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Villanelle wakes in a warm tangle of limbs. On the far side of the bed Anne-Laure is lying face down, her hair a honey-coloured swirl, one suntanned arm trailing across Kim's chest. Where Anne-Laure is all dreamy curves, Kim displays a lynx-like elegance, even in sleep. His features are lean and refined, reflecting his Franco-Vietnamese ancestry, and his limbs are the colour of ivory, their musculature precisely defined in the morning light.

Detaching herself, Villanelle walks to the bathroom, and takes a shower. Still naked, she pads to the tiny galley kitchen, fills the Bialetti coffee maker with Hédiard's "Sur la Côte d'Azur" blend, and switches on the ceramic hob. At the end of the kitchen a sliding glass door leads to a small terrace, and Villanelle steps outside for a moment. It's September, and Paris is radiant with the dying summer. The horizon is a pale haze, pigeons are cooing on a neighbouring rooftop, and the faint murmur of traffic rises from the rue de Vaugirard, six storeys below.

Anne-Laure inherited the single-bedroom apartment five months ago, and tells her husband, Gilles, a senior functionary at the Treasury, that she goes there "to write" and "to think." If Gilles thinks this out of character, and suspects that the place is put to more active use, he doesn't say so, because he himself has recently taken a mistress. His secretary, to be precise, a plain and unstylish woman with whom he cannot be seen socially, but who, unlike Anne-Laure, never questions or criticises him.

Anne-Laure is astride Kim now, her hands braced against his muscular thighs, her eyes half-closed. Setting the coffee tray down on a bedside table, Villanelle clears the chaise longue of discarded clothes and arranges herself, cat-like, on the soft brocade. She likes watching her friend having sex, but this morning there's an artificial quality to Anne-Laure's gasping and sighing and hair-tossing. It's a performance, and from his blank expression and the dutiful bucking of his hips, Villanelle can tell that Kim isn't buying it.

Catching his eye, Villanelle hitches her knees up, spreads her thighs, and begins, very slowly and deliberately, to finger herself. Anne-Laure is oblivious to this performance, but Kim stares intently between her legs. Villanelle returns his gaze, notes his anguished look as he tries to hold himself back, and watches as he shudders to a climax. Seconds later, with a plaintive cry, Anne-Laure subsides on top of him.

Villanelle stands there, gazing out over the city, until she hears the rasp of the percolating coffee. In the bedroom, Anne-Laure is stirring, her fingers sleepily re-acquainting themselves with the hard contours of Kim's body. He is twenty-three, and a dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet. Anne-Laure and Villanelle met him twelve hours earlier at a drinks party given by a fashion designer. It took them just three minutes to persuade him to leave with them.

"Coffee, anyone?" she enquires.

"From time to time," says Anne-Laure. She takes a cigarette from the packet beside her and flicks her gold Dunhill lighter. "He probably thinks that if he stops altogether I'll suspect something."

Half an hour later Kim has left for ballet class at the Opera and Villanelle and Anne-Laure are sitting outside on the terrace. Anne-Laure's wearing a silk kimono, while Villanelle's in cigarette jeans and a Miu Miu sweater, her hair twisted into a scrappy chignon. Both are barefoot.

"So, does Gilles still fuck you?" Villanelle asks.

They fall silent. Before them is the roofscape of the Sixième Arrondissement, tranquil in the morning light. It's a luxury to be able to sit like this, chasing the morning away with inconsequential chatter, and both women know it. Six storeys below, people are racing to work, fighting for taxis, and jamming themselves into buses and Metro carriages. Anne-Laure and Villanelle's financial needs are well taken care of, so they're free to abstain from this daily grind. Free to pick through vintage clothes stores in the Marais, lunch at yam'Tcha or Le Cristal, and have their hair done by Tom at Carita.

On the chaise longue Villanelle stretches and licks her finger. Sex, for her, offers only fleeting physical satisfaction. What she finds much more exciting is to look into another person's eyes and to know, like a cobra swaying in front of its hypnotised prey, that she is in absolute control. But that game gets boring, too. People capitulate so easily.

Eve's using the fifteen-year-old copier because the scanner's given up the ghost and is now lying unplugged on the floor, where sooner or later she's going to trip over it. She's put in a request for new office equipment, or at least a budget for repairs, and there have been vague promises from Vauxhall Cross, but given the byzantine arrangement by which the operation is funded, she's not hopeful.

Over London, a leaden sky promises rain. In her office above Goodge Street Underground station, Eve Polastri wrenches a wad of printing paper from the photocopier and repositions it, but the paper-jam light continues to blink.

"And sod you, too," she mutters, punching the off button.

Today, Eve is to be joined by two new colleagues, both male. Richard Edwards has described them as "an enterprising couple of blokes," which could mean anything. At a guess, a pair of low-flyers with discipline issues who have failed to adjust to the ordered, hierarchical world of the Secret Intelligence Service. Whatever their history, they're unlikely to regard Goodge Street as a promotion.

Eve glances at the battered metal desk formerly occupied by her deputy. A scattering of effects -- a Thermos flask, a Kylie Minogue mug filled with pens, a Disney "Frozen" snow-globe -- stands as he left them, untouched. Seeing this dusty array, Eve feels a vast weariness. There was a time when her mission was straightforward, and its purposes clearly defined. Now, three months after Simon's murder, a paralysing uncertainty bears down on her. The outlines of her task, once so hard-edged, have dissolved into a blur, as indistinct as the view through the grime-streaked office window.

She wonders, vaguely, if she should have taken more care with her appearance. She's wearing a zip-up tracksuit top, a pair of baggy-arsed supermarket jeans, and trainers. Simon was always on at her to make a bit more of herself, but all that vanity stuff -- shopping, make-up, hairdressing -- doesn't come naturally to her. When she was working with the Joint Services Analysis Group at Thames House, a well-meaning colleague took her for an afternoon at an expensive spa. Eve tried to enjoy herself, but she was bored witless. It all seemed so unimportant.

Lance Pope and Billy Primrose arrive at 10 a. m., and exchange unreadable glances as Eve introduces herself. Lance is fortyish, with the lean, suspicious features of a stoat. Billy, audibly wheezing after the climb up the stairs, looks barely out of his teens, with black-dyed hair, skin like suet, and a deathly back-bedroom pallor.

One of the things she's always loved about Niko is that none of these things matter to him, either. Yet he makes her feel beautiful, and sometimes, at the most ordinary of moments -- when she's getting dressed, perhaps, or climbing out of the bath -- she catches him gazing at her with a tenderness that pierces her to the heart.

For how much longer, she wonders, will he look at her like that. How unreasonably will she have to behave for him to wake up one morning and decide that he just can't continue? They must be almost at that point already. She's taken to pacing mutely around the flat in the evenings, vodka-tonic in hand, like an alcoholic ghost. Later, as often as not, she passes out in front of her laptop. Murdered men stalk her dreams, and she wakes at random hours of the night, her heart pounding with dread.

"I've spent most of my career in the field. I'm not choosy about furniture."

Eve nods. "A long way from the comforts of Vauxhall Cross, I'm afraid."

At seventeen, using the online handle "$qeeky," a reference to the asthma from which he'd suffered since childhood, Billy was a member of a hacker collective responsible for a series of well-publicised attacks on corporate and government websites. The FBI and Interpol eventually took the group down, and its leaders received prison sentences, but the underage Billy was released on bail on the condition that he live at home, under curfew, with no access to the Internet. Within weeks he had been recruited by MI6's Security Exploitation team.

"I've ordered some hardware," says Billy, still wheezing faintly. "External processors, logic and protocol analysers. Basic stuff."

"Bugger all," says Lance. "We were told you'd brief us."

"It'll be here this afternoon. I'll need a bit of space."

She replaces her glasses, and the two men swim back into focus. Billy in gothic black, Lance in a seedy version of sports casual. She finds them both deeply unprepossessing, confirming the impression she gained from their files.

"Good luck with that. I filed a requisition order six weeks ago."

"Just as well."

"Well, help yourself." She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. "How much do you both know about why you're here?"

"So this is it," Lance murmurs.

"We're here to hunt down a professional assassin," Eve tells them. "We have no name, no country of origin, no information concerning political affiliation. We know that she is a woman, probably in her mid- to late-twenties, and that she acts on behalf of an extremely well-resourced organisation with a global reach. We know that she's got at least six high-profile kills to her name."

Lance is a career MI6 officer, and a veteran of numerous overseas postings. Although an experienced agent runner, commended by the heads of station he has served under, he has not been promoted in several years. The problem is his chronic insolvency, caused by a predilection for online gambling. He's divorced, and lives alone in a one-room rented flat in Croydon.

Rain begins to beat at the office window, and she zips her tracksuit top up to her chin. "There are two main reasons we need to catch this woman, apart from the fact that she's a serial murderer who needs to be stopped."

"Which isn't the concern of the Service," says Lance, almost to himself.

