英语小说网

Sleet is spattering against the window of the Airbus as it taxis to the runway. A stewardess with over-bleached hair is giving a listless safety demonstration. Canned music rises and falls in volume.

"That bad, eh?"

"Are they serving drinks on this flight, do you think?"

"Yeah, even though he knows that, I'm still going to wherever it is that I'm going with some other guy."

"I know the hotel," Lance says. "It's on Prospekt Mira, and absolutely bloody enormous. Probably the biggest in Russia."

"Eve, this is Aeroflot. Relax."

Lance glances at the passenger on his left, a bullet-headed figure wearing a bulky jacket in the black and red colours of FC Spartak Moscow, and shrugs. "There's no answer. My ex-wife hated that I never talked to her about my work, but what can you do? She liked a gossip with her pals, and with a couple of drinks inside her she got very chatty indeed. There are couples who cope better than others, but that's as far as it goes."

"You told him I was coming?"

"Not having sex?"

"Sorry, Lance, it's been a really shit couple of days. I think Niko may even have left me."

"I know I shouldn't have. But better than not saying anything, or lying, and him then finding out."

"That bad. Venice was tricky enough; this time I can't even tell him where I'm going. He'd totally freak if he knew. And even though he knows that you and I are absolutely, you know…"

"Don't be surprised if I'm not here when you get back from wherever the fuck it is you're going," he said, leaning balefully on his crutches.

Eve nods, and wishes she hadn't. She feels hung over, sleep-deprived and emotionally fragile. She and Niko were up until almost 3 a. m., drinking wine that neither of them felt like drinking, and saying things that could not be unsaid. Eventually she announced that she intended to go to bed, and Niko insisted with wounded determination on sleeping on the sofa.

"Don't. If I don't have the right to know your movements, you don't have the right to know mine, OK?"

"Why? What difference does that make?"

"I'm just asking."

She fetched him blankets. Sitting on the sofa with his head bowed and his crutches at his side he looked lost, a displaced person in his own home. It distressed Eve to see him like this, so steeped in hurt, but some cold and clear-thinking part of her knew that this battle had to be fought and won. That she might back down was an alternative she never considered.

"OK."

"Where will you go?"

"Vodka's good for a hangover, isn't it?"

"About three and a half hours."

"Tried and tested."

"How long's this flight?" she asks Lance.

"As soon as we're airborne, catch that stewardess's eye."

The hotel, as Lance has described, is vast. The lobby is the size of a railway station, its pillared expanse and functional grandeur redolent of high Sovietism. Their twenty-second-floor rooms are drab, with worn furnishings, but the views are spectacular. Opposite Eve's window, on the far side of Prospekt Mira, is the complex of ornate pavilions, walkways, gardens and fountains comprising the former All-Russia Exhibition Centre. At a distance it still has a fading glamour, especially beneath the enamel-blue October sky.

Eve reflects. She feels renewed by the night's sleep, and unexpectedly optimistic. The fight with Niko, and the issues surrounding it, have receded to a background murmur, a distant shimmer. She's ready for whatever the day and the city might bring. "I'd like to go for a walk," she says. "Get some Russian air in my lungs. We could go to that park opposite; I'd love to take a closer look at that sculpture of the rocket."

"So what's the plan?" Lance asks, as they drink a second cup of coffee in the hotel's Kalinka restaurant.

"Yeah."

"I remember Jin Qiang saying much the same in Shanghai."

"No names. Just that it's someone Richard knows from his time here. An FSB officer would be my guess. Probably someone quite high-up."

"This is Moscow. We're here under our own names, and we can count on those names being on some list of foreign intelligence operatives. Our arrival won't have gone unnoticed, trust me. And obviously our contact knows we're here."

"Who is this person? Any idea?"

"Then we've got two and a half hours. I don't mind going by myself."

"Richard was head of station here, right?"

"I think Richard saw those relationships as a kind of fail-safe. So that if one of their leaders, or ours, were to go completely off the rails…"

"You seriously think that I'm at risk? Or that we are?"

"Not a lot. But he always had a way of getting on with people, even when things got frosty at the diplomatic level."

"So does that happen a lot? Senior officers keeping lines of communication open with the other side?"

"If you go, I come with you."

"Oleg said we'd be contacted at the hotel at eleven o'clock."

"That sort of thing."

Fifteen minutes later they're standing at the foot of the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. This is a hundred-metre-high representation, in shining titanium, of a rocket rising on its exhaust plume. Beside them, a kebab vendor is setting up his stand.

"I always felt so sorry for Laika, that dog they sent up," Eve says, pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her parka jacket. "I read about her when I was a child, and I used to dream of her alone in the capsule, far away in space, not knowing that she would never return to earth. I know there were humans who died in the space programme, but it was Laika that I found so heartbreaking. Don't you think?"

"Wiser heads might prevail?"

"I always wanted a dog. My Uncle Dave managed a waste depot outside Redditch, and every so often he'd invite us kids round and we'd send his terriers in after the rats. They'd kill maybe a hundred in a session. Complete bloody mayhem, and the smell was diabolical."

"Yeah, well. My dad always said Dave made a fortune out of that place. Most of it from turning a blind eye when blokes turned up at night with lumpy shapes rolled up in carpeting."

"What a lovely childhood memory."

"Put it like this. He retired aged forty, moved to Cyprus, and hasn't lifted a finger since, except to play golf." He hunches into his coat. "We should keep moving."

"Seriously?"

"Any particular reason?"

The park, built in the mid-twentieth century to celebrate the economic achievements of the Soviet state, is vast and melancholy. Triumphal arches, their columns flaking and weather-streaked, frame empty air. Neo-classical pavilions stand padlocked and deserted. Visitors huddle on benches, staring into the middle distance as if defeated by the attempt to make sense of their nation's recent history. And above it all, that almost artificially blue sky, and the scudding white clouds.

"So Lance, when you were here before…"

"If anyone's got surveillance on us, and that's somewhere between possible and probable, we're not going to know if we stay still."

"OK. Let's walk."

"What were you actually doing?"

"Go on."

He shrugs. A solitary roller skater whirrs past them. "Bread-and-butter stuff, mostly. Keeping an eye on people who needed an eye kept on them. Seeing who came and went."

"Agent-handling?"

"Lance, I'm not that naive."

They're rounding an ornamental lake, its surface furrowed by the wind.

"Don't look now," Lance says. "Hundred metres behind us. Single gent in a grey overcoat, pork-pie hat, looking at a map."

"I was more of a talent-spotter. If I felt one of their people had potential, and wasn't being fed to us, I'd pass it on and an approach would be made. With walk-ins, I helped filter out the obvious nutters."

"Certainly keeping eyes on us."

"He picked us up when we left the rocket statue."

"That we do what we're going to do anyway. Go and have a look at the metro station, like good tourists, and make our way back to the hotel. If possible resisting the temptation to turn round and stare at our FSB chum."

"How long have you known?"

"What do you suggest?"

"Following us?"

