Dead Lions

To begin with what it hasn’t got, Upshott has no high street, not like those in nearby villages, with their parades of mock-Tudor frontages gracefully declining riverwards, clotted with antique shops and garden-furniture showrooms; whose grocery stores offer stem-ginger biscuits and seven kinds of pesto, and whose pubs’ menus wouldn’t be out of place in Hampstead. It doesn’t have cafés with the day’s specials chalked on pavement blackboards, or independent bookshops boasting local-author events; nor are its back lanes lined with neatly coiffed hedges guarding houses of soft yellow stone. Because Upshott doesn’t invite the epithet “chocolate boxy,” so often delivered through gritted teeth. If it resembles any kind of chocolate box, it’s the kind found on the shelf at its only supermarket: coated with dust, its cellophane crackly and yellowing.

Take that high street, which Upshott doesn’t have. What it has, instead, is a main road that curves once upon entering the village, to avoid the church, and then again three hundred yards later as it threads between the pub on its left and the semicircular green on its right. Then it climbs past the new-build housing; past the small primary school and the village hall, a modern prefab visitors need directions to find. But then, the hall isn’t Upshott’s heartbeat; that would be the trinity of post box, pub and village shop. The first of these sits on the side of the green furthest from the road, which is inconvenient, unless you live in one of the houses lining that stretch. Arranged in a curve, they are Upshott’s oldest dwellings—three-storey eighteenth-century townhouses peculiarly resituated here, making strange near-neighbours for those bungalows on the rise, most of which stand empty, having once been homes for service-staff on the nearby USAF base: cleaners and janitors, cooks and washers-up, mechanics and drivers. When the base pulled the plug in the mid-nineties, a lot of life drained out of Upshott. What’s left mostly lives in those townhouses, or further along the main road, and sooner or later all of it turns up at the pub.

Which is called The Downside Man, and faces the green, with a small car park to its left and a tiered patio round back, overlooking the woods’ curving treeline a mile distant. The Downside Man has whitewashed walls and a wooden pub-sign which once flapped in the breeze, but also came loose in high winds, so has now been fixed to its post by Tommy Moult, the village’s honorary odd-job man. Tommy’s rumoured to have a secret life, as he’s only ever seen at weekends, when he can reliably be found outside the village shop, red woollen cap pulled over his ears, selling packets of seeds from his bicycle, which he parks next to the racks of vegetables. He evidently regards this as the linchpin of his commercial enterprise, because every Saturday morning, winter or summer, there he is; networking more than selling, perhaps, because few locals pass without exchanging words.

The shop where he stands is back the way we came, on the corner facing St Johnno’s. To get there from the pub is to pass, on the left, a row of stone cottages, interrupted by the old manor house, now converted into flats. On the right are larger, newer houses, yet to bed down into the landscape; they’re too clean, too neatly brushed. In the gaps between them, though, views of the mile-distant treeline can still be enjoyed, and if the occasional presence of a cement mixer indicates that some of those gaps were intended to sprout houses of their own, there’s little other sign of building activity. That all came to a halt years back. It might start up again once things improve, but the financial crisis remains as ill-defined as an unbuilt house; you can sketch its possible shape on the air, but there’s no touching its walls to know its limits. And then the road bends again, between shop and church, St John of the Cross: thirteenth century and pretty as a postcard, it has a lych-gate and a well-tended graveyard, whose oldest occupants once inhabited the manor house, and who presumably rolled over when its conversion into flats took place. But services at St Johnno’s are now on a fortnightly basis; far more reliable is the village shop, open eight till ten daily, though this bears no resemblance to the upmarket boutiques of the prettier villages, its shelves stacked high with stuff people need rather than want: tinned foods, dairy foods, frozen foods; sacks of charcoal, bags of kitty litter, breezeblocks of toilet rolls; shampoos, soaps and toothpastes; fridgefulls of lager and wine; cartons of juice and bottles of milk.

For many locals, the shop is as far as they need to go on any pedestrian expedition; the road, though, pootles on, passing a few more raggle-taggle cottages before dwindling into a minor country highway, hedged either side and badly potholed. A mile further on, it reaches the MoD range—when the American base upped sticks the Ministry of Defence stepped in, and land once leased to friendly aircraft is now home to friendly fire. When red flags fly, there’s no rambling across the fields south-east of Upshott; and sometimes, after dark, great balls of light drop from the sky, illuminating the ranges for night practice. Adjoining the road, separated from it by an eight-foot wire mesh fence, lies the last remaining airstrip, at one end of which sit, like properties on a Monopoly board, a hangar and a clubhouse. These see civilian activity several evenings a week, and most weekend mornings during spring and summer are the launchpad for a single-engined plane, which putters over Upshott before disappearing into the open skies, though so far, it’s always returned.

A quiet place, then—that gunfire notwithstanding. Sleepy, even, though in fact it wakes early by and large, as most of those who live there work elsewhere, and tend to be on the road by eight. So perhaps a better word would be harmless—as Jackson Lamb pointed out, it’s hardly Helmand Province.

Though even harmless villages suffer screams in the afternoon.

“Jesus!” River screamed—too late. Full-body armour wouldn’t have helped him. Prayer was all he had, and then not even that: just prayer’s echo, bouncing around his thoughtless skull as his body went into spasm, and then again, and then stopped, or seemed to stop, and his eyes relaxed behind their tight-shut lids, and the darkness he was locked in became softer.

After a while, his companion said, “Blimey,” but it didn’t sound like a good blimey. Rolling off him, she pulled the sheet up to her shoulders. River lay still, heartbeat returning to normal, skin damp—he’d lasted long enough to work up a sweat.

But doubted he’d be raising that in mitigation.

It was mid-afternoon, a Tuesday, River’s third week in Upshott, and he lay in the curtain-darkened bedroom of one of the new-builds on the northern rise, a house rented under his cover name, Jonathan Walker. Jonathan Walker was a writer. Why else would anyone come to Upshott, out of season? Even if Upshott had a season. So Jonathan Walker wrote thrillers, and had an Amazon entry to prove it, Critical Mass, whose non-existence hadn’t saved it from a one-star review. He was currently working on a novel set on a US military base in the eighties. Hence Upshott, out of season.

His companion said, “I used to have a T-shirt. Boys wanted—no experience necessary. Careful what you wish for, eh?”

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, I read your body language.”

Her name was Kelly Tropper, and she tended bar at The Downside Man: she was early twenties, petite, flat-chested, with crow-coloured hair; a string of adjectives River would have found dispiritingly inadequate if he really were a writer. She also had creamy, unfreckled skin, a curiously flattened nose, which gave her the appearance of pressing up against a pane of glass, and had described herself in his hearing as a cynic. She wrapped her leg round his. “Not falling asleep now, are you?” Her hand explored him. “Hmm. Not totally lifeless. Still need a few minutes, though.”

“Which we could fill with conversation.”

“You sure you’re not a girl? No, wait. You came too fast to be a girl.”

“Let’s keep that between us, shall we?”

“Depends how you make out in round two. That village notice board’s not just for show.” She moved her leg. “Celia Morden pinned a review of Jez Bradley there once. She said it wasn’t her, but everyone knew.” She laughed. “Don’t get that in your big city London, do you?”

“No, but we have this thing called the Internet. On which similar things happen, I’m told.” Which earned him a nip on the arm. She had teeth. He said, “Were you born here?”

“Ooh, getting personal?”

“Well, not if it’s classified.”

She nipped him again, a little less sharply. “My folks moved here when I was two. Wanted to get out of London. Dad commuted for a while, then joined a practice in Burford.”

“Not farming stock, then.”

“Hardly. Mostly urban refugees round here. But we treat strangers nicely, don’t you think?” She stroked him again.

“And do you get many of those?”

She tightened her grip. “Meaning?”

“I was just wondering what kind of … turnover the village sees.”

“Hmmm.” She resumed stroking. “That better be all you meant. And it still makes you sound like an estate agent.”

“Background,” he improvised. “For the book. You know, how quiet it is now the base has gone.”

“The base went years ago.”

“Still …”

“Well, it’s pretty dead. But getting livelier.” Her eyes flashed. They were startlingly green, River thought. He was hoping she was going to come up with a sudden memory, suppressed till now: a bald man who appeared a few weeks ago; a name, an address … Three weeks, and he’d yet to catch a sniff of Mr. B. He’d become an accepted feature at The Downside Man, and locals greeted him by name; he knew who lived where and which houses were empty. But of Mr. B he’d glimpsed not hair nor hide, a silly phrase given his naked dome, but it was hard to concentrate with Kelly doing what she was doing with her fingers, and now—“That’s more like it,” she said slowly—with her lips, and then River lost his train of thought entirely, and instead of being an agent in the field he was under the covers with a lovely young woman, who deserved a better accounting than he’d managed earlier.

Happily, this time he provided it.

It was the day before the summit, and Arkady Pashkin had arrived. He was in the Ambassador on Park Lane. The traffic outside was an angry mess, a fistfight continued by other means; in the lobby, there was only the trickling of water from a small fountain, and a polite murmur from the reception desk, whose guardians had been drawn from the pages of Vogue. Wealth had once fascinated Louisa Guy, the same way the flight of birds had: the attempt to comprehend something eternally out of reach could be dizzying. But three weeks since Min’s death, she observed how the rich live as a series of security details. Shots fired outside would reach the lobby as corks being popped. Someone mown down by a car would be lost entirely; wouldn’t be countenanced by the purified air.

Behind her, Marcus Longridge said, “Cool.”

Marcus and Louisa had been paired. She didn’t like it, but it was part of a deal she’d lately made. This deal was apparently with the Service, or more particularly Spider Webb, but in fact was one she’d made with reality. The hard part was not letting on how much she’d been prepared to give away. What she’d wanted was to stay on the job; specifically, on the assignment she and Min had been handed. What she’d been prepared to give away was everything.

Pashkin was in the penthouse. Why would anyone imagine otherwise? The lift made less noise than Marcus’s breathing, and its doors opened straight into the suite, where Piotr and Kyril waited, the former smiling. He shook hands with Marcus, and said to Louisa, “It’s good to see you again. I was sorry to hear about your colleague.”

She nodded.

Kyril remained by the lift while Piotr led them across the large pale room, which was thickly carpeted and smelt of spring flowers. Louisa wondered if they pumped scent in through vents. Pashkin rose from an armchair at their approach. “Welcome,” he said. “You’re the Energy people.”

“Louisa Guy,” Louisa said.

“Marcus Longridge,” Marcus added.

Pashkin was in his mid-fifties, and resembled a British actor she couldn’t put a name to. Of average height but broad-shouldered, he had thick black hair left deliberately vague; sleepy eyes under heavy brows. There was more hair on his chest, easily visible beneath an open-necked white shirt, which was tucked into dark-blue jeans. “Coffee? Tea?” He raised an eyebrow at Piotr, who was hovering. Had she not known him for a goon, Louisa would have assumed him a butler, or the Russian equivalent. A valet. A man’s man.

“Nothing for me.”

“We’re fine. Really.”

They settled on easy chairs arranged round a rug that looked a hundred years old, but in a good way.

“So,” Arkady Pashkin said. “Everything is ready for tomorrow, yes?”

He was addressing them both, but speaking to Louisa. That was apparent.

And fine by her.

Because on that bad bad night when Min Harper had died, Louisa had felt she’d fallen through a trapdoor; had suffered that internal collapse you get when the floor disappears, and you’ve no idea how far away the ground is. It should have surprised her afterwards, how swiftly she’d assimilated the fact of Min’s death; as if, all this time, she’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. But nothing surprised her any more. It was all just information. The sun rose, the clock spun, and she conformed to their established pattern. It was information. A new routine.

Except, ever since, she’d had an ache at the hinge of her jaw; intermittently, too, her mouth would flood with saliva, repeatedly, for minutes at a time. It was as if she were weeping from the wrong orifice. And when she lay in the dark, she feared that if she fell asleep her body would forget to breathe, and she’d die too. Some nights she’d have welcomed this. But on most she clung to the deal instead.

It was the deal that stopped her falling further, or at least promised a survivable landing. The deal was the branch growing out of the cliffside; the open-topped truck parked below, bearing a fresh load from the pillow factory. It was in Regent’s Park that it had come to life. This was four days after Min’s death, and the weather had perked up, as if in consolation. There were interview suites on the Park’s upper floors where they enjoyed watercooler moments rather than waterboarding incidents, and this one had comfortable seating, and framed posters from classic movies on the walls. It had been kitted out since Louisa had last been here, and even if everything else in her life had felt normal would still have rung strange. Like returning to school and finding they’d turned the sixth form into an aromatherapy centre.

James Webb did sympathy like he’d studied the textbook. “I’m sorry for your loss.” An American textbook. “Min was a fine colleague. We’ll all miss him.”

She said, “If he was that fine, he’d not have been at Slough House, would he?”

“Well—”

“Or gone cycling through heavy traffic pissed. In the rain.”

“You’re angry with him.” He pursed his lips. “Have you talked to anyone? That can … help.”

What would help more would be to plant her fist in the middle of that mouth. But she’d learned the hard way what others expect from grief, so she lied: “Yes. I have.”

“And taken leave?”

“As much as I need.”

Which had been a day.

His gaze turned towards the windows. These overlooked the park across the road, and because it was mid-morning there was a lot of pre-school traffic out there: women, prams, toddlers exploring grass verges. A car backfired and a flock of pigeons erupted, swam a figure eight through the air, and resettled on the lawn.

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive,” he said, “but I have to ask. Are you okay to continue the assignment?”

He had lowered his voice. This was theoretically a griefmeeting, but they were alone, and she’d known he’d bring up the Needle job.

“Yes,” she said.

“Because I can—”

“I’m fine. Angry, okay, I’m angry with him. It was a stupid thing to do, and he ended up—well, he died. So yes. Angry. But I can still do my job. I need to do my job.”

She thought she’d pitched that right—with the right amount of emotion. If he thought her a zombie, that would be as bad as thinking her hysterical.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

He looked relieved. “Well. Okay then. That’s good. It would be, ah, awkward to have to rejig …”

“I’d hate to be an inconvenience.”

Spider Webb blinked, and moved on. “Keep me abreast of developments, then.” A phrase from another textbook; one with a chapter on how to let subordinates know the meeting was over.

He walked her to the door. There’d be someone outside to take her downstairs, repossess her visitor’s badge, and see her off the premises, but these signs of exile, which once would have loosed bees in her mind, were irrelevant. She was still assigned to the Needle job. It was a done deal. That was all that mattered.

As he held the door, Webb said, “You’re right, though.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Harper shouldn’t have been on the road after drinking. It was an accident, that’s all. We looked into it very carefully.”

“I know.”

She left.

Perhaps, she thought, as she was guided downstairs; perhaps, once this was over, and she’d found out why Min had died, and killed those responsible, she’d come back and throw Spider Webb through that window he enjoyed looking out of.

It depended on her mood.

While Kelly showered River pulled boxers and a shirt on, then roamed the bedroom, collecting clothes. Some, it turned out, were still downstairs. Well, she’d only come round for coffee. In the sitting room he found her shirt; also her shoulder bag, a bulky thing which had shed its load across the floor. He uprighted it, returning to its recesses her mobile, her purse, a paperback and her sketchpad, but he leafed through the sketchpad first: the nearby treeline, the road as it left the village, a group gathered on the patio behind the pub. She wasn’t good at faces. But there was a nice study of St Johnno’s, and another of its graveyard, each headstone a pencil-shaded stubbiness around which long grass wilted; and several aerial studies of the village—Kelly Tropper flew. The last page was strange, not so much a sketch as a design: a stylised city landscape, its tallest skyscraper struck by jagged lightning. Scribbled-over words had been scrawled along the bottom edge.

“Jonny?”

“Coming.”

He carried her shirt up to the bedroom, where she stood draped in a towel.

“You look …”

“Gorgeous?”

“I was going to say damp,” he said. “But gorgeous works.”

She stuck her tongue out. “Someone’s pleased with himself.”

He lay on the bed, enjoying the view while she dressed. “Didn’t know you drew,” he said.

“A bit. Saw my book, did you?”

“It fell open,” he confessed.

“Don’t tell me. I can’t do faces. But you need a hobby round here.”

“And flying is …”

“Not a hobby.” Her green eyes were serious now. “It’s the most alive you can ever be. You should try it.”

“Maybe I will. When are you next going up?”

“Tomorrow.” A smile came and went. A special secret flashed. “But no, you can’t come with.” She kissed him. “Gotta go. Need to do stock before we open doors.”

“I’ll be along later.”

“Good.” She paused. “That was nice, Mr. Walker.”

“I thought so too, Ms. Tropper.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can look at my stuff without permission,” she said, and bit his earlobe.

When he heard the front door close, he rang Lamb.

“If it isn’t 007. Got anywhere yet?”

“Nothing but dead ends and blank looks,” River said. He was staring at his bare toes. “If Mr. B was ever here, he dropped out of sight immediately afterwards.”

“Blimey. So he might be, what, hiding? Or something?”

“If he was ever here. Maybe his feet didn’t touch the ground. Maybe he was heading somewhere else before the taxi driver flipped his for-hire sign.”

“Or maybe you’re useless. How big’s that place anyway? Three cottages and a duck pond? Have you checked the cowshed?”

“Why come all the way from London to hide in a cowshed? If there was one. Which there isn’t.” River noticed a sock hanging from the curtain rail. “He doesn’t live here. Not as Mr. B or under any other name. I guarantee it.”

“You’ve infiltrated the community, then?”

“I’ve, er, made some progress, yes.”

“Oh Christ,” said Lamb. “You’re shagging a local.”

“Most of the population’s either retired, or commutes, or teleworks, but a lot of the houses are empty. There’s talk of the local school closing, always a sign of a dying community—”

“If I want a bleeding heart editorial I’ll read the Guardian. What about the MoD place?”

“Well, they don’t like you to wander about, but they don’t test secret weapons there, do they? It’s a target range.”

“Which used to belong to the Yanks. Who knows what toys they kept in their cupboards?”

“Whatever they were, I doubt they’re there now.”

“But if there’s evidence of them ever being there, it could still cause embarrassment,” said Lamb.

Like you’re an expert on that, thought River. “Yeah.” He retrieved his sock. “Which is what I was calling about. I’m going in tonight, take a look around.”

“About time.” Lamb paused. “Are you dressed? You don’t sound dressed.”

“I’m dressed,” River said. “How’s Louisa?”

“Doing her job.”

“Good. Yes. Obviously. But how is she?”

Lamb said, “Her boyfriend got smeared by a car. I don’t suppose she wakes up whistling happy tunes.”

“You checked out the accident?”

“Did we change places when I wasn’t looking?”

“Simple question.”

“A pissed cyclist. Which part doesn’t spell organ donor?”

“Fuck off, Jackson,” River said bravely. “Harper was one of yours. If he was struck by lightning, you’d be questioning the weather. I’m just asking what came up.”

There was a pause, during which River heard the click of a lighter. Then Lamb said, “He was drunk. He’d been over the road, had several beers there. Stopped elsewhere and loaded up on vodka. They’d had a row.”

River squeezed his eyes shut. Course they had. You have a row; you get pissed. How it works. “Where’d he drink the vodka?”

“We don’t know. You want to guess how many bars there are west of City Road?”

“Does he show up on—”

“Why didn’t we think of that?” Down the line, Lamb sucked up smoke. “He flashes past cameras on Oxford Street, or we think he does. Black and white footage, and all cyclists look the same. And there was nothing at the scene. Camera was buggered up when a car sideswiped its pole.”

“Now there’s a coincidence.”

“Yeah. One which says it’s a junction where accidents happen. The Dogs okayed it.”

“Huh.” Even River didn’t know what he meant by that. The Dogs were the Dogs. “Okay then. I’ll call later.”

“Do that. And Cartwright? Next time you tell me to fuck off, make sure you’re a long way away.”

“I am a long way away,” River explained.

“Apology accepted.”

He dropped the phone and went to shower.

“So,” Pashkin said, addressing them both, but speaking to Louisa. “Everything is ready for tomorrow, yes?”

“It’s all under control.”

“And not wanting to throw any spanners around, but you’re not from the Department of Energy.”

Longridge opened his mouth, but Louisa beat him. “No.”

“MI5, yes?”

“A branch of it.”

Marcus said, “The details aren’t important.”

Pashkin nodded. “Of course. I’m not trying to compromise you. I’m just establishing … parameters. I have my men here to protect me—”

He had Kyril by the door, and Piotr hovering nearby; an entirely different pair today to the brusque, almost jolly couple they’d seemed three weeks ago, the day Min—

“—and you, I presume, have been assigned to make sure all other arrangements run smoothly.”

“They will,” Marcus said.

“I’m pleased to hear it. Department of Energy or not, you’ll be aware your Government is keen to, ah, reach a mutually beneficial understanding regarding certain fuel demands my company can meet.” His features adopted a self-deprecating expression. “Not enough to drive your entire country, of course. But a reserve. In the event of difficulties arising elsewhere.”

He spoke fluently, with a medium-thick accent Louisa suspected was cultivated. A deep and sexy growl never hurt when you were opening negotiations, whatever they happened to be.

“And given the obvious delicacy of the situation, it’s in all our interests that the meeting goes smoothly. And with that in mind, I have a request.”

Watching his mouth form words, Louisa had the impression they were little clockwork toys he was winding up and setting free, to waddle across this wide expanse of carpet. “All right,” she said.

“I would like to go there. This afternoon.”

“There …?”

“The Needle,” he said. “That’s what the building’s called, yes?”

“Yes, the Needle.”

“On account of its mast,” Marcus said.

Pashkin looked at him politely, but Marcus had nothing to add. He returned his gaze to Louisa. “I want to see the room. To walk the floor.” He touched the top button of his shirt with his right index finger. “Before we get down to business. I want to feel comfortable there.”

Louisa said. “Give me five minutes. I need to make a phone call.”

When he’d finished speaking to River, Lamb sat for a while wearing what Catherine Standish called his dangerous expression: the one where he was considering something other than what to eat or drink next. Then he checked his watch, sighed, and with a heavy grunt rose and picked up a shirt from the floor. Scrunching it in a fist, he crossed the landing to Catherine’s room.

“Got a carrier bag?”

Looking up from her desk, she blinked.

He waggled the shirt. “Anyone home?”

“In there,” she said, pointing at a canvas bag slung from her coatstand.

Thrusting a hand into it, Lamb withdrew half a dozen plastic carriers. He shovelled his shirt into one. The others fell to the floor. He turned to go.

“Leaving early?” she asked.

Lamb hoisted the bag above his head without turning round. “Laundry day,” he said, and disappeared down the stairs.

She stared for a while, then shook her head and returned to work.

In front of her were fragments of lives, fillets of biography, snatched from online sources and official records: HMRC, DMLV, the ONS; the usual crowd. It was like eating alphabet soup with a fork.