"You're sure about that?" asks Lance.

Billy nods. "Fascist nut-job, Russian, taken out in London last year." He scratches his groin absent-mindedly. "Weren't Moscow behind that?"

"Which wouldn't normally be our concern, but in this case, very much is. I'm assuming you both know who I mean by Viktor Kedrin?"

Billy gives a low whistle. "Pretty fit, then."

"Lucy Drake's a model. Our killer used her as a double, to check into Kedrin's hotel and to approach him in a lecture hall. But the likeness may only be superficial."

"The SVR? No, that's what everyone assumed. In fact Kedrin and his bodyguards were shot dead by our target. It was a brutally efficient job, and she carried it out alone."

"Best we've got?" asks Lance.

"Absolutely. And for what it's worth, we have a CCTV image of her." Eve hands each man a printout of a blurry figure in a parka, with the hood up. The image has been captured from behind. She could be anyone.

Eve nods, and hands them each another printout. "But she may resemble this woman. Lucy Drake."

"Make a splash?" Billy shrugs. "Show that no one's beyond their reach?"

"Unlikely, given that the SVR have an entire directorate trained in assassination. And why would they have him killed in London when they could do it any time they wanted to at home?"

"So could she have been freelancing for Moscow?" asks Billy. "The shooter, I mean, not the model."

Eve meets his gaze. "Officially, me. I was the liaison officer between MI5 and the Metropolitan Police."

Lance purses his lips. "So who was responsible for Kedrin's protection when he was in London?"

"Possible, but our information is that the Kremlin were quite happy to tolerate Viktor and his far-right associates; they made the official regime look almost moderate. And they didn't hesitate to use his death against us. They've demanded a full investigation and made it clear, at diplomatic level, that they expect the killer caught. That demand has filtered down via Richard Edwards to me. To us."

Lance lets her answer hang in the air. Above the patter of the rain, Eve can hear the faint wheeze of Billy's breathing.

"She cut his throat," says Lance flatly. "To send you a message."

"Shit," murmurs Billy. Reaching into the pocket of his combat pants, he finds an inhaler, and takes two deep puffs.

"You said there's a second reason we want this woman."

"She killed Simon Mortimer, the officer you're replacing. And yes, I know what the official Service report says, because I helped draft it. What actually happened is that she cut his throat, to send a message to me."

"Yes. You heard me right. So you might want to think quite carefully before agreeing to join this team."

"We have a lead. The name of an individual who might be on the payroll of the organisation that runs our target. It's a long shot, but it's all we've got. So we follow the money, and we follow the man, and maybe, just maybe, we get to our killer."

"Any chance of borrowing some A4 surveillance people from Thames House?"

Lance looks at her for a moment. "Where exactly do you see us going with all this?"

"None whatsoever. This is a closed-circle operation, and no whisper of it leaves this room. Nor will you make any further contact, social or otherwise, with any Security Services personnel, on either side of the river. If anyone checks your files, you're both on official secondment to Customs and Excise. And I repeat, this could be dangerous. All the indications are that our target is not only highly trained and well-resourced, but a narcissistic sociopath who kills for pleasure."

"I'm assuming the money's shit," Lance says.

The two men look at each other. Then, very slowly, Billy nods, Lance shrugs his shoulders, and for the first time since their arrival Eve senses a flicker of common purpose.

"You both stay at present pay-grades, yes."

As Villanelle runs, she feels her body relax into the familiar rhythm. Her back and thighs are still sore from the previous afternoon's ju-jitsu session at the Club d'Arts Martiaux in Montparnasse, but by the time that she's completed the circuit of the lake and the Auteuil racecourse, the stiffness has vanished. On her way home, she picks up a takeaway sushi order from Comme des Poissons and a copy of the financial paper Les Echos.

"So," Billy says. "This lead you mentioned."

Back at the flat she showers, runs a comb through her dark-blonde hair, and pulls on jeans, a T-shirt and a leather jacket. Sitting on her balcony, she eats the sushi with her fingers and works her way through Les Echos. By the time she's finished the last mouthful of tuna, she's scanned every page and processed the information she needs.

Looking out over the city, she checks her phone. But there's no text from Konstantin. No new target. Turning on the Grundig shortwave radio, as she is required to do at least twice a day between actions, Villanelle keys in a search code. As usual, it takes a moment or two to find the number station, which tends to skip from frequency to frequency. Today it's broadcasting at 6840 kHz. There's a faint crackle, followed by the first fifteen notes of a Russian folk song, whose name Villanelle once knew but has long forgotten. The music's electronically generated, with a thin, tinny sound that's at once sad and faintly sinister. The notes repeat for two minutes, and then a woman's voice, distant but precise, begins to recite a five-digit Russian number group.

This is the call-up code, identifying the individual for whom the message is intended, and the voice has repeated the numbers three times --"Dva, pya', devyat', sem', devyat'…" Two, five, nine, seven, nine -- before Villanelle realises that the call-up code is her own. The shock momentarily takes her breath away. A number station call-out entails immediate action. She's been checking in with the station for more than two years without ever hearing her number.

17NORTHSTAR.

The call-up repeats for four minutes, then six electronic chimes announce the message. Again, this consists of five-digit groups, each voiced twice. Then the chimes again, the opening notes of the folk song, and the hiss of empty air. It takes Villanelle ten minutes to decrypt the message using the one-time pad that she keeps, along with a SIG Sauer P226 automatic and image10,000 in high-denomination notes, in a concealed safe. It reads:

Re-locking the safe, Villanelle grabs a baseball cap and sunglasses and leaves the flat. Location seventeen is the heliport at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Taking the ring road as fast as the traffic allows, whipping from lane to lane in the silver-grey Roadster, she makes it in fifteen minutes flat. At the entry gate to the car park, two men in high-visibility vests are waiting. They look vaguely official, and as Villanelle slows to a halt one of them holds out a placard printed with the words NORTH STAR. When Villanelle nods he beckons her out of the Audi and takes her car keys, then the second man leads her up an unmarked side road to a rectangle of tarmac enclosed by warehouses. At its central point, an Airbus Hummingbird helicopter is waiting, rotors idly turning.

Villanelle gives him a thumbs-up, and the Hummingbird lifts off, hovers for a moment above the heliport, and swings eastwards. Below them, briefly, is the serpentine glitter of the Seine, and the crawl of traffic on the Périphérique. And then the city falls away and there's just the thrum of the engine. Only now does Villanelle have time to wonder why she's been called out via the number station. And why there's been no word from Konstantin.

"OK?" asks the pilot, his eyes invisible behind mirrored sunglasses.

It's late afternoon by the time they touch down at Annecy Mont Blanc airfield in south-eastern France, where a lone figure is waiting on the tarmac. Something about her severely cropped hair and over-tight suit tells Villanelle that the woman is Russian, and this is confirmed when she speaks, directing Villanelle towards a dusty Peugeot parked fifty metres away. The woman drives with brisk efficiency, making a fast half-circuit of the airfield before pulling up with a screech of brakes in a hangar beside a Learjet bearing the North Star insignia.

Villanelle climbs into the seat beside the pilot, straps herself in, and places a noise-reducing communications headset over her baseball cap. She is carrying no luggage, money, passport or identifying documents.

"So where are we going?" Villanelle enquires, releasing her seat-belt buckle.

"Inside," she orders, slamming the car door, and Villanelle climbs the steps into the Learjet's climate-controlled interior and straps herself into a seat upholstered in arctic-blue leather. Following her, the woman retracts the steps and seals the exit door. The engines start immediately. There's a flare of late-afternoon sunshine at the window as the jet exits the hangar, and then, with a muted roar, they're airborne.

"And clothes. Please change now."

The woman meets her gaze. She's got broad, high-cheekboned features and eyes the colour of slate. Something about her is familiar.

"East," she says, snapping open an overnight bag at her feet. "I've got your documents."

A passport, Ukrainian, in the name of Angelika Pyatachenko. A worn leather wallet containing a driving licence, credit cards, and a reception pass identifying her as an employee of the North Star corporation. Crumpled receipts. A wad of ruble notes.

A leather-look jacket, limp angora sweater, and short skirt. Scuffed ankle boots. Underwear, much washed. Cheap tights, new, from a Kiev department store.

"I wasn't sure to begin with, but…"

"Shit. It really is you. Oxana Vorontsova."

Conscious that she's being scrutinised, Villanelle takes off her cap and sunglasses and begins to undress, laying her clothes on the blue leather seat. When she removes her bra, the other woman gasps.

"I'm sorry?"

Villanelle stares at her blankly. Konstantin promised her that the cut-out was total. That nothing like this could ever happen.

Fuck, it can't be. But it is. That girl from the military academy. She's cut her hair off, and looks older, but it's her. With a supreme effort of will, Villanelle keeps her face expressionless. "Who do you think I am?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You don't remember me? Lara? From Ekaterinburg?"