Entry to the metro station is via a circular pillared atrium. Inside it's bustling but spacious, and after buying a ticket each they descend by escalator to the palatial underground concourse. At the sight of it Eve stops dead, causing a woman to ram her behind the knees with a shopping trolley before pushing brusquely past. Eve, however, is captivated. The central hall is vast, and lit with ornate chandeliers. The walls and vaulted ceiling are white marble; archways faced in green mosaic lead to the railway platforms. Passengers hurry to and from the trains in swirling cross-currents, a young man is playing a song Eve vaguely recognises on a battered guitar, a beggar displaying military service medals kneels with head lowered and hands outstretched.

"I know. Just saying."

"Everyone thinks they know it. It's the most annoying song ever written. It's called "Posledniy Raz". The Russian equivalent of the 'Macarena'."

Eve freezes, wide-eyed. She hears the tiny mewing of the kittens, and as if from a distance, screaming. Then she's dragged to her feet, and Lance is strong-arming her towards the exit. Everyone else has the same idea and as the crowd presses around them, shoulders barging and elbows shoving, Eve is lifted from her feet. She feels herself losing a shoe and tries to duck down for it, but is swept forward, the press of bodies against her ribcage so unyielding that she gasps for breath. The clamp tightens, points of light burst before her eyes, a voice yells in her ear -- "Seryozha, Seryozha" -- and the last thing she knows before her legs give way and the darkness rises to meet her is that from somewhere, somehow, she can still hear that maddening, insinuating song.

"The things you know, Lance, honestly…" She stops. "Oh my goodness gracious. Look."

Lance and Eve allow themselves to be drawn along the concourse by the crowd. "What's that song?" she asks. "I'm sure I know it."

As Eve falls to one knee, intending to touch a finger to the impossibly soft head of one of the kittens, a fluttering wind touches her hair, followed by a smacking sound. The face of the man on the bench seems to fold inwards, grin still in place, as his skull bloodily voids itself against the marble wall.

An elderly man is sitting on a stone bench. At his feet is a cardboard box full of new-born kittens. He grins toothlessly at Eve. His eyes are a pale, watery blue.

"Can you walk?" Lance scans the area urgently. "Because we really, really need to get away from here."

Catching her, hoisting her up so that her head lolls on his shoulder, Lance carries her onto the escalator. This too is packed tight with passengers but finally they reach the atrium, and he lowers her into a seated position against a pillar. Opening her eyes she blinks, gulps air, feels the waves of dizziness rise and fall.

Eve knows that she should act decisively, but she feels so light-headed and nauseous that she can't bring herself to move. Shock, a small voice tells her. But knowing that she's in shock doesn't dispel the meaty smack of the bullet, the infolding face, the brains tumbling from the skull like summer pudding. Posledniy Raz. The kittens, she thinks vaguely. Who will look after the kittens? Then she leans forward and vomits noisily onto her bare feet.

Her lungs heaving, Eve kicks off the remaining shoe as Lance pulls her to a standing position. She sways for a moment, the floor cold beneath her bare feet, and attempts to order her thoughts. Someone has just tried to shoot her in the back of the head. The old man with the kittens has had his brains blown out. The shooter might at any moment catch up with them.

"Kogo-to zastrelili," Lance tells him, pointing into the metro. "Someone's been shot."

Immediately outside the metro station, four solidly built men are waiting. Behind them, a black van bearing the insignia of the FSB is drawn up on the tarmac. A fifth man, wearing a pork-pie hat, stands a short distance from the others, making no attempt to disguise the fact that he's watching the outpouring passengers closely.

Eve's retching, and the evasive action taken by those passing her, attracts the men's attention. By the time she straightens up, wet-eyed and shaking, they're moving determinedly towards her.

"Come," says one of them, in English, placing a hand on her elbow. He's wearing a leather flat cap and a padded winter jacket, and looks neither friendly nor unfriendly. Like his three colleagues, he has a large handgun holstered on his belt.

Eve stares at him wretchedly. Her feet are freezing.

"I don't think we've got much choice," Lance says, as passengers continue to stream past them. "Probably safer there than anywhere else."

The man in the leather cap ignores his words. "Please," he says, gesturing towards the black van. "Go in."

"Shit," she answers, not turning round.

"How are you feeling?" Lance asks.

The drive is conducted in silence and at high speed, the van swerving aggressively from lane to lane. As they race southwards down Prospekt Mira, Eve attempts to focus her thoughts, but the swaying van and the overpowering smell of petrol, body odour, cologne and her own vomit make her nauseous, and it's all she can do not to throw up again. Staring through the windscreen at the road in front of them, she runs a hand through her hair. Her forehead is clammy.

"Don't worry."

"I know, not ideal. But I think we're safer with these guys than on the street."

"I hope so. I fucking hope so."

"Don't worry?" Her voice is a rasp. "Lance, someone just tried to fucking shoot me. I've got bits of sick between my toes. And we've been abducted."

They swing into a wide square, dominated by a vast and cheerless edifice in ochre brick. "The Lubyanka," Lance says. "Used to be the headquarters of the KGB."

"Great."

"Now occupied by the FSB, who are basically the KGB with better dentistry."

The driver takes a road to the side of the building, makes a turn, and parks. The rear of the Lubyanka is a wasteland of building works and litter. Wire grilles cover windows impenetrable with grime. The man in the leather cap steps down from the front passenger seat, and slides open the van door.

She turns to Lance, wide-eyed with apprehension. He tries to get up but is pressed firmly back into his seat.

"She come, you stay."

She feels herself boosted towards the van door. Leather-cap waits outside, blank-faced.

Oxana Vorontsova is walking at the side of a road in a city that both is and isn't Perm. It's evening, and snow is falling. The road is bordered by tall, flat-fronted buildings, and between these the dark expanse of a river is visible, and ice-floes painted with snow. As Oxana walks, the landscape takes shape ahead of her, as if she's in a 1990s computer game. Walls rise up, the road unrolls. Everything is made up of graduated flecks of black, white and grey, like the wing-scales of a moth.

"Come," he says to Eve.

"This could be what we came for," says Lance. "Good luck."

Eve feels empty, even of fear. "Thanks," she whispers, and steps down onto a cold scattering of builders' grit. She's hurried past an entrance covered by corrugated iron to a low doorway surmounted by a hammer and sickle in carved stone. Leather-cap presses a button, and the door gives a faint, expiring click. He pushes it open. Inside, Eve can see nothing but darkness.

The knowledge that she is living in a simulation reassures Oxana: it means, as she's always suspected, that nothing is real, that her actions will have no consequences and she can do what she likes. But it doesn't answer all her questions. Why is she driven to this constant search, this endless walking of this twilit road? What lies behind the surfaces of the buildings that rise up to either side of her like stage scenery? Why is it that nothing seems to have depth or sound? Why does she feel this terrible, crushing sadness?

Villanelle snaps awake, wide-eyed, heart pounding. Everything is sunlit white. She's lying in a single bed, with her head supported by pillows. Wound dressings and compression bandages cover much of her face. In the direction that she's facing she can see light streaming through net curtains, a cast-iron radiator, a chair and a bedside table holding a bottle of mineral water and a box of Voltarol tablets. When she first woke up here forty-eight hours ago, she felt utterly wretched. Her ears ached excruciatingly, bile rose in her throat whenever she swallowed, and the slightest movement sent pain jolting through her neck and shoulders. Now, apart from a faint, residual ringing in her ears, she just feels drained.