Raymond Hadley, 62, had been a BA pilot for eighteen years, and now busied himself with local politics and environmental issues, his commitment to which didn’t prevent him owning a small aeroplane.

Duncan Tropper, 63, was a solicitor; formerly with a high-powered West End interest, he currently put in a couple of days a week at a firm in Burford.

Anne Salmon, 60, was an economics don at the University of Warwick.

Stephen Butterfield, 67, had been sole owner of Lighthouse Publishing, a small concern specialising in left-leaning history, until one of the industry monoliths had gobbled it up, leaving a smoking pile of money in its place.

His wife Meg, 59, part-owned a clothes store.

Andrew Barnett, 66, was Civil Service (retired); something in the Ministry of Transport, which—a first in Catherine’s experience—actually meant he’d been something in the Ministry of Transport.

And the rest, and the rest, and the rest. Someone from the Financial Services Authority; two TV producers (one Beeb; one independent); a chemist who’d worked at Porton Down; graphic designers; teachers; doctors; a journalist; business refugees (construction, tobacco, advertising, soft drinks): it added up to a bunch of successful professionals who’d managed to combine busy careers with a quiet life in the Cotswold village of Upshott; the kind of quiet life, Catherine guessed, you’d need a busy career to fund. Many had taken early retirement. Most had children. All drove.

And, Catherine reminded herself, none of it was her business, let alone her job; and in her job, minding her business was paramount. But she was missing River Cartwright, sort of. And hoped he’d return safely, not dead.

The Cotswolds, Standish. Not bleeding Helmand Province.

Which was true, as was the fact that Lamb had staked River out like a sacrificial, well, lamb, to see what would happen next. And given that what had happened first was a murder, there were no guarantees River’s country exile would prove idyllic.

She looked at Stephen Butterfield’s brief profile again. A left-leaning publishing house. Too obvious? Or just the right amount?

Without more background it was impossible to say, and while Upshott had a small population, running a solo check on every villager was an uphill task. But of this, Catherine was convinced: that if every current inhabitant lined up in front of her, Mr. B would not be among them. Because if Lamb was right, and poor Dickie Bow had been killed in a drag hunt, then Mr. B’s role had come to an end once he’d finished laying his trail. The question was, why did that trail lead to Upshott?

The clue was that word, cicadas. Part of the Popov legend, intended to have the Service tying itself in knots, looking for a network that didn’t exist. But in the spooks’ hall of mirrors, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be real … The Cold War was history, but its shrapnel was everywhere. Maybe, all these years later, Upshott harboured a cicada, who was getting ready to sing.

Though the biggest damn mystery of all, Catherine thought, was why had their attention been brought to it in the first place?

In sudden irritation, she dropped her pen and stood. There were always displacement tasks; tiny mindless things to distract her from the larger, equally mindless tasks Lamb imposed. A smear on her window, for example. Attempting to wipe it clean, she found it was on the outside, but as she stood there Catherine saw a curl of smoke above distant rooftops. Fingers poked her heart, but before they could take a grip she remembered that a crematorium lay that way, and that the smoke funnelling from its chimney marked a private tragedy, not a public cataclysm. But still. You couldn’t see smoke on the city skyline without a shiver of fear that it, or something like it, was happening again. This was so much a reflex that it could remain undefined.

Then she yelped in sudden shock when someone spoke.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t—”

“No. I was miles away, that’s all.”

“Okay. Sorry,” Shirley Dander said again. And then, “You might want to see this.”

“You found him?”

“Yes,” Shirley said.

Webb said, “Sure. Give him the tour.”

“He’s calling the shots?”

“He’s a rich man. They like to take control.”

Because Webb was oh-so-used to rich men’s foibles. The corridors of power were where he left his shoes out overnight.

Louisa said, “Okay. Just thought I’d check.”

“No, that’s good. That was a good thing.” He hung up.

Her vision blurred then cleared. She’d been patted on the head by Spider Webb. But that, too, was part of the deal: to take whatever shit came her way. Just so long as she remained on the job.

Through the lobby’s glass doors, she watched three buses trundle past; the third an open-topped double-decker, from which tourists peered raptly, admiring buildings, the park, other traffic. There was always a temptation to imagine tourists had no life other than the one you saw them leading; that they were constantly wowing at landmarks and wearing inappropriate shirts. Which was something Min had said, that she would remember every time she saw a tour bus.

She turned to Marcus. “It’s not a problem.”

Marcus rang upstairs. “We’ll see you outside.” He disconnected. “They’re coming now.”

Waiting on the pavement was a lesson in rich man’s timekeeping: now meant when Pashkin got round to it. Louisa dulled her mind counting black cars: seven, eight, nine. Twenty-one.

Marcus said, “Oil deal. Right.”

“What?”

He said, “Come on.”

Cars passed uncounted.

“He’s negotiating an energy deal with the British Government? Off his own bat?”

“He owns an oil company.”

“And Securicor own armoured vehicles, but you don’t see them parading down the Mall on Remembrance Day.”

“I assume you’re making a point.”

“That there’s a world of difference between private ownership and national interest. You think the Kremlin’s enthusiasm for private enterprise extends this far? Dream on.”

Louisa hadn’t wanted Marcus Longridge, but that too was part of the deal. But she’d hoped he’d glide through it silently: keep his mouth shut; carry bags. Not feel the need to speculate, or not do so out loud.

“Did you read that profile? This isn’t someone who’s gunna buy a football team and marry some pop stars. He’s got an eye on the big chair.”

To carry on not answering would look deliberate. She said: “So why’s he want to meet with Spider Webb?”

“Other way round. Why wouldn’t Webb want to meet with him? Guy with a shot at the Kremlin, Spider’s got to be creaming his pants at the thought of being in the same room.”

Now Louisa couldn’t help herself. “Webb wants to recruit him?”

“Be my guess.”

She said, “Because that’s the first step to political office, isn’t it? Sell yourself to another country’s intelligence service.”

“It’s not about state secrets,” Marcus said. “Agent of influence, that’d be his role. And what’s in it for him is Western support when he makes his move.”

“Right. A profile in the Telegraph’s just the start. Wait till Webb gets his picture in OK.”

“Twenty-first century, Louisa. You want to strut on the world stage, you’ve got to be taken seriously.” He scratched the tip of his nose with his little finger. “Webb can get Pashkin in the room with people. The PM. A royal. Peter Judd. Trust me, that’d count with Pashkin. He’ll need all the international coverage he can get if he wants to make waves back home.”

“Twenty-first century, Marcus,” Louisa agreed. “But still the middle ages here and there. Pashkin starts bigging himself up at Putin the Great’s expense, he’ll find his head on a stick.”

“You get nowhere if you don’t take risks.”

The lift doors opened, and Pashkin appeared, Piotr and Kyril at his heels like wolfhounds.

“End of,” she said, and Marcus shut up.

The first floor office was noisier than Catherine’s. You noticed the traffic more; could see faces on the buses that trundled past in an unbroken stream for minutes at a time, before vanishing for half-hours at a stretch. But those weren’t the faces the two women were studying now.

“It’s him all right.”

It was him. Catherine had no doubt about that.

Shirley’s monitor was frozen on a split screen. One half showed a still from the CCTV coverage she’d stolen from DataLok: Mr. B on his westbound train, his posture indicating a freakish stasis even allowing for it being a photograph. Behind him, a young woman was caught in the act of movement; an incomplete thought working across her features. But Mr. B sat docile and concentrated, like a shop dummy on a daytrip.

The other picture showed the same clothes, same expression, same bald head. And Mr. B was once again the still centre of his world, though this world was blurrier, more active. He was standing in line, while all around him people were caught in a motionless bustle, hauling luggage across shiny floors.

“Gatwick,” Shirley said.

“How very low profile,” Catherine murmured.

But it gave weight to Lamb’s hypothesis. If you were laying a trail, you wanted it followed to the end. Mr. B, or whoever gave him his orders, had wanted his departure registered, and would doubtless be surprised it had taken this long. But then, they couldn’t have known it would be Slough House doing the field-work. Regent’s Park had access to surveillance from all national airports, and could run it through state-of-the-art recognition software. On Aldersgate Street, they had Shirley Dander running stolen tape through an out-of-date program.

“A morning flight,” Shirley said. “To Prague.”

“When?”

“Seven hours after he was dropped off in Upshott. Why go all the way there if he was catching a plane next morning?”

“Good question,” said Catherine, as a way of not answering it. “Okay, we know where he went. Let’s find out who he was.”

That was a good thing.

Webb laid his phone neatly on his desk: he liked things aligned. Then he smoothed his hair. That too.

That was a good thing he’d said to Louisa Guy, and had meant it. Anything that happened before tomorrow he wanted run past him first. If he had one skill—and he had bags of the damn things—but if he had one skill above all, it was averting disaster.

On that bad bad night when Min Harper had died, for example, Spider Webb got the news early. So he’d been on the scene before Jackson Lamb. Averting disaster was about good timing. Then he’d walked to the Embankment and sat facing the dark galleries on the far bank and thought hard for as short a time as possible. Strategy was nine tenths reaction. Study any situation too long, you can think yourself into paralysis.

He’d called Diana Taverner. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Harper,” she said.

“You’ve heard.”

She suppressed a sigh. “Webb? I’m Second Desk. On your best day, you’re a gopher. So yes, I heard about Min Harper getting killed before you did.”

“Getting killed?”

“Being knocked over. It’s a verb.”

“I’ve been monitoring the situation.”

She said, “Excellent. If his condition changes—”

“I meant—”

“—do let me know, because we can put a positive spin on it. ‘MI5 agent comes back to life.’ That would boost recruitment, don’t you think?”

When he was sure she’d finished Webb said, “I meant I’ve talked to Nick Duffy. He’s been on the scene since first thing.”

“That’s his job.”

“And he reckons it’s clean. That it’s what it appears to be. An accident.”

Silence. Then: “His exact words?”

Duffy’s exact words had been, No way of telling until we’ve run all the angles. But he smells like a brewery, and it’s not like it was hit and run. The driver remained on the scene.

Webb said, “Pretty much, yes.”

“So that’s what his report will say.”

“It’s the timing I’m worried about. With the Needle thing coming up—”

“Jesus Christ,” Di Taverner said. “He was a colleague, Webb. You worked with him. Remember?”

“Well, not closely.”

“And don’t you think, before you start worrying what impact his death’ll have on your career prospects, you should consider what impact it might have on mine?”

“I have been. I’m thinking about both of us. Once Duffy’s report pegs this as a traffic thing, we can mourn Harper, obviously, but we can also get on with the job in hand. But if his death comes under scrutiny, his last days will be under the microscope. And if Roger Barrowby gets wind we were running Harper off the books while this audit’s in full swing—”

“ ‘We’?”

Webb said, “I logged our conversation, of course I did. I had to. When it comes off, and we have Arkady Pashkin as an asset, our asset, then everyone between Regent’s Park and Whitehall will want a slice of the credit. Especially—well, you know.”

Ingrid Tearney, his silence spelt.

“Best to have it clear from the get-go who’s done all the work.”

What he was hearing now was Diana Taverner thinking.

Mobile pressed to his ear, Webb looked up. No stars, but there rarely were in London: you had the weather, you had the light pollution, you had all the heavy artillery a city threw at the sky, and these things generally won. Except that didn’t mean the stars weren’t there.

At last she said, “What are you asking?”

“Nothing. Not much. A quick call.”

“To?”

“Nick Duffy.”

“I thought you said he was happy?”

“He is. He is. All we need is for him to put that in a report, even an interim one. To make sure everyone stays calm until the Needle job’s done and dusted.”

More silence.

“And we’ve pulled off the intelligence coup of the—”

“Don’t push it.” She thought more. “There’s no chance Harper’s death has anything to do with this op?”

“It was an accident.”

“But what if it turns out to have been a very good accident that has something to do with this op?”

“It won’t. Pashkin’s not even in the country yet. And if anyone had wind he’s planning to join our team, well, it wouldn’t be Min Harper bearing the brunt. He was only … He was a minor cog.”

“A slow horse, you mean.”

“It’s not like he even knew what’s going on. As far as he was concerned, he was babysitting an oil deal.”

She said, “You realise that if this gets out, Roger Barrowby’s the least of your worries? Harper might only have been a slow horse, but let’s not forget who’s in charge of that stable.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll tread carefully round any bruisable toes.”

She laughed. “Jackson Lamb bruises like an elephant.” She made a small noise: changed hands on her phone or something. “I’ll speak to Duffy.” She hung up.

And what Webb had thought then, and had seen no cause to change his mind about since, was that the thing about elephants was, they grew old and died. There’d been a documentary: an elephant carcass left by a watering hole. Hours it lasted, before the flies moved in, and the birds, and the hyenas. After that, it was parts. Jackson Lamb had been legend in his day, they said, but they said that about Robert de Niro.

That was a good thing.

Louisa Guy was handling her end, and no one at the Park, barring Lady Di, had wind of the Pashkin op. After tomorrow, he, James Webb, could be pulling the strings on the most important asset Five had reeled in since, well, ever.

All that mattered was that things kept moving smoothly.

Arkady Pashkin said, “Why aren’t we moving?”

Middle of the city, traffic in front, traffic behind, a big sign saying roadworks ahead, and a stop light clearly visible through the windscreen. So why aren’t we moving, Louisa wondered. You had to be rich to ask.

Pashkin said, “Piotr?”

“Traffic’s heavy, boss.”

“Traffic’s always heavy.” To Louisa he said, “We should have outriders. Tomorrow, I mean.”

“I think they’re reserved for royals,” she said. “And government ministers. VIPs.”

“They should be available to those who can afford them.” He glanced at Marcus briefly, as if estimating his net worth, then his gaze returned to Louisa. “You’d think, with all the practice you’ve had, you’d be better at capitalism than us.”

“I don’t think anyone’s surprised what quick studies you turned out to be.”

“Is that a clever remark? This is not my first language.” Without turning his head, he spoke to Piotr and Kyril in that one. Kyril replied: Louisa couldn’t read the intonation. Possibly deferential. But it was like being in New York, where someone could ask you the time in a way that suggested you’d just punched their mother.

Their car had a separate driver’s compartment, though the dividing window was rolled down. Louisa and Marcus sat facing Pashkin, who was facing front. Immediately behind them, a red bus loomed. It was full of less rich people moving through London very slowly, and probably no less aggrieved by it than Pashkin, who shook his head in irritation, and began to study the Financial Times.

The car shunted forward and rolled over something bumpy, which probably wasn’t a cyclist.

Louisa blinked as pain stabbed her eyeballs, but it soon went. If you carried on looking like you were holding it all together, pretty soon you were holding it all together.

Pashkin tutted, and turned a page.

He looked like a politician, spoke like one too; he had charisma, probably. Maybe Marcus was right, and he also had frontline ambitions, and this mini-summit had less to do with oil deals than under-the-table promises about future conduct, future favours. That could only be a good thing, unless it turned out a bad one. Political alliances often turned unhappy: some hands got shook, some arms got sold, but it never looked great for HMG when the torturing bastards were strung up by their own people.

Beside her, Marcus shifted, and his leg brushed hers. And now a bicycle whizzed past, and this time instead of a pain in her eyes Louisa felt her heart lurch, and the tired old logic unreeled again in her mind: that Min had got drunk after a row was possible, even after a row so trivial Louisa couldn’t remember what it had been about. And that Min had been knocked off his bicycle and killed—yes, that could happen too. But not one after the other. Not those two things in a row. To believe that would mean accepting some kind of cosmic continuity, an organised randomness of event. So no, there’d been something deeper at work, some human agency. And that could only mean this job she was working on now, and these people in this car. Or others, who knew about the summit, and wanted to stop it happening, or turn it into something else.

She started drawing up a mental list of everyone she didn’t trust, and had to stop immediately. She didn’t have all day.

And then, with the suddenness of a tooth freeing itself from its socket, the car was through the snarl-up and moving smoothly. Above them glass and steel buildings did their best to pierce the sky, and on the pavements sharply dressed men and women threaded between each other, hardly ever bumping. Min Harper had been dead three weeks. And here was Louisa, doing her job.

By the time Lamb’s taxi reached the laundrette, near Swiss Cottage, it would have been cheaper to bin the shirt and buy several new ones. While it swam away in the never-ceasing stream of traffic, Lamb lit a cigarette and perused posters in the laundrette’s window: a local quiz night, stand-up gigs, tomorrow’s Stop the City rally, an animal-free circus. Nobody paid him attention. When his cigarette was done he ground it out and entered.

Machines lined both walls, most of them sloshing rhythmically, making sounds Lamb’s stomach made when he woke at three, having drunk too much. A familiar noise. Dividing the room was a series of benches on which four people sat: a young couple wrapped round each other like an interlocking puzzle; an old woman rocking back and forth; and, up the far end, a short dark middle-aged man in a raincoat, engrossed in the Evening Standard.

Lamb sat next to him. “Any idea how these things work?”

The man didn’t look up. “Do I have any idea how washing machines work?”

“I assume they take money.”

“And washing powder,” the man said. Now he did look up. “Jesus, Lamb. You never been in a laundrette before? Short of tearing a postcard in half, I thought this couldn’t have got more old school.”

Lamb dropped the bag to the floor. “I was your other kind of undercover,” he said. “Casinos, five-star hotels. World-class hookers. Laundry was mostly room service.”

“Yeah, and I jet-packed to work, before they fired me.”

Lamb extended his hand, and Sam Chapman shook it.

Bad Sam Chapman had been Head Dog once, Nick Duffy’s role now, until a high-profile mess involving an industrial amount of money meant he’d had his arse handed back on a plate: no job, no pension, no reference, unless you counted “Lucky to be leaving upright.” He now worked for a detective agency which specialised in finding runaway teenagers, or at least in taking credit card details from the agonised parents of runaway teenagers. Since Chapman’s arrival their success rate had tripled, but that still left a lot of missing kids.

“So how’s life in the secrets business?” he asked.

“Well, I could answer that …”

“But then you’d have to kill me,” Chapman finished.

“But it’d bore your tits off. Got anything?”

Bad Sam passed him an envelope. By its thickness, it contained maybe two folded sheets of paper.

“This took you three weeks?”

“Not like I have your resources, Jackson.”

“The agency not got pull?”

“The agency charges. Any special reason you couldn’t do this in-house?”

“Yeah, I don’t trust the bastards.” He paused. “Well, maybe a couple of the bastards. But not to actually do a proper job.”

“Oh, that’s right. Your crew’s special needs.” With his index finger, Chapman flicked the envelope in Lamb’s hand. “Someone was ahead of me on this.”

“I’d hope so. The cow killed a spook.”

“But not all the way,” Sam continued.

Down the bench one of the youngsters abruptly stood, and Sam paused. It was the boy, or possibly the girl—or possibly they were both boys, or both girls—but whatever, they fed the nearest drier with a clatter of coins so it came grunting back to life, then sat and wrapped themselves round their other half again.

Lamb waited.

Chapman said, “Someone ran the numbers on her, and I expect they gave her a clean bill of health.”

“Because she’s clean?”

“Because they did a half-arsed job. She looks clean now, but go far enough back and it’s a whole other story.”

“Which you did.”

“But my successor didn’t. Or whichever minion he assigned.” Chapman slapped the newspaper on the bench without warning. The thwock stopped the old woman rocking for a moment, though the kids didn’t react. “Christ,” he said. “Me, they sack just to balance the books. If I’d been incompetent, I’d still have a job.”

“Yeah, but it’d probably be round my gaff.” Lamb tucked the envelope into a pocket. “Owe you one.”

“There’s another possibility,” Bad Sam said. “Maybe they didn’t do a proper job on her because they already knew what they’d find.”

Jackson Lamb said, “Like I say, I don’t trust the bastards.” He rose. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“You’ve forgotten your shirt,” Sam called.

Lamb looked at the canoodling couple as he passed. “I’ll never forget that shirt,” he told them kindly.

On the whirling metal circus of the road, it took him five minutes to find a taxi.

Ambling down the road to The Downside Man, River pondered the task in hand. A contact—Mr. B had come to Upshott to make contact: with his handler or his joe. And who that might be, River still had no idea.

It hadn’t taken long to embed himself into the village. He’d been half-expecting a Wicker Man scenario, with locals in sinister masks, but turning up at the pub every night and attending evensong at St Johnno’s was all he’d had to do. Everyone was friendly, and nobody had tried to set fire to him yet.

His cover as a writer helped. On the outside, Upshott had less going for it than other Cotswold villages; it wasn’t as picturesque; it had no galleries, no cafés, no bookshop; nowhere the culturally-minded could gather to discuss their artistic leanings. But it remained as much a middle-class haven as its neighbours: a poster for a recent county-wide Arts Week indicated four local venues, and one of the fake barns along the main road housed a pottery, whose prices were comfortably ridiculous. An author fitted in hand in glove.

As for the locals he’d met, they were largely retired, or tele-workers, their livelihood independent of the village itself. Those who’d been employed at the USAF base had moved on long ago, but there remained a smattering of agricultural workers, and a handful who ran trades from vans or garages—carpenter, electrician; two plumbers—but even among the artisans, there was an air of quality craftsmanship, and bills to match.

And few of them were Upshott born-and-bred. The twentysomethings in evidence were the offspring of incomers, Kelly among them; her father, a solicitor, practised nearby. Kelly had a politics degree, and her job in the pub wasn’t a life-choice; more a treading of water while she decided what to do next. It appeared that a politics degree was about as useful as it sounded. But she seemed happy enough: was the centre of a group of friends who worked as estate agents or graphic designers or architects as far afield as Worcester, but returned to Upshott each evening and colonised the pub, when they weren’t in their clubhouse by the MoD range, piloting and taking care of Ray Hadley’s little aeroplane. Which, River thought, was the real umbilical cord: if they wanted the freedom of the skies, they had to keep returning to the village. River, not much older, reckoned they were still young enough to find that a price worth paying.

On the other hand, it didn’t explain what had attracted Mr. B. Maybe Lamb was right, and the old American base was at the heart of it. That was what had put Upshott on the map, even if the base itself hadn’t appeared on maps at the time. It was why he’d placed it at the heart of his cover; the setting for his supposed novel. And now it was gone, and in its place was the Ministry of Defence artillery range, which rendered even more unlikely the chances of anything secreted there having survived fifteen years … But still, it needed looking at, if only because River was running out of ideas. And he needed to see it the way Mr. B had, if that’s what Mr. B had done: after dark and over the fence. Which was what he planned to do later.

And because he was a stranger here, and had no desire to end up in a ditch or under arrest, he wasn’t going alone.

Like Marcus had said, the Needle was called the Needle on account of its mast, but everything about it looked sharp. All 320 metres of it burst into daylight out of a shallow crater, which was paved in red brick, laid in tiers and studded with huge bronze pots, each boasting a tree as yet too spindly to cast shade, though the size of the pots suggested they’d grow tall and leafy. Stone benches were set here and there, around which small graveyards of cigarette stubs had been flattened, and spotlights were trained at intervals on the Needle’s sides. At night, it was lit like a carnival. In daylight, from this angle, it looked dark, vaguely monstrous, and out of place—like it was asking for trouble.