"Oxana, I know who you are. You look different, but it's you. I thought I recognised that little scar on your mouth, and I knew for sure when I saw that mole on your breast. Don't you remember me?"

Villanelle considers the situation. Denial isn't going to work. "Lara," she says. "Lara Farmanyants."

That was the moment when Oxana knew that she had won. Early the next morning she crept back to her own room, and when she saw Lara at breakfast in the canteen looked straight through her. Lara tried to approach her several times that morning, and each time Oxana blanked her. When they lined up at the target range, Lara's broad features registered hurt and bafflement. She tried to compose herself for the competition, but her aim wavered, and the best she could manage was a bronze medal. Oxana, shooting straight and true, took gold, and by the time she climbed onto the team coach to return to Perm, Lara Farmanyants had been deleted from her thoughts.

They met, just a few years earlier, at the university games, when they were competing in the pistol-shooting. It had become clear that Farmanyants, representing the Kazan Military Academy, was going to be very hard to beat, so the night before the final Oxana slipped into her rival's room, and without speaking a word, stripped naked and climbed into bed with her. It didn't take the young cadet long to recover from her surprise. She was, as Oxana had guessed, badly in need of sex, and returned her kisses with the desperation of a starved animal. Later that night, dopey from hours of fervent cunnilingus, she whispered to Oxana that she loved her.

The light is fading when the Learjet touches down at a small private airfield outside Scherbanka in South Ukraine. A cold wind scours the runway, where a BMW high-security vehicle is waiting. Lara drives fast, leaving the airfield by a side-gate, where a uniformed guard waves them through. Their destination, she tells Villanelle, is Odessa. For an hour they proceed smoothly through the darkening landscape, but as they approach the city, they run into traffic. Ahead of them, illuminated by the lights of the city, the clouds are a sulphurous yellow.

"I read in the paper that you killed some Mafia people," Lara says. "And later, one of the instructors at the academy told me that you hanged yourself in prison. I'm glad that part wasn't true."

"You did what you had to do to win. And although it probably meant nothing to you, I've never forgotten that night."

Conscious that she needs to keep Lara onside, Villanelle softens her gaze. "I'm sorry I treated you the way I did at Ekaterinburg."

And now, by some malign coincidence, here she is again. Perhaps it isn't so strange that she should be working for Konstantin. She's a superb shot, and probably far too smart and ambitious to waste her career in the military.

"Perhaps another two hours."

"Really?"

"Really and truly."

"And will we be interrupted?"

"In that case…" She reaches out and runs a finger softly down Lara's cheek.

"The pilot has instructions not to leave the cabin."

"So how long is this flight?" Villanelle asks.

"I won't say anything about you," says Lara.

Villanelle inclines her head against the window. The first spatters of rain streak the armour-plated glass. "It won't go well for you if you do. Oxana Vorontsova is dead."

"A pity. I admired her."

On her return from China, with the help of an investigator borrowed from the City of London's Economic Crime department, Eve attempted to chase down the lead Jin Qiang had given her: to identify who had made the bank transfer of £17 million, and who had been the beneficiary. The investigation failed to reveal the source of the funds, but led them via an intricate web of shell companies to the payee, a low-profile venture capitalist named Tony Kent.

"You need to forget her."

I'll speak to Konstantin, Villanelle decides. He can deal with Lara. Preferably with a 9mm round to the back of that neatly cropped head.

Detailed investigation of Kent and his affairs revealed little, but one fact caught Eve's interest: that Kent was a member of an exclusive fly-fishing syndicate that owned half a mile of the River Itchen in Hampshire. Information about the syndicate was not easy to come by, but Richard Edwards was able, after a few discreet enquiries, to furnish Eve with a membership list. This was not long; indeed, it contained only six names. Those of Tony Kent, two hedge-fund managers, a partner in a high-profile commodity trading firm, a senior cardio-thoracic surgeon, and Dennis Cradle. Eve knew exactly who Dennis Cradle was. He was the director of D4 Branch at MI5, responsible for counter-espionage against Russia and China.

Billy is crouched at the steel desk that used to be Simon's, hacking into Dennis Cradle's email account. The new computer hardware, now connected and running, gives off a faint hum. Lance is sitting on a plastic chair in front of the window, staring at the traffic on Tottenham Court Road. His contribution to the office decor has been a clothes rail, hung with coats and jackets that look like a job lot from a charity shop. In the teeth of all her principles, Eve has given him permission to smoke, as the pungent tang of his roll-ups masks other, worse odours.

"Nearly there, I think." His fingers dance over the keyboard as he stares at his screen. "Oh! You silly, silly man."

"Did you have curry last night, Billy?" she asks, looking up from her laptop screen.

"Yeah, prawn Madras." He shifts his buttocks in his chair. "How d'you know?"

"Call it an inspired guess. How are you getting on with that password?"

"You in?" asks Lance.

"All the way. Dennis Cradle, you're my bitch."

"So what've we got?" Eve asks, a tiny flame of excitement flaring inside her.

"Cloud server data. Everything on his home computer, basically."

Billy shrugs. "He probably thinks that because it's domestic stuff, he doesn't need heavy-duty authentication."

"Or perhaps he doesn't want to give the impression of having anything to hide. Perhaps this is what we're supposed to see."

Cradle shares an account with his wife, Penny, a corporate lawyer. Their emails are stored in orderly folders with names like Accounts, Cars, Health, Insurance and Schools. The inbox holds fewer than a hundred messages, which Billy copies and sends to Eve. A preliminary examination reveals little of interest.

"This is like a lifestyle advertisement," says Eve, scrolling through the Cradles' picture files. Almost all of the images are of family activity holidays. Skiing in Megève, tennis camp in Malaga, sailing on the Algarve. Cradle himself is a tanned, bullish figure of about fifty, who clearly enjoys being photographed in sports kit. His wife, prettyish and well groomed, is perhaps five years younger. Their children, Daniel and Bella, stare at the camera with the sulky entitlement of privately schooled teenagers.

"Doesn't sound as if it's very secure."

Eve shrugs. "I doubt they'll have to. Assuming that Tony Kent is acting as some sort of financial intermediary for the organisation we're targeting, I'd guess that money's parked well out of sight of the Revenue."

"We don't, for certain. But Jin Qiang wouldn't have directed me to Kent if he didn't know I'd make the connection with Cradle. I'd asked specific questions about the possibility that members of the UK Intelligence Services were receiving large-scale payments from any unknown source. This was Jin's answer. I think it was as far as he thought he could go."

"Muswell Hill. They've been there six years. Cost them one point three mill. Today, it's got to be worth two, at least."

"Even so, they'll have trouble explaining away seventeen fat ones."

"Have a look at their London place," says Eve.

"No. The wife's the big earner."

"Surely Cradle's not pretending to have paid for all this on his Service salary?"

"So how do we know it's going to Cradle?"

The street-view image shows a red-brick Georgian house, set back from the road. A pillared porch is half-obscured by a spreading magnolia. A burglar alarm is visible beside a ground-floor window.

"Where is it?" asks Lance.

"Twats," says Billy.

"I'm assuming we're not going the search warrant route?"

"Too soon. We need to do a proper recce. We can't just go charging in there. What else have they got coming up?"

Eve frowns. "But that's tonight."

"I can do tonight." Lance shrugs. "I'll cancel my date with Gigi Hadid."

"I need a guaranteed two-hour window. What can they offer us?"

"I've got Penny's. He doesn't seem to have one."

Eve polishes her glasses. "I'd like to, but it'll be well secured. He's a senior MI5 officer. The shit would really fly if we were caught."

"So," says Lance, "are we going to turn Cradle's place over?"

"How about this?" says Billy. "Dinner with A & L, Mazeppa 8.00."

"No. We'd never get one, even if we said why we needed one. Which we can't."

"Just asking." Lance leans in towards the screen. "That's a dummy alarm over the first-floor window, so they've probably got a conventional system inside. Infra-red, pressure pads…"

"You think it's doable?" Eve asks him.

He flicks his lighter beneath his half-smoked roll-up. "Everything's doable. It's a question of opportunity. Can you get the bloke's diary up, Billy?"

"OK," she says.

"Fuck." Eve searches for Mazeppa on her phone. It's a Michelin-starred restaurant in Dover Street, Mayfair. She looks uncertainly at Lance.

"Don't know about Dennis," says Billy. "But Penny's not got anything else booked this week."

Lara has dropped Villanelle off at a cafe in Odessa's Bird Market, in the Moldovanka district. It's a dingy place, with yellowish lighting, faded travel posters on the walls, and a blackboard advertising the day's special. Perhaps half of the tables are occupied. By single men, mostly, and a couple of women who might be prostitutes, fuelling themselves for the night's work with solyanka soup and dumplings. From time to time the men glance at Villanelle, but on meeting her flatly hostile gaze, look away again.