Far ahead of her, an indistinct figure waits. Oxana walks towards her, her step determined. The woman is looking forward, into a snow-blurred infinity. She doesn't seem to be aware of Oxana's approach, but at the last moment she turns, her gaze a spear of ice.

He nods. "You've had primary blast wave concussion and whiplash. You've been on strong sedatives."

"So, Villanelle. How are you?"

"Max Linder? The Felsnadel Hotel?"

"Some of it."

"Tired."

"I thought about different methods. I wasn't happy with any of them. Then I found Linder's vibrator."

"Yes. I remember."

"Where are we?"

She frowns. "I… I went to Linder's room and prepared the device. Then he came in. I suppose I hid. I can't remember what happened next."

"So tell me. What the fuck went down? How did you get caught in the explosion?"

"A private clinic in Reichenau, outside Innsbruck." He steps to the window, pulls back the net curtains, and peers out. "Do you remember what happened to you?"

"Nothing at all?"

"I'd worked through a lot of ideas. Phone, digital alarm clock, laptop…"

Anton walks into her field of vision. Apart from a mostly silent young man who has brought Villanelle her meals, he's the first person she's seen since arriving here. He's wearing a down-filled jacket, and carrying a zip-up cabin bag.

"Tell me about the device."

"No."

"Speak up. You're slurring your words."

"Which guest? What evidence?"

"And you rigged it with the micro-det and the Fox-7?"

"Yes, after planting forensic evidence on one of the other guests."

"The Englishman, Baggot. I hid the plastic wrapping from the explosive in the lining of his washbag."

"Good. He's a moron. Go on."

Villanelle hesitates. "How did I get out?" she asks him. "After the explosion, I mean?"

"Maria messaged me. Said Linder was dead and you'd been found unconscious at the scene and needed a rapid exfil."

"Maria?" Villanelle raises her head from the pillow. "Maria works for you? Why the fuck didn't you --"

"Because you didn't need to know. As it happened, there was a high-altitude blizzard that night, and no emergency helicopters could get up there. So the guests were forced to spend the night of the explosion in the hotel, which apparently caused a certain amount of panic and distress. At least Linder's body was properly refrigerated. After you blew out the plate-glass window, the temperature in that room must have dropped to minus 20 degrees."

"No one thought this was weird?"

"No, what happens to me? Are the police going to turn up?"

"And me?"

"I don't remember any of this."

"At the Felsnadel? You don't need to worry about that. Your part is done."

"Maria kept an eye on you overnight. At first light I chartered a helicopter, and had you picked up before the police got there."

"You wouldn't."

"So what happens now?"

"The guests were asleep. The hotel staff assumed it was official, and given the state you were in, were probably glad to see you go. The last thing they needed was a second corpse on their hands."

Villanelle touches the dressings on her face. The scabbing cuts are starting to itch. "Linder's dead, as you requested. I'm worth everything you pay me and more."

"No. I drove you here and checked you in myself. As far as everyone at the clinic is concerned, you're a French tourist convalescing after a driving accident. They're very discreet here, as they should be, given the price. Apparently they get a lot of post-operative cosmetic surgery patients. There's some sort of treatment where they pack your face in snow."

"You see? Is that the best you can come up with? For fuck's sake, Villanelle. When you're good, you're brilliant, so why do you have to act up in this childish, narcissistic fashion? It's almost as if you want Polastri to catch and kill you."

Seating himself on the bedside chair, Anton leans forward. "He's dead, as you say, and we appreciate that. But right now it's time to get your shit together, and fast. Because thanks to your antics in Venice with Lara Farmanyants, and your Hello! magazine approach to assassination, we have a major fucking problem. Namely that Eve Polastri is currently in Moscow, discussing Konstantin Orlov with the FSB."

"I see."

"Really? I thought I was."

"Right." She reaches for the Voltarol tablets, and he snatches them away.

He throws the cabin bag onto the bed. "New clothes, passport, documents. I want you in London and ready to work by the end of the week."

"That's enough of those. If you're in pain, I want you to remember that it's wholly self-inflicted. All this drama you create. Speedboats, made-up aristocratic titles, exploding dildos… You're not living in a fucking TV series, Villanelle."

"Terminating this shitstorm once and for all."

"And what will I be doing there?"

"Killing Eve."

The officer looks at Eve, reaches unhurriedly for a rubber stamp, inks it from a violet pad in a tin, and applies it to the document. "Tak," he says. "Dobro pozhalovat' na Lubyanku."

Escorted by the men who were in the FSB van, Eve walks into the building. The interior is not quite dark, as it appeared from outside. To one side is a battered steel desk behind which a uniformed officer is seated, eating a meatball sandwich by the light of a desk lamp. As they enter he looks up, and puts down his sandwich.

"By which you mean?"

"Tell him I've always wanted to visit."

Neither man smiles. The officer lifts the receiver of an ancient desk telephone, and dials a three-figure number. A minute later two heavily built men in combat trousers and T-shirts arrive, look Eve up and down, and beckon her to follow them.

"Angliskiy spion," says the man in the leather cap, slapping a crumpled document onto the desk.

"He says 'Welcome to Lubyanka,'" Leather-cap informs her.

Inside is a tiled hall and a trestle table behind which two male officers are lounging, their crested caps tilted at jaunty angles on their shaved heads. One looks up briefly as they enter, then returns to his perusal of a body-building magazine. The other unhurriedly rises and, advancing on Eve, gestures that she should empty her possessions into a plastic tray on the table. She does so, divesting herself of her watch, phone, passport, hotel room keys and wallet. She's then made to remove her parka, and subjected to a body-scan with a hand-held metal detector. She asks for the jacket back, but is refused, leaving her shivering in a thin sweater, vest and jeans.

"I have no shoes," she tells Leather-cap, pointing at her dirty bare feet, and he shrugs. The desk officer has already returned to his sandwich. She accompanies the two men down a long, sour-smelling corridor, through a pair of double doors, and into a courtyard littered with cigarette ends. High buildings, some of yellowish brick, some faced with weather-stained cement, rise on all sides. Uniformed and plain-clothes personnel lean against the walls, smoking, and stare expressionlessly at Eve as she passes. The two men lead her to a low door.

From the reception hall she's led to a flight of stairs giving on to a small landing. From here a dim-lit, concrete-walled corridor leads into the building's interior. The men walk fast, purposefully, and in silence. Their necks are thick and the back of their heads bristled. Pig-men, Eve thinks. An increasingly painful stabbing in her right heel tells her that she's trodden on something sharp. The pig-men cannot fail to see her limping but they don't slow down.

"Pozhalusta," she says. "Please."

They ignore her, and Eve's hope that the situation is stage-managed, and designed to deliver her to Richard's contact, begins to ebb. The corridor turns at right-angles several times, each change of direction delivering an identical vista of bare bulbs and concrete walls. Finally they reach an atrium, and a large service elevator. The air smells of garbage and decay; the stench catches in Eve's throat. All this sends a very bad message. Is she under arrest? Do they really think she's a spion, a spy?

You are a spy, an inner voice whispers. It's what you always wanted. You're here because you chose to be here. Because, in the face of wiser counsel, you insisted on it. You wanted this.