Of its eighty storeys, the first thirty-two belonged to a hotel which hadn’t opened yet, or Pashkin would doubtless have booked a suite there. The rest were privately leased, and not yet fully occupied. But security was tight, and had lately risen several notches with the arrival of Rumble, the out-of-nowhere Apple-rivals who were preparing to launch a new version of their world-conquering e-reader; plus the diamond merchants de Koenig, and BiffordJenningsWhale, the Chinese-owned market traders. Here, along with all the other banks, insurers, inter-dealer brokers and risk-management consultants, were the wealthy embassies of offshore havens, drawn by the bright lights and big views. Quite the little United Nations, though without the avowed intent of doing any good except unto themselves.

On her first visit, Min in tow, Louisa had taken the stairs to the next landing down, but had been unable to access the floor. The stairwell doors were one-way, unlocking only in the event of fire or other emergency, while the business lifts—separate from the hotel’s—were restricted access. Cameras monitored every lobby. As for the suite Spider Webb had finagled, she didn’t know who owned that. A deliberate omission from the paperwork. Whoever it was, they were evidently open to persuasion, but then, Webb was a collector of other people’s secrets. Min had found him laughable, but Spider Webb was the kind of joke you laughed at then looked behind you, in case he’d heard.

She shook her head abruptly. Don’t think about this. Don’t think about Min. Do the job. Collect secrets of your own.

“A problem?”

“No. Nothing.”

Arkady Pashkin nodded.

And keep your thoughts inside your head, she added. She didn’t like the way Pashkin looked at her, as if reading a script from her features.

They were in the lift, heading swiftly skyward. Their names had been recorded on entry, security protocols demanding a register be kept of who was in the building at all times. For the meeting with Webb, they’d be sidestepping this: Webb had supplied a keycard for the service lift which could be accessed from the underground car park. They planned to be above the City but under the radar. No one would know they were there.

Today, though, they’d been shepherded through the atrium, where a small rainforest now flourished. This, the eco-flash of the new hotel, had taken root in the last three weeks. Guests would be able to take walks in the undergrowth when they tired of the big city, and emerge for a drink and a sauna when they tired of nature. All around the greenery, ever-diminishing people pursued a variety of tasks integral to the grand opening of a world-class hotel, which was still a month off.

“In China,” Pashkin remarked, “buildings this size, even with all these fancy, these fancy …”

Losing his way, he snapped a word at Piotr, who replied, “Trappings.”

“All these fancy trappings, they go up inside a month.”

Marcus said, “I gather they’re not overburdened with health and safety.”

In the suite, Pashkin strode round the table as if measuring it. He spoke several times in Russian: short blunt sentences Louisa guessed were questions, because to each Piotr or Kyril made an even shorter response. Meanwhile, Marcus stationed himself by the door, arms folded. He’d been ops, she reminded herself; would have worked on bigger jobs than this before losing his nerve, if that’s what had happened. For now, he seemed unfazed by the views, and was mostly watching Piotr and Kyril.

Pashkin stood with thumbs hooked into his jacket pockets, lips pursed. He might have been a prospective tenant, looking for an angle to hang a price reduction on. Nodding at the cameras affixed above the doors, he said, “I assume they are off.”

“Yes.”

“And there are no recording devices of any sort here.”

“None.”

As if following a mental checklist, he then said, “What happens in an emergency?”

“There are stairwells,” Louisa said. “North and south walls.”

She pointed, to be clear. “The lifts freeze, and won’t take passengers. The wells are reinforced, and all the doors are fireproof, obviously. They unlock automatically.”

He nodded. What kind of emergency was he expecting, she wondered? But then, the whole point about emergencies was you didn’t expect them.

It was difficult, once you’d embarked on such a chain of thought, not to become entangled in its linked banalities.

Pashkin said, “That’s a lot of stairs.”

“It could be worse,” she said. “You could be coming up them.”

He laughed at that; a deep laugh from the heart of his burly frame. “That’s a good point. What kind of emergency might that be, that would have you running up seventy-seven flights of stairs?”

Whatever kind it was, she thought, if it wasn’t serious to start with, it certainly would be before you reached the top.

The pair of them, and the other two Russians, crossed to the window. Last time she’d been here, she’d been overwhelmed by the space on offer; all that sky overlooking all that city. It was beautiful, but stank of wealth, which was what had been weighing on her that day: her need for money, her need for a better place for herself and Min; a bigger slice of all that space. And Min had been there, of course, in touching distance. They didn’t have much money, and didn’t have enough space, but they’d had a hell of a lot more than she had now.

An air-ambulance swam into view, carving up the distance between east and west. She watched its silent progress; an orange dragonfly, oblivious to its own ridiculous shape.

“Maybe,” Pashkin said, “we should try going down the stairs, yes? To see how well we’d cope with an emergency.”

She turned. Marcus had moved to the table, was leaning over it, his palms resting on its surface. She had the sense of interrupted movement, but his expression was unreadable.

“I’ve a better idea,” she said. “Let’s use the lift.”

In the back of the cab Jackson Lamb opened the envelope Chapman had given him to find just two sheets of paper. He read them, then spent the rest of the journey so distracted he almost forgot to demand a receipt.

When he reached his office Standish was there, her cheeks tinted, as if she were the one who’d just climbed four flights of stairs. “Mr. B has a name,” she said.

“Oh god. You’ve been investigating.”

He shrugged off his coat and threw it. She caught it and folded it over one arm. “Andrei Chernitsky.” The words rolled off her tongue darkly. “He used a passport in that name when he flew out. It’s on the Park’s books.”

“Don’t tell me. Second-rate hood.” Running a hand through greasy thinning hair, Lamb parked himself behind his desk. “Not ranking KGB, but showed up in a supporting role when heavy lifting was needed.”

“You already knew?”

“I know the type. When did he leave?”

“The morning after he killed Dickie Bow.”

“I note the absence of ‘allegedly’. You starting to believe me, Standish?”

“I never didn’t believe you. I’m just not sure sending River out on his own is the right way to find out what’s going on.”

Lamb said, “Yeah, I could have prepared a report. Presented it to Roger Barrowby, who’s evidently running things these days. He’d have had three other people read it and make recommendations, and if they came up positive, he’d have formed an interim committee to investigate possible avenues of reaction. After which—”

“I get the point.”

“I’m so glad. I was beginning to bore myself. Do I take it you’ve recruited Ho to do your research? Or is he still playing computer games on the firm’s time?”

“I’m sure he’s hard at work on the archive,” Catherine said.

“And I’m sure he’s hard at work on my arse.” Lamb paused. “That didn’t work. Pretend I didn’t say it.”

“Andrei Chernitsky,” Catherine persisted. “Did you recognise him?”

“If I had, don’t you think I’d have mentioned it?”

“Depends on your mood,” she said. “But the reason I ask is, Dickie Bow obviously did. Which suggests Chernitsky did time in Berlin.”

“They didn’t call it the Spooks’ Zoo for nothing,” Lamb said. “Every tuppeny lowlife turned up there one time or another.” He found his cigarettes, and put one in his mouth. “You’ve got a theory, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I—”

“I didn’t say I wanted to hear it.” He lit up. The smell of fresh tobacco filled the room, displacing the smell of stale tobacco. “How’s the day job? Shouldn’t there be reports on my desk?”

She said, “When Dickie Bow was kidnapped—”

“We used to call it ‘bagging’.”

“When Dickie Bow was bagged—”

“I really have no choice but to hear this, do I?”

“—he said there were two of them. One called himself Alexander Popov.” Catherine batted away smoke with her hand. “I think Chernitsky was the other. Popov’s muscle. That’s why Bow dropped everything to follow him. This wasn’t some stray spook from the old days. It was someone Bow had a very specific memory of, someone he might even have wanted revenge on.”

Cigarette notwithstanding, Lamb appeared to be chewing. Maybe it was his tongue. He said, “You realise what that would mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh you do, or uh-huh, you’re making a noise so I’ll spell out what it means and you’ll pretend you knew all along?”

“They bagged him. They force-fed him alcohol. They let him go,” Catherine said. “There was no point to it at all, except that he get a look at them. So that one day they could swish a coat in his path, and he’d trot after it like a trained poodle.”

“Jesus.” Lamb breathed out grey air. “I’m not sure what disturbs me more. The thought that someone’s got a twenty-year plan, or the fact that you’d already worked that out.”

“Popov took a British spy off the streets twenty years ago with no motive except to use him as an alarm bell when the time was right.”

“Popov never existed,” Lamb reminded her.

“But whoever made him up did. And apparently this was part of his plan. Along with the cicadas. A sleeper cell.”

Lamb said, “Any plan a Soviet spook came up with two decades back is long past its sell-by date.”

“So maybe it’s not the same plan. Maybe it’s been adapted. But either way, it’s in play. This isn’t you chasing ghosts from your past any more. It’s a ghost from your past jumping up and down, shouting ‘look at me!’ ”

“And why’s that?”

“I haven’t a clue. But it demands a more coherent response than just letting River Cartwright off the leash. Chernitsky went to Upshott for a reason, and the only logical reason is that that’s where this network’s ringleader is. And whoever that is, you can bet your life they already know River’s not who he’s pretending to be.”

Lamb said thoughtfully, “Or I could bet River’s life. Which would be safer for me and more convenient.”

“It’s not a joke. I’ve been checking up on the names in River’s reports. None of them scream ‘Soviet agent’. But then, if any of them did, they’d not have successfully buried themselves all this time.”

“Are you still talking to me, or just thinking aloud?” Lamb took a final drag on his cigarette and dropped the stub into a coffee cup. “Bow was killed, yes. Sad, but shit happens. And the point of killing him was to lay a trail. Whatever that’s about, it’s not to set up River Cartwright. Someone wants one of us there for a reason. Sooner or later, probably sooner, we’ll find out who and why.”

“So we do nothing? That’s your plan?”

“Oh, don’t worry. There’s plenty to chew on in the meantime. The name Rebecca Mitchell ring a bell?”

“She’s the driver who ran down Min.”

“Yeah. Well, him being drunk and her a woman, it’s no surprise the Dogs signed off on it. But they shouldn’t have.” Pulling Bad Sam’s envelope from his pocket, he tossed it onto the desk. “They looked at her last ten years, during which she’s been a squeaky clean lady, if you leave aside her killing one of my team. Which they shouldn’t have done. What they should have done was to take her entire life and shake it in a high wind.”

“And find what?”

“And find she used to be a different kind of squeaky altogether. Back in the nineties she was bumping uglies with all sorts, and had a particular yen for your romantic Slav. Spent six months sharing a flat with a pair of charmers from Vladivostok, who set her up in her catering business before they buggered off. Though of course,” he added, “that’s just circumstantial, and she might be Snow White. What do you think?”

Catherine, who rarely stooped to profanity, swore.

“Indeed. Me also.” Lamb picked up the coffee cup, raised it to his lips, then noticed it was an ashtray. “As if I didn’t have enough to be getting on with, it turns out whatever these shady Russian bastards of Spider Webb’s are up to, it’s dodgy enough to get Harper killed.” He put the cup back down. “Just one thing after another, isn’t it?”

They returned the Russians to the hotel, then headed for the tube. Marcus suggested cabbing it; Louisa gestured at the traffic, which was sclerotic. She had a hidden agenda: in a taxi, she’d have little choice but to suffer Marcus’s conversation. On the tube, he’d be more likely to give it a rest. That was the theory. But as they headed into the underground he said, “What do you make of him?”

“Pashkin?”

“Who else?”

She said, “He’s the job,” and slapped her Oyster card on the platen. The gates opened and she slipped through.

One step behind her, Marcus said, “He’s a gangster.”

Webb had said as much. One-time Mafia. But these days he was establishment, or rich enough to pass, and she didn’t know how it worked in Russia, but in London, once you were rich, being a gangster was a minor offence, on a par with wearing a tie for a club you didn’t belong to.

“Nice suit, nice manners, and his English is better than mine. And he owns an oil company. But he’s a gangster.”

At the top of the escalators a poster warned of disruption to services during tomorrow’s rally. Being anti-bank, chances were the rally would be well attended and turn ugly.

She said, “Maybe. But Webb says we treat him like royalty, so that’s what we do.”

“Meaning what, we pimp him an underage masseuse? Or suck his dick for a wrap of coke?”

“Those probably weren’t the royals Webb was thinking of,” she said.

On the train Louisa closed her eyes. Part of her brain was juggling logistics: the rally would be a factor. You couldn’t dump a quarter million pissed-off citizens into the mix without complicating things. But these thoughts were an alibi, parading through her consciousness just in case anyone had developed a mind-reading machine. By tomorrow, details like their route to the Needle were going to be as useful as Christmas crackers.

Marcus Longridge was talking again. “Louisa?”

She opened her eyes.

“Our stop.”

“I know,” she told him, but he was giving her a quizzical look anyway. All the way up from platform to street, he was a step or two behind her. His attention took the form of a heat spot, back of her neck.

Forget about that. Forget about tomorrow. Tomorrow wasn’t going to happen.

Tonight was.

When River stepped into the pub, it was to greetings from two separate tables. He thought: you could spend years propping up the bar at your London local, and they wouldn’t know what name to put on the wreath. But maybe that was just him. Maybe the River who made friends easily was the one pretending to be someone else. He returned all greetings, and stopped at the Butterfields’ table: Stephen and Meg. Neither needed a drink. Kelly was at the bar, polishing a glass on a teatowel.

“How nice to see you,” she said.

Playing with him, definitely, but that was okay.

He ordered a mineral water, and she raised a mild eyebrow. “Celebrating?” While she fetched it, he felt a twinge he hoped wasn’t his conscience. If he’d met Kelly anywhere, he’d have done his best to end up exactly where he’d been that afternoon. So why was he certain that if she discovered he wasn’t who he claimed to be, she’d chop off his—

“Pickled eggs?”

“… Sorry?”

“Would you like a pickled egg with that? They’re a popular local delicacy.”

Carefully enunciated, as if inviting comparison with other local delicacies he might have recently enjoyed.

“Tempting, but I’ll give it a miss,” he said. “Flying club not in tonight?”

“Greg popped in earlier. Were you hoping to grab anyone in particular?”

“No one I haven’t already grabbed,” he said quietly.

“Walls have ears.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“That’s good,” she said. “We’ll make a spy of you yet.”

With that ringing in his ears, he made his way back to the Butterfields.

Stephen and Meg Butterfield. Parents of Damien, another member of the flying club. He was retired from publishing; she part-owned a boutique in Moreton-in-Marsh. In the country but not of the country, as Stephen put it; in the country, but happy to pop up to London twice a month to eat, visit friends, catch a play, “remember what civilisation feels like.” But happy too to wear a tweed cap, a green V-neck, and carry a silver-topped stick. In the country and blending in nicely, more like. He asked River:

“How goes the writing business?”

“Oh, you know. Early days.”

“Still researching?” said Meg. Though her eyes were on River, her long, nervous fingers toyed with the smoking equipment in front of her: packet of tobacco, Rizla papers, throwaway lighter. Her graying blonde hair was under wraps tonight, coiled beneath a black silk headscarf; and this too, and the wrinkles at her eyes, and even her clothes marked her out a smoker—the ankle-length skirt glittering with silver threads, and the black cardigan with deep pockets, and the red-fringed shawl she wore like a displaced Bedouin. In London, he’d have dismissed her as a superannuated hippie; here, she seemed more like an off-duty witch. He could see her knocking up a remedy for lovesick swains, if that was still a word. Probably was round here. Not much call for it in the city.

The couple sat next to each other on the bench, which River thought sweet. “Ninety per cent of the job,” he said. Funny how simple it was to be an expert on writing. “Getting it down on paper’s the easy part.”

“We were talking about you with Ray. You met Ray yet?”

River hadn’t, though the name was all too familiar. Ray Hadley was the maypole around which the village danced: he was on the Parish Council, on the school’s board of governors; on everything that required a name on a dotted line. He was the eminence grise of the flying club, too: a retired pilot, and the owner of the small plane housed near the MoD land. And yet he remained elusive.

“I haven’t, no.”

Because Hadley always seemed to have just left, or was expected any moment but didn’t turn up. There weren’t many places in Upshott that weren’t the pub, but Hadley had contrived to find most of them these past few weeks.

“Ray was great mates with the brass at the base,” Meg went on. “Always in and out of there. Wasn’t he, darling?”

“Give him half a chance, he’d have joined up. Still would. The chance to fly one of those Yank jets? He’d have given his right bollock.”

“I can’t believe your paths haven’t crossed yet,” Meg said. “He must be hiding from you.”

“Actually, I might have seen him this morning, heading for the shop. Tall bald man, yes?”

Meg’s phone rang: Ave Satani. “Son and heir,” she said. “Excuse me. Damien, darling. Yes. No. I don’t know. Ask your father.” She handed the phone to Stephen, then said to River, “Sorry, dear. Busting for a fag,” and collected her paraphernalia and headed for the door.

Stephen Butterfield began a lengthy explanation of what it sounded like was wrong with Damien’s car, waggling an apologetic eyebrow at River, who made a no-matter gesture and returned to the bar.

The pub had oak rafters onto which paper currency had been pasted, and whitewashed walls on which farm implements hung. In a corner were photographs of Upshott through the years. Most had been taken on the green, and showed groups of people metamorphosing through black-and-white austerity to the Hair-Bear Bunch fashions of the ’70s. The most recent was of nine young adults, more at ease with their youth and good looks than earlier generations had been. They stood on a strip of tarmac, three of them women; Kelly Tropper at their centre. In the background was a small aeroplane.

He’d been looking at this photo on his first evening there, and had recognised the woman who’d just served him a pint, when a man approached. He was about River’s age though broader, and with a head like a bowling ball: hair trimmed to the skull, an equally sparse fuzz prickling chin and upper lip, and eyes sharp with cunning or suspicion. River had seen similar eyes in other pubs. They didn’t always spell trouble, but when trouble broke out anyway, they were usually right near the middle.

“And who might you be?”

Let’s be polite, thought River. “The name’s Walker.”

“Is it now.”

“Jonathan Walker.”

“Jonathan Walker,” the man repeated in a sing-song voice, to underline the effeminate nature of anyone limp-wristed enough to be called Jonathan Walker.

“And you are?”

“What makes that your business?”

And now a third voice chimed in, and here was the bartender, offering a brisk “Behave, you.” To River she said, “His name’s Griff Yates.”

“Griff Yates,” River said. “Should I repeat that in a stupid voice? I’m not sure I’ve grasped the local customs yet.”

“Oh, we’ve got a clever one,” Yates had said. He put his pint down, and River had a sudden glimpse of what his grandfather would have made of this. You’ve been under cover five minutes, and you’re about the same distance away from a public brawl. Which part of covert is giving you trouble? “Last clever one we had in here would have been that city twerp who took the James’s place for a summer. And you know what happened to him?”

River had little option. “No,” he said. “What happened to him?”

“He fucked off back where he came from, didn’t he?” Griff Yates paused a beat, then roared with laughter. “Fucked off back where he came from,” he repeated, and kept laughing until River joined in, then bought him a pint.

Which had been River’s first Upshott encounter, and a little bumpier than those that followed, but then Griff Yates was the odd one out; Griff Yates was local stock. A little older than the crew known as the flying club, he existed at a tangent to them: part envy, part blunt antagonism.

He wasn’t here now, though. Andy Barnett—who was known as Red Andy, having voted Labour in ’97—was at the bar instead, or technically was, his unfinished pint and Sudoku puzzle claiming the area for the duration. Andy himself was temporarily elsewhere.

With no immediate audience, Kelly smiled a welcome. “Hello again, you.”

He could still taste her. “I haven’t bought you a drink yet.”

“Next time I’m your side of the bar.” She nodded at his glass. “And it won’t be mineral water, I can tell you.”

“You working tomorrow?”

“And the night after.”

“What about tomorrow afternoon?”

“Habit-forming, is it?” There was a look women could give you once you’d slept with them, and Kelly bestowed this upon him now. “I told you. I’m flying tomorrow.”

“Of course. Going anywhere nice?”

The question seemed to amuse her. “It’s all nice, up there.”

“So it’s a secret.”

“Oh, you’ll find out.” She leaned forward. “But I’m finished here at eleven thirty. If you want to pick up where we left off?”

“Ah. Wish I could. Kind of busy.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Kind of busy? What kind of busy can you be after closing time round here?”

“Not the kind you’re thinking of. It’s—”

“Hello, young man. Chatting up our lovely bar staff?”

And this was Red Andy, back from having a smoke, if the fumes clinging to his jacket were any guide.

“Andy,” said River.

“Just been chatting with Meg Butterfield out there.” He paused to drain his pint. “Another one of these, Kelly dear. And one for our visitor. Meg tells me you’re well on with your book.”

“Nothing for me, thanks. I’m about to leave.”

“Pity. I was hoping to hear about your progress.” Andy Barnett was everybody’s nightmare: a genuine local author, whose self-published memoir had been quite the succès d’estime, don’t you know. Which anyone who’d met Andy Barnett did two minutes later. “Be more than happy to look at anything you’re ready to show.”

“You’ll be first in line.”

A draught at River’s back indicated someone new had just come in, and Barnett said, “Here comes trouble.”

River didn’t have to turn to know who this was.

It was growing dark when Louisa emerged at Marble Arch among crowds of young foreign tourists. She threaded past giant rucksacks and breathed the evening air, tasting traffic exhaust, perfume, tobacco, and a hint of foliage from the park. At the top of the steps she unfolded a pocket map, an excuse for pausing. After inspecting it for two minutes, she put it away. If she was being followed, they were good.

Not that there was reason for anyone to be following. She was just another girl on a night out, and the streets were heavy with them: whole migrating herds of fresh young things, and some less fresh, and some less young. Tonight Louisa was a different woman to the one she’d lately been. She wore a black dress which stopped above the knee and showed off her shoulders, or would do once she removed her jacket, which was four—no, five—years old, and starting to look it, but not so much a man would notice. Sheer black tights; her hair pulled back by a red band. She looked good. It helped that men were easy.

She carried a bag on a strap, just big enough for a few feminine essentials, the definition of which varied from woman to woman. In her own case, alongside mobile phone, purse, lipstick, credit card, it included a can of pepper spray and a pair of plastic handcuffs, bought off the Internet. Like many Internet-related activities, these purchases were amateurish and ill-thought out, and part of her wondered what Min would have said, but that was arse-backward. If Min had been in any position to know, she’d not have been carrying this stuff.

The Ambassador looked different at night. Earlier, it had been another imposing urban monolith, all steel and glass and carefully maintained kerb-flash. Now, it glittered. Seventeen storeys of windows, all catching reflections of the whirlwind traffic. She used her phone as she approached, and he answered on the second ring. “I’ll be straight down,” he said.