"I could check the house out this afternoon," he offers. "Park up and sit tight. Soon as they leave this evening, in we go."

Eve nods. It's far from ideal. And she has no idea about Lance's skills as a housebreaker. But Richard wouldn't have sent her a dud operative. And she needs results.

And now here he is again. There are the patchy beginnings of a beard, and a battered leather jacket has replaced the tailored coat, but the frozen darkness of the eyes is the same. When they first met he spoke English, but now he is calling to the elderly waitress in fluent, Moscow-accented Russian.

She's been waiting here for twenty minutes now, sipping a cup of tea and skim-reading a copy of Sevodnya, a Russian-language tabloid, in one of the booths at the side of the room. At intervals she raises her eyes to the cafe's rain-blurred glass frontage, and the dimly lit streets beyond. She's hungry, but doesn't order anything in case she has to leave.

"Borscht and pirozhki for two," he orders, and sits back.

A lean figure slips into the booth opposite her. A man she's met before: the man who talked to her in Hyde Park the previous winter, and who spooked her.

"You're hungry?" he asks, running a hand through rain-damp hair.

She shrugs.

"So," says Villanelle, her face expressionless.

"So we meet again." He gives her the ghost of a smile. "I apologise for failing to identify myself in London. The time wasn't right."

"I see."

"You don't see, but you will. My name is Anton, and I'm a colleague of the man you know as Konstantin."

Still she says nothing. Even if he's telling the truth, and Konstantin has been abducted, she's still lethally compromised. If they -- whoever "they" are -- can get to Konstantin, with his serpentine wariness, then they can get to her.

He looks at her, assessingly. "We were impressed by your handling of the Kedrin action. And now we are faced with a situation requiring your assistance."

"You have to trust me," he says. "If I was a hostile, you'd be dead already."

Her expression remains neutral, but alarm is jolting through her with nauseating force. Is this a set-up? An attempt to panic her into revealing who and what she is?

"And yes, we're quite sure. The gang is called Zoloty Bratstvo, or the Golden Brotherhood, and it's headed by a man named Rinat Yevtukh. According to our information, Konstantin is being held in a well-secured house in Fontanka, a half-hour away from here. The house is owned by Yevtukh. The gang's intention, apparently, is to demand a ransom."

She stares at him, speechless.

"And now it is?"

"Go on."

"Konstantin has been abducted. Taken hostage by a mafia gang, based here in Odessa."

"OK. We're certain that the kidnappers know nothing about Konstantin's connection to us, or even that we exist. As far as they're concerned, he's just a visiting businessman, whose company will pay up in the usual way. What concerns us is that Yevtukh's organisation has, for some time, been under the control of the SVR, the Russian secret intelligence service. And the SVR have wind of us, as MI6 do. They don't know who or what we are, but they know we exist. So the question is, have they organised this abduction with a view to interrogating Konstantin about us? We're not sure. We've got our own people in the SVR, naturally, but it'll take time to find out what's really going on. And we don't have time."

"Tell me," she says eventually.

He pauses as bowls, spoons and a steaming casserole of borscht are placed on their table, followed moments later by a plate of pirozhki -- small buns filled with minced meat. As the waitress shuffles away, Anton ladles out the beetroot soup, splashing the front of Villanelle's cheap sweater with spots of dark purple.

"You do now."

"We get him out."

"Yes. I've assembled a team of our best people."

"Just listen, OK. You have a very specific role to play."

She sits there, motionless. "I've never taken part in a hostage-rescue."

She meets his gaze. "I don't work with other people."

"Konstantin's tough," he continues. "But even he can't beat an SVR interrogation."

"I'll be the one who decides that."

She listens. And knows that she has no choice. That all that she is, all that she has become, hangs on the success of this mission.

Villanelle nods, dabbing absently at her sweater with a paper napkin. "So what do you propose?"

He leans in towards her. "Listen, we don't have time for this primadonna shit. You'll do what you're told. And there's a good chance we can all walk away from this."

"I'll do it on one condition. That I'm not recognisable. I don't want anyone else on the team to see my face. Or find out anything about me."

"We?"

"Don't worry, the others feel the same. You'll wear full-face masks throughout, and communication will be limited to an operational minimum. Afterwards, when the mission's completed, you'll be returned separately to where you came from."

She nods. There's so much about him that she distrusts, and from which she instinctively recoils. But she can't, at that moment, find fault with his plan.

"So when do we go in?"

He surveys the cafe, and takes a mouthful of soup. The rain beats harder against the glass frontage.

"Tonight."

Niko doesn't raise his voice, but Eve can hear that he's upset. Two of his colleagues from the school are expected for dinner, Chilean Pinot Noir has been bought, and a small but expensive shoulder of lamb is waiting in an oven-proof dish, stuck with cloves of garlic. The subtext to the evening is that Eve will make herself look nice, and wear the St. Laurent scent he bought her, and her prettiest earrings, and when the guests have gone they will make slightly drunken love, and things will, one way and another, be OK again.

"I can't believe that it -- whatever it is -- really has to happen tonight," he says. "I mean, Jesus, Eve. Seriously. You've known about Zbig and Claudia coming over for weeks."

"I'm sorry," she says, conscious of Billy listening to every word. "I just can't do tonight. Nor can I discuss this on an open line. You'll just have to apologise for me."

"No I don't, actually, Eve. I really don't. I have a life, in case you haven't noticed, and I'm asking you, just this once, to do something for me. So make an excuse, do whatever you have to, but be there this evening. If you're not…"

"Niko, I --"

"No, listen to me. If you're not, then we need to think very seriously about whether --"

"Niko, please. Tell them whatever you like. You know the situation."

Silence, except for the rise and fall of his breathing.

"I'm sorry, I have to go."

"Niko, it's an emergency. There's a threat to life, and I've been ordered to stay."

As she breaks the connection Eve catches Billy's eye, and he looks away. She stands there for a moment, dizzy with shame. This is not the first time that she's avoided the truth with Niko, but it's the first time that she's straight out lied to him.

"So what am I going to say? That you're working late? I thought all that finished when you…"

And for what? Billy and Lance could handle this just fine without her. In fact they'd probably prefer to, but something deep inside her, something savage and atavistic, wants to run with the pack. Is it worth it? Turning her life into this furtive twilight, and testing the love of a good man to destruction? Is she onto something with Dennis Cradle, or just forging imaginary links to deceive herself she's making progress?

"Her user name's Ladyfang."

"Have you got a girlfriend, Billy?"

"Not as such. Chat with this girl on Sea of Souls."

"That's a bit sad, isn't it?"

"Nah. Was thinking about pushing for a date, but she'd probably turn out to be really old, or a bloke, or something."

"So what's she called?"

If they find nothing on Cradle, she'll take time off. Make things right with Niko, if it's not too late. All the longer-serving officers at Thames House said the same thing: you had to have a life outside. If you didn't want to end up alone, you had to tear yourself away from the sleepless intoxication of secret work. All it offered was an unending series of false horizons. And no closure, ever.

Thinking of Niko at home without her, laying the table, setting out the wine glasses, carefully placing the lamb in the oven, makes her want to weep. The temptation to ring him, to say that the situation's resolved and that she's coming straight home, is overwhelming. But she doesn't.

"Online role-player game."

"What's Sea of Souls?"

"Ever met her?"

Billy shrugs. "To be honest I haven't got time for a girlfriend right now." There's a brief silence, broken by the buzz of his phone. "It's Lance. He's parked up, with eyes on the house. No sign of any occupants."

"They won't be back from work yet. And my guess is that they'll both go straight to the restaurant. He'll be coming from Thames House. Her firm's based out at Canary Wharf. But we can't count on it. Our clock starts at eight, when they meet the others at Mazeppa."

"I'll ring my mum. Tell her not to wait up."

The forward operating base is a disused farmhouse two miles north-west of Fontanka. The assault team is gathered in a rectangular outbuilding housing a rusting ZAZ hatchback and an assortment of mud-caked agricultural implements. Temporary spotlights illuminate two long trestle tables bearing maps, architectural plans and a laptop computer. Metal boxes containing weaponry, ammunition and equipment are stacked on the earth floor. It's 10 p. m., local time. Beyond the farmyard wall, silhouetted against the darkening sky, Villanelle can see the rotors of a Little Bird military helicopter.

Anton's plan is simple: a surgical strike of such savagery and intensity as to leave the hostage-takers incapable of coordinated response. As the assault team clears the house, the sniper will seek targets of opportunity. Speed will be of the essence.

The building in which Konstantin is being held, they learn, stands in grounds of half-a-dozen acres. Photographs show an ostentatious three-storey palazzo with pillars, balustrades and a steeply pitched tile roof. A chain-link fence surrounds the estate; entry is by means of a guarded electronic gate. To Villanelle, the place looks like a fortified wedding cake.

