climbed and the shadows shortened. The trees were tight set with flowering shrubs under them and masked the wall between his property and that of the old Briton. He heard no sound from the Villa Paraiso. He did not know if he would ever be able to throw off the old world, once as comfortable as a glove, now strange and unsettling. He went to get the rifle from the basement. He had never known fear when he had walked in the old world.

Winnie Monks's shoes were dirty when Dawson led the small party through the turnstiles of Madrid Zoo.

Neither Kenny nor Xavier had remarked on her determination to tramp in undergrowth below the university buildings, or on that of the Six man that they should meet a source from the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia among the animal compounds.

'All fucking skin and bone,' she murmured, and was rewarded with a savage glance from Dawson, who was approaching a consumptive-looking middle-aged man. Then she grinned. 'As a community, we spooks are hardly stereotypes.'

She stood back, with Kenny and Xavier, to allow Dawson to greet his contact. She understood. The listing in a station chief's mobile of one middle-ranking official in CNI or any other intelligence agency could make the difference between a career that went nowhere and one that hit the stratosphere. Her shoes were dirty and she had laddered her tights because she had insisted on scrambling down a hillside to look for shallow trenches, dug seventy-odd years before. She had bellowed up to them, 'I have a feeling that it was here Emrys the Brigade fell. Close to the university. His people never had the body back, but there were extra flowers put on the family grave in the town. The old socialists still do it.' There were no trenches.

She'd given up. 'But he died with a gun in his hand doing what he believed in. He had a cause and got off his arse to do something about it.'

Dawson's contact planted kisses on Dawson's cheeks. Dawson said something, and the other laughed. Then Dawson waved her forward.

He did the introductions. She was Winnie and he was Gonsalvo. He had laughed because her mission was to secure close cooperation in the arrest of a Russian national believed to be coming soon, perhaps, to the Costa.

Why was that funny? Silence fell. They walked. Dawson was on one side of the Spaniard, Winnie on the other. Xavier and Kenny were back-markers.

They did the flamingos, some contemplative owls, an overweight lynx on an artificial rock, two leopards, then a Barbary lion. Dawson translated what the man had said, in a reedy whistling and feeble voice: 'It comes from Morocco. There are none in the wild. He lives with his women and has the best roar of any lion species. It can be heard from eight kilometres. The zebras, gazelles and ostriches live opposite, within the sound and smell of the creature that would kill them. That must be hard for them. They have to pretend the lion isn't there. You follow me, Miss Winnie?'

'Why not? See nothing, hear nothing, know nothing.'

They had moved on to north African sheep and Bactrian camels, double-humped, an 'endangered species'. She accepted what she was told. She valued truth in any briefing.

'First, there is little stomach for doing the bidding of the English and running errands for your country. We play host to almost a million British people. We like them for their money and little else. The Russian comes here and breaks no law, except possibly illegal entry. Maybe he invests, launders, and his cash goes into our economy. A surveillance operation is launched on the villa at which you tell us he'll arrive and officers are tasked with the protection of your principals. Very soon it is known throughout the police headquarters in Marbella where the UDyCO are based. The man who lives there, who is to be visited, I guarantee, Miss Winnie, that he owns at least one policeman, maybe a magistrate, and another officer or two in UDyCO in Malaga.'

They were looking at birds of prey. Lightweight chains fastened them to perches.

'I'm proud to be Spanish, Miss Winnie. I love my country but I'm a realist. Corruption in Spain is endemic. Our word listo means "chancer", someone who crosses the line of legality, but it also encompasses a man who is shrewd, cunning. In Spain it is possible to be a tax avoider and to hold your head high if you're also an evader. We do not have the Anglo-Saxon horror of illegality. Organised crime is embedded in Spanish society. Corruption is all around you. I tell you, Miss Winnie, we wouldn't want to help you with this man. Have I disappointed you?'

'No more so than if I'd stepped in cow shit,' she answered. She noted that her remark was not translated into Spanish.

'I wouldn't expect to see you again on this matter in my country.'

'Of course not.'

She shook hands with the counter-intelligence officer, and Dawson kissed the man's cheeks. He walked away and was lost among schoolchildren clustered around a teacher.

Dawson gazed at her. She looked back to the tethered birds.

'I told you,' he said.

'You told me.'

'Is that the end of it?'

'Is it likely?'

He chuckled. 'I'd rather I was kept away from collateral and consequences. What do you plan?'

She looked at the birds again. 'I'd like to take a fucking bolt-cutter to those chains, cut them free and see them fly away.'

Dawson said, 'There are things we'd like to do, things that might be right to do, and things we cannot do, Miss Monks.'

'Tell you the truth, Dawson, I feel quite at home among these creatures that are extinct in the wild, or nearly. I'm a dying breed old-fashioned when a door gets slammed. Means you have to hit it with your fucking shoulder.'

'We should be on our way.'

He would do a cut-out, he told her, and drop them at a taxi rank. They could go independently to the airport. In normal times she would have said she detested men of privilege, confidence and certainty . . . but these were not normal times. She trusted Dawson. And she'd have the bastard with the mutilated hand.

Xavier said, 'She didn't seem too bothered to have it chucked back in her face. Which means . . .'

He had been with her first in Belfast. He was nine years older and had been captivated. To have a younger woman as their superior would have disjointed others' noses. Not if it was Winnie Monks. He was married, had a home and a family, and had been on liaison at New Scotland Yard since the killing of the Graveyard Team, but he looked back to the days in the Province as the most fulfilling of his professional life. They had run assets, organised lifts and cajoled co-operation out of stone-faced Special Branch detectives. She'd charmed the boots off potentially hostile army officers to get manpower for search operations. The rules? He wouldn't have said she knew them. When the call had come, Xavier had cleared his desk in less than ten minutes and been on his way.