She’d hoped he’d ask her up. Still: if not now, later. She’d make sure of that.

In the mirrored lobby, it was impossible not to catch sight of herself. Again: What would Min have thought? He’d have liked the dress, and the way her tights showed off her calves. But the thought that she’d scrubbed up for someone else would have struck ice through his heart.

And here came the lift, and out of it stepped Arkady Pashkin. Alone, she was relieved to note.

Crossing the lobby he was careful not to show teeth, but there was a wolfish gleam in his eyes as he took her hand and—yes—raised it to his lips. “Ms. Guy,” he said. “How charming you look.”

“Thank you.”

He wore a dark suit, with a collarless white shirt, its top button undone. Knotted round his neck was a blood-red scarf.

“I thought we might walk, if that’s all right,” he said. “It’s warm enough, yes?”

“Perfectly warm,” she said.

“And I have so few chances to see the city as it should be seen,” he said, nodding at the young woman on reception as he guided Louisa out onto Park Lane. “All the great cities—Moscow, London, Paris, New York—they’re best enjoyed on foot.”

“I wish more people thought so,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the traffic. She looked round, but no one was following. “It’s just us, then.”

“It’s just us.”

“You’ve given Piotr and—sorry, I’ve forgotten—”

“Kyril.”

“And Kyril the night off? Very good of you.”

“It’s the modern way,” he said. “Treat your workers well. Or they look for pastures new.”

“Even when they’re goons.”

He had taken her arm as they crossed the road, and she felt no increase in pressure. On the contrary, his voice was amused as he replied: “Even when, as you say, they are goons.”

“I’m teasing.”

“And I like to be teased. Up to a point. No, I gave them the evening off because I took the liberty of assuming that tonight is not business. Though I was surprised to get your call.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He smiled. “I won’t play games with you, I get calls from women. Even from English women, who can be a little … is reticent the word?”

“It’s a word,” Louisa allowed.

“And this afternoon, you seemed so businesslike. I don’t mean that as a criticism. On the contrary. Though in this particular case, it means I have to ask, was my assumption correct?”

“That tonight’s not business?”

They were safely across the road, but he had not released her arm.

She said, “Nobody knows I’m here, Mr. Pashkin. This is entirely personal.”

“Arkady.”

“Louisa.”

They were in the park, on one of its lamplit paths. It was warm, as Louisa had promised, and the traffic’s hum receded. Last winter, she’d walked this path with Min, heading for the Christmas Fair—there’d been a ferris wheel and skating, mulled wine, mince pies. At an air-rifle booth, Min had missed the target five times in a row. Cover, he’d said. Don’t want everyone knowing I’m a trained sharpshooter. Bury that, she thought. Bury that moment. She said, “We seem to be heading somewhere. Do you have a plan, or are we just seeing where the moment takes us?”

“Oh,” he told her, “I always have a plan.”

That makes two of us, Louisa thought, and her grip tightened on the strap of her bag.

Two hundred yards behind them, out of reach of the lamplight, a figure followed silently, hands in pockets.

There was damp in the air, and overhanging clouds; a grey mass, hiding the stars. Griff Yates set off at a lick, but River kept up. They met nobody on the village’s main road, and few houses were lit. Not for the first time, River wondered if the place existed in a time warp.

Perhaps Yates read his mind. “Missing London much?”

“Peace and quiet. Makes a nice change.”

“So’ll being dead.”

“If you don’t like it, why do you stay?”

“Who says I don’t like it?”

They passed the shop and the few remaining cottages. St John of the Cross became a black shape and vanished into bigger darkness. Upshott disappeared quickly at night. The road curved once, and that was it.

“Some of the people, mind. I’d happily be shot of them.”

“Incomers,” River said.

“They’re all incomers. Andy Barnett? Talks like he’s farming stock, but he doesn’t know the business end of a bull.”

Which probably depended on whether you were a cow or a rambler, River thought. “What about the flying crew?”

“What about them?”

“They’re a young crowd. Weren’t any of them born here?”

“Nah. Mummy and daddy moved here when they were small, so the kiddies could grow up in the country. You think real locals have aeroplanes to play with?”

“It’s still their home.”

“No, it’s just where they live.” Yates stopped abruptly, and pointed. River turned, but saw nothing: only the dark lane, hedge-rowed either side. Larger outgrowths were trees, waving at the sky. “See that elm?”

River said, “Yes,” though had no idea.

“My grandad hanged himself from that. When he lost his farm. See? History, that is. Means your family’s blood’s been spilt there. Somewhere doesn’t belong to you just because your parents bought a chunk of it.”

“It kind of does, though,” River said. “You know. In the strictly legal sense.”

They walked on.

“That’s bullshit about your grandad, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

They reached a crossroads, one fork of which was a farm track: two ruts in a narrow passage. Griff marched down it without altering speed. The surface was slick underfoot, with random outcroppings of rock. River had a pencil-torch he couldn’t use, partly because they were approaching the MoD land, but mostly so Griff wouldn’t think him a wuss. It was very dark. There must be a moon, but River had no idea where, or what shape it would be if it showed itself. Meanwhile Griff marched without stumbling or slowing, proving a point: this was his territory, and he could navigate it eyes shut. River gritted his teeth and picked his knees up. Less chance of stumbling.

Griff halted. “Know where we are?”

Of course I bloody don’t. “Tell me.”

Griff pointed left, and River squinted. “Not seeing it.”

“Start at the ground and move your gaze upwards.” River did as told, and about eight feet from the ground became aware of a change in texture. This wasn’t hedgerow any more. Catching light from somewhere it winked at River briefly, and he understood: this was the MoD range, bordered on all sides by wire-mesh fence, along the top of which razorwire curled.

“We’re going over that?” He was whispering.

“Can if you like. But I’m not.”

They trudged on.

“Common land, this used to be,” Griff said. “Before the war. Till the government invoked some whatyecallit, emergency provision, and used it for training. Then the war ended, but they never gave it back, did they? Leased it to the Yanks, then when they buggered off, it went back to the M of bloody D.” He hawked noisily, and spat. “For more training. So they say.”

“Artillery range, isn’t it?”

“Oh aye. But that might just be cover.”

“For what?”

“Weapons research, maybe. Chemical weapons, you get? Or other stuff they don’t want us knowing about.”

River made a non-committal noise.

“You think I’m joking?”

“Truthfully,” River said, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Well here’s your chance to find out.”

It took River a moment to realise Yates was pointing at a section of dark overgrowth. It looked no different than any other stretch they’d passed this last half hour, but that’s what Griff was here for: to show him a way in he wouldn’t find for himself.

“After you,” he said.

“So how long have you been with the, ah, Department of Energy?”

“I thought we agreed. No business.”

“Forgive me. One of my vices, I find it difficult to relax.” He glanced at her chest, a fair proportion of which was on display. “Not impossible. Just difficult.”

“We must see what we can do about that,” she said.

“Something worth drinking to.” He raised his glass. She had already forgotten the name of the wine he’d ordered, and its label was obscured now as it wallowed in its bucket, but he’d specified the year, and that was a first for Louisa. Her dining experiences mostly involved sell-by dates, not vintages.

“I was sorry to hear about your colleague,” he said. “Mr. Harding?”

“Harper,” she said.

“My apologies, Harper. And my condolences. Were you close?”

“We worked together.”

“Some of my closest friendships have been born of work,” he said. “I’m sure you miss him. We should drink to his memory.”

He raised his glass. After a moment, Louisa raised hers to meet it.

“Mr. Harper,” he said.

“Min.”

“I’m sure he was a good man.” He drank.

After another moment, so did she.

The waiter arrived and began unloading food, the sight and smell of which made her want to gag. She’d just drunk a toast to Min’s memory with the man she was sure was the force behind his death. But now would not be a good time to retch: she had the whole evening to get through. Keep him sweet and keep him happy; keep him eager until they were back in his suite. Then business could begin.

She wanted to know who, and she wanted to know why. All the questions Min himself would seek answers to, if he were here.

“So,” she said, her voice far away. She cleared her throat. “So. You’re happy with tomorrow’s arrangements?”

He waved a finger like a disappointed priest. “Louisa. What were we just saying?”

“I was thinking about the building. Impressive, isn’t it?”

“Please. You must try this.” He was arranging bits of starter on her plate. She still had no hunger; she had an ache inside, but it wasn’t food she needed. She forced a smile and thought she must look grotesque, as if her mouth had fish-hooks at the corners. But despite his enormous wealth, he was too much the gentleman to shudder or point.

“Impressive, yes,” he said, and she had to change mental gear: he was talking about the Needle. “Capitalism at its most naked, rearing high above the city. You don’t need me to mention Freud, I’m sure.”

“Perhaps not this early in the evening,” she heard herself say.

“And yet it’s impossible to avoid. Where there is money, there is also sex. Please.” He gestured with his fork. “Eat.”

It was as if he’d prepared it himself, and she wondered if that were a symptom of wealth; that you assume yourself the source of all your company’s needs and pleasures.

She ate. It was a scallop, over which had been drizzled a nutty-looking sauce which tasted of too many things for her tongue to process. And yet that ache inside, which food could not pacify, rolled over on its back and quietened. Eat. Eat some more. It wasn’t wrong to be hungry after all.

He was saying, “And where there’s sex, trouble follows. I’ve been seeing posters everywhere, hearing news reports. This Stop the City rally. Are your masters at the Department of Energy worried about it?”

That joke could wear thin. “It’s not ideal timing. But our route avoids it.”

“I’m surprised your authorities allow it on a weekday.”

“I suppose the organisers felt there was little point in bringing the City to its knees at the weekend, when the City’s out of town.” Her bag buzzed. That was her phone receiving a text, but there was nobody she wanted to hear from. She ignored it, and speared another scallop.

He said, “And it won’t get out of hand?”

Similar demonstrations had seen burning cars and shattered windows. But the violence tended to be contained. “These things are strenuously policed. The timing’s a pain, but it’s just one of those things. We’ll work round it.”

Arkady Pashkin nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll trust you and your colleague to get me there and back safely.”

She smiled again. It felt more natural this time. Maybe because she was thinking that there was no chance Pashkin would be trusting her to do anything, once this evening was over.

Always supposing he was still alive.

For some reason River had expected it to be different, this side of the fence; lighter, perhaps; easier underfoot. But having followed Griff through not much of a gap in the spiky undergrowth, to a sheared-through section of the wire fence that peeled back, he found everything much the same, except that there was no defined track, and he was muddier.

“Where now?” he asked, breathing hard.

“The main complex’s two miles that way.” River couldn’t tell which direction Griff was pointing. “We pass some abandoned buildings first, half a mile or so. Ruined. Leave buildings untended, that’s gunna happen.”

“How often do you come here?”

“When I feel like it. It’s a good place for rabbiting.”

“How many other ways in are there?”

“That one’s easiest. Used to be another towards Upshott, where you could lift a post clean out of the ground and just walk in over the fence. But it was cemented back in place.”

They began to walk. The ground was slick, and inclined downwards; he slipped and would have hit the ground if Griff hadn’t steadied him. “Careful.” Then the clouds thinned, and a sliver of light gleamed from behind a gauzy curtain. River saw Griff’s face clearly for the first time since leaving the pub. He was grinning, showing teeth as grey as his pitted skin, his mottled scalp. He seemed to be reflecting that scrap of moon.

Darker shadows waited at the foot of the incline. River couldn’t make out whether they were trees or buildings, then understood they were both. There were four buildings, mostly roofless, and jutting out from their broken walls were long spectral branches, which caught a shiver of wind as he watched, and beckoned him onwards. Then the heavens shifted again, and the moonlight faded.

“So,” River said. “If someone just turned up looking for a way in, he’d not be likely to find it?”

Griff said, “Might, if he was smart or lucky. Or both.”

“You ever run across anyone in here?”

Griff made a snickering noise. “Scared?”

“I’m wondering how secure it is.”

“There’s patrols, and some places are wired. You want to avoid them.”

“Wired?”

“Tripwires. Lights and sirens. Mostly near the base, though.”

“Any round here?”

“You’ll know soon enough, won’t you? If you tread on one.”

That would be a laugh, thought River.

Holding an arm out for balance, he followed Griff towards the smashed-up buildings.

Pashkin said, “I ought to ask, you’re not married?”

“Only to the job.”

“And these, ah, messages you’re getting. They’re not from an irate lover?”

Louisa said, “I have no lover. Irate or otherwise.”

She’d received three further texts, but hadn’t read them.

They had eaten their starters, and their main courses; had drunk the first bottle, and most of the second. It was the first proper meal she’d eaten since Min’s death. Pricey, too. Not a detail that would bother Arkady Pashkin, who owned an oil company. Louisa wondered if condemned men reviewed their final meals; sent compliments to the chef en route to the scaffold. Probably not. Though they had the excuse of knowing they were condemned.

She would blind him with the pepper spray. Plasti-cuff him hand and foot. Then all she’d need was a towel and a shower hose. In the Service they trained you in interrogation resistance, which was a covert way of teaching you interrogation methods. Pashkin was a big man, seemed in good health, but she imagined he’d last five minutes. Once she’d learned how Min had met his death, and which of Pashkin’s goons had killed him, she’d put him out of his misery. There’d be something around she could use: a letter opener. Picture wire. They taught you to be resourceful, in the Service.

“So,” he said. “You don’t want to know the same of me?”

“Arkady Pashkin,” she quoted, “is twice-married, twice-divorced, and never in want of attractive female company.”

He threw back his head and roared. All around the restaurant, heads turned, and Louisa noticed that while the men scowled, the women looked amused, and some of their gazes lingered.

When he’d finished, he dabbed his lips with his napkin and said, “It seems I’ve been Googled.”

“The penalties of fame.”

He said, “And it doesn’t, ah, put you off? This so-called playboy image?”

“Attractive female company,” she said. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“So you should. And as for ‘never in want,’ journalists exaggerate. For headline value.”

A waiter arrived, and asked if madame, sir, would like to view the dessert menu? He went off to fetch it, and Pashkin said, “Or we could walk back across the park now.”

She said, “I think so, yes. But would you excuse me?”

The cloakroom was down a flight of stairs. When they called them cloakrooms, you’d moved up a notch on the restaurant scale. This one had old-fashioned pewter sinks in a wooden unit, lighting dim enough to flatter, and proper cotton towels, not air-blowers. She was alone. From elsewhere came the muffled percussion of cutlery; the conspiratorial hum of conversation; the throaty drone of an air purifier. She locked herself in a cubicle, peed, then checked her bag. The plasti-cuffs seemed weedy and impractical until you tugged them, whereupon their tensile strength became apparent. Once you’d wrapped them round someone, they had to be cut free. As for the spray, the label warned of serious damage if applied directly to eyes. A nod was as good as a wink.

She left the cubicle. Washed her hands. Dried them on a proper cotton towel. Then stepped out of the door and into the lobby where she was seized and pulled through another door into a small dark space. An arm was round her throat; her mouth clamped shut. A voice whispered into her ear: “Let’s have the bag.”

Where the slope bottomed out the ground was stony, and clumped with grass. River heard trickling water. His night vision was picking up, or maybe there was more to see. The first house was right in front of them, broken like a tooth, one side collapsed to reveal the cavity within. Wooden beams straddled its upper half, supporting an upper storey that was no longer there, and the floor was a litter of brick, tile, glass and broken stonework. The other buildings, the furthest no more than a hundred yards away, seemed in similar fettle. From inside the next River heard a rustling as its tree stirred, and branches scraped against what remained of its walls.

“Was this a farm?” he asked.

Griff didn’t answer. He glanced at his wrist, then moved off towards the further building.

Instead of following, River walked round the first house. The tree inside was big enough that its upper branches poked above the highest remaining wall. He wondered how long a tree took to grow so big, and figured the house had been a ruin for decades. He saw no sign that anyone had been here recently. He was standing in cold ashes, the remains of a fire. But that was long dead.

If Mr. B’s purpose had involved the MoD base, he might have met his contact here, in this hollow; among these victorious trees and smashed houses. River wondered whether this area was patrolled, or if it was only the perimeter the guards took notice of. Griff would know. Where was Griff?

He walked back round the front. He couldn’t see more than a dozen yards ahead, and didn’t want to shout. Plucking a chunk of rock, he hurled it at the house. It hit with a thock loud enough to alert Griff, but no figure appeared. He waited a minute, then did it again. Then checked his watch. It was seconds off midnight.

The dark dispersed, as if a switch had been thrown. A shining ball burst into being overhead with a noise like tearing paper. It hovered in the sky, casting unearthly light, and instantly made the landscape strange—the battered houses with their intruder trees, the pocked and hillocked ground; all became alien, another planet. The light was orange, edged with green. The noise faded. What the hell? River spun round as another noise ripped the world apart, a banshee scream so loud he had to slap hands to his ears. It ended in a crash he couldn’t tell how far away, and before its echoes died another erupted into the night, and this time he saw in its wake a red-hot scar that burnt its shape into his eyes. And then another. And another. The first explosion shook the ground, and warm wind blasted past him; the second, third, fourth turned him on his heels. The blasted ruins were no shelter, but they were all there was.

River leapt a ruined fragment of wall and landed on a strew of broken tiles. And then he was sprawling on the ground as furious noises crashed nearby, and he had to crawl for the shelter of the tree—the nearest thing to safety he could currently imagine. He closed his eyes, made himself small as possible. Way over his head, the night sky fizzed and boiled with angry lights.

Jesus wept, he thought, with that part of his mind not screaming in terror. Of all the nights to pick, he’d chosen one when the range was in use …

Another explosion took his breath away, and he thought no more.

Tonight, he’d be breaking hearts.

This was new territory. Roderick Ho wasn’t without experience in the gentle art of trashing stuff: he’d wrecked credit ratings, disassembled CVs, altered Facebook statuses and cancelled standing orders. He had systematically dismantled the offshore tax arrangements of a couple of old school chums—who’s the dweeb now, dickheads?—and once had broken an arm—she’d been six; he’d been eight; it was almost certainly an accident. But hearts, no, he’d broken no hearts yet. Tonight would put that right.

Roddy had first met Shana—let’s be precise; first encountered Shana—on Aldersgate Street: they were heading for their respective offices, and she’d barely noticed him. Well: “barely” might not be the word. “Not” might be the word. But he’d noticed her, enough that the second time they passed he was half-looking out for her, and on the third was actually waiting for her, though nowhere she’d see him. He’d tailed her to her office, which turned out to be a temping agency near Smithfield. Back at Slough House, it hadn’t proved much of a stretch to take a peek at its intranet, check out staff listings, and there she was: beaming photo and all. Shana Bellman. After that, it was a hop-and-a-skip to Facebook where, among other things, Roddy found Shana to be a workout addict, so next up was a wander round the membership files of the local gyms. The third one he tried, he found her address. Couple of hours later they were best friends, which is to say that Roddy Ho now knew everything there was to know about Shana, up to and including the name of her boyfriend.

Which is where the heartbreak came in. The boyfriend had to go.

He smiled at her image, a wistful smile acknowledging the pain that precedes happiness, and downsized her photo into the tab at the foot of his screen. Then flexed his fingers, making a satisfying crack. Down to business.

And it’s going to work like this. Shana’s boyfriend is going to strike up a friendship with a couple of skanks on an internet chatsite, a conversation which is going to move from inappropriate to downright graphic within the space of half a dozen exchanges, at which point, with the kind of fat-finger error it’s almost impossible not to see as willed, as if the cheating bastard actually wants to be caught, he’s going to accidentally copy Shana in on the entire thread. And sayonara, boyfriend.

After that, it was gravy. Tomorrow morning—make it the day after; let the dust settle—all Roddy would have to do, passing Shana on her way to Smithfield, would be to make some friendly observation; Hey beautiful, why so sad? And then, Hey, men are jerks. Tell me about it. And then, after she’d gratefully been taken to dinner or a movie or whatever, Hey baby, you want to take this in your—

“Roddy?”

“Crawk!”

Catherine Standish made less noise than a draught. “I hate to bother you when you’ve got your hands full,” she said. “But there’s something I need you to do.”

If he stood dead centre of his sitting room, Spider Webb was exactly three paces from the nearest piece of furniture, which itself sat in open space—this was his sofa, which was long enough to lie full-length on, with wiggle room on either end. After another couple of paces, you reached the wall, against which you could lean back and spread your arms wide without meeting obstruction. And while you were doing this you could feast your eyes on the view, which Spider kept behind big glass doors giving onto his balcony: treetops and sky; the trees organised in a neat row because they lined a canal, along which quiet narrowboats glided, decked out in royal reds and greens. Beat that, he thought. This was a catch-all phrase, applicable to whoever happened to be handy, but in Spider Webb’s personal lexicon, it had a specific target.

Beat that, River Cartwright.

River Cartwright occupied a one-bedroom flat in the East End. His view was a row of lock-up garages, and there were three pubs and two clubs within chucking-up distance, which meant that even once River had negotiated his way through chavs, tarts, drunks and meth-heads, he’d still get no sleep for the racket they’d make till it was time to roll home for their giros. Which neatly underlined the way things were: River Cartwright was a fucking loser, while James Webb was scaling heights like Spider-Man’s smarter brother.

It might have been different. Time was they’d been friendly. They’d undergone training together, were going to be the next bright lights of the Service, but this was what happened: Spider had been compelled to become instrumental in River’s downgrading to slow horse; and subsequently, many long months later, River had demonstrated his poor-fucking-loser status by smashing Webb in the face with a loaded gun.

Still, that had only hurt for a while. A long while, true, but the facts remained: Spider lived in this apartment, worked in Regent’s Park, and was on Diana Taverner’s daily-contact list, while River sweated out interminable days in Slough House, followed by noisy nights in the arse-end of the city. The best man had won.

Now the best man was meeting Arkady Pashkin in London’s smartest new building in the morning, and if all went as planned, he’d be recruiting the most important asset the Service had seen in twenty years. A possible future leader of Russia in Regent’s Park’s pocket, and all it would cost Webb was promises.

After that, Lady Di’s daily-contact list would look like small beer. Besides, anyone forming a long-term alliance with Taverner was going to end up being Nick Clegged. Snuggling up to Ingrid Tearney was the better bet. Side-by-side with Tearney, he’d be seen as first-anointed. And for all the modernising policies the Service tipped its hat at, that counted for a lot.

Everything to play for, then, and he’d done everything right too—from the moment Pashkin had made contact Webb had played it like the high stakes game it was. And luck had been with him. Roger Barrowby’s security audit had played into his hands, giving him the perfect alibi to outsource security details to Slough House, whose drones would follow orders without their activities registering on the Park’s books. Even the location had been swiftly arranged: Pashkin had asked for the Needle, and it had taken Webb just three days to secure it. The suite’s lease-holder was a high-end trading consultancy, currently brokering an arms deal between a UK firm and an African republic, and only too happy to cooperate with an MI5 agent. The date, chosen to fit with Pashkin’s commitments, had been manageable too. Webb ran his tongue round mostly new teeth, a tangible reminder of River Cartwright’s assault. All the details had fallen into place. If it weren’t for Min Harper’s death, it would have been textbook.