The service elevator doors open with a metallic shriek, and Eve is led inside. The doors close and the elevator begins a slow, grinding descent, the pig-men leaning against the dented walls with folded arms and blank faces. From somewhere in the building Eve senses a mechanical pulse. Faint at first, but growing louder as the elevator moves downwards. The noise becomes a roar, making the elevator shudder. She digs her fingernails into her hand. This is the twenty-first century, she tells herself. I'm an Englishwoman with a husband, a Debenhams store card, and a kilo of fresh tagliatelle in the freezer. Everything will be all right.

"Please," she says again in halting, pleading Russian. "Where are we going?"

Once again the pig-men ignore her. Her heel hurts badly now, the pain driving upwards like a blade. But the pain is nothing compared with the fear. One of the men presses the elevator's call button, and there's a distant mechanical clanking. Eve's shaking now. The possibility of imposing herself on the situation has evaporated. She feels utterly, mutely helpless.

Ten minutes later, she's utterly disoriented. She senses that they're underground, but that's all. The mechanical roar is quieter now, although still audible, and the place seems to have other occupants. She can hear doors rattling and creaking, and a faint sound that could be shouting. They turn a corner. A tiled floor underfoot, the peeling walls suffused in that horrible mustard-coloured light. At the head of the corridor a door is open, and her guards pause long enough for Eve to look inside. At first glance the interior resembles a shower room, with a sloping concrete floor, a drain, and a coiled hose. But three of the walls are padded, and the fourth is made of splintered logs.

No, the voice whispers. It fucking well won't. You're a pathetically amateurish spy, hopelessly out of your depth, and now you're paying the price of your fantasies. This nightmare is real. This is really happening.

Finally, the doors open. They're in an atrium identical to the one they left just minutes ago. The light is a sulphurous mustard colour, and the noise, relentless and terrifying, is all around them. The pig-men march Eve into yet another corridor, and she follows them as best she can. If the journey is grim, she's certain that the arrival will be worse.

Before Eve has time to guess at the implications of this room, she's moved into a row of cells, with reinforced doors and observation hatches. The pig-men stop outside the first of these, and pull it open. Inside there's a stoneware basin, a bucket and a low bench against one wall. On the bench is a soiled palliasse. Light is provided by a low-wattage bulb protected by a wire grille. Open-mouthed and disbelieving, Eve allows herself to be manhandled inside. Behind her, the door slams shut.

Locking and bolting the door of her Paris apartment behind her, Villanelle drops her bag and curls, catlike, into a grey leather and chrome armchair. With her eyes half closed she looks around her. She's grown very attached to its restful sea-green walls, anonymous paintings and worn, once-expensive furniture. Beyond the plate-glass window, framed by heavy silk curtains, is the city, silent in the twilight. She gazes for a moment at the faint shimmer of the illuminations on the Eiffel Tower, and then dips into her bag for her phone. The SMS message is still there, of course. The one-time burn code dispatched with a single keystroke.

They were in bed together in Venice when Lara showed Villanelle her phone. "If you ever get this text, I've been taken and it's all over."

But it has happened, and here is the text. "I love you."

"That won't happen," Villanelle replied.

Lara did love her, Villanelle knows. She still does, if she's alive. And for a moment, Villanelle envies her that capacity. To share another's happiness, to suffer another's pain, to fly on the wings of real feeling rather than to be forever acting. But how dangerous, how uncontrollable, and ultimately how ordinary. Better, by far, to occupy the pure, arctic citadel of the self.

It's bad that Lara's been taken, though. Very bad. Rising from the grey leather chair, Villanelle walks to the kitchen, and takes a bottle of pink Mercier champagne and a cold tulip glass from the fridge. In thirty-six hours she flies to London. There are plans to be made, and they are complex.

In Eve's cell, the light flickers and goes out. She has no idea what time it is, or even if it's night. No guards have returned with food, and although she's painfully hungry, she's also desperate to avoid the shame of having to empty her bowels into the bucket. Thirst has forced her to take sips from the tap in the basin. The water is brownish and tastes of rust, but Eve is beyond caring.

She stands up in the dark, endures another bout of the shakes, and limps around the cell, trying not to think about the probable infection in her heel. She can't sleep. Her stomach is twisting with hunger, the bench is hard, and the palliasse smells of vomit and shit. She makes her way to the door. The random shouting that once seemed distant sounds closer now. A phrase, not quite intelligible, is repeated over and over again in a male voice. Others respond angrily. There's a low groaning, suddenly interrupted.

She seems to have been lying on the hard bench for hours, her mind alternately racing off at frantic tangents and sinking into a sick fog of despair. At intervals, she's overtaken by shaking fits, caused not by the cold, although it is cold, and her sweater painfully thin, but by the endlessly reshuffling memory of events in the metro. Nothing in her life has prepared her for the flutter of a bullet parting her hair. For the sight of an infolding face, and outpouring brains. Who was he, the old man with the pale eyes, whose last living act was to smile at a stranger? Who was the man she killed? Because I did kill him, Eve tells herself. I killed him with my stupid, misplaced self-belief, as surely as if I shot him myself.

Then, as she crouches by the hatch, looking out, a figure moves into her peripheral vision, and starts walking up the corridor towards her. At the sight of him, Eve once again starts to shake. A man of about forty, with thinning brown hair, wearing a boiler suit, a long leather apron and rubber boots.

As he passes her door, Eve closes the hatch to a crack. She can't stop watching, and she can't stop shaking. Moving with the unhurried air of a doctor on a hospital round, the man goes into the room with the hose and the drain and the sloping floor. Perhaps a minute passes, then the two pig-men arrive at the opposite end of the corridor and unlock a cell door. Marching inside, they come out supporting a thin, blankly staring figure in a suit and shirt, and walk him past Eve's door and into the same room.

Warily, Eve lifts the small wooden panel in the door -- wide enough to slip a food bowl through -- and looks out. From the end of the corridor, in the direction from which she was led earlier, come dim, flickering lights. The shouting starts again, the same unintelligible phrase delivered in a furious, desperate rasp. It's met with the same responses, and the same sharply curtailed groaning. It occurs to Eve that she's listening to a recording, some kind of looped tape. But if so, why? What would be the point? To intimidate her? That was hardly necessary.

Moments later they leave without him, and Eve sinks to the floor of her cell, her eyes as tightly shut as she can force them, and her hands clamped over her ears. But she still hears the shots. Two of them, seconds apart. And she's so terrified she can no longer think, or breathe, or control any part of herself, and she just lies there in the darkness, shaking.

Somehow, probably from sheer exhaustion, she sleeps, and is woken by a hammering at the cell door. The lights are on again and there's a faint smell of cooked meat. At that moment the only thing that she's sure of is her hunger. She limps to the communication hatch, her mouth dry and her guts twisting with longing.

With that, the hatch opens and a red box is pushed through by a large, hairy hand. It's a McDonald's Happy Meal, and it seems to be still hot. It's followed by a canned energy drink called Russian Power. Eve stares disbelievingly at these luxuries before ripping open the McDonald's box, and with trembling fingers devouring the contents. In the box with the hamburger and french fries there's a cellophane-wrapped toy. A tiny plastic teapot with a Hello Kitty face on it.

"Zavtrak!" a voice growls. "Breakfast."