The assaulters can expect a fight. According to intelligence gained by surveillance, there's a permanent armed security detail of six men attached to the house, of whom up to three, at any one time, are patrolling the exterior. Given Yevtukh's reputation, and the probability that most are ex-military, they're likely to mount a strong resistance.

In addition to Anton, the team numbers five. Four assaulters, of whom Villanelle is one, and a sniper. All five are wearing black Nomex coveralls, body armour, and close-fitting balaclava masks. Villanelle has no idea of the identity of the others, but Anton is conducting the final briefing in English.

Villanelle looks around her at the other masked figures. The Nomex suits and body armour give them all the same bulky profile, but the sniper has the body-mass of a woman. They will be known to each other only by their call signs. The assaulters are Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta, the sniper is Echo.

With the tactical briefing completed, the assaulters move to the weaponry boxes. After some thought, Villanelle arms herself with a KRISS Vector sub-machine gun, a Glock 21 handgun, several magazines loaded with.45 ACP rounds, and a Gerber combat knife. Then from one of the trestle tables she takes a fibre-optic scope and viewer, and the helmet carry-bag marked with her call sign, Charlie. Slipping the scope into a thigh pocket, she takes the helmet outside into the darkened farmyard to check the intercom and night-vision goggles. Around her there are brief illuminations as the other three assaulters test weapon-mounted torches and laser sights.

Lifting off the ballistic helmet, she watches them. There's a tall guy, Delta, with dark-skinned hands, who's shouldering a heavy combat shotgun. Bravo is a wiry figure of medium height, wholly anonymous, and Alpha is bullish and compact. Both are carrying short-barrelled Heckler & Koch sub-machine guns and multiple bandoliers of ammunition. All three are, without question, male, and she's aware of them checking her out in return, eyes expressionless behind their face masks. Half-a-dozen paces away the sniper, armed with a Lobaev SVL rifle and night-scope, is measuring crosswind vectors with a velocity meter.

Smoothing out the maps and architectural plans, Anton beckons to them.

"OK. Last run-through, then we go. I'd have liked to hit the house some time before dawn tomorrow morning, but we can't risk leaving the hostage there that long. So listen in."

As he speaks, Villanelle is aware of the sniper, Echo, standing beside her. Their eyes meet, and she recognises the slate-grey gaze of Lara Farmanyants.

Inside the farmhouse the team finalises communications and radio procedure. The voices of the others are unrevealing; all speak fluent English, although with differing accents. Alpha sounds Eastern European, Bravo is definitely southern-states American, and Delta's first language is probably Arabic. Echo, the woman, is Russian. And to these faceless creatures, Villanelle muses, I have to entrust my life. Fucking hell.

Yet again, Villanelle feels her bearings shift. Lara naked and supine beneath her is one thing, Lara hefting a high-precision rifle quite another. Is she there merely to take out the guards, or is she part of some unfathomably devious plan of Anton's?

The two women regard each other for a moment, expressionless.

"Nice weapon," Villanelle says.

"It's my favourite for this kind of work. Chambered for.408 Chey-Tac." Lara works the Lobaev's soundlessly smooth bolt action. "I'm not so easily distracted from my aim, these days."

"I'm sure you're not. Good hunting."

The minutes creep past. Villanelle fits the ear cups of her helmet, adjusts her microphone boom, and tightens her chinstrap. Finally, a signal from Echo informs Anton that she is in position and ready. Anton nods at the four assaulters and they make their way through the darkened farmyard to the matt-black Little Bird. The pilot is waiting in the unlit cockpit, and readies the craft for take-off as the assaulters take their places on the outboard fuselage platforms. Seating herself on the starboard platform, with the KRISS Vector slung across her chest, Villanelle clips on the retaining harness. Next to her, Delta is holding the shotgun across his knees. His eyes narrow, and they exchange wary nods.

Lara nods, and a minute later climbs into the SUV which will take her to her firing position.

There's a muted roar as the Little Bird's engine engages, followed by the accelerating whump-whump of the rotors. The craft shudders, Delta extends a gloved arm, and he and Villanelle bump fists. For now, whatever the future might hold, they're a team, and Villanelle forces her apprehensions to the back of her mind. The Little Bird lifts a few metres and hovers. Then the ground falls away as they climb into the night sky.

As they sprint for the cover of the side of the house, high-intensity security floodlights bathe the area in dazzling white. Two figures race towards them across the driveway. There's a wet smack, then another, and both go down on the gravel. One writhes like a pinned insect, and the other lies still, all but decapitated by the silenced.408 sniper round.

The helicopter approaches the villa upwind, then angles in fast, skimming over the chain-link fence before dancing in the air a metre above the lawn to the east of the main entrance. Releasing their harnesses the assaulters jump down, weapons levelled, and seconds later the Little Bird lifts and swings away into the darkness.

What follows is a study in time and motion. Alpha runs out to the large central front door, places shaped explosive charges against it, and rejoins the others. The front door blows with a deafening whoomph, but this is a diversion. The real assault is through a small side door, which Delta blows off its hinges with his shotgun. The assaulters pour through, into the deserted kitchens.

"Nice shooting, Echo," murmurs Bravo, his Southern drawl pin-sharp in Villanelle's earphones, and with a series of aimed shots, begins to knock out the LED floodlights mounted on the lawn and the front of the building. Alpha runs to the rear corner of the building to perform the same operation there. Villanelle watches and waits. Muted by her helmet's noise-suppression system, the shots sound distant and unreal.

With only the far wall of the house still spotlit, the western portion of the grounds is thrown into sharp relief. Villanelle risks a quick glance round the angle of the building and feels the air ripple as a round passes her face. The shooter must have betrayed his position because Villanelle hears, once again, the meaty thwack of a sniper round finding its target. In her headphones, Lara's voice is calm. "Echo to all players, you are now clear to breach. Repeat, you are clear to breach."

They're in an anteroom now, full of overstuffed furniture. On the wall is a vast painting of Michael Jackson fondling a chimpanzee. From somewhere in the interior of the building comes the muffled thump of feet on stairs. A security guard edges into view levelling an assault rifle, and Villanelle spins him to his knees with a three-round burst from the KRISS Vector. He balances for a moment, blank-eyed, and falls face down. As she fires a double tap through the back of his skull, spattering the deep-pile carpet with blood, Bravo throws a stun grenade through the doorway towards the main body of the house.

There's a formal choreography to house clearance. It's a self-propelling process that cannot and must not be halted. The team moves from room to room, with each member assigned a quadrant, sweeping, clearing, moving on. Villanelle knows the dance well, has rehearsed every step in the killing house at Delta Force's training facility at Fort Bragg. The instructors there knew her as Sylvie Dazat, on secondment from the GIGN, France's National Gendarmerie Intervention Group, and in her final assessment described her as an exceptionally fast learner with instinctive weapon skills, but with a personality so antisocial as to rule her out of any teamwork role. Her hostile behaviour had been deliberate. Men make themselves forget women who are unimpressed by them; Konstantin had taught her that. And no one at Fort Bragg remembers Sylvie Dazat.

Villanelle and Delta are crouching behind a large Chesterfield sofa upholstered in turquoise calfskin. Behind them is the main entrance, now open to the night, with the heavy front door sagging on its hinges. To their left, on a marble plinth, is a life-size statue of a ballerina naked except for a thong. A burst of fire rakes the sofa, tearing into the scatter cushions. If we stay here, Villanelle thinks, we're dead. And I really, really don't want to die here, among these criminally ugly furnishings.

A tidal wave of sound rolls over Villanelle, punching through her helmet, and Alpha and Bravo race past her. As she and Delta follow, leaping over the body of the guard, her ears sing. They're in an oversized hallway, which is hung with a pall of oily smoke from the stun grenade. For a couple of seconds the place appears unoccupied, then there's a fusillade of automatic-weapon fire, and the assaulters dive for cover.

Delta points at a gilt-framed mirror reflecting the far end of the hall. In it, a figure is just visible behind a large, ornate desk. As one, Villanelle and Delta rise from each end of the sofa. As she gives covering fire, he blasts the desk with the shotgun. Wood chips fly, and a body pitches heavily to the floor. Four down. There's a movement in the opposite corner, and a rifle barrel shows above a white leather armchair. Bravo smacks a burst into the upholstery, and a mist of blood reddens the zebra-print wallpaper. Five.

Ducking back behind the sofa, Villanelle changes magazines and runs for the stairs. The remaining hostage-taker, she guesses, is waiting on the first floor.

She inches up the stairs, and cautiously brings her eyes level with the first floor. A figure appears in the nearest doorway, she fires, and her head is whipped back with such force that, for a moment, she's certain that she's been shot. She falls to a crouch, her ears ringing, and is steadied by a hand to her shoulder. Pinpoints of light are bursting in front of her eyes.

"OK?" a familiar voice asks.

Villanelle nods, too dazed to wonder why Lara's there, and reaches a hand to her helmet. There's a deep furrow scored through the armoured plastic; a centimetre lower and it would have been her skull.