But Harper had died because he’d been drunk, and that was an end of it. There was nothing to suggest any last-minute snags, so all Webb had to do was get his head down and sleep the sleep of the just, full of the easy dreams and anticipations of success that would seem to River Cartwright like memories from another life.

So that’s what he’d do now. Soon. In a bit.

Meanwhile, Spider Webb stood gazing round his bright well-appointed apartment, congratulating himself on his charmed existence, and hoping nothing would fuck it up for him now.

From her office, Shirley watched Catherine Standish enter Ho’s office and close the door behind her. Something going on. And this was the pattern: when Shirley could be useful, some crap job was dumped on her. The rest of the time she was out in the cold.

Even Marcus Longridge was more wired in than her. Longridge had stepped into Min Harper’s shoes, at least as far as the job went. Where Louisa Guy was concerned, Shirley doubted he’d be taking up Harper’s slack any time soon. Louisa had turned into a wraith since Harper’s death, as if actively prolonging some symbiotic relationship: he was dead, so she was a ghost. But still, she was out there, on a live job, while Shirley was stuck peeping over her monitor at someone else’s closed door.

She’d found Mr. B—found him twice. Tracked him to Upshott and nailed him at Gatwick too, which was like following a minnow through a shoal. But she didn’t know what those triumphs amounted to, because no one was telling her squat.

It was late, and she should have been on her way hours ago, but she didn’t want to go home. She wanted to know what was going on.

Shirley knew enough about stealthy movement not to fart about trying to move quietly. She strode into the hall and put her ear to Ho’s door. And now she could make out a murmur. How it translated into English, she wasn’t sure: Catherine was speaking softly, and Ho filled the gaps by remaining silent. The only distinct sound was a creak. A very slight creak. Trouble was, it came from behind her.

Slowly, she turned.

Jackson Lamb, on the next landing up, gazed down at her like a wolf who’d just separated a sheep from its flock.

Back across the park they walked. The traffic maintained an insectile buzz, and up above airliners circled, stacked on the Heathrow approach. Arkady Pashkin held her by the arm. Louisa’s bag was lighter now. When it banged her hip, she felt only the usual baggage: mobile, lipstick, purse. But her heart was thumping wildly.

Pashkin pointed out the shapes of trees; how streetlights dancing behind quivering leaves made it seem a ghost was passing. He sounded very Russian saying this. When a motorbike fired up his grip tightened briefly, though he made no comment; and a short while later he tightened it again, as if to underline that he had been unperturbed by the sudden explosion, that it had coincided with his decision to squeeze her arm.

She said, “It must be late,” and her voice sounded as if she were at the far end of a hall of mirrors.

They rejoined the pavement. Black cabs thundered past, their flow interrupted by the occasional bus. Through tinted windows, faces gazed at London’s brilliant parade.

Pashkin said, or maybe repeated, “Are you quite well, Louisa?”

Was she? She felt like she’d been doped.

“You’re cold.” And he draped his jacket over her shoulders like a gentleman in a story, the kind you didn’t encounter any more, unless they were trying to impress you because they planned to get you naked.

They arrived at his hotel’s territory; a broad sweep of pavement lined with terracotta pots, and she stopped, feeling the tug of his arm for a moment before he too halted.

His face was polite puzzlement.

“I ought to go,” she said. “There’s a lot to do tomorrow.”

“A swift nightcap?”

She wondered in how many languages he could say that.

“Not the best time.” She shrugged his jacket off, and as he reached for it his eyes grew colder, as if he were re-evaluating the night’s conversation and concluding that he’d made no basic errors; that this unsatisfactory conclusion was due to her having supplied incorrect data. “I’m sorry.”

He made a slight bow. “Of course.”

I had planned to come upstairs. He wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that, this man with more money than the queen. I had planned to come upstairs, have a nightcap, fuck you if necessary. Anything to get you into a state where I could truss you like a Sunday goose and force answers from you. Like: what did Min find out that meant he had to die?

“I’ll get you a taxi.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “This is not over,” she promised, but luckily he had no notion as to what she meant.

In the taxi, she told the driver to let her out round the corner. He sighed theatrically, but stopped when he caught her expression. Only a minute after she’d left it, the evening air struck her like a new thing, tasting dark and bitter. The taxi pulled away. Footsteps approached. Louisa didn’t turn.

“You saw sense.”

“I had no choice, did I? Not once you’d taken my gear.”

Christ: she sounded like a petulant schoolgirl.

Maybe Marcus agreed. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t answer your phone,” he said. “I could have let you give it your best shot. But it would have been a good way to get seriously damaged. Or dead.”

Louisa didn’t reply. She felt used up. Ready to crawl under the covers, and hope daylight never came.

Nearby traffic thundered along Park Lane, while up in the dark skies aircraft ploughed through clouds, their tail-lights bright as rubies.

“Tube’s this way,” said Marcus.

Shana was a memory. Her boyfriend was reprieved. The pair could spend another night in their fools’ paradise, because Roddy Ho had other fish to fry.

… One day he was going to sit Catherine Standish down and explain to her exactly why he didn’t have to do everything she said. It would be a short conversation which would doubtless end with her in tears, and he was already looking forward to it as he loaded the names she’d given him onto his computer and started doing everything she’d said.

And because he was who he was, the digital tasks in front of Roderick Ho bloomed, and eclipsed the resentment boiling inside him. Catherine slipped into his rearview then vanished, and the list of names became the next level of the online game he was constantly playing.

As ever, he played to win.

Lamb said, “She was listening outside when you were talking to Ho.”

“And I was inside when you caught her doing that,” Catherine said. “So how come I didn’t hear you disembowelling her?”

“Oh, she had an excuse.”

Catherine waited.

Lamb said, “She wanted to hear what you were talking about.”

“That would cover it,” Catherine agreed. “You think she’s Lady Di’s plant?”

“Don’t you?”

“She’s not the only possibility.”

“So you assume it’s Lockridge. What are you, Standish, racist?”

“No, I—”

“That’s even worse than thinking it’s the dyke,” Lamb said.

“I’m so glad we’ve got you to grade our discrimination issues.”

“Ho’s looking at the Upshott menagerie?”

She was used to him switching topics. “I’ve got as far as I can on my own. There are plenty of candidates, no obvious suspects.”

“Would’ve been quicker to use him in the first place.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be doing this in the first place,” she pointed out. “Has River checked in?”

“Earlier today.”

“He okay?”

“Why wouldn’t he be? Whatever’s going on, it’s not a big plot to assassinate Cartwright.”

“This summit happens in the morning. The Pashkin thing.”

“And you think there’s a connection,” he said flatly.

“Arkady Pashkin,” she said. “Alexander Popov. That doesn’t worry you?”

“Give me a break. I’ve got the same initials as … Jesus Lhrist, but I don’t go on about it. This isn’t an Agatha Christie.”

“I don’t care if it’s a Dan Brown. If the two are connected, then something’ll happen in Upshott. Soon. We should let the Park know.”

“If Dander’s Taverner’s mole, they already do. Unless you want to take a punt on this initials thing.” Lamb scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Think they’ll call a COBRA session?”

“You’re the one who put all this in motion. And you’re just going to wait and see what happens?”

“No, I’m just going to wait for Cartwright’s call. Which he’ll make when he’s back from the MoD place. You think I’m still here this time of night because I’ve nothing better to do?”

“Pretty much,” Catherine said. “What’s happening at the MoD place?”

“Probably nothing. But whoever laid a trail didn’t do it to keep what’s going to happen a secret. So I’m assuming Cartwright’ll find a clue somewhere. Now bugger off and leave me in peace.”

She rose but paused at the doorway. “I hope you’re right,” she said.

“About what?”

“That whatever’s going on isn’t a plan to assassinate River. We’ve already lost Min.”

“They staff us with screw-ups,” Lamb reminded her. “We’ll be back up to strength in no time.”

She left.

Lamb tilted his chair back and gazed at the ceiling for a while, then closed his eyes, and became very still.

Ho sucked his teeth as he worked. What Standish had done with her data was old school: she’d processed it looking for common threads. You could do the job faster if you just printed it out and read it, biro in hand.

Going Amish, they called that. Applied to Catherine Standish too. The woman wore a hat.

Ho’s method didn’t have a name, or not one he could think of. What he did came naturally, like water to a fish. He took the names, plus their DOBs, ignored everything else Standish had supplied, and ran them blind through engines both backdoor and legal. Legal was anything in the public domain, plus various government databases his Service clearance gave him access to: tax and national insurance, health, driving licence; what he thought of as data-fodder.

The backdoor stuff was more potent. For starters, he had an NCIS trapdoor. Ho limited himself to brief forays, because its security was improving, but it gave near-instant rundowns on even peripheral involvement with criminal investigations. It wasn’t likely a deep-cover spook would have form, but it wasn’t impossible, and Ho liked to keep in practice. After that came the premier division. Back when he’d been a junior analyst at the Park Ho had been given one-off access to the GCHQ network, and had made a clone from his temporary password. He’d subsequently upgraded himself to administrator status, and could pull up all existing background on any name he chose. This covered not only subversive activity—which included relationships with foreign nationals from any country on the suspect list; travels to unfriendly nations, which for historical reasons included France; and any contact whatsoever, up to vague geographical proximity, with anyone on the watchlists, which were updated daily—but also digital footprint, phone use, credit rating, litigation record, pet ownership: everything. If GCHQ sold user-lists to direct-mailing companies, it could fund the war on terror by itself. In fact, an enterprising freelancer might take advantage of this, Ho thought; a topic worth researching, though maybe not right this moment.

He let himself in, entered the target names, created a destination folder for the results, and exited. No point hanging around while the Matrix did its stuff, which was to accumulate, assess and regurgitate data, with crossover points neatly highlighted so even an Amish could assimilate the bullet points. Kind of like playing Tetris. All the little blocks of info, settling into place. No gaps.

Like that, only much more cool … If Shana could see him now, that boyfriend of hers would be dust. And Roderick Ho lapsed into happy daydream, while the machine-world did his work.

“Why’d you stop me?”

The tube was quiet: a few homegoers down the far end; a lone woman plugged into her own little iWorld; a drunk man by the doors. But Louisa kept it low, because you never could tell.

Marcus said, “Like I told you. Trying to take down Pashkin on your own’s a good way of getting hurt.”

“And what’s that to you?”

“I was ops. We had this thing about watching each others’ backs.” He didn’t appear offended. “You think he killed Harper, don’t you?”

“Or had him killed. You think I’m wrong?”

“Not necessarily. But don’t you think he’s been looked at?”

“By Spider Webb.”

“Who’s not been straight with us.”

“He’s a suit, he’s the Park. He wouldn’t be straight if you rammed a telegraph pole up his arse.” She stood. “I change here.”

“You’re going home?”

“Now you’re my dad?”

“Just tell me you’re not heading back for another crack at him.”

“You took my cuffs, Longridge. And my spray. I’m not going back for another crack, no, not with just my bare hands.”

“And you’ll be there in the morning.”

She stared.

He spread his hands wide: look at me; nothing to hide. “Maybe he had Min whacked, maybe not. But we’ve still got a job to do.”

“I’ll be there,” she said through gritted teeth.

“That’s good. But one other thing, yeah?”

The train pulled into the station, and suddenly there were white tiles and lurid posters visible through the windows.

“Tomorrow, I’m working security. And my job’s to neutralise any threat to the principal. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Good night, Marcus,” she said, stepping onto the platform. By the time the train moved off, she’d disappeared down an exit tunnel.

Marcus remained in his seat. Two other people had left at Louisa’s stop, three more had got on, and he knew exactly which were which. But as none represented a threat, he closed his eyes as the train picked up speed, and for all the world looked like he’d fallen asleep.

Ho woke, straightened his neck, and the thread of drool bridging the corner of his mouth and his shoulder broke and pooled on his shirtfront. He wiped his mouth blearily, dabbed at his shirt with his fingers, and wiped his fingers dry on his shirt. Then he turned to his computer.

It was making a contented humming sound; the friendly noise it made when it had finished a task he’d set it.

He rose. This was a sticky business—his clothing clung to his chair. In the hallway, he paused. Slough House was quiet, but didn’t feel empty. Lamb, he guessed, and probably Standish also. He yawned and padded to the toilet, peed mostly into it, then padded back to his office and slumped back into his chair. Wiped his fingers on his shirt again, and drank some energy drink. Then tilted his flatscreen to see the results of his searches.

As he scrolled down, he leant forward. Information interested Ho to the precise degree that it might prove advantageous, and the data he was looking at had no relevance to himself. But it was of interest to Catherine Standish. Among the names he’d processed, she hoped, was that of Mr. B’s contact; a Soviet sleeper from the old days. Finding out who it was would impress her. On the other hand, she already knew he was shit-hot at this, and while it was true she was nicer to him than anyone else in this dump, the fact remained that she’d blackmailed him into—

Something caught his attention. He stopped scrolling, scrolled back up again, checked a date he’d just registered. Then re-scrolled down to where he’d been.

“Hmph.”

Ho pushed his glasses up his nose with a finger, then sniffed the finger and made a face. He wiped it on his shirt and returned his attention to the screen. A moment later, he again stopped scrolling.

“You’re kidding,” he muttered.

He scrolled down further, then stopped.

“You have got to be kidding.”

He paused and thought. Then he keyed a phrase into the search box, hit return, and stared at the results.

“You have got to be fucking kidding,” he said.

This time, he didn’t stick to the chair at all.

He heard a voice.

“Walker.”

The booming noises remained, but only inside his head: a pulse like a dull metal drumbeat, caroming round his skull. With every contact a starburst was born, died, and rose again. His body was one big fist, its knuckles raw.

“Jonathan Walker.”

River opened his eyes to find he’d been captured by a dwarf.

He was where he’d always been; curled at the foot of an indestructible tree, the only thing fixing the earth to the sky. The ruined building had shrunk—or everything else had grown—and his heart was trying to burst free from its cage.

How long had he been here? Two minutes? Two hours?

And who was the dwarf?

He unclenched himself. The dwarf wore a red cap, and twinkled in an evil way. “Enjoy the show?”

River spoke, and his words swelled up as they left his mouth. His head had been swallowed by a balloon.

“Griff? He’s long gone.” River could have sworn the dwarf rolled back on his heels, like a toy you couldn’t push over. Then he loomed back into River’s face. “Not likely to stick around during artillery practice, is he?”

He hauled River to his feet, and it turned out he wasn’t a dwarf at all, but a medium-sized man. Unless River had shrunk. Terror could do that. He shook his head, and when he stopped the world carried on shaking. He looked up, which was another mistake, but at least the sky had calmed down. No new scars ripped it apart. He looked back at the no-longer dwarf.

“I know you,” he said, and this time his voice more or less behaved itself.

“Maybe we should move.”

River pressed his hands to his temples. This suppressed all movement for a while. “We in danger here?”

“The night’s young.”

The man in the red cap—not a dwarf, but that cap remained real—turned and plodded out of the shell of the building. River stumbled after him.

Lamb wiped his face with a meaty hand. “This better be good.” He’d been asleep in his chair, and looked barely awake in it now. But when Roderick Ho had appeared in the doorway, printout in hand, his eyes had snapped open, and for a moment Ho had felt like a rabbit who’d wandered into a lion’s cage.

“I found something,” he said.

Catherine appeared. If she’d been sleeping, too, she’d been less messy about it than Lamb, who was smeared with big red blotches. “What kind of something, Roddy?”

She was the only person who called him that. Ho couldn’t decide whether he liked it that way, or wished more people did.

He said, “Don’t know. But it’s something.”

“That wasn’t the best sleep I’ve ever had,” Lamb said. “But if you woke me to play twenty questions, you’ll be sharing a room with Cartwright when he gets back.”

“It’s the village. Upshott. The population spread.”

“It’s pretty tiny,” Catherine said.

Lamb said, “It’s bloody Toytown. With fewer amenities. You have any information we don’t already know?”

“Fewer amenities, exactly.” Ho was starting to feel confident again. Remembered he was a cyber warrior. “There’s nothing there. And even when there was, it was the Yank airbase, and none of the names on the list had anything to do with that.”

Lamb lit a cigarette. “First of the day,” he said, when Catherine flashed him a look. It was ten past midnight. “Look, Roddy.” This was said kindly. “All that crap I lay on you? The name-calling? The threats?”

“It’s okay,” Ho said. “I know you don’t mean it.”

“I mean every bloody word, my son. But it will all seem trivial compared to what’ll happen if you don’t start making sense sharpish. Capisce?”

The cyber warrior leaked away. “None of them were connected with the airbase. Something else must have attracted them to Upshott, but there’s nothing else there. So—”

“Urban flight?” Lamb asked. “It’s what happens in cities when too many undesirables turn up.” He paused. “No offence.”

“Except that’s a gradual thing,” Ho said. “And this wasn’t.”

The smoke from Lamb’s cigarette hung motionless in the air.

Catherine said, “What do you mean, Roddy?”

And here was his night’s triumph, though it involved fewer blondes than he’d wanted. “They moved into the village in the space of a few months. A whole bunch of them.”

“How many?” Lamb asked.

Handing his printout to Catherine, Ho said, “Seventeen of them. Seventeen families. And they all arrived in Upshott between March and June, nineteen ninety-one.”

And he had the satisfaction of seeing, for once, Lamb lost for an instant reply.

Stomping up the slope Griff Yates had led him down earlier, River had to rest halfway. But the pounding in his head was fainter, and he was starting to notice he was alive, when he could easily have been sprayed across this landscape as a fine red mist.

The thought of encountering Griff again was starting to energise him too.

Redcap waited at the top. He was little more than a dark outline, but River’s brain was firing again, and a name popped into it. He said, “You’re Tommy Moult.” Outside the village shop, selling packets of seeds from his bike basket. That was where River knew him from, though they’d never spoken beyond a hello. “What are you doing here this time of night?”

“Picking up strays.” Tufts of white hair sprigged out from Moult’s cap. He must have been seventy: he had a well-lined face, and dressed like he lived under a hedge with an ancient tweed jacket that smelled of outdoors, and trousers that were knotted round his ankles. Makeshift bike clips, River supposed, though less sanitary possibilities occurred. His voice was a rough gargle: the local accent poured over pebbles. An unlikely saviour, but a saviour all the same.

“Well, thanks.”

Moult nodded, turned and walked. River followed. He had no idea which direction they were headed. His inner compass was spinning crazily.

Over his shoulder, Moult said, “You’d have been all right. They don’t target the buildings. If they did they’d be rubble, and those trees would be matchsticks. See the humps in the land back there?”

“No.”

“Well, they’re bronze age barrows. The military don’t plant ordnance on them. Draws criticism.”

“I suppose Griff knows that too.”

“He didn’t plan on you being blown to bits, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’ll bear that in mind next time I see him.”

“He just wanted to scare you shitless.” Moult halted so suddenly River nearly bumped into him. “What you probably ought to know is that Griff’s been in love with young Kelly Tropper since she took the stabilisers off her bike. So what with you and her being so friendly—and in the middle of the day—well, you can see he might take that amiss.”

“Jesus wept,” said River. “That was like—that was this afternoon.”

Tommy Moult glanced skywards.

“Yesterday afternoon. And he knows about it? You know about it?”

“You’re familiar with the phrase global village?”

River stared.

“Well, Upshott’s the village version of that. Everyone knows everything.”

“Bastard could have killed me.”

“I suppose, to his way of thinking, it wouldn’t have been him doing the killing.”

Moult tramped off. River followed. “It seems further than it did before,” he said after a while.

“Same distance it’s always been.”

A penny dropped. “We’re not heading back to the road, are we?”

“Be a shame,” Moult said, “to go to all this effort, not to mention having the poop scared out of you, and then just scoot home with your tail between your legs.”

“So where are we going?”

“To find the only thing round here worth finding,” Moult said. “Oh, and by the way? It’s top secret.”

River nodded, and they walked on into the dark.

“Okay,” Lamb said at last. “That must be why I keep you round. Now back to your toys, button-boy. If they’re all sleepers then they’re long-term fakes, fakes being the operative word. Their paperwork must be good, but there’ll be a chink of light somewhere. Find it.”

“It’s after midnight.”

“Thanks,” Lamb said. “My watch is fast. And when you’ve done that, do a background on Arkady Pashkin, which is spelt exactly like I’ve just said it.” He paused. “Is there a reason you’re still here?”

Catherine said, “That’s good work. Well done, Roddy.”

Ho left.

She said, “Would it kill you to tell him well done?”

“If he doesn’t do his job, he’s just taking up space.”

“He found this.” Catherine waved the printout. “And another thing—‘chink of light’?”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Christ, I’m getting old,” said Lamb. “Don’t ever tell him, but that was unintentional.”

She went out to the tiny kitchen, and put the kettle on. When she returned, he’d pushed his chair back and was staring at the ceiling, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Catherine waited. At length, he spoke.

“What do you make of it?”

It appeared to be a genuine question.

She said, “I presume we’re ruling out coincidence.”

“Well, it’s not like Upshott had a sale on. And like Ho said, there’s no other reason to move there.”

“So an entire sleeper network just descended on a Cotswold village and, what, took it over?”

“Sounds like the Twilight Zone, doesn’t it?”

“To what end? It’s basically a retirement village.”

He didn’t reply.

The kettle boiled, and she went back out and made tea. Came back with two mugs, and put Lamb’s on his desk. He made no response.

She said: “It’s not even a dormitory town. No direct rail link to London, or anywhere else. It’s got a church, a shop and a few mail-order outlets. There’s a pottery. A pub. Stop me when it starts sounding like a target.”

“The base was still there when they moved in.”

“Which suggests that if their presence had anything to do with the base they’d have left by now. Or done whatever they meant to do while it was still operational. And who buys a house to carry out a covert op, for heaven’s sake? Half of them took out mortgages. That’s how Ho found them.”

Lamb said, “No, please, keep talking. I find silence oppressive.” Without shifting his gaze from the ceiling, he began fumbling for his lighter.

She said, “If you light that, I’m opening a window. It already stinks in here.”

Lamb removed the cigarette from his mouth and held it above his head. He rolled it between his fingers. She could hear him thinking.

He said, “Seventeen of them.”

“Seventeen families. Or some of them are families. Do you think the kids know?”

“How many we talking about?”

Catherine checked the printout. “About a dozen. Most of them well into their twenties, but at least five still have strong ties to the village. River says—” Lamb jerked upright and she paused, her thread broken. “What?”

“Why are we assuming they know about each other?”

She said, “Ah … Because they’ve all been there twenty years?”