"Da?"

Eve wipes her greasy, salty fingers on her jeans then rips the tab from the Russian Power can and gulps down as much as she can before sinking back, gasping, onto the bench. Nothing makes sense any more. Pulling the bucket to the door so that she can't be seen through the hatch, she pees in it, pours the urine down the sink, and washes her hands and the bucket with the trickling brown tap water. Her bowels give a warning grumble, but shitting in the bucket is an indignity she's not yet ready for, although she's resigned to the fact that that time will come. Turning the french fries packet inside out, she licks up the last of the salt, and takes a measured sip of Russian Power. Was this a last meal before being dragged to the room with the concrete floor, the hose and the drain? I'm sorry, Niko my love. I'm so, so sorry.

The door swings abruptly open. It's the two pig-men. They beckon to her, and she limps towards them, her hand closed tightly around the little teapot in her pocket. When they lead her past the killing room, her heart is pounding so hard that it hurts. Then, instead of continuing along the corridor, they open a cell door, beyond which is an elevator. Not the filthy service cage that she came down in, but a hotel-style guest elevator with a brushed steel interior. This ascends smoothly and silently to a half-landing, and a short flight of stairs leading to the tiled atrium, where the same two officers in the over-large caps are sitting behind the trestle table. Waiting on the table are her parka jacket and the tray holding her possessions.

"Obuv," says one of the pig-men, gesturing with his foot to a pair of short winter boots trimmed with rabbit fur.

Glancing nervously at the officers, who barely acknowledge her presence, she pulls on the parka, glad of its warmth and of the chance to cover up her dirty sweater. Hurriedly, she loads the pockets with her passport, watch, phone, keys and money.

"Can you believe Kim Kardashian?" he says, waving a hand to dismiss the pig-men. "Surely no one's really that shape?"

Eve peers at him. He's probably in his mid-fifties, with buzz-cut hair and a wry, urbane smile. His suit looks handmade.

"OK," says the other pig-man, moving back towards the stairs to the elevator. "You come."

They rise several storeys, and step out onto parquet flooring and a worn carpet the colour of raw liver. At the end of the corridor, a dark wood door stands ajar. Inside, the office is all shadows. Nondescript curtains frame tall windows. Behind a mahogany desk a broad-shouldered, silver-haired figure is hunched over a laptop computer.

Gratefully, Eve pulls them on. They fit perfectly.

"Latte? Americano?"

He snaps the laptop shut. "Take a seat, Mrs Polastri. I'm Vadim Tikhomirov. Let me order you some coffee."

"Yes, whatever."

Eve sinks into the proffered chair, murmuring bewildered thanks.

Eve inhales the rose's rich, oily fragrance. "Perhaps we should. I'll suggest it."

"You should insist on it. I'm sure Richard Edwards would approve the budget. But let me ask you: how did you find last night?"

"How did I… find it?"

He presses an intercom button on his telephone. "Masha, dva kofe s molokom… Do you like roses, Mrs Polastri?" Rising, he crosses the room to a side table bearing a bowl of crimson roses, selects one, and hands it to her. "They're called Ussurochka. They grow them in Vladivostok. Do you have cut flowers in your Goodge Street office?"

"It's an immersive on-site project I'm developing. The Lubyanka Experience. Spend a night as a condemned political prisoner during the Stalinist Purge." Noting her speechless gaze, he spreads his hands. "Perhaps someone should have explained the concept to you beforehand, but I saw it as an opportunity for some valuable feedback, so… what did you think?"

"It was, quite simply, the most terrifying night of my life."

"Yes, you had the full NKVD Execution package. So you think it needs fine-tuning? Too spooky?"

"Perhaps a little."

"You mean in a bad way?"

"I mean in the way that I thought I was losing my mind. Or that I was about to be shot."

"At least you got to wake up in the morning." He chuckles. "In the old days your ashes would have been used as fertiliser."

He nods. "It's tricky, because while this is very much a working secret police environment, we do also have these amazing historical assets. All those underground torture cells and execution chambers, we'd be crazy not to exploit them. And we've certainly got the actors. This organisation's never been short of people who like dressing up in uniforms and scaring people."

Eve twiddles the rose-stem. "Well, I was genuinely terrified, especially since someone actually did try to kill me yesterday, as I'm sure you're aware."

"So I believe."

He nods. "I am aware of that, and I'm going to get to it in a minute. Tell me, how is Richard?"

"Busy enough. Did he explain to you why I wanted to come here?"

"Tell me," she says.

"Well, I'll do my best." Tikhomirov rises, and walks to the window. He stands with his back to her, silhouetted against the pale, slanting light. There's a knock at the door and a young man wearing combat trousers and a muscle T-shirt enters, carrying a tray, which he places on a side table.

"Yes. Specifically his later career."

"Excellent. I hope we're keeping him busy at the Russia desk."

"I've heard of them, yes. Not much more."

"He did. You want to ask me, among other questions, about Konstantin Orlov."

"Spasiba, Dima," says Tikhomirov.

The coffee is ferociously strong, and as it races through Eve's system, she feels a faint shiver of optimism. A lifting of the fog of helplessness and shame which, for the last twenty-four hours, has enveloped her.

"He's well. And he sends compliments."

He nods, responsive to the shift in her mood. He's back behind the desk now, his posture languid but his gaze attentive. "You've heard of Dvenadtsat. The Twelve."

Tikhomirov shrugs. "Perhaps. But history, as so often, has other ideas. Boris Yeltsin's policies in the early 1990s enriched a handful of oligarchs, but diminished and impoverished the country. At which point, it seems, the Twelve went underground, and began to transform into a new kind of organisation altogether. One that made its own rules, dispensed its own justice, and pursued its own agenda."

"Sounds reasonable."

"There's a school of thought that holds that sooner or later, whatever its founding ethos, the most pressing concern of any organisation is to ensure its own survival. To this end, it adopts an aggressive, expansionist posture which ultimately comes to define it."

"We think that they started life as one of the secret societies that came into being under Leonid Brezhnev in the late Soviet era. A cabal of behind-the-scenes operators who foresaw the end of communism and wanted to build a new Russia, free of the old, corrupt ideologies. As they saw them."

"Do you know anything about organisation theory?"

"Which was?"

Eve shakes her head.

"Not quite. I believe that it's a new kind of borderless crypto-state, with its own economy, strategy and politique."

"You saw him? Where?"

Tikhomirov shrugs. "To protect and advance its own interests."

Eve smiles. "Like…"

"That's such a weird idea."

"In Fontanka, near Odessa. The SVR, our domestic intelligence agency, ran the operation against him which ended, regrettably, with his death."

"And what's its purpose?"

"Yes, if you will, like Russia itself. Like any corporation or nation state that perceives itself surrounded by enemies. And this was the point, I think, at which Konstantin Orlov was recruited by the Twelve. Which was entirely logical, because by then the Twelve had their own Directorate S, or its equivalent, and they needed a man with Orlov's highly specialised skill-set to run it."

"These are weird times, Mrs Polastri. As was confirmed to me when I saw Orlov earlier this year."

"You buy in, with whatever you've got to offer. Cash, influence, position…"

"So how do you join? How do you become a part of it?"