"You both fired at the same time," Lara says. "And luckily for you, he fired high."

The sixth guard is lying on his back in the doorway. The ragged, sucking sound of his breath indicates a lung shot. With Villanelle covering her, Lara runs up to him, an automatic in her right hand.

The reply is an indistinguishable mumble. Lara leans closer, but all she can hear is the sucking of his chest. Levelling the handgun, she fires a single round between his eyes.

"That wasn't the plan."

The guard looks upwards.

"No one?"

Together, they attend to the figure on the chair. There's a black cloth bag over his head, stiff with dried blood. Underneath it, Konstantin's face is battered. He has been gagged, and his breathing rattles through a broken nose.

"Anyone guarding him?"

The faintest of nods.

The eyes flutter and close.

"What are you doing here?" Villanelle says.

"The same as you."

"The plan has changed. I'm your back-up."

"Next floor up?"

Villanelle hesitates for a moment, and then biting back her doubts, leads Lara up the last few stairs. At the top, facing her, is a door. Taking out the fibre-optic scope, Villanelle slips the flexible 1mm cable over the carpet and under the door. The tiny fish-eye lens shows a brightly lit room, empty except for a figure trussed to a chair.

"Where's the hostage?" she asks in Russian.

Silently, Villanelle tries the door. It's locked. A single round from the KRISS Vector blows out the cylinder, she kicks it open, and she and Lara burst into the room.

"I know what you're thinking," Lara tells Villanelle. "You're thinking that you'll never be safe as long as I'm alive, because I know who you really are. You're thinking about killing me."

As Lara removes the gag, Villanelle draws her combat knife and severs the PlastiCuffs binding Konstantin to the chair. He slumps to one side, his bruised and bloodied head thrown back, working his swollen fingers and drawing air into his lungs.

"This would be the perfect moment," agrees Villanelle.

"True again."

"You can also see how that puts me in the same position. How I'll never be safe as long as you're alive."

"I never told them anything. You know that, don't you?"

Both women turn to him. Neither removes her balaclava.

"I know that," says Villanelle. She glances at Lara, notes the deceptive casualness of her stance, and the tautness of her index finger on the trigger guard of the automatic.

Konstantin's eyes move to Lara. "I heard what you said. You two have no cause to fear each other."

"Oxana? Lara?" Konstantin whispers through lips dark with dried blood. "It's you, isn't it?"

"What was that?"

Lara's gaze narrows, but she doesn't speak.

Villanelle genuflects, so that her face is level with Konstantin's, and her body shielded from Lara by his. Reaching behind her back, she draws the Glock from its holster.

"Something you once told me," she says to Konstantin. "I've never forgotten it."

"Trust no one," she says, and placing the barrel of the Glock against his ribs, squeezes the trigger.

Eve drives away, doubles round the block, and pulls up beneath a street light fifty metres away. In the shadowed passenger seat she's almost invisible, but she can see pedestrians and traffic coming from both directions. She knows what the Cradles look like. She's seen Dennis often enough at Thames House, and Penny at a couple of the rather grim drinks parties that the Service feels moved to organise each December. She's confident that she'll recognise them.

Gaining entry to the Cradles' house is something of an anticlimax. After disabling the burglar alarm with a signal-jammer, Lance lets himself and Billy in through the front door with a set of skeleton keys. Helpfully, the Cradles have left their lights on, to discourage intruders.

Confidence, Eve tells herself. Look respectable, press the bell, march in through the front door. Lance lets her in and hands her a pair of surgical gloves. The front hall is narrow, with a tiled floor and white gloss woodwork. There's a sitting room to the left, and a kitchen beyond the staircase. Eve feels her heart pounding. There's something profoundly shocking about trespassing in this way. "Fancy some toast and Earl Grey?" Lance asks.

Eve sits in the car, her mood switching between acute anxiety and boredom. After what seems like a dangerously lengthy interlude, she sees Billy sauntering along the pavement towards her.

She's instructed Lance and Billy to go straight to the study and concentrate on the computers. To download everything on every drive that they can find, and copy any documents that they think might be relevant with handheld laser scanners. Both men seem to be experienced burglars; presumably this was what Richard Edwards meant when he described them as "enterprising."

"We're pretty much done," he says, subsiding into the passenger seat. "Lance wonders if you'd like to take a quick shufti."

Eve shakes her head. "No, if there's anything we need, it'll be in here. I very much doubt he'd share the kind of information we're looking for with his wife."

"Sensible bloke," murmurs Lance.

"Don't joke, I'm starving," says Eve, steadying her voice. "What've we got?"

Dennis Cradle's office is a neat, rather smug little room, with built-in shelving and bookcases, a desk in the same pale wood, and an ergonomic office chair. On the desktop is a powerful-looking computer with a twenty-four-inch monitor.

"Is there a safe?"

"Not in here. There might be one somewhere else in the house, but even if we found one, I doubt we'd have time to crack it before they get back."

"This way."

Eve ignores him. "So looking round here, what do you see?"

"If it's on there, we've got it. Plus an external drive and various memory sticks we found in the drawers."

"Assuming Billy's gutted that," Eve says.

"Controlling type. And pretty pleased with himself, I'd say."

The photos, mounted in a group on the wall above the desk, show Cradle with friends in a university dining hall, shaking hands with a U. S. Army general, catching a salmon in a mountainous river, and posing with his family on holiday. The shelves hold a mix of bestselling thrillers, political memoirs, and titles related to security and Intelligence issues.

Lance's phone buzzes. "It's Billy. The Cradles are outside. Getting out of a taxi. Time to go."

"Shit. Shit."

"The lights," she hisses, struggling to control her breathing. "We left the fucking lights on."

Lance moves fast and silently. Eve follows, her heart pounding so hard she thinks she's going to vomit. In the kitchen Lance slips the garden door latch, hurries Eve out, and quietly closes the door behind them. They're on soft ground now, some kind of lawn. Shit. Why are the Cradles back so early?

"Into the lane," Lance orders. Overhung by bushes, this leads to the road. Eve swings a leg awkwardly over the low fence, thorns tearing at her clothes. Desperately, she wrenches herself free, and Lance follows her.

"They were on when we went in. Chill."

"OK, lie down." He presses a hand between her shoulder blades. The ground is hard, uneven and wet.

"When I say the word, make for the road," whispers Lance.

Angry noises issue from the Cradles' kitchen. A banging of cupboard doors. Utensils slammed onto hard surfaces.

A brief silence, then something flips over the fence, and lands in Eve's hair with a tiny scorching hiss. The kitchen door clicks shut, and Eve claws at the half-smoked cigarette, melting the latex glove and burning her fingers before she finally tears it loose.

"Look, I'm sorry, OK." The man's voice, much closer now. "But I honestly don't see…"

"Fine, but not in the garden, OK? We've got neighbours."

"You don't see? Well for a start, you condescending shit, you don't ever tell me to calm down in front of our friends."

"Penny, please. Don't shout."

"What are we waiting for?"

Eve wills Penny to stay in the kitchen. She doesn't. Eve hears the garden door pushed open, and a thumb flicking at a cigarette lighter. Moments later, she smells smoke. Penny can't be more than a couple of metres away. Rigid with the fear of discovery, Eve barely dares to breathe.

There's the faint sound of the closing front door, and of a male voice. Eve presses herself even harder into the ground. Her face is inches from Lance's shoe.

"Dennis. He's still in front, paying the taxi driver."

"Fuck the neighbours." Her voice drops. "And fuck you, too."

"I'll shout as loud as I fucking well like."

"Yes, I'm afraid now."

"Now?"

"What's that smell?" asks Billy, letting out the clutch.

Niko grunts non-committally.

"Crikey, I won't ask. I'm assuming we're all going back to Goodge Street?"

"I need your help. Can you come to the office?"

Wincing with pain, Eve follows him down the lane to the road. No one seems to be watching as they climb into the car, but she's glad they've got false number plates.

"Maybe, but let's do it anyway. There's bugger-all on TV."

"Billy, we don't have to go through all this stuff tonight," Eve says.

"Yeah, whatever."

"Niko, look, I'm really sorry about tonight, and I'll make it up to you, but I need to ask you something. Something important."

It's nearly midnight when Eve rings Niko. He's at home, and the two other teachers who have come to dinner are still there.

"My hair," says Eve, pulling off the half-melted glove.

"Jesus, Eve." He pauses. "So what do I do with Zbig and Claudia?"

"Lance?"

"Go," whispers Lance.

"Everyone good with pizza?" Billy asks. "We passed a place on the Archway Road."

"Yes, you will. Tell me."

"Call a cab, and get over here. All of you."

"Yeah, I trust them." He sounds weary. Resigned.

She considers. "How good are they?"

"They're very clever people. But right now, they're shit-faced."

"You trust them?"

"What do you mean, good?"