“Yeah. It must come up at dinner parties all the time.” His voice rose a key. “Did I ever mention that Sebastian and I spy for the Kremlin? More Chablis?” He resumed his search for his lighter. “Sleepers operate solo. They don’t have handlers, just a call-code. Do this. Over and out. Years can go by in-between, and they have no contact with anyone else.”

His face had assumed its bullfrog expression. He found the lighter and lit his cigarette but did so on auto-pilot. He didn’t even comment when Catherine crossed the room, raised the blind, and opened the window. Dark night air rushed in, eager to explore this brand new space.

He said, “Think about it. The Wall comes down. The USSR breaks up. Whatever the network was for, at this point it’s tits up. So maybe the mastermind running it, who we’re assuming’s the same guy who dreamed up Alexander Popov, decided to mothball it. But instead of calling them home, he sends them out to the sticks instead. Why not?”

Catherine jumped onto his train of thought. “They’ve spent years burrowing into English society. They’ve all got jobs, all successful in their own fields, and then they’re instructed to move out into the countryside, like countless other middle-class successes. Maybe they’re not sleeping any more. Maybe they’ve become who they’ve been pretending to be.”

“Living normal lives,” said Lamb.

“So I was right. It is a retirement village.”

“Though it seems someone plans to wake them up.”

“Either way,” said Catherine, “it might be an idea to let River know.”

Moult opened the fridge and from its freezer compartment produced a bottle so frosted River couldn’t read its label. Finding glasses on a shelf, he set them on the workbench. Then he uncapped the bottle, filled each glass, and handed one to River.

“That’s it?” River said.

“You expected a slice of lemon?”

“We’ve walked seven miles across pitch-black moorland, and your top secret is, you know where there’s free booze?”

“It was barely two miles,” Moult pointed out. “And there’s a quarter moon.”

On the moor, they’d had to drop to the ground when a jeep passed, carving out chunks of the night, small parts of which glittered—insects, darting about like aerial shards of glass, and reflecting the security patrol’s headlights. Not long afterwards, they’d come through the fence, but not the same way Griff Yates had led River in; instead, they’d emerged onto a stretch of tarmac along which they’d been trekking for over a minute before River registered what it was: not a road but a landing strip. And then the building up ahead took shape, and it was the hangar where the flying club kept their aeroplane. Next to it was a smaller construction, the clubhouse itself, which turned out to be not much more than a garage with added amenities—the fridge Moult was raiding; a few chairs; an old desk cluttered with paperwork; a stack of cardboard boxes, half-covered by a plastic sheet. Light came from a bare overhead bulb. The key to all this treasure had been on a ledge above the door, which would have been the first place River looked, had Tommy Moult not already known it was there.

Tommy Moult, who was now looking at his empty glass as if trying to puzzle out how it had got that way.

River said, “I’m guessing you’re not actually a full member of the club?”

“It’s not a club as such,” Tommy said. “Not with rules and membership lists.”

“So that would be a no.”

He shrugged. “If they wanted their door locked, they’d keep the key where it couldn’t be found.”

There were photos magneted to the fridge. One was of Kelly in flying gear: jumpsuit, helmet, broad smile. Others, alongside bills and newspaper clippings, showed Kelly’s friends: Damian Butterfield, Jez Bradley, Celia and Dave Morden; others River couldn’t put names to. An older man standing by the neat aircraft that was the flying club’s pride and joy looked very much the pilot in pressed trousers and silver-buttoned blazer. His white hair was immaculately tended; his shoes shined to perfection.

“That’s Ray Hadley, is it?”

“Aye,” Tommy said.

“How’d he afford his own plane?”

“Maybe he won the lottery.”

Hadley was the club’s founder, if a club that wasn’t a club could have a founder. Through his encouragement Kelly and Co had taken flying lessons; because of him, their lives had come to centre around this garage and the hangar next door.

In one of their first conversations River had asked Kelly how they managed to afford it all, and slight puzzlement had flitted across her face as she’d explained that their parents had paid. “It’s not much more expensive than riding lessons,” she’d said.

Above the desk was a calendar, the month’s days marked off in small square boxes. Several had been X’ed out with thick red marker pen. Last Saturday, River noted, and the Tuesday before that. And tomorrow. Underneath it, holiday postcards had been blu-tacked to the wall: beaches and sunsets. All a long way away.

His mobile vibrated in his pocket.

“I’ll be outside,” he told Tommy, which was where he checked the incoming number before answering.

It was Catherine Standish, not Lamb.

“This is going to sound odd,” she promised.

Catherine gone, Lamb closed his window, pulled down his blind and poured a glass from the Talisker kept, true to cliché, in his desk drawer. As he drank, his gaze slipped out of focus. Anyone watching might have thought he was slipping into a booze-fuelled nap, but Lamb asleep was more restless than this—Lamb asleep made sudden panicky movements, and sometimes swore in tongues. This Lamb was still and silent, though his lips shone. This Lamb was impersonating a boulder.

At length, this Lamb spoke aloud: “Why Upshott?”

If Catherine had been there, she’d have said, Why not? It had to be somewhere.

“And if it was anywhere else, I’d be asking why there?” Lamb replied. But it wasn’t anywhere else. It was Upshott.

And whoever had decided that that’s where it should be had Kremlin brains in a Kremlin head. Which meant they didn’t choose breakfast without weighing up the consequences. Which meant there was a reason for it being Upshott which didn’t involve a map and a pin.

Eyes closed, Lamb summoned up the Ordnance Survey map he’d studied once a day since River Cartwright had become an agent in place. Upshott was a small village among larger towns, none of which had any strategic significance; they simply nestled in the heart of the British countryside, attracting tourists and photographers. They were towns where you bought antiques and expensive sweaters. Places to go to when you were sick of cities. And if you wanted an image of England, they were the places you thought of, once you’d used up Buck House and Big Ben and the Mother of Parliaments.

Or at least, he amended, they were the places a Kremlin brain in a Kremlin head might think of when thinking of England.

Now Lamb stirred, and sat up. He poured another scotch and drank it; the two actions twin halves of a single seamless gesture. Then he pawed at his collar with a meaty hand, to confirm he already wore his coat.

It was late, but he was still up. And in Lamb’s world, if he was still up, there was small reason why any other bugger should be sleeping.

Needing a Russian brain to pick, he left Slough House and headed west.

River said, “You what?”

Catherine repeated herself. “Half the names you’ve mentioned, Butterfield, Hadley, Tropper, Mor—”

“Tropper?”

Catherine paused. “Any special reason for singling him out?”

“… No. Who else?”

She read them out; Butterfield, Hadley, Tropper, Morden, Barnett, Salmon, Wingfield, James: the rest … seventeen names, most of which River had encountered. Wingfield—he’d met a Wingfield at St Johnno’s. She was in her eighties; one of those old ladies who seem half bird: bright of eye and sharp of beak. Used to be something at the Beeb.

“River?”

“Still here.”

“We thought Mr. B was in Upshott to meet a contact. It could have been any one of them, River. It looks like the cicada network exists, all right. And is right there, right now.”

“There a Tommy Moult on that list? M – O – U – L – T.”

He could hear the printout shimmy in her hands. “No,” she said. “No Moult.”

“No, I didn’t think there would be,” River said. “Okay. How’s Louisa?”

“The same. It’s this summit thing tomorrow. Your old friend Spider Webb and his Russians. Except …”

“Except what?”

“Lamb came up with background on the woman who ran Min over. It looks like the Dogs might have been hasty, writing it up as an accident.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Louisa know?”

“No.”

“Keep an eye on her, Catherine. She already thinks Min was murdered. If she gets proof …”

“I will. How do you know she thinks that?”

“Because I would,” he said. “Okay. I’ll watch my step. But so far, I’ve got to tell you, Upshott appears to be what it looks like on the map. A small piece of nowhere in some pretty countryside.”

“Roddy’s still digging. I’ll get back to you.”

River stood a while longer in the dark. Kelly, he thought. Kelly Tropper—maybe her father, yes, former big-shot lawyer in the capital; maybe he was the kind of long-term burrower the old-style Kremlin might have put in play. But his daughter had barely been born when the Wall came down. There was no reason to suspect she might be part of the network. What were the chances that this little nowhere was nurturing a new generation of Cold War warriors, and what would they be fighting for if it did? The resurrection of the Soviet Union?

Through the window, he watched Tommy Moult pour more vodka, then take something from his pocket and put it in his mouth. He used the alcohol to wash it down. He still wore his red cap, and the hair that poked from it seemed comical. His skin was tight across his jaw, and bristled with white stubble. The gleam in his eyes was lively enough, but there was an air of weariness about him. The cap struck a jaunty note at odds with everything else.

Turning, River faced the hangar. The big doors giving onto the landing strip were padlocked, but there was an unsecured side entrance. He stepped inside, listening hard, but the only sounds were those of an empty structure, and when he swept the interior with his pocket torch’s beam, nothing scuttled from its reach. The plane loomed in the shadows. A Cessna Skyhawk—he’d not been this close to it before, but had seen it ploughing the skies above Upshott, where it seemed a child’s toy. It wasn’t that much more substantial now: about half as tall as River himself, and maybe three times that long. It was single-engined, with space for four passengers; white with blue piping. When he laid a hand on its wing it was cold to the touch, but promised warmth; the warmth of coiled potential. He hadn’t really registered until now that Kelly flew. Had known it as a fact, but not felt it. Now he did.

The rest of the structure was mostly clear floorspace, everything else being stacked against the walls. A flatbed trolley’s handle reared up like a hobbyhorse. Whatever it held was draped in canvas. This was secured to the trolley with clothesline, and River had to fiddle with a knot, torch in mouth, before he could peel it free. Having done that, it took him a moment to work out what it was that was stacked there, three sacks deep. He put a hand to it. Like the plane it was cold, but warm with the same coiled potential.

What felt like a pair of darts struck him on the neck.

A flash of light ignited River’s brain, and the world turned to smoke.

The Wentworth Academy of the English Language was quiet, no lights showing from its third-floor offices above the stationer’s off High Holborn. This suited Lamb. He’d prefer to find Nikolai Katinsky asleep. Being woken at this hour would stir memories, and render him amenable to questioning.

The door, like Slough House’s, was black and heavy and weathered, but where the latter hadn’t been opened in years, this saw daily use. No groaning from the tumblers as Lamb slipped a pick into its keyhole; no squealing from the hinges as he eased it open. Once inside he waited a full minute, accustoming himself to the dark and the building’s breathing before tackling the staircase.

It was often observed of Lamb that he could move quietly when he wanted. Min Harper had suggested that this was only true on his home ground, because Lamb knew every creak and wobble of Slough House, having doctored the noisier stairs himself. But Harper was dead, so what did he know? Lamb went up without a sound, and paused at the Academy’s door barely long enough to squint through its frosted window, or so it appeared, though the pause proved long enough for him to gain entry. He closed the door behind him as silently as he’d opened it.

Again, he stood a moment, waiting for the atmospheric disturbance his entrance had made to settle, but it was wasted caution. There was nobody there. The door to the next office hung ajar, and there’d be nobody in there either. The only living thing was Lamb himself. Slivers of streetlight broke through blinds, and as his eyes adjusted he could make out the shape, under the desk, of the still-folded camp bed; its thin mattress folded round its metal frame like a diagram of an unlikely yoga position.

Lamb carried no torch. Torchlight in a darkened building screams burglary. Instead, he switched the anglepoise on, flooding the desk with cold yellow lamplight and puddling the rest of the room. Everything looked as it had on his previous visit. Same bookshelves holding the same thick catalogues; same paperwork littering the desk. He opened drawers and scuffled through papers. Most were bills, but a letter lay among them, handwritten, peeping from a coyly curling flap. A love letter, of all things; not even an explicit one, but expressing regret at parting. It seemed that Nikolai had seen fit to end an affair. Neither the fact that he had done so, nor that he had embarked upon an affair in the first place, surprised Lamb. What he did find curious was that Katinsky had left the letter in what amounted to plain view. All it took was for someone to break in and rifle his desk. Katinsky had never been a player—a cipher clerk, one among many; barely known to Regent’s Park before his defection—but still, Service life should have taught him Moscow Rules, and Moscow Rules should never be forgotten.

He replaced the letter. Examined a desk diary. No appointments had been noted for today. The remainder of the year was empty too: a string of blank days stretching ahead. Lamb flipped back and found annotations: brief reminders, initials, times and places. He put it down. In the small adjoining office was a filing cabinet which held clothing; in a mug on a shelf, a razor and toothbrush. A shirt hung on the back of the door. In a corner, a blue coolbox held tubs of olives and houmous, slices of ham and a chunk of mouldy bread. In a cupboard he found a stash of empty pill bottles, none with prescription labels. ‘Xemoflavin,’ one read. He dropped it in a pocket, then surveyed the tiny room once more. Katinsky lived here all right. He just wasn’t here now.

Lamb switched off the anglepoise and left, locking the door behind him.

London slept, but fitfully, its every other eye wide open. The ribbon of light atop the Telecom Tower unfurled again and again, traffic lights blinked through unvarying sequence, and electronic posters affixed to bus stops rotated and paused, rotated and paused, drawing an absent public’s attention to unbeatable mortgage deals. There were fewer cars, playing louder music, and the bass pulse that trailed in their wake pounded the road long after they’d gone. From the zoo leaked muffled shrieks and strangled growls. And on a pavement obscured by trees, leaning on a railing, a man smoked a cigarette, the light at its tip glowing brighter then dying, brighter then dying, as if he too were part of the city’s heartbeat, performing the same small actions over and over, all through the watches of the night.

Unseen eyes observed him. This stretch of pavement was never unregarded. What was curious was that he’d been allowed to stand there so long without interference. A half hour crawled by before a car turned up at last and purred to a halt. Its driver spoke through its rolled-down window. His tone was weary, though this might have had less to do with the time of night than with the man he was forced to address.

“Jackson Lamb,” he said.

Lamb tossed his cigarette over the railings. “Took your time,” he replied.

When River came round he was staring at the sky, and the ground was rolling beneath him. He was on a trolley. Doubtless the one he’d seen in the hangar. Was bound to it, in fact; with the same clothesline—was strapped like Gulliver: wrists, ankles, across the chest, across the throat. In his mouth a wadded-up handkerchief, secured in place by tape.

Pushing the trolley was Tommy Moult.

“Taser,” he said. “If you’re interested.”

River arched his back and flexed his wrists, but the line held firm. The only give came from his flesh.

“Or you could lie still,” Moult suggested. “Want to be Tasered again? I’m out of cartridges, but I can give you a contact blast. It’ll hurt.”

River lay still.

“Up to you.”

The one name not on Catherine’s list was Tommy Moult. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why Moult was here on a Tuesday night, when he was usually only seen at weekends.

A wheel hit a rock, and if River hadn’t been tied in place he’d have been thrown clear. The clothesline bit into his throat and he made an indecipherable noise: pain, fury, frustration, all muffled by the gag in his mouth.

“Whoops.” Moult stopped pushing and wiped his hands on his trousers. He said something else, but the wind dragged it away.

River twisted his head to ease the pressure on his throat. He was less than a foot from the ground. All he could see was black grass.

And he thought again of what he’d found in the hangar, packed onto the trolley he was tied to now. Which meant it wasn’t on the trolley any more.

He assumed it was on the aeroplane instead.

They sat in the car. Nick Duffy’s cheek wore a crease-mark stamped by a pillow. “So what did you think was going to happen?” he asked. “It’s gone two in the morning, and you’re outside the Park’s front door, smoking like a mad man and doing sod all. You’re lucky they didn’t unleash the Achievers.”

The Achievers were the guys in black, who turned up slightly before things turned violent.

“I do have clearance,” Lamb pointed out.

“Only on the understanding you never attempt to use it,” Duffy said. “So I’m dragged out of bed because the duty staff are worried you’re about to storm the place. They all remember last year’s bomb scare.”

Lamb nodded complacently. “Good to know I’m not forgotten.”

“Oh, your memory lingers on. Like herpes.” Duffy nodded towards the nearby building. “No way are you getting inside, so whatever you were after, put it in a memo. Lady Di’ll be thrilled. And now, as I’m one of the good guys, I’ll give you a lift to the nearest taxi rank. But only if it’s on my way home.”

Lamb clapped his hands, once, twice, three times. Then again, and then some more. He kept this up until any humour in it was long since gasping for breath, and only then said, “Oh, sorry. You were finished?”

“Fuck off, Jackson.”

“Maybe later. After you’ve taken me into the Park.”

“Were you listening?”

“Every word. See, we could do this your way, but then I’d have to walk back from the taxi rank and do things less subtly. Which means making a fuss, and, oh yeah, fucking up your career.” He produced his cigarette packet, examined its empty recess, then tossed it onto the back seat. “Up to you, Nick. I haven’t fucked up anyone’s career in months. It’s fun, but the paperwork’s shocking.”

Duffy was facing the road, as if the car were moving, and the way ahead had grown complicated.

“If you didn’t already know you’d screwed up, we’d be on the move.” Lamb reached across and patted Duffy’s hand, which had grown whiter since his grip on the steering wheel had tightened. “We all make mistakes, son. Your latest was signing off on Rebecca Mitchell without doing the full-court press.”

“She was clean.”

“Yeah, you established she was a virgin. Which maybe she is, but she didn’t use to be. Not back when she was playing spin-the-bottle with a pair of likely lads from, where was it? Oh yeah, Russia. And she just happens to mow down Min Harper, who’s babysitting some visiting goon from, oooh, where was it again? You really want me to fill in the gaps?”

“Taverner was happy with the report.”

“And I’m sure she’ll continue to be. Until somebody holds it to the light and points out the cracks.”

“Don’t you get it, Lamb? She was happy. With. It.” He tapped the words out on the steering wheel. “Told me to wrap it in ribbons and file it away. So it’s not me you’re screwing with, it’s her. Good luck with that.”

“Grow up, Nick. Whatever order she gave, you’re the one carried it out. So if anyone gets thrown to the wolves, guess who it’ll be?”

For a moment they sat in silence, Duffy still tapping out unspoken words on the wheel. Then the tapping grew disjointed, faltered, stopped, as if the words were trailing away even in his mind. “Christ,” he said at last. “My mistake was answering the phone after midnight.”

“No,” Lamb said. “Your mistake was forgetting Min Harper was one of mine.”

They got out of the car, and headed for the Park.

Long before the journey was over every nerve in River’s body was screaming for release. He felt like a tambourine, rattled to someone else’s rhythm.

Moult, too, looked like he’d been fed through a wringer. Every five minutes he had to pause and rest. Earlier, approaching the clubhouse, they’d had to drop from sight when a patrol passed. That didn’t happen now. Moult knew the patrols’ routine, that was clear. Whoever he was, he knew what he was doing.

As to where they were going, he was keeping that to himself.

Pausing, he scratched his scalp through his hat and everything shifted, as if his head had slipped off its axis. He caught River watching, and grinned an evil grin.

“Nearly there.”

“Records.”

Duffy had grown paler now they were inside; wore a tight expression suggesting he might soon spring a leak and deflate into an empty, angry bag. “Records,” he repeated.

“That’s still downstairs, right?”

Duffy jabbed the lift button as if it were Lamb’s throat. “I thought your boy Ho was working on an archive.”

“Yeah, well, he might not have done as much as he likes to pretend.”

Some floors down—but some floors above the lowest—they stepped into a blue-lit corridor. A door hung open at its far end, and the light streaming through it was warmer, library-like. Some of it was blocked by a squat, suspicious shape: a woman in a wheelchair; quite round, with a messy cap of grey hair, and a face powdered to clownish white. As they approached, her expression changed from suspicion to pleasure, and by the time the two men reached her, she had opened her arms.

Lamb bent down for her hug, while Nick Duffy looked on as if witnessing an alien landing.

“Molly Doran,” Lamb said, when the woman released him. “And not looking a day older.”

“One of us has to keep in shape,” she said. “You’ve gotten fatter, Jackson. And that coat makes you look like a vagrant.”

“It’s a new coat.”

“New when?”

“Since I last saw you.”

“That’s fifteen years.” She released him and looked at Duffy. “Nicholas,” she said pleasantly. “Fuck off. I won’t have the Dogs on my floor.”

“We go wherever we—”

“Ah-ah.” She waggled a short fat finger. “I won’t. Have. The Dogs. On. My. Floor.”

“He’s just going, Molly,” Lamb assured her. He turned to Duffy. “I’ll be here.”

“It’s the middle of the—”

“Waiting.”

Duffy stared, then shook his head. “He used to warn me about you. Sam Chapman did.”

“He had a few things to say about you too,” Lamb said. “Once he’d run the numbers on Rebecca Mitchell. Here.” He produced the pill bottle he’d taken from Katinsky’s office. “Get this checked out while you’re at it.”

Whatever Duffy had to say in reply was lost as the lift doors closed.

Lamb turned to Molly Doran. “How come they’ve got you on the nightshift?”

“So I don’t frighten the youngsters. They take one look at me, see their future, and piss off to the City instead.”

“Yeah, I thought it would be something like that.”

Her wheelchair, which was cherry-red with thick velvet armrests, had the turning-circle of a doughnut. She spun it on the spot and led Lamb into a long room lined with upright cabinets which were set on tracks like tramlines, so they could be pushed together when not in use: one huge accordion structure, each row containing file after file of dusty information, some of it so ancient that the last to consult it had long since faded to dust himself. Here were Regent’s Park’s older secrets. Which could all be stored on the head of a pin, of course, if the budget were there to squeeze it into shape.

Upstairs, the queens of the database ruled their digital universe. Down here, Molly Doran was the keeper of overlooked history.

In a cubbyhole was Molly’s desk. A three-legged stool sat to one side, but the space in front was left free for Molly’s wheelchair. “So. This is where you’ve ended up.”

“As if you didn’t know.”

“Social calls. Never really been a people person.”

“I don’t think either of us were cut from that cloth, Jackson.”

She wheeled herself into her customary place. “It’s okay. It’ll take your weight.”

He lowered himself onto the stool, glaring at her upholstered chariot. “All right for some.”

She laughed a surprisingly bell-like laugh. “You haven’t changed, Jackson.”

“Never seen the need to.”

“All those years undercover, pretending to be someone you’re not. I think they drained you of pretence.” She shook her head, as if remembering something. “Fifteen years, and here you are. What do you need?”

“Nikolai Katinsky.”

“Minnow,” Molly said.

“Yes.”

“Cipher clerk. One of a shoal of the damn things, we couldn’t give them away in the nineties.”

“He came with a piece from a jigsaw,” Lamb said. “But it didn’t fit anywhere.”

“Not a side piece. Not a corner. Just a bit of the sky,” Molly’s face had altered now they’d reached the meat. Her grossly over-painted cheeks shone pinker, their natural colour showing through. “He claimed to have heard of the cicadas, that phantom network that other phantom set up.”

“Alexander Popov.”

“Alexander Popov. But it was all just one of those games Moscow Centre liked to play, before the board was tipped over.”