"So you're saying that the Twelve is a kind of shadow Russian state?"

"In the house of Rinat Yevtukh?"

"So why might Yevtukh have been killed?"

"Exactly so. The FSB contributed intelligence and man-power to that operation, and in return, I was invited to question Orlov. He told me nothing, of course, and I didn't expect him to. He was old-school. He'd have died before betraying his employers, or the assassins he'd trained for them. The irony, of course, being that they killed him."

"Sure enough. The Twelve would have worked out pretty quickly that Orlov hadn't been abducted just so that the local gangsters could collect a ransom payment. They'd have seen the fingerprints of the SVR all over the case. And they'd have liquidated Orlov in case he'd talked."

"You're sure of that?"

"If he was, it might have been because he collaborated, willingly or otherwise, with the SVR."

"We're following developments, certainly."

"No, he didn't tell me that." He looks thoughtful. "Let me ask you something, Mrs Polastri. Are you familiar with the expression 'a canary in a coal mine'"?"

"So do you have an interest in the Yevtukh case? In knowing exactly who murdered him?"

"Did Richard mention to you that we have an idea who was responsible?"

"I was asked to investigate a particular assassin. A woman. And I have a number of lines of enquiry that could lead to her identification. I've got closer to her than anyone else has."

"Vaguely."

"That's fascinating, Mr Tikhomirov, but why exactly are you telling me this?"

"Have you ever asked yourself, Mrs Polastri, why you were appointed by MI6 to investigate a major international conspiracy? You'll forgive me, but you are hardly experienced in this area."

"In the old days, here in Russia, coal miners used to take a canary in a cage with them when they went down to dig a new seam. Canaries are highly sensitive to methane gas and carbon monoxide, so the miners knew that as long as they could hear the canary singing, they were safe. But if the canary fell silent, they knew they had to evacuate the mine."

"Hence the attempt on your life yesterday."

"There's no 'perhaps' about it, Mrs Polastri. Fortunately, we had people watching you."

"Perhaps."

"You saw the ones we intended you to see. But there were others, and they intercepted and arrested the woman who attempted to kill you."

"Yes, I saw them."

"You're telling me you've caught her?"

"No, in Butyrka, a couple of miles away."

"Yes, we have her in custody."

"My God. Can I see her? Can I question her?"

"Do you have a name for this woman?"

"Here? In the Lubyanka?"

He opens a folder on the desk in front of him. "Her name is Larissa Farmanyants. She's what we call a torpedo, a professional shooter. New photographs will have been taken during her induction at Butyrka, but they haven't sent them over yet, so I've printed out an old press shot for you."

"I'm afraid that's impossible. I doubt she's even been processed." He lifts a silver paper-knife in the shape of a dagger, and turns it in his fingers. "Also, the fact that she's been arrested doesn't mean you're out of danger. Which is why I made sure you were brought here, yesterday, to spend the night as our guest."

Three young women standing on a ceremonial dais, in an outdoor sports stadium. They're wearing tracksuits zipped up to their chins, they're holding posies of flowers, and they have medals and ribbons around their necks. The Tass news agency caption identifies them as medallists in the pistol-shooting event at the University Games, six years earlier. Larissa Farmanyants, representing Kazan Military Academy, has won bronze. Blonde-haired, with broad, high-cheekboned features, she stares blankly into the middle distance.

"In the first instance, we will put you on a flight home, under another name, as we did your colleague, yesterday." He hands her the folder. "This is for you. Read it on the flight. Give it to the steward before you leave the aircraft."

Tikhomirov looks at her, his gaze level. "You've crossed the line. You've done what nobody thought you could, or would. You've got too close to the Twelve."

"I wish I could help you."

"Why?" she murmurs. "Why here? Why now? Why me?"

"We don't know, although we'd very much like to."

Eve stares back at her, dazed. This person, a young woman she has never met, tried to kill her. To put a bullet through the back of her skull.

In response Tikhomirov takes a second sheet of paper from the folder, and hands it to her. It's an identical screen-grab to the one that Billy printed out at Goodge Street. "We've seen that footage," he says. "And we agree."

Eve picks up the Tass printout. "This Lara woman could be one of the pair who killed Yevtukh in Venice. There's a CCTV clip."

"So what happens now?"

"Mrs Polastri, you've helped us far more than you know. And we're grateful."

"And the other woman?"

Tikhomirov frowns, and flips open his laptop. His fingers stab the keyboard. "She's dead," he says.

"Are you sure about that?" Eve asks, suddenly short of breath. "Are you absolutely one hundred per cent certain?"

"The one who won gold," she says, glancing at the caption. "The Perm University student, Oxana Vorontsova. What do you know about her?"

Tikhomirov is as good as his word. He gives Eve lunch in the Lubyanka canteen, and then shows her into a Mercedes with darkened windows which is waiting at the entrance to the FSB complex on Furkasovsky Lane. On the rear seat is her suitcase, which has been collected from the hotel. Within the hour she is at Ostafyevo airport, being fast-tracked through the customs and security procedures by the car's driver, a young man in a business suit to whom the airport staff are immediately deferential. He ushers Eve to a first-class waiting room, and sits with her, unobtrusive but vigilant, until her flight is called. As she leaves, with a dozen-strong group of Gazprom executives, he hands her an envelope. "From Mr Tikhomirov," he says.

She picks up the Tass agency printout and is about to slide it into the folder when something stays her hand. For almost a quarter of a minute she stares disbelievingly at the image of the medal-winners.

She takes a long swallow, feels the spirit's icy progress through her veins, and inclines her head towards the window, and the darkness beyond. Just forty-eight hours ago, she reflects, I was flying the other way. I was a different person then. Someone who hadn't heard the passing whisper of a silenced bullet. Someone who hadn't seen a man's face infold.

The interior of the Dassault Falcon jet is shockingly luxurious, and Eve sinks pleasurably into her seat. Take-off is delayed, and dusk has fallen by the time the aircraft finally lifts off, banks to port over the glittering sprawl of Moscow, and sets its course for London. Exhausted, Eve sleeps for an hour before waking with a start to find a steward at her side, tendering frosted shot-glasses of Black Sable vodka.

I can't do this any more. I need my life back. I need my husband back. I need a routine, familiar things and places, a hand to hold on icy pavements, a warm body next to mine at night. I'll make it up to you, Niko. I promise. All those evenings I spent whispering into my phone and staring at my laptop screen. All the secrets I kept, all the lies I told, all the love I withheld.

What does Tikhomirov mean? What is he not telling her, and why? Who, or what, is the canary?

Reaching into her bag she searches for her phone, determined to draft a text to Niko, but her fingers find the envelope from Vadim Tikhomirov, which she has forgotten to open. Inside is a single sheet of paper. No message, just a black and white line illustration of a canary in a cage.

And that woman in the photograph. Not Larissa Farmanyants, but Oxana Vorontsova, the Perm University gold medallist. Now dead, according to FSB records, but the doppelgänger of the woman she saw in Shanghai on the night Simon Mortimer was killed. Or is she imagining that, and making connections that simply aren't there? She only saw the woman momentarily, after all. Eve winces with frustration. None of it quite fits together. From having too little information to work with, she's now got too much.