"Niko, I'm sorry. I'll never ask you for anything again."

"IT stuff. Security protocols. Cracking."

"Eve, you're forgetting. I don't know where 'here' is. I don't know where anything is any more."

"Niko…"

When she puts down the phone the others are looking at her. Billy's hands are poised, unmoving, above his keyboard. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" Lance asks.

"Just tell me, OK?"

She meets his gaze. "We've looked at everything on the external drive and the memory sticks, and everything we downloaded from his hard drive, and it's all squeaky-clean. We've just got this one locked file, and I'm afraid that if we don't crack it, everything else we did tonight counts for fuck all. Dennis Cradle is old-school MI5. He's not a techie, but he knows how to create a high-entropy password. Billy's brute force attack isn't working. We need more heads on this one, and I've got clearance from Richard to use outside consultants if necessary."

"So who are these people?" Lance asks.

"Yes."

"Yeah. What he said."

"He wouldn't have told them anything."

"Billy?"

"Those were my orders," says Lara. "If you didn't finish Konstantin off, I was to shoot you, and then him. He was compromised."

Lance shrugs. "OK by me, I guess."

They're lying, naked, on the Learjet's foldaway bed. They smell of sweat, sex and gunshot residue. In forty minutes they will land at Vnukovo airport, south-west of Moscow. Lara will leave, and Villanelle will continue to Paris via Annecy Mont Blanc and Issy-les-Moulineaux. There will be no official record of her entering France, just as there was no record of her leaving.

"You know that, and I know that. But it's not theoretically impossible, so he had to die, and you had to kill him, and I was the back-up. That's how they operate, our employers."

"My husband's Polish, and an ex-chess champion. He teaches maths, but he's a pretty damn good hacker. Zbigniew is his friend, a classics scholar, and Claudia is Zbig's girlfriend. She's an educational psychologist. They're smart people."

"We're just asking them to help us crack a password. Nothing more. We're not going to name any names, give them context, or show them what we find in the file."

"You haven't answered my question. Would you have killed me?"

"What about Official Secrets?"

"So would you have killed me?" Villanelle asks.

She strokes the nape of Lara's neck. Feels the prickle of her cropped hair. "You were good tonight. That running head-shot was perfection."

"You practically decapitated him."

"Thank you."

Villanelle begins to answer, but feeling the slippery flutter of Lara's fingers inside her, arches her back and sighs, her body's pulse becoming one with the engine-note of the Learjet. She pictures the aircraft racing through the night, and the dark Russian forests far below. Taking Lara's other hand in hers, she sucks the trigger finger into her mouth. It tastes metallic and sulphurous, like death.

"I know. That Lobaev's a dream to shoot." Gently, she takes Villanelle's upper lip between her teeth, and explores it with her tongue. "I love your scar. How did you get it?"

"I want to know," says Lara, reaching between Villanelle's legs. "Tell me."

"It doesn't matter."

Eve meets Niko and his friends outside Goodge Street tube station. Niko touches a hand to her arm, the gesture stiff and self-conscious, and she smells plum brandy on his breath. Zbig is wild and bear-like and visibly drunk, and Claudia is glacial and avoids Eve's eye. Looking at them, Eve feels her optimism fade.

Claudia looks at Zbig, who shrugs, and blows the steam off his tea.

"You could say."

"Which we don't have," says Eve.

"Tell us about this guy," says Niko.

"I think we can have a bloody good try."

"Right now, a series of dictionary attacks. If that doesn't do it, I'm going to try a rainbow table. But that'll take time."

Claudia frowns, still holding her collar tightly closed. "How much do you know about the password-holder?"

"Smart, middle-aged, well educated…" Eve begins. "Computer-literate, but not a full-on geek. He would have people to take care of issues like computer and network security at work. But the file we need to crack was hidden on his home computer, so probably password-locked by himself."

"A bit."

Niko looks at Billy. "Life or death, I understand."

"You think we can possibly guess the password?"

"So what are you trying?"

Eve looks at the assembled faces. "We have a password to break."

"So how can we help?" asks Claudia, her face expressionless, her hands taut at the collar of her coat.

In the office Lance has made tea, and noting Claudia's expression, has slipped outside for a roll-up. The temperature is dropping. Eve finds everyone chairs.

"Executable. bat file. Not completely entry-level."

"How well was it hidden?" asks Claudia.

"My instinct about this guy," Eve says, "is that he would consider himself clever enough to create an uncrackable password. He'll have informed himself about things like information entropy…"

Niko rubs his eyes. "Password strength is measured in entropy bits, which represent the base-2 logarithm of the number of guesses it would take to break it."

"Billy?"

"Like what?" asks Zbig.

Zbig stares. "Sorry… what?"

"You don't need to know all that," says Claudia. "What Eve means is that our target is smart enough to know that the password will have to be obscure, it will have to be long, and it will have to incorporate different types of characters."

"He's arrogant," says Eve. "It won't be something random. The password will mean something to him. Something he thinks no one will ever guess. And I'd put money on the fact that there's a clue in plain sight in his office, which is why Billy photographed everything on his desk, on the walls, and in the bookcase. We've just got to out-think him."

"Communist kitsch," murmurs Niko. "Dickhead."

Lance reappears, smelling of cigarettes, and Billy spreads out the A4 prints. There's a shot of the desktop, showing Cradle's computer, landline phone, anglepoise lamp, DAB radio and binoculars, as well as miniature busts of Mao Tse Tung and Lenin.

The shots of the books show copies of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Machiavelli's The Prince and Donald Trump's Great Again, political thrillers by John le Carré and Charles Cumming, memoirs by David Petraeus and Geri Halliwell, and two shelves of Intelligence-related titles.

"Remember," Eve says, as she refills the kettle for another round of tea. "The word or phrase we're looking for could have as many as thirty characters. Think of quotes. Ex- public-school types like Cradle love quotes; they're a way of showing off how well read they are."

Other photographs are of pictures on the study wall. The students in the university dining hall, Cradle shaking hands with the U. S. four-star general, the salmon-fishing shots, and the family holiday snaps.

An hour passes, punctuated by speculative bursts of talk, flurries of key strokes, and the growl of night-traffic on the Tottenham Court Road. Lance goes outside for another roll-up. A second hour passes. Hangovers begin to bite, faces take on a defeated aspect, and Zbig mutters in Polish.

"Right, well, let's take a break and see where we are." She stands up and looks at the others. "Can I have your best guesses so far? We've got three attempts at this password before the system locks down, so before we try one we need to be really sure we're in with a chance. Niko, do you want to go first?"

"What did he say?" Eve asks Niko.

"OK. My best shot is something based on 'Methinks it is like a weasel.'"

"So?"

"He said that this is about as much fun as fucking a hedgehog."

"It's a quote," says Niko. "From Hamlet. There's a copy of Hamlet in the bookcase."

"The Weasel Program is also the name of a mathematical experiment by Richard Dawkins. It's based on the theory that, given enough time, a monkey hitting random characters on a typewriter could produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Dawkins says that even if you just take the phrase 'Methinks it is like a weasel,' and a keyboard limited to twenty-six letters and a space bar, it would still take a high-speed computer program longer than the life of the universe to generate the correct phrase, given that there are…"

"Don't get it," says Eve.

"Any particular reason?" asks Claudia, closing her eyes and bowing her head.

"They just sound wrong," says Billy.

"Would our subject know about this Weasel thing?" asks Claudia.

"Zbig?"

"That's good," says Eve. "I can see our man using that. Any other thoughts, anyone?"

"I don't like any of them," says Billy.

"How about The Naïve and Sentimental Lover… It's one of the le Carré titles."

"Funny guy. No, it's Geri Halliwell's second album. I bought it when I was sixteen. I used to sing 'It's Raining Men' into my hairbrush in front of the bathroom mirror."

Billy shrugs. "Not if we've only got three tries before we're locked out, no. We're not there yet."

"That's not from Hamlet," says Zbig.

"Exactly."

"Scream If You Wanna Go Faster?" suggests Claudia.

"No reason why not," says Eve. "And Hamlet is definitely the odd one out in that bookcase. Anything else, Niko?"

"Twenty-seven to the power of twenty-eight possible combinations," says Billy.

He shakes his head.

"You don't think any of them are worth a try?" asks Eve. "In any form?"

"Lance?"

"If Billy says we're not there yet, then we keep looking."

Claudia and Zbig look at each other, but neither speaks.

"I'm sorry, everyone," Eve mutters. "You must be exhausted."

"Those printouts," says Niko. "Shuffle them, then lay them all out again."

Eve does so, and they stare at the A4 pages in silence. A minute passes, then another. Then, at the same moment, as if by telepathy, both Claudia and Niko place an index finger on the same sheet. It's a photograph of Penny Cradle with the children, Daniel and Bella, in a vast square in front of an ancient, pillared building. Penny is smiling a little fixedly, and the children are occupied with ice creams. In the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph someone, presumably Cradle, has written "Stars!"