Lamb nodded. It was warm down here, and he was starting to feel clammy. “So what paper do we have on him?”

“It’s not on the Beast?”

The Beast was Molly Doran’s collective name for the Service’s assorted databases: she refused to differentiate between them on the grounds that when they crashed—which they were bound to, sooner or later—there’d be no telling them apart anyway. Just one dark screen after another. And she’d be the one holding the candle.

“Bare details,” Lamb said. “And the tapes of his debriefing. You know what it’s like, Molly. The young guns think a twenty-minute video’s worth a thousand words. But we know better, don’t we?”

“Are you trying to sweet-talk me, Jackson Lamb?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

She laughed again, and the sound went fluttering into the stacks like a butterfly. “I used to wonder about you, you know. Whether you’d go over to the enemy.”

Lamb looked affronted. “CIA?”

“I meant the private sector.”

“Huh.” He glanced down briefly, taking in his stained, untucked-in shirt, scuffed shoes and undone fly, and seemed to enjoy a moment’s self-awareness. “Can’t see me being welcomed with open arms.” Not that he bothered zipping up.

“Yes. Now I see you, there was nothing to worry about, was there?” Molly pulled away from the table. “I’ll see what we’ve got. Make yourself useful, and put the kettle on.”

As she rolled off, her voice floated back: “And you dare light up, and I’ll feed you to the birds.”

And here they were again.

Had River slept? Was that possible? He must have drifted off on some naturally produced anaesthetic; his body refusing to submit to more punishment. Through his mind, various nightmare pictures had flitted. Among them, a retrieved image; the page from Kelly Tropper’s sketchbook showing a stylised city landscape, its tallest building struck by jagged lightning.

And now they were here again, and every bone in his body groaned. Unless that was the noise the tree made as the wind shook its branches, scraping them against the ruined walls of the battered house.

“Home sweet home,” said Tommy Moult.

Lamb sucked a biro he’d found, and leafed through Katinsky’s file. This didn’t take long. “Not a hell of a lot,” he said.

“If it hadn’t been for his mentioning the cicadas,” Molly said, “he’d have been thrown back. As it was, he got the low-grade treatment. Background established he was who he said he was, then got onto frying bigger fish.”

“Born in Minsk. Worked in transport administration there before being recruited by a KGB talent spotter, subsequently spent twenty-two years at Moscow Centre.”

“His existence was first noted in December ’74, when we got hold of a staff rota.”

“And we never made a pass,” Lamb said.

“The file would be thicker if we had.”

“Odd. You’d think we’d at least have taken a look.”

Placing the file on Molly’s desk, he stared into the darkness of the stacks. The pen in his mouth rose slowly, slumped, and rose again. Lamb seemed unaware of this; unaware of anything, as his hand slipped inside his still open fly and he began to scratch.

Molly Doran sipped her tea.

“Okay,” Lamb said at last. It was quiet in Records, but grew quieter still now, as Molly held her breath. “What if he’s not a minnow? What if he’s a big fish pretending to be a minnow? How would that have worked, Molly?”

“A strange thing to do. Why would anyone hide their light? Run the risk of being chucked back with the rubbish?”

“Strange,” Lamb agreed. “But could he have done it?”

“Faked a cipher clerk? Yes. He could have done it. If he was a big fish, he could have done it.”

They shared a look.

“You think he was one of the missing, don’t you?” Molly said. “One of those we lost sight of when the USSR collapsed.”

Of whom there’d been more than a few. Some had probably found their way into shallow graves; others, they suspected, had reinvented themselves and flourished even now in different guises.

“He might have been. He might have been one of those Kremlin brains who gave us so much trouble. Who wanted out when the war was lost, but not to spend the rest of his life being poked at by the winners.”

Molly said, “It would have meant placing that name on the rota years in advance. He couldn’t have been sure we’d even see it.” And then checked herself. “Oh—”

“Yeah,” Lamb agreed. “Oh. Any idea how it came our way?”

“I could run it down,” Molly said doubtfully. “Possibly.”

He shook his head. “Not a top priority. Not right now.”

“My point stands though. He’d have had to do it years before he could know he needed it. December seventy-four? Nobody saw the end coming. Not that far in advance.”

“You didn’t have to see it coming,” Lamb said. “You just had to know it might.” He looked at the biro in his hand, as if wondering how it got there. “There’s nothing a joe likes more than knowing he’s got his exits covered.”

“There’s something else, isn’t there? You’ve got the look.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “There’s more.”

Tommy Moult’s breathing had slowed to normal. He’d wheeled the trolley over the rubble that had once been the house’s floor, a bone-wrecking distance for River, who was starting to feel his teeth loosen. He continued to tremble even now they’d come to a halt. Where his bonds cut into him he burned, and his ears throbbed in time to pounding blood. What was holding him together was rage; rage at himself for being so stupid twice in one night. And because he’d had a glimmer of what Moult was planning, and couldn’t believe it, but couldn’t disbelieve it either.

The tape was ripped from his mouth. The handkerchief was pulled free. Suddenly River was gulping mouthfuls of night air, making up for the night’s thin rations, breathing so deeply he almost gagged. Moult said, “You needed that.”

River could almost talk. “What the. Fuck. Are you doing?”

“I think you already know, Walker. Jonathan Walker, by the way? Bit of a tired old name.”

“It’s mine.”

“No. It’ll be the one Jackson Lamb gave you. Still, won’t be needing it much longer, will you?”

He knew Lamb; knew River was a spook. There was little point feigning innocence. River said, “I’m supposed to check in. An hour ago. They’ll come looking.”

“Really? Miss one call and they send out the coastguards?” Moult pulled his red cap off. His hair disappeared with it; those white tufts that had sprigged from underneath. He was bald, or nearly bald, with only a fringe stubbling his ears. “Miss tomorrow’s, and maybe they’ll get worried. Though by then they’ll have other things on their mind.”

“I saw what you had on the trolley, Moult.”

“Good. Give you something to think about.”

“Moult?”

But Moult had stepped out of River’s line of vision, and all he could hear was feet tracking over rough ground.

“Moult!”

Then not even that.

As carefully as he could, River moved his head to face the sky again. He took a deep breath and bellowed and at the same time arched his back, as though the same rage was trying to burst through his stomach. The trolley rattled, but the clothesline bit deeper, and River’s bellow became a scream that soared into the branches above, then howled around the broken walls surrounding him. And when it was done he was still secured in place, flat on his back on a trolley in the dark. He was nowhere near escape, and there was no one near to hear him.

And time, he’d come to realise, was running out.

Behind its powder, laid thickly as butter on bread, Molly Doran’s face was immobile. Even once Lamb had finished she remained silent for upwards of a minute. Then: “And you think it was him. Katinsky. All those years ago, you think he was the one took Dickie Bow.”

“Yes.”

“And he’s waited all these years to make his second move.”

“No. Whatever the plan was then, it was rendered obsolete by the end of the Cold War. No, he’s up to something else now. But Dickie Bow came in handy.”

“And the cicadas? They’re real too?”

“The best disguise for any network is if the opposition think they’re ghosts. Nobody went looking for Alexander Popov’s cell, because we thought it was a legend. Like Popov himself.”

“Who Katinsky invented.”

“Yes. Which to all intents and purposes,” Lamb said, “means that’s who he is. Nikolai Katinsky is Alexander Popov.”

“Oh Christ, Jackson. You’ve raised the bogeyman, haven’t you?”

Lamb leaned back. In the soft light, he looked younger, possibly because he was reliving ancient history.

Molly let him think. The shadows over the stacks had grown longer, here in this sunless cellar, and experience told her this was her mind playing tricks; adjusting her surroundings to the rhythms of a normal day. Outside, morning was coming. Regent’s Park, never entirely asleep, would soon be shaking off its night-creeps, those spidery sensations that occupy buildings when they’re dark. The day shift would have been alarmed to learn of their existence.

When Lamb stirred, she prodded him with a question. “So what’s he up to, then? Popov?”

“I don’t know. Don’t know what and don’t know why now.”

“Or why he grouped his network in Upshott.”

“That either.”

“Dead lions,” Molly said.

“What about them?”

“It’s a kids’ party game. You have to pretend to be dead. Lie still. Do nothing.”

“What happens when the game’s over?” Lamb asked.

“Oh,” she said. “I expect all hell breaks loose.”

His mobile phone was in his pocket.

As information went, this was on a par with a knowledge of penguins’ mating habits: partly a comfort, partly a puzzle, but of no real practical value. The puzzle part was wondering why Moult hadn’t taken it. But either way, it might as well have been lodged in a branch of the tree above him.

He’d stopped struggling, because this only brought pain. Instead, he was sorting through everything he knew, or thought he knew, about what Moult was up to, and however far and wide his speculation ranged, it always returned to the same point: the sacks of fertiliser he’d found stacked on the trolley in the hangar.

Why had Moult even taken him there, if it housed secrets he wanted to keep? And if Catherine’s information was accurate, and the village was packed with Soviet sleepers, where did Moult fit in anyway? Though as light seeped into the sky, these questions faded into the background, and the image of those sacks of chemical fertiliser took their place.

Fertiliser, which, under the right conditions, acted exactly like a bomb.

And which River had last seen stacked next to an aeroplane like so much luggage.

Lamb went out for a smoke, but on the pavement remembered he’d finished his last cigarette earlier, so walked to the tube station and bought a packet at the 24-store. Back near Regent’s Park’s front door he lit a second from the stub of his first, and gazed up at a sky that was lightening by the minute. Traffic was now a constant hum. Days began like that now; a gradual accrual of detail. When he’d been younger, they’d started like a bell.

Nick Duffy appeared again, as he had earlier. He emerged from a parked car, and joined Lamb on the pavement.

“You smoke too much,” he said.

“Remind me what the right amount is?”

Across the way, trees stirred as if troubled by bad dreams. Duffy rubbed his chin. His knuckles were scraped red.

He said, “Every month she gets a cheque. Once in a while, a little job to do. Providing bed and board to someone passing through under the radar. Or being a post office, or an answering service. All low-key shit, the way she tells it.”

“Until Min Harper.”

“She got the call late. Whoever it is used the code she responds to. Bring your car, underground garage round back of Edgware Road.” Duffy had slipped into telegraphese, to spare himself unnecessary words. “Two of them plus, her words, a drunk bloke they’re carrying.”

“She ever see them before?”

“Says not.”

He paused again. Then told Lamb what Rebecca Mitchell had told him, eventually: that one of the pair had smashed Min Harper’s head against the concrete floor of the garage, while the other had backed Rebecca Mitchell’s car up. The next part had been like a kids’ game: balance the man on the bicycle, smack the car into him. Once they’d made sure his neck was broken, they’d loaded bike and body into their own car, and moved the scene somewhere else.

When he’d finished, Duffy stood staring at the trees, as if he suspected their rustling was a secret conversation, and what they were talking about was him.

Lamb said, “It should have been picked up.”

“They took photos. Laid the body and bike out the way they fell in the garage.”

“Still should’ve been picked up.” Lamb threw his cigarette away, and sparks burst. “You did a half-arsed job.”

“No excuses.”

“Damn right.” He wiped his face with a hand smelling of tobacco. “Was she keen to talk?”

“Not so much.”

Lamb grunted.

After a while, Duffy said, “He must have seen something he wasn’t supposed to see.”

Or someone, thought Lamb. He grunted again, then went back through the big door.

This time, stepping out of the lift, he was met by an overgrown boy in a sweatshirt with Property of Alcatraz stamped on it, and glasses with heavy black frames. “You’re Jackson Lamb?” he asked.

“What gave it away?”

“The coat, mostly.” He shook the pill bottle Lamb had given Duffy earlier. “You wanted to know what this is.”

“And?”

“It’s called Xemoflavin.”

“Right. Wish I’d thought of reading the label.”

“Basic research tool,” the kid said. “Name aside, it’s a whole lot of not much. Aspirin, mostly, in a sugarshell coating. Orange, if it matters.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Lamb. “They sell it on the internet.”

“Bingo.”

“As a cure for?”

“Liver cancer,” said the kid. “Doesn’t work, though.”

“There’s a surprise.”

The kid dropped the bottle into Lamb’s waiting hand, pushed his glasses up his nose, and stepped into the lift Lamb had vacated.

Lips pursed, Lamb wandered back into Molly Doran’s space.

She’d made herself more tea, and sat nursing it in her alcove. Steam rose in thin spirals and disappeared in the upper dark.

Lamb said, “I checked his diary, did I tell you? He has no plans for the future.”

Molly took a sip of tea.

“And he’s broken things off with the woman he was seeing.”

Molly placed her cup on the table.

“And he’s taking some quack cancer remedy.”

Molly said, “Oh dear.”

“Yeah,” said Lamb. He dropped the pill bottle into the wastepaper bin. “Whatever he’s up to, at least we know why. He’s dying. And this is his last hurrah.”

Morning. Light. Surprisingly strong, breaking through the curtains, but then it had been sunny lately; unseasonably warm. Summer in April, full of unreliable promise. If you turned your back on it too long, the temperature would drop.

Louisa didn’t so much wake as realise she’d been awake for some time. Eyes open, brain humming. Nothing especially coherent; just little mental Post-its of the day’s tasks, beginning with get up, shower, drink coffee. Then bigger things: leave the flat, meet Marcus, collect Pashkin. Everything else—like last night—was just a black mass boiling in the background, to be ignored as long as possible, like clouds on an unreliably sunny day.

She rose, showered, dressed, drank coffee. Then went out to meet Marcus.

Catherine was back in Slough House so early it felt like she’d never left, but even so, she travelled there through a city whose fuse had been lit. The underground was full of people talking to each other. Some held placards—STOP THE CITY was a favourite. Another read BANKERS: NO. At Barbican station, someone lit a cigarette. Anarchy was in the air. There’d be glass broken today.

But early as she was, Roderick Ho had beaten her. This wasn’t unusual—Ho often seemed to live here: she suspected he preferred his online activities to emanate from a Service address—but what was different was, he’d been working. As she passed his open door, he looked up. “Found some stuff,” he said.

“That list I gave you?”

“The Upshott people.” He brandished a printout. “Three of them, anyway. I’ve tracked them back as far as they go. And there’s paperwork, sure, they’ve paperwork coming out their ears, but the early stuff is all shoe and no footprint.”

“Which would be one of those internet expressions, yes?”

Ho flashed a sudden smile. This was even weirder than people chatting on the tube. “It is now.”

“And it means …?”

“Well, take Andrew Barnett. His CV’s got him attending St Leonard’s Grammar School in Chester in the early sixties. It’s a comp now, with a good IT department, and one of its projects is putting the school records online.”

“And there’s no match-up,” Caroline finished.

Ho shook his head. “Must have seemed a fair bet at the time. These guys have papered over their early lives all you want. But it was pre-web, and they’d no way of knowing the paper would start to peel.”

She glanced at the printout. As well as Barnett, he’d run down Butterfield and Salmon and found similar gaps in their histories. And there’d be more, there’d be flaws in the others’ lives too. It was all true, then. A Soviet sleeper cell had taken root in a tiny English village. Perhaps because it no longer had a purpose. Or perhaps for some other reason they had yet to fathom.

“This is good, Roddy.”

“Yeah.”

And maybe she’d been hanging round Lamb too much, because she added: “Makes a change from just surfing the net.”

“Yeah, well.” He looked away, colour rising. “All that archive crap, I could pull an all-nighter, get it finished in a sitting. This is different.”

She waited until his gaze met hers again. “Good point,” she said. “Thanks.” She glanced at her watch. It was nine. Louisa and Marcus would be on their way to pick up Arkady Pashkin, which reminded her: “Did you do the background on Pashkin?”

And now his expression became the more familiar put-upon scowl. Spending a life among computers had a way of prolonging adolescence. There was probably a study on it. It was probably online. “Been kind of busy?”

“Yes. But do it now.”

Shame to leave him on a sour note, but Roddy Ho had a way of sticking to his own script.

They met near the hotel, a little after nine. The tubes had been full, the streets crowded; there was a huge police presence, not to mention camera crews, news trucks, rubberneckers. Crowds were gathering in Hyde Park, from where the smells of a hundred variations on breakfast drifted. Instructions booming from a loudhailer, This is a CO11-notified event, which means that the police will be marshalling the route, were drowned by music and chatter. The atmosphere was one of burgeoning excitement, as if the world’s biggest party was waiting for its DJ.

“Looks like someone’s out for trouble,” was Marcus’s greeting. He gestured at a group of twentysomethings heading for the park, a banner reading Fuck the Banks lofted above their heads.

“They’re pissed off citizens,” Louisa said. “That’s all. You ready?”

“Of course.” Today he wore a grey suit, a salmon-pink tie, neat shades: he looked good, she noticed, the same way she might notice any other irrelevant detail. “You?”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure?”

“Just said so, didn’t I?”

They turned the corner.

He said, “Look, Louisa, what I said last night—”

His mobile rang.

You couldn’t call it sleep. Call it overload: pain, stress; all of it tumbling over and over like an argument trapped in a washing machine; over and over until its rhythm rocked River out of consciousness and dropped him down a well of his own making. In that circular darkness the same half-chewed facts nipped at him like vermin: the fertiliser loaded on the plane, which Kelly would be soaring away in this morning; the sketch she’d drawn of the cityscape, with that lightning bolt smiting that tall building. An aeroplane was already a bomb, but that wasn’t the first thing you thought of when you looked at one. It was only when you loaded it with bags of nitrogen-rich fertiliser that you underlined its essential explosiveness.

And over and over in his tumbling mind, the image repeated itself; of Kelly Tropper—why?—steering her pride and joy into London’s tallest building; searing a new Ground Zero into the eyeballs of the world.

Over and over, until at last River lost his grip on the here and now, and—having long since bellowed himself dry—slipped out of his mind.

While Marcus was on the phone Louisa watched the rally assembling. It was like seeing a hive mind being born; all these different particles coming together, out of which one consciousness would arise. Marcus was probably right. There’d be trouble later. But that was a sideshow, another part of the ignorable background. She wondered if last night would turn out to be her only chance of getting Pashkin on his own. If he’d jet away as soon as the talks were done, leaving her forever ignorant of the reason Min had died.

Marcus said, “Sorry about that.”

“Finished? We’re on a job, not an outing.”

“It won’t ring again,” he said. “And you’re not throwing Pashkin out of any high windows, right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Right?”

“Lamb put you up to this?”

“I don’t know Lamb as well as you. But it doesn’t strike me his team’s welfare is his top priority.”

“Oh, you’re looking out for my welfare, are you?”

“Those gorillas Pashkin has? They’re not for show. Make a move on their boss and they’ll take you apart.”

“Like they did Min.”

“Whatever happened to Min, we’ll sort it. But there’s no point in revenge if it costs you everything, and believe me, what you’d planned last night would have cost just that. Anything Pashkin’s goons didn’t do to you, the Service would have done instead.”

A sudden outburst of chanting from across the road splintered into gales of laughter.

“Louisa?”

“Why are you with us?” She hadn’t known she was going to ask until she heard herself speak. “At Slough House?”

“That’s important?”

“You’re appointing yourself my handler, yes, it’s important. Because what I heard is, you lost your nerve. Couldn’t take the pressure. So maybe this concern for my well-being is just you making sure your life stays quiet, and I don’t rock your boat.”

Marcus stared for a moment over the top of his shades. Then he pushed the glasses into place. When he spoke, his tone was milder than his look had promised. “Well, that sounds plausible. Bullshit, but plausible.”

“So you didn’t lose your nerve.”

“Shit, no. I gamble, that’s all.”

Someone called his name.

It sounded like his name. It wasn’t, but it sounded like it—it hauled River out of the darkness, and when he opened his eyes, daylight spackled through the branches overhead. The sky was wide-open, and he had to close his eyes again, scrunch them shut, as protection against its bright blueness.

“Walker? Jonny?”

Hands were on him and suddenly the tightness loosened and he could move properly, which brought fresh pain coursing through his limbs.

“Fuck, man. You’re a mess.”

His saviour was a blurry creature, fuzzy patches held together like a walking Rorschach test.

“Get you out of this shit.”

Arms pulled River upright and his body screamed, but felt good at the same time—aching its way out of cramp.

“Here.”

A bottle was pressed to his lips, and water poured into his mouth. River coughed and bent forward; spat; threw up almost. Then blindly reached for the bottle, grabbed it, and greedily gulped down the rest of its contents.

“Shit, man,” Griff Yates said. “You really are a fucking mess.”

“I gamble, that’s all,” Marcus Longridge said.

“You what?”

“Gamble. Cards. Horses. You name it.”

Louisa stared. “That’s it?”

“Quite a big it, actually. Incompatible with efficient operational mode, apparently. Which is a joke. Ops can be the biggest gamble of all.”

“So why didn’t they just boot you out?”

“Tactical error. See, one of the HR bods decided I was suffering a form of addiction, and sat me down with a counsellor.”

“And?”

“He counselled.”

“And?”

Marcus said, “Well, I wouldn’t say it took, exactly. Not a hundred percent. That was a bookie just now, for instance.” He paused for a barrage of car-horns; an impromptu symphony likely to become the day’s soundtrack, as traffic found itself relegated to second-class status on the city’s streets. “But anyway, it turned out that once they’d given me a shrink, they couldn’t fire me. In case of legal hassle. So instead …”

So instead, he’d joined the slow horses.

Louisa glanced at the hotel, through whose big glass doors they’d be walking any moment. “Are you Taverner’s line into Slough House?”

“Nope. Why would she want one?”

“Catherine says she does.”

“Can’t see why,” Marcus said. “We’re basically the Park’s outside lav. If she wants to know anything, can’t she just ask Lamb?”

“Maybe she’d rather not.”

“Fair enough. But I’m nobody’s snitch, Louisa.”

“Okay.”

“That mean you believe me?”

“It means okay. And the gambling’s not a problem?”

“We had a fortnight in Rome last year, me and Cassie and the kids. Paid for by my, ah, addiction.” He pushed his shades up again. “So fuck ’em.”

It was the first time he’d mentioned his family in her hearing. She wondered if that was intended to win her confidence.

He looked at his watch.

“Okay,” Louisa said again, which this time meant he had a point: time was getting on. She led the way into the hotel lobby.

Since they were partnered, it was probably as well he was in full possession of his nerve, she thought.

But today was a babysit. It wasn’t like his ops experience would be needed.

Catherine called River, got Number Unavailable; then Lamb, with the same result. Then studied paperwork. “All shoe and no footprint.” The more weight you carried, the deeper marks you made. But the early lives of these Upshott folk wouldn’t have left tracks in icing sugar.