Kenny said, 'Which means that alternatives are tucked away in the Boss's mind. We might be be told, we might not. Perhaps that matters and perhaps it doesn't.'

He had met her off the flight at Aldergrove. She'd been a slip of a girl, but the only time Kenny had seen her fazed was when they'd sat in his car and he'd produced a service pistol, a Browning. He'd told her to put it between her legs and drop her handbag over it. She'd gazed into his eyes and asked what he'd do if they were jumped. He'd said he'd grab the weapon, and mischief had sparkled in her eyes. He'd learned to accept that the RUC men who rode shotgun when they went on asset meets in forestry car parks worshipped her. They queued to go out with her. That hadn't happened with anyone before and probably wasn't repeated with any other officer shipped in from London. He was twelve years older than the Boss and had never queried her decisions: there were still papers on his desk, abandoned when he had answered the call. He thought her unique.

'She liked the boy we all did but it's about more than liking him.'

'The team governs everything. Spill the blood of anyone on her team and you spill hers. There'll be alternatives.' Kenny chuckled.

They followed Winnie Monks and Dawson to the car.

'We're honoured that you've devoted so much time and energy to this matter.'

The Major was a meld of tsar and commissar in Pskov. 'It gives me great pleasure to serve my community in this small way.' He had the power that came from extreme wealth and connections. He was about to leave the near-completed building site where the four walls and most of the roof marked a state-of-the-art children's hospice. It was a project with which few could argue. That some two-thirds of the money for the project had come from the sale of refined heroin and the movement of teenage girls from Moldova or Romania to West European bars and brothels was not important.

'It is a much-needed facility and will be envied by many communities,' the future director said, his hands clasped nervously he knew the source of the benefactor's affluence.

'I'm proud to help,' he said, with what appeared to be humility. The same conversation had been played out earlier that morning at a new kindergarten for the children and babies of town hall and municipality workers on Lenina Street, and would be repeated at the next location. His wife was with him. She wore jewelled earrings. They were not suitable for a woman of her age, and were out of place on a building site.

Officials bobbed their heads to the Major and his wife. She was the daughter of a former general. The general met others of similar status at drinking clubs in Moscow. In the clubs there were links to the siloviki, the men who prowled the Kremlin's corridors and provided 'roofs', protection. One of the roles the Major played which endeared him to the siloviki was that of an enforcer. There was a loose association, an obshak, of groups who would arrive, 'sort out' a problem and depart; a benefit of a strong roof. Through his wife, the Major had the roof and a reputation as an enforcer who solved problems. A journalist had written scurrilous articles in a blog about the conduct of special-forces troops in Chechnya and did not listen to warnings. The Major had fired the shots, the warrant officer had been his back marker and the master sergeant had driven the car. There had been a gang leader from Murmansk who had believed himself too powerful to have to sweeten the siloviki: he had been fished out of the oily waters of the docks, having floated to the surface between two half-sunken ice breakers. And there had been a young British agent, with the case handcuffed to him, who had investigated weapons shipments on barges down the Danube . . .

The Major, his wife and his entourage were driven to the clinic where a new scanner, made in Japan, had been installed three weeks earlier. He had paid for it. The town was his fiefdom, and he had the support of the National Tax Collection agency in Moscow to run the local service in Pskov. He was supreme, and no clouds ranged above him. The morning was crisp and clear.

Natan stayed in his room. He worked. He was alone in the world that offered him privacy, success and confidence. The meeting with the girl in the back-street cafe and his memories of Liz, the girl in Baku, were shut out.

His paymaster, the man with three fingers and presence, did not trust his one-time employer the FSB. That organisation, which controlled much of the Major's work, could have supplied secure communications. But the Major did not trust anything promised by the security apparatus. In the absence of trust an opening had appeared, and Natan had crawled through it.

He typed on his keyboard, sent messages.

It was only when he typed that he could avoid his memories of the meetings. Natan understood that the life of the Major was divided into two separate sectors: there were days when the traffic he worked on involved officers in the Lubyanka, and there were more when his business did not reflect the state's priorities. For it to work, in the void where no trust existed, there had to be secure communication. Natan gave it. The Major understood nothing of the new technology.

The Major believed the majority of his money came from traditional trafficking along the routes smugglers had used over centuries. It was not admitted that the Gecko had the skill to break into bank accounts, utilise cloned cards, transfer cash. Perhaps the Major feared what the Gecko could achieve. Natan had explained the intricacies of the computer as if he was talking to a child. The Major's eyes had glazed. Natan had reeled off the titles of Internet Service Providers and Internet Protocol; the police had neither the resources nor the manpower in the US, Britain or Germany to monitor, follow and decode conversations. He had promised them that the providers stored 'Word documents' but did not bank 'speech connections'. When he used jargon and spoke fast he lost the Major and was supreme.

But he had done it. Natan had gone to the embassy in Baku and had denounced the hand that fed him. It could not be undone.

He sent messages to computers in Mauretania, Morocco, and Marbella, and confirmed the visit of the Major, his minders and himself. Without him they were juveniles and could not survive. He had betrayed them.

When he had closed down the computer he would take out the Nokia phone, tap in the password, open the directory, find the single entry and click on it. He would hear her clipped voice giving recorded instructions. Then he would speak into the void and say when he would arrive in Nouakchott. She had told him she would be there.