"What?" says Eve.

"I'm not with you," says Eve.

"Not what. Why?" Claudia replies, and Niko smiles.

"Why this photo?" says Niko. "All the others are show-off shots, chosen to prove how important and successful this guy is. The high-profile acquaintances, the expensive long-haul holidays, the salmon fishing, and the rest of it. But this one's just… I don't know. The wife looks stressed, the kids look bored. Why does he call them stars? Why's the photo there?"

Access denied.

"So?"

"Try just the letters without the spaces," Eve suggests.

Eve stares at the screen with exhausted eyes. She looks back at the A4 print, at the sunlit square and the family group, and something falls quietly and precisely into place. "Billy, for the first attempt, you used upper-case letters and full stops, yes?"

A flurry of keystrokes.

"Wait till you see how it's actually written. Billy, can you Google 'Pantheon inscription,' and print us an image?"

They all lean closer. "Wait a minute," says Zbig, his voice low. "Wait a fucking minute…"

"Tell us," says Eve.

"I like it. Nice high entropy."

"Now that looks like a password," says Claudia.

"So let's try it."

M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT

Eve snatches the single sheet as it issues from the laser printer. Beneath the pediment of the building, the inscription is clearly legible:

Billy does so, and this time Niko turns away, and Zbig swears in Polish.

"That square's in Rome, and the building behind them is the Pantheon. You can't see it, but there's a carved inscription on the front of it. Marcus Agrippa, Lucii filius, consul tertium fecit. Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, built this when consul for the third time."

Eve nods. "Billy?"

"Er… OK."

He nods.

"But if you look at the inscription, those aren't full stops. They're symbols to mark the ends of the words, so that the inscription's legible."

"You're sure?"

"So try it again, but where you put full stops, put stars."

A flurry of keystrokes, then silence.

At the fashion house in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the anticipation is mounting. Like every haute couture show ever staged, this one is running late. No one is so gauche as to betray actual excitement, but there's an expectancy in the muted laughter, the flickering glances, and the delicate tapping of lacquered nails on iPhones. Villanelle closes her eyes for a moment, dismissing the crowd around her -- the socialites overdressed for the press cameras, the fashion professionals in shades of black -- and inhales the heady perfume of wealth. The fragrance of the lilies, fuchsias and tuberoses banked on either side of the runway, and entwined with that, the smell of designer scent -- Guerlain, Patou, Annick Goutal -- on warm skin. And as a top note, the sharper odour of the sweat lending a faint sheen to the foreheads of an audience that has been waiting here, on too-small gilt chairs, for more than forty minutes.

"Christ on a bike," breathes Billy. "We're in."

"Do it," says Eve.

What would happen, she wonders, if Lara Farmanyants were to announce that Oxana Vorontsova is alive. Would anyone believe her, or care? Who was Oxana Vorontsova, after all? Some crazy student who shot three gangsters in a Perm bar, and then supposedly killed herself in prison. Old news, long forgotten. Russia's a madhouse these days, and people are being murdered all the time. Why would Lara speak out? Who would she tell?

Absently, Villanelle reaches out and takes a rose-petal-flavoured Ladurée macaroon from the box on Anne-Laure's lap. As she closes her teeth on its crisp outer shell the lights dim, the shining peals of a Scarlatti cantata fill the space, and the first model swings out onto the runway, wearing a long, crocus-yellow silk coat. She's a vision, but Villanelle doesn't really register her.

On the runway, immaculately tailored suits give way to embroidered crossover tops and tulle ballet skirts in dusty pink. Anne-Laure sighs appreciatively, and Villanelle helps herself to another macaroon, this one flavoured with Marie-Antoinette tea.

The point is not who she would tell, or who would care. The point is that if any element of the Villanelle legend threatens to unravel -- if there's so much as a loose thread -- then she becomes a liability to the Twelve. And if that happens, she's dead. Which leads back to the necessity of killing Lara. But would she be able to get away with it? The Twelve have people everywhere. She could confide in Anton, but she doesn't fully trust him, and he might well decide that it is her, and not Lara, who has to be eliminated. Besides, she has to admit that she's stirred by Lara, with her unblinking sniper's gaze and hard, efficient body. She's excited by the poignancy of her need.

A Handel sarabande. Cocktail frocks in silvery grey, furled like unopened petals around the slender bodies of the models. Evening gowns in midnight blue, embroidered with galaxies of diamanté stars.

Shooting Konstantin was bad. The sudden nothingness behind his eyes. Did Anton fly her halfway across the world to kill him out of a perverse consideration? Or to deliver a brutal message to Villanelle about the reality of her situation?

"Sorry," murmurs Villanelle, closing her eyes as the icy wine slides down her throat. "I'm a bit zonked. I haven't slept much."

What's most concerning is that the crisis in Odessa arose at all. It tells her that while the organisation that employs her is more than capable of solving its problems, it's also susceptible to error. Konstantin always gave her to believe that in working for the Twelve, he and she were part of something which was both invisible and invulnerable. This episode showed that for all its reach and power, the organisation could be hurt. Despite the warmth of the salon, Villanelle shivers.

The lights soften. The fashion show has progressed to the bedroom, to a dreamscape finale with the models swaying and weaving in delicate camisoles, sheer nightdresses, and shimmering organza gowns. The designer steps onto the runway, blows kisses at the audience, and is met by waves of applause. The models retreat, and waiters circulate with trays.

"So did you see any of that?" asks Anne-Laure, handing her a flute of pink Cristal champagne. "You seemed miles away."

"Don't tell me you want to go home, chérie. We've got the whole night ahead of us, starting with a party backstage. And there are two very handsome men over there, staring at us."

"Run it past me again."

"OK," she says. "Let's have some fun."

Villanelle inhales the scented air. The champagne has set her body tingling. The exhaustion falls away, and with it, for now, the doubts and fears of the last twenty-four hours.

"So," says Richard Edwards. "Dennis Cradle. You're really sure about this? Because if you're wrong. If we're wrong --"

They're sitting in Edwards's thirty-year-old Mercedes in an underground car park in Soho. The grey-blue interior is worn but comfortable, the open windows admit a faint smell of exhaust.

Eve leans forward in her seat. "Acting on information given to us by Jin Qiang, who almost certainly knows more than he's saying, we investigated a large payment made by persons unknown to a Gulf State account held by one Tony Kent. It turns out Kent is an associate of Dennis Cradle, and when we conducted a covert search of Cradle's property, we found a locked file concealed on his computer. When we broke the password and opened it, we discovered details of a numbered account in the British Virgin Islands owned by Cradle. We also discovered that a sum in excess of £12 million has recently been paid into this account by Tony Kent, from the account that he controls at the First National Bank of Fujairah. I'd say that was conclusive enough to act on."

"We're not wrong" says Eve.

"I propose that we have a quiet word with him. We don't mention these accounts and payments to anyone -- Revenue, police, whoever. Instead, we leave everything in place. But we turn Cradle. We threaten him with exposure, shame, prosecution, whatever it takes, and we wring him dry. If he helps us, and agrees to let us run him against his paymasters, he gets to keep the money. If he doesn't, we throw him to the wolves."

"I am right."

He stares through the windscreen at the concrete walls, and the low ceiling with its sprinkler fittings. "Eve, listen to me. There are enough dead people in this story. I don't want you and Dennis Cradle adding to their number."

"So you want to bring Cradle in?"

Edwards frowns, beating a soft percussion on the steering wheel with his fingers. "If you're right about the people who are paying him…"

"I'll step carefully, I promise you that. But I want this woman, and I'm going to get her. She killed Viktor Kedrin on my watch, she killed Simon, and she's killed God knows how many other people besides."

"You're right. She has. Do it."

When Eve gets home, Niko is sitting at the kitchen table making calculations in a notebook. The table is littered with electrical components and cooking ingredients. He looks tired.

He nods, his expression grave.

Behind his back, she takes the Glock 19 pistol from her waistband holster and transfers it to her bag.

"She's got to be stopped, Richard."

He attaches two wires to a multimeter with alligator clips, causing the needle to swing wildly. "I'm making an enzyme-catalysed fuel cell. If I get this right, we should be able to charge our phones using icing sugar."

"Yes," she says, kissing the top of his head, and subsiding into the chair next to his. "We did. Thank you."

"Excellent. Can you pass me that glass beaker?"

"What exactly are you doing?"

"So," he asks her carefully. "Did you find what you were looking for in that file?"

"I'm sorry I've been so distant, Niko. Truly. I want to make it up to you."

"That sounds promising. Perhaps you could start by putting the kettle on?"

"Is this for the experiment?"

"No. I thought we might have a cup of tea." He sits up and stretches out his arms. "It's over, then, that project you were working on?"

Richard is silent for a moment, then sighs.

"No," she says. "It's just beginning."