Just as well then, that it no longer matters. Just as well that on Monday morning she is going to schedule a meeting with Richard Edwards, at which she is going to admit to him what she has finally admitted to herself, that she is out of her depth. That she's decided to walk away from Goodge Street, MI6, and this whole toxic, terrifying mess, and reclaim her life.

At London City airport, she sends Richard an encrypted text to say that she's back, and takes the tube home. Her phone battery's dying, she's starving and she desperately needs Niko to be at home, preferably cooking and with a bottle of wine open. At Finchley Road station she drags her case up the steps to the exit. Outside, the pavements are shining with rain, and she puts her head down and half walks, half runs through the illuminated darkness. Turning into her street, the wheels of her suitcase whirring and skidding behind her, she sees the unmarked van parked a few cars down from her building, and, for the first time, feels truly grateful for the watchers' presence. Then, seeing that the lights in the flat are unlit, her step slows.

Inside, the air is still and cold, as if long undisturbed. On the kitchen table there's a note, secured in place by a vase of dying white roses whose fallen petals obscure the words.

Hope your trip went well, though don't expect to hear the details. Have taken car and goats, and gone to stay with Zbig and Leila. Not sure how long I'll be gone. Hopefully long enough for you to decide whether you want us to go on being married.

Eve, I can't continue like this. We both know the issues. Either you choose to live in my world, where people do normal jobs, and married couples sleep together and eat together and see their friends together and yes, perhaps it is a bit boring at times, but at least no one's getting their throat cut. Or you choose to continue as you are, telling me nothing and working day and night in the pursuit of whatever and whoever, in which case sorry, but I'm out. I'm afraid it's that simple. Your call. N.

Eve stares briefly at the note, then goes back and double-locks the door to the flat. A quick scavenge through the kitchen produces a tin of tomato soup, three limp samosas in an oily bag, and a date-expired blueberry yoghurt. She wolfs down the samosas and the yoghurt while the soup is heating on the stove. As if in reproach of her habitual untidiness, Niko has left the flat in scrupulous order. In the bedroom the bed is made and the blinds are lowered. Eve considers running a bath but gives it a miss; she's too tired to think, let alone dry herself. After attaching her phone to the charger she takes the Glock automatic from her bedside drawer, and slips it under her pillow. Then she pulls off her clothes, and, leaving them in a pile on the floor, climbs into bed and is instantly asleep.

The desire for breakfast eventually gets the better of her, and she pulls on a tracksuit, drops the Glock in her bag, and makes for the Café Torino in Finchley Road. Richard's watchers know their stuff, surely? And if they don't, and she's beaten to the draw by a torpedo, it's going to be with a large cappuccino and a cornetto alla Nutella inside her.

Chiswick is at least an hour away, and Eve doesn't much feel like making the journey, but it will be a chance to tell Richard her decision in a neutral setting. "See you then," she faxes in response, then crawls back to bed, burying herself under the sheets for another hour. Fear, she's discovering, is not a constant. It comes and goes, kicking in at odd moments with paralysing suddenness, and then receding, tide-like, to the point where she's barely conscious of it. In bed, it takes the form of a fluttery nervousness just insistent enough to keep her awake.

She's woken around nine thirty by the chattering of the fax machine that Richard has insisted she install, on the basis that it's supposedly more secure than encoded email. It's a hastily scrawled invitation to a private view at an art gallery in Chiswick, west London, where, from midday onwards, Richard's wife Amanda is exhibiting her paintings and drawings. "Come if you're free, and we can chat," Richard signs off.

The gallery in Chiswick is difficult to find, identified only by a small silver plaque on the door. Occupying the ground floor of a Georgian house, it has a sunlit brick frontage and a wide bow window overlooking the Thames. As soon as she steps inside Eve feels out of place. Richard's friends have that casually privileged look that quietly but unmistakably fends off outsiders. For quite a few minutes, no one talks to her, so she affects a frowningly intense interest in the art on display. The watercolours and drawings are accomplished and inoffensive. Landscape views of the Cotswolds, boats at anchor in Aldeburgh, a girl in a straw hat on holiday in France. There's a portrait drawing, quite a good one, of Richard. Eve is admiring this when a fine-boned woman with eyes as pale as sea-glass appears at her side.

Appetite assuaged, she dials Niko's number. When there's no answer, she's simultaneously frustrated and relieved. She wants to tell him that everything's all right between them, but she can't quite face the intensity of the conversation that will ensue. From the café she walks unhurriedly to the tube station. It's perfect Saturday weather, clear and cold, and she imagines her invisible watchers falling into step behind her. In the half-empty tube train she picks through an abandoned copy of the Guardian, reading reviews of books she will never buy.

"It's very like him," says Eve. "Benign, but hard to read. You must be Amanda?"

"So what do you think?" she asks.

"Yes. And I'm guessing you're Eve. Concerning whom there can be no discussion."

"Richard often mentions you. I don't think he's aware quite how often. And obviously, official secrets and so on, I don't ask him about you. But I've always rather wondered."

"I'm sorry?"

"Ah," he says. "You two have met. Excellent. I'll just get Eve a glass."

Amanda gives her a pale smile. "Let me get you something to drink." She beckons to Richard, who's circulating with a bottle of prosecco wrapped in a napkin. Disconcertingly, given his church-mouse work look, he's wearing a jauntily unbuttoned pink linen shirt and chinos.

Richard walks away, and Amanda makes as if to straighten a picture frame. She barely touches it, but the movement draws Eve's attention to the platinum wedding band and glittering baguette diamond ring.

"Trust me, I'm not the mysterious type."

"I'm not sleeping with your husband," Eve says. "In case you're wondering."

Eve smiles. "The paintings seem to be selling well," she says. "Lots of red stickers."

Amanda raises an eyebrow. "I'm glad to hear it. You're not remotely his type, but you know how lazy men are. Whatever's to hand."

"Won't you miss them? All those memories."

"That's mostly the drawings, which are cheaper. I'm counting on Richard to keep pouring wine down people's throats. See if that helps shift some of the paintings."

"Paintings are like children. It's nice to have them around the house, but not necessarily for ever."

Eve nods. She half turns, but Amanda's already drifting away.

Richard returns with a newly washed glass, which he fills and hands to Eve. "Can I have a brief word? In five minutes?"

"Let me introduce you to our daughter," Richard says.

Chloe Edwards has long-lashed eyes and her mother's bones. "You work with Dad, don't you?" she says, when Richard has moved on. "That's so cool. Mum and I never get to meet his fellow spies so you'll have to forgive me if I get a bit fan-girly. Bet you've got a gun in your bag."

"Oh, fifteen, probably. I don't remember his name. Which was probably fake anyway, right?"

"You should follow your dad into the Service. You'll meet plenty."

"Of course." Eve smiles.

"Not necessarily. Is that you in the painting? In the straw hat?"

"Lucky you if you do. We were at our house in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Mum was out sketching or shopping or something, and he came over for lunch. Older guy, Russian, devastatingly ravaged-looking. God, I fancied him."

"God yes, every time."

""Fraid so. I wish someone would buy it and take it away."

"It's so, you know, white girl on holiday."

"Truly?"

"Actually, come to think, I did meet one once. Another spook, I mean."

"But it must be lovely having a house in Provence."

"I suppose. The heat and the smell of the lavender fields. All that. But I'm not so much for the rich Parisian boys in their Vilebrequin swim-shorts."

"Prefer a ravaged Russian?"

"He says I'm too glam to be a spy. That you've got to be, like, really ordinary-looking. The sort of person you'd walk straight past in the street."

"How old were you?"

"Anyone I know?"

Eve smiles. "Like me?"

"Don't worry, I'm just teasing you. But your dad's right. You're amazing-looking, and you should enjoy it."

"No, no, no. No. I don't mean --"

Chloe grins. "You're nice. Can we stay in touch? Dad's always going on about meeting the right people." She hands Eve a card. It has her name on it, a phone number and an embossed skull and crossbones.

"I want to go to drama school. I've got auditions in the New Year."

"Well, good luck."

Richard winds through the guests towards them, and pats his daughter on the bottom. "Vamoose, darling, I need to borrow Eve for a few minutes."

Chloe rolls her eyes, and Eve follows him outside.

"Well, I'm not so sure I'm one of the right people, but thanks. Are you at university?"

Whitlock and Jones, purveyors of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, is one of the longer established businesses in Welbeck Street, in central London. Its sales staff wear white coats, and are known for the tact with which they cater to their customers" often intimate requirements. For sales assistant Colin Dye it's been a slow day. The store caters to many of the private specialists whose well-appointed clinics line nearby Harley Street and Wimpole Street, and in the two years that he's been working here, Dye has come to recognise many of the nurses who drop in when their employers' surgical supplies need replenishing. With half a dozen of these he's on solid bantering terms. His own surname is always a good ice-breaker.

He grins. "In my experience, yes."

"Well, you know what they say." He points to his name-tag. "Live and let… Dye."

"Excuse me?" She peers at him. She's slightly cross-eyed, and the clunky glasses don't help, but that apart, Dye concedes, not a total car-crash.

"Give me a couple of minutes."

"I'm afraid the condoms only come in standard size. Is that going to be a problem?"

"Do they stretch?"

So if he doesn't know the young woman who's approaching the counter, her gaze lingering on the fibreglass mannequins fitted with trusses and lumbar supports, he knows the type. Conservative make-up, sensible shoes, not hazardously pretty, and a generally brisk and capable air.

"So, what can I do you for?" he enquires, and in answer she places a written list in front of him. A blood collection kit, hemostatic forceps, a sharps disposal bag and a packet of large condoms.

When he returns, she hasn't moved.

"Having a party?"

"Have you got everything on that list?"

She fixes him with one eye, the other looking disconcertingly over his shoulder, and pays for the goods in cash.

"I did." A breeze shivers the river's thin glitter. "A professional shooter tried to take me out in the Moscow metro. If it wasn't for the FSB, I might be dead."

He drops the receipt into the Whitlock and Jones bag. "See you again, perhaps? You know what they say… Dye another day?"

Eve follows Richard out of the gallery, across the riverside walkway, and down a slipway to a floating jetty, to which dinghies and other small craft are moored. It's low tide, and the jetty rocks gently beneath their feet. There's a faint smell of ooze and seaweed, and the slow rasp of mooring chains shifting with the river's rise and fall. It's cold, but Richard doesn't seem to notice.

"She's quite a girl, your daughter."

"Actually no one says that. Asshole."

"It was. Although clearly it was my fault for insisting on going to Moscow in the first place."

"Isn't she? I'm glad you liked her."

"Lance told me. Said that they took you to the Lubyanka."

"That's right."

"I'm sorry, the whole thing must have been bloody frightening."

"Does he now?"

"Yes, in Butyrka. Which I gather is not a soft billet."

She tells him. The metro, the Lubyanka, the conversation with Tikhomirov. All of it.

Richard looks away. "That's not important now. Just tell me exactly what happened."

"No. It's bloody medieval."

When she's finished he says nothing. For almost a minute he seems to be watching a narrowboat edge past the jetty. "So they've got this Farmanyants woman in custody," he says finally.

"Richard, you recruited me to find out who killed Viktor Kedrin. I believe that it was a young woman named Oxana Vorontsova, codename Villanelle. A former linguistics student and prize-winning pistol shot from Perm, who was convicted of triple murder at the age of twenty-three. She was recruited and trained by Konstantin Orlov, the former head of the SVR's Directorate S, as an assassin for the Twelve. He lifted her from prison, faked her death, and created a series of new identities for her, before he was killed himself, quite possibly by Villanelle. I'll fax you my report in full over the next forty-eight hours, if I live that long."

"I'm pretty sure she's one of the women who killed Yevtukh in Venice. Tikhomirov thinks so too."

"All right."

"I hear you. But can I ask you one question?"

"I'm not going back to Goodge Street," she adds. "Ever."

"I hope so, Richard, I really bloody hope so, because she's a killing machine. I'm trying to sound calm, and I'm more or less in control, most of the time. But I'm also scared to death. I mean, really fucking terrified. So terrified I can't even think about the danger I'm in, or take the necessary precautions, because I'm afraid that if I face it straight on, or start thinking about it in any detail, I'm just going to fall to pieces. So there you go."

"Where do you want to be in ten years' time?"

"I'm out, Richard. I mean it."

"Look at it from Villanelle's point of view. She's dangerously compromised by what I've discovered about her, and her girlfriend's in Butyrka, mostly because of me. So who do you think she's coming for next?"

He regards her with silent, clinical concern.

"As many as you like."

"You really think --"

"The people I've got watching you are the best, Eve. I promise you. You won't see them, but they're there."

"Eve, there are no guarantees in this life, but you are in every sense more secure inside the citadel than outside. Let us take the strain. You were born for the secret life. You live and breathe intelligence work. The rewards could be… very great."

"I'll settle for alive. If I'm still married that would be a bonus."

"I simply can't do it, Richard. I can't carry on. And now I'm going to go."

He nods. "I understand."

He frowns as he watches her go.

"I don't think you do, Richard. But either way." She holds out her hand. "Thanks for asking me today, and my compliments to Amanda."

With the medical goods from Whitlock and Jones stowed in her rucksack, Villanelle meets Anton at the ticket barrier at Finchley Road tube station. He looks tense and short-tempered, and they've barely exchanged a few words before he turns away and leads her to the small Italian café outside the station.

Ordering coffee for both of them, he directs her to a corner table. "Ideally, I want it done tonight," he tells her. "The husband's away, staying with friends, and I've just had confirmation he's still there. The weapon, ammunition and documents you requested are in the bag under the table. You also asked for a vehicle, presumably for getting rid of the body?"

"You'll find a white Citroën panel van parked directly outside Polastri's house. Key's in the bag with the gun. Signal me in the usual way when the job's done, and I'll see you in Paris."

"Yup."

"OK. Nyet problem."

He looks at her irritably. "Speak English. And why are you wearing those ridiculous glasses? You look mental."

"I am mental. Have you seen the Hare psychopathy checklist? I'm off the scale."

"It doesn't matter. What matters is that this one goes right."

"Just don't screw up, OK?"

"As if."

"Villanelle, take me seriously. The reason I still need you to do this job is that Farmanyants fucked up in Moscow."

Villanelle remains expressionless. "What went wrong?"