Stephen Butterfield had owned a publishing company, and a quick dip online showed him numbered among the chattering class’s great and good: always ready to weigh in on the issues of the day, on Radio 4, in The Observer. He’d served on a Parliamentary Commission on illiteracy; was a trustee of a charity supplying schoolbooks to developing countries. But go back, and his early life dissolved into mist. The same went for the others Roddy had backgrounded: light- to middleweight persons of substance; embedded in an establishment that invited them to its high tables, to sup with captains of industry and cabinet ministers. Control was about influence …

With a start, she realised Ho was in her doorway. She had no idea how long he’d been standing there.

He said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Kidding you? What do you mean?”

He looked puzzled. “That you’re having a joke.”

Catherine had the ability to make it clear she was taking a deep breath without actually taking one. She did this now. “What am I kidding you about, Roddy?”

He told her.

“It was meant to be a joke.”

Some joke.

“They never target the old houses. Once you know that, it’s kind of cool, actually.”

Once you know that was the key phrase here.

“And I can’t believe Tommy would’ve …”

River ached all over, and couldn’t move as fast as he wanted—they were heading uphill. There was no signal in the dip.

He said, “And this was because of Kelly?”

Christ. He had the voice of a ninety-year-old.

Yates stopped. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“I get it,” River said. “I just don’t care.”

“She’s all I ever—”

“Grow up.” She makes her own choices, he nearly said, but the thought of Kelly’s choices killed the words. He tried his mobile again, his hands taking fat-finger to a new level. No signal yet. An engine drifted into earshot and he looked up, half-expecting to see Kelly zipping through the blue in her flying bomb—but if that’s what she was in, she wouldn’t be buzzing over Upshott.

She’d be in the air by now. He had to raise the alarm.

There’s a plane going to fly into the Needle—our very own 9/11.

On the same day a Russian oligarch with political ambitions would be on the seventy-seventh floor.

Of course, if he was wrong, it would make crashing King’s Cross look like the pinnacle of his career.

And if he was right, and didn’t sound the warning in time, he’d spend the rest of his life grieving for innumerable dead.

“Come on.”

“That’s the wrong way,” Griff told him.

“No it isn’t.”

The hangar. He had to get to the hangar; see if he was right about the fertiliser.

Two steps more, and his phone buzzed in his hand. The signal was back.

A jeep crested a hillock in front of them.

When Pashkin emerged from the lift, he gave no indication that last night had ever happened; or at least not to him, not to her. He wore a different suit today. Gleaming white shirt, open at the neck. A flash of a silver cufflink. A hint of cologne. He carried a briefcase.

“Ms. Guy,” he said. “Mr. Longridge.”

The lobby echoed like a church.

“The car should be outside.”

And so it was. They sat in the same formation as the previous day, in similar slow-moving traffic. But what difference, Louisa wondered, would it make if they were ten minutes late? There was only Webb waiting. For a supposedly high-level summit, it was low key. She texted him anyway, to let him know they weren’t far off.

At a junction on the edge of the City, the car rolled past three police vans: black, with shaded windows. Figures lurked inside; human shapes distorted by uniform and helmet, like American football players, absurdly padded up for a kickabout.

Pashkin said, “Trouble is expected, then.”

Louisa didn’t trust her voice in his presence.

He said, “Your liberal values, they take a back seat when your banks and buildings are threatened.”

Marcus said, “I’m not sure I have liberal values.”

Pashkin looked at him, interested.

“And besides. A few troublemakers get their heads broken, or thrown in a cell overnight. We’re hardly talking Tiananmen.”

“Isn’t there a phrase for that? The thin end of the wedge?”

The police vans were behind them now, but a hefty cop presence remained on the pavements. Most were wearing high-visibility jackets, not battle armour. Officer Friendly was the first face shown. Sergeant Rock stayed indoors until things got hairy.

But these rallies had a habit of turning nasty, thought Louisa. It wasn’t just the banks the marchers were targeting. It was corporate greed in all its manifestations; all the visible symbols of the rich getting richer, while others had their salaries cut, their debt increased, their jobs rationalised, their benefits slashed.

Not her problem, though. Not today. She had her own battles to fight.

Piotr spoke, and Pashkin replied, in a language thick as treacle. Maybe her face asked the question. Either way, Pashkin chose now to address her directly. “He says it is nearly over.”

“Over?”

“We’re nearly there.”

She’d lost track. But here they were indeed, at the foot of the Needle; the car pulling into the root of its enormous shadow, then disappearing underneath it, to the car park below.

Their plate was registered as belonging to a contractor; officially, their party was meeting with the one of the hotel’s kitchen supervisors in a utilities room below the building’s lobby.

Their entry into the Needle itself would go unrecorded.

James Webb had entered in the same way earlier. Up on the seventy-seventh now, he was considering placement. The tricky thing was, it wasn’t immediately clear which side of an oval table was the head. He tried the chair facing the window. All he could see was a lone plane scarring the blue. Some days you could sit here and be at the heart of a cloud. Right now, he was higher than parts of the sky.

Though hadn’t yet flown as high as he intended to.

“So, Mr. Pashkin. How can we make things easier for you?”

That was the line he’d be taking. That Pashkin had nothing Webb wanted; all that mattered was that Pashkin’s path be made smooth. Later, debts would be called in; suggestions made as to how Pashkin might repay the kindness of foreigners. Even if no tangible favours were bestowed, simply meeting Webb rendered Pashkin compromised. But that was the lure of power. Ambition tended to the reckless, a seam Webb planned to mine.

“I’m here to help. Officially, I don’t speak for HMG.” Modest cough. “But any requests you make will find a sympathetic hearing where it will do most good.”

Cosmetic aid was what Pashkin would want. To be seen in the company of movers and shakers, and reckoned a force in the world. A photo op with the PM, drinks at Number 10, a little attention from the press. Once you were taken seriously, you were taken seriously. If Pashkin’s star rose in the west, it would cast light in the east.

His phone buzzed. Marcus Longridge. They were in the garage. Webb listened, said, “Oh for Christ’s sake, he’s an honoured guest, not a security risk. Use your common sense.”

After hanging up he rose, walked round the table, and tried the other side, so he was facing into the room, with the big view behind him.

Yes, he decided. That was it. Leave the windows for Pashkin to gaze out of. Show him the sky was the limit, and wait for him to bite.

He went to the lobby to wait for the lift.

Behind him, in the far distance, the sun glinted off the wing of a tiny aeroplane, making it seem, for a moment, far larger than it was.

“This Arkady Pashkin character?” said Ho.

Catherine didn’t want to ask. “What about him?”

“You read that feature? Supposed to be from the Telegraph?”

“Supposed to be,” she repeated flatly.

Ho said, “You look at it closely?”

“I read it, Roddy. We all did.” She shuffled papers, moved a folder, found it. Not the actual newspaper, but a printout from the web. She waved it at him. “Telegraph. July seventh, last year. What’s your problem?”

“It’s not my problem.” Ho plucked it from her hand. It ran to three pages, complete with photograph. “Here.” He stabbed the address box at the top of the page. “See that?”

“Roddy. What are you on about?”

“It looks like the Telegraph, sounds like the Telegraph, and you want to scrumple it up and eat it, it probably tastes like the Telegraph. But it’s not.” He held it in front of her. “You took it from the man’s own website. Did you even check the newspaper’s archive?”

“It’s all over the web,” she said numbly.

“Course it is. Because some dude’s posted it all over the web.

But you know where it’s not? In the newspaper’s own archive.”

“Roddy—”

“I’m telling you, that thing’s fake. And you take it away, you know how much evidence there is for Arkady Pashkin even existing, let alone being some bigshot Russian oligarch?”

He made a zero sign with finger and thumb.

“Oh,” Catherine said.

Ho said, “There’s references, true. He’s got Facebook presence, and a Wiki page, and he’s on lots of sites where you drop your marker in and everyone assumes you’re someone. But chase the mentions down, and they’re all referring to each other. The web’s stuffed full of straw men.” He coloured slightly: must have been excitement. “Pashkin’s one of them.”

“But how …?” But she already knew how. The research on Pashkin had been done by Spider Webb: Regent’s Park’s Background section had been out of the picture, because of that damned audit. Odds on it had been Pashkin who’d approached Webb in the first place …

She said, “This Needle summit. Whatever Pashkin’s up to, that’s what it’s about. I’ll pull the plug. Roddy—get over there.”

“Me?”

“Take Shirley.” He stared as if she’d slipped into another language. “Just do it, okay?” She reached for her phone, and even as she did so it rang. To Ho’s departing back she said, “And Roddy? Don’t ever say dude again,” and answered her call.

“Catherine?” said River. “Call the Park. Possible Code September.”

Miles away, somewhere between the two ends of this phonecall, Kelly Tropper guided the blue-and-white Cessna Skyhawk through a clear blue sky. Ahead of her lay swathes of nothingness—that was how it felt; that she was cleaving an absence, which healed itself the moment she’d passed. And if a painful truth sometimes threatened to intrude, that the scars in her wake were as enduring as they were invisible, she generally managed to tamp this knowledge down, and smother it under the conviction that nothing so central to the core of her being could be evil.

She glanced at her companion, who’d agreed to accompany her mostly because he fancied her, and wondered if he knew she’d slept with Upshott’s newest resident the previous afternoon. It was possible he did. A village was porous when it came to private life. Either way, telling him would add to the frisson she already felt. Tomorrow, people would read about her in their newspapers. Read about her, picture her, and know she’d done something they were incapable of. Some, indeed, would remember watching her pass overhead.

Another frisson. Her companion turned to her, curious.

The ground was a memory, and Kelly Tropper was where she belonged: up in the brighter element, with a comrade in arms.

Just the two of them, and their inflammatory cargo.

As mid-morning bloomed, and only a few stray clouds, like the mildest twinges of conscience, ruffled central London’s skies, it became apparent that today would fulfil the forecasters’ promise, and be the warmest day of the year so far. A fact that few of the evening’s news reports would fail to mention.

The mob was heading east, mob being what others declared it. But it was moving, was mobilised, so that’s what it was, a mob, if for the most part a highly organised one; marshalled by policemen, but arranged according to its own lights, and eager to indicate to gathering camera crews that it represented a spontaneous outburst of public anger rather than a cynical manipulation of public concern. A vociferous and placard-wielding contingent headed it up, marching in time to a troupe of drummers; their stencilled placards read STOP THE CITY and SMASH THE BANKS and HALT THE CUTS, or showed cartoons of top-hatted fat cats lighting cigars with fifty-pound notes. Bobbing above head-height here and there were rag-and-plaster effigies, like out-of-season guys looking for bonfires; they wore bowler hats and pinstripes and expressions of unsatiated greed. Stewards with loudhailers chirped at random intervals, and flitting about on the flanks were diehards in donkey-jackets, peddling SOCIALIST WORKER. But for every dreadlocked, safety-pinned crusty in view there were half a dozen fresh-faced youths in summer casuals. It was a rainbow coalition of the pissed off, and their chanting grew in volume as the march progressed.

The middle group was more placid, their placards handcrafted, and replete with knowing cultural references—DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING, AND BANK BAIL-OUTS? NO THANKS! Dancing in and out among the throng were children who’d been facepainted in Hyde Park, and now were cats or witches, dogs or wizards, their pink and green faces alive with astonishment. They ran about in giggling bunches, begging the mounted policemen for rides, while their parents enjoyed the nostalgic frisson of public dissent, the occasional self-mocking call and response of Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!—Out! Out! Out! underlining the degree to which this was a rally down memory lane. There was even communal, if self-conscious, singing; Bob Marley songs mostly—“One World” and “Exodus” and even a ragged “Redemption Song.” When a helicopter hovered overhead, this section burst into cheers, though no one knew why.

And finally, dragging up the rear, came the seemingly less-committed, viewing the occasion not so much as an outlet for airing social outrage as an opportunity to stroll through a London cleared of traffic. They waved for the cameras, posed for tourists, chatted with police officers assigned to shepherding duties, and generally blew kisses to a watching world, but among this contingent—as among the others—marched some with masks in their pockets and larceny in their hearts, for banks are evil, and bankers self-serving bastards, and not a single soul-sucking money-magnet among them would mend their ways for the sake of a well-behaved procession. No: reformation required broken glass, and today would see plenty of it.

Though even the anarchists didn’t yet know how much.

The rally processed along Oxford Street, and up towards High Holborn.

“Mr. Pashkin.”

“Mr. Webb.”

“Jim, please. Welcome to the Needle.” Fatuous, on both counts; nobody called Spider Jim and Pashkin had been here before. But the moment had passed, Pashkin putting his case on the floor to take Webb’s right hand in both of his: not the bear-hug he’d been expecting, but a solid citizen’s grasp all the same. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? A pastry?” The smell of both wafted from the kitchen.

“Nothing. Thank you.” Then, as if in retrospective validation of Webb’s comment, Pashkin looked round as if he’d never been here before. “Magnificent,” he said. “Truly.”

Webb glanced towards the rest of the party: Louisa Guy, Marcus Longridge, the two Russians. He gestured towards the kitchen. “If you want coffee or anything.”

Nobody did.

Downstairs, in the underground garage, Marcus and Louisa had frisked Kyril and Piotr for weapons, and allowed themselves to be patted down in return. Marcus had then examined Arkady Pashkin, after which he’d gestured at his case. “Do you mind?”

“I’m afraid I do,” Pashkin had said smoothly. “There are documents in there—well, I don’t need to spell it out.”

Marcus had glanced at Louisa.

“Call Webb,” she’d said.

Who’d told him, “Oh for Christ’s sake, he’s an honoured guest, not a security risk. Use your common sense.”

So now Pashkin was laying his unchecked case on the table. He snapped at his men in their shared language. Piotr and Kyril peeled away from the group, and Marcus instinctively grabbed the nearest by the arm: this was Kyril, who spun back, fist raised, and just like that the pair were a heartbeat off knocking seven bells out of each other until a shout from Pashkin froze them: “Please!”

Kyril dropped his fist. Marcus released Kyril’s arm.

Piotr laughed. “You, you’re fast.”

“Forgive me,” said Pashkin. “I simply asked them to check the cameras.”

“They’re off,” said Webb. “Aren’t they?”

Louisa looked at Pashkin. “They’re off. As I told you.”

He gave her a formal nod. “Of course. But all the same …”

Marcus raised an eyebrow, but Webb, seeing an opportunity to regain the initiative, said, “As you wish.”

They watched as Piotr and Kyril dealt with the cameras above the door and in the corner, twisting wires free of their casing in a way that didn’t look temporary.

Pashkin said, “You understand my position.”

Webb looked like he was trying to, while wondering whether this destruction of security equipment was going to come bouncing back at him. Pashkin, meanwhile, opened his case and removed what looked like a microphone. When he placed it on the table, it hummed into life.

Marcus Longridge said, “I thought everything had been made clear.” He was cradling one hand in the other, as if a blow had actually been landed. Nodding at the device, he said, “This isn’t being recorded.”

“No,” Pashkin agreed. “And now we can all be certain of that.”

The device pulsed gently; invisibly converting into white noise anything picked up by eavesdropping equipment.

Kyril stood with his big hands clasped in front of him, studying Marcus with what might have been amusement.

Louisa said, “Anything else in that case we should know about?”

“Nothing to cause alarm,” Pashkin said. “But please.” He made a sudden expansive gesture, as if releasing a dove. “Let’s sit. Let’s start.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Do you know,” he added, “maybe I will have that coffee after all.”

River had the phone to his ear when the jeep reached them and a soldier jumped out: a young guy, fit-looking, wide across the shoulders.

“Catherine?”

“Would you put the phone down, sir?”

“Is there a problem?” This was Griff Yates. “We’re out walking, got a bit lost, like.”

“Call the Park. Possible Code September.”

“Sir? The phone?”

The soldier approached.

“Today. This morning.”

“The phone. Now.”

When the soldier laid hands on him, a night’s worth of stress and fear found brief release. River knocked his arms aside, opening the guy up; he kicked his knee, then jabbed him in the throat with his phone-free hand as the soldier slipped off-balance.

“Jesus, man!” Griff shouted, as the other soldier leaped from the jeep, drawing a sidearm.

“River.” Catherine’s voice was very calm. “I need to hear the protocols.”

“Phone down! Hands up! Now!” Screamed, not spoken; either this was the way they were taught, or Soldier Number Two was going off on one.

“Manda—”

The word was cut off by a gunshot.

“So,” Ho said, “You got a car?”

“Are you kidding?”

He hadn’t been. He looked up Aldersgate for a taxi; looked down it too; and when he turned back to Shirley Dander, she was on the other side of the road, moving fast.

Oh, shit.

He waited another second, hoping this was a joke, but when she disappeared round the corner, he accepted the dismal truth: they were heading for the Needle on foot.

Cursing Shirley Dander, cursing Catherine Standish, Roderick Ho began to run.

Manda—

Mandarin was the first of River Cartwright’s protocols, the others being dentist and tiger. But when Catherine had called back, her only reward was the Number Unavailable mantra.

Code September. That part he had completed. Possible Code September. Today. This morning.

Catherine was alone in Slough House. Lamb hadn’t turned up yet; Ho and Shirley Dander had just left at a lick.

Code September … It wasn’t an official designation, but was frequently used; its reference point the obvious. Code September didn’t simply signify a terrorist event. It meant someone was planning on flying an aeroplane into a building.

With the thought, new currents fizzed in her veins. Two courses of action were open. She could assume River had lost his mind. Or she could trigger a major response to an alert for which she had no concrete evidence.

She called the Park.

The rally was a long and winding worm now, the gap between its head and the waggly remnants of its tail wriggling through the heart of London. The front had crossed the viaduct at Holborn; some of the stragglers were still on Oxford Street. There seemed no hurry. The warmer it got, the truer this became.

At Centre Point, where building-site barriers blocked Charing Cross Road, the noise of excavation drowned the chanting. As the rally squeezed past the narrowed junction, a small boy pulled his hand from his father’s and pointed at the sky. Squinting upwards, the man caught a flash of something; sunlight reflecting off a window of the distant Needle. He scooped the boy onto his shoulders, making him laugh, and they continued on their way.

When Soldier Two fired, River dropped his phone. The shot went overhead, but it was anyone’s guess where he’d been aiming. Soldier One scrambled upright and threw a punch in River’s direction; sidestepping it, River slipped and fell to his knees. A heavy foot stamped on his phone. Griff Yates shouted in anger or innocence, and River reached for his Service card—

Hands in the air!

Drop it!

Flat on the ground! Now!

River flung himself onto the dirt.

Empty your hands! Empty your hands!

His hands were empty.

Soldier Two, with terrifying casualness, swung the butt of his handgun into Griff Yates’s face, and Yates dropped to his knees, blood spinning all around.

“I’m with British Intelligence,” River shouted. “MI5. There’s a national emergency about to—”

“Shut it!” Soldier One screamed. “Shut it now!

“—break and you’re not helping—”

“Shut it!”

River placed his hands on his head.

Yates, half-sobbing, was still audible. “You cunt! What you bloody do that for, you bloody—”

“Shut it!”

“—cunt?”

Before River could speak, Soldier Two swung at Griff Yates again.

In Regent’s Park, one of any number of chic, sleek and drop-dead efficient women answered a phone, listened, placed the speaker on hold and buzzed the glass-walled office on the hub, where Diana Taverner was two hours into a morning she wasn’t enjoying, because she wasn’t alone. Roger Barrowby, currently overseeing the daily outgoings and incomings of the Service’s operational nexus, was sharing her personal space as if bestowing a favour—lately he’d taken to turning up at the Park as early as Lady Di herself, his thinning sandy hair teased into an attitude that lent it body; his prominent chin pinkly shaved and dabbed with cologne; his middle-aged body parcelled into the subtlest of pin-stripes; all of this intended, apparently, to convey the impression that she and he were in the same boat; were shoring up the ruins. Taverner was starting to worry that it was a courtship ritual. Barrowby wasn’t bothered about the Service’s financial competence. He simply wanted to demonstrate that he was pulling the strings that made everyone jump, and making it obvious that hers were the strings he enjoyed tugging most. Perhaps because she tugged back.

Today, he was studying, rather than occupying, the black leather and chrome visitors’ chair Taverner had inherited from her office’s previous incumbent. “Is this actually a Mies van der Rohe?”

“What do you think?”

“Because they’re awfully expensive. I’d hate to think that in these straitened times, the Service budget was being stretched to coddle posteriors.”

Coddled posteriors was very Barrowby. He had moments so arch, he made Stephen Fry look level.

“Roger, it’s a chain store knock off. The only reason it’s not in a skip is that in these ‘straitened times,’ the Service budget doesn’t ‘stretch’ to replacing it.”

Her phone buzzed.

“Now, would you mind?

He settled himself on the object under discussion.

Suppressing a sigh, she answered the phone. After a moment, she said: “Put her through.”

The pavement pounded beneath Shirley Dander in time with the thudding of her heart—she’d have to slow down soon; run a bit, walk a bit, wasn’t that how you were supposed to do it?

In the jogging books, maybe. Not in the Service manual.

She risked a look. Ho was several hundred yards behind, running like a drunk with a sprain, in no state to observe her. So she stopped, nursed her ribs with her left hand, steadied herself against a wall with her right. She was in a small park: trees, bushes, a playground, grass. A clutch of mothers, their offspring strapped in buggies or loaded onto swings, were drinking coffee from a breakfast stall this side of the alley onto Whitecross Street. Shirley passed through it, and at the far end looked up. There it was, the tip of the Needle; visible even here, in this built-up canyon.

Something was going on over there, and Shirley had no idea what, but at last she was involved.

A gulp of air. Another spurt of speed. No sign of Ho, but that was okay. If you couldn’t get Windows to start, Ho was your man. The rest of the time, he took up space.

Her head buzzing like her haircut, on she ran.

At the entrance to the same park, Roderick Ho gripped the railings and prayed for something. He wasn’t sure what. Just something that would make his lungs forgive him. They felt like he’d been gargling fire.

Behind him, a car rumbled to a halt. “You all right, mate?”

He turned, and here was his miracle. A black cab. A great big beautiful black cab, open for business.

Falling onto the back seat, he managed to gasp, “The Needle.”

“Right you are.”

Away he went.

River blinked.

Soldier Two swung at Griff Yates again, and in a moment so smooth it looked choreographed, Yates seized his arm, twisted his wrist, relieved him of his gun and put him on the ground. The blood masking Yates’s face painted him a demon. For a moment, River thought he was going to shoot, but instead he turned it on Soldier One. “Drop it!” he screamed. “Now.”

The soldier was just a boy—they were both boys. The gun trembled in his hands. River plucked it free.

Then said to Yates, “You too.”

“This bastard smashed my face in!”

“Griff? Give me the gun.”

Griff gave him the gun.

River said, “I’m with MI5.”

This time they listened.

The building had come to life over the past few hours, but on Molly Doran’s floor there was only the gurgling of plumbing, as hot water negotiated clumsy bends in monkey-puzzled piping. The sleek and glossy surfaces of Regent’s Park masked the elderly exoskeleton on which it had been hoisted, and like a spanking new estate erected on a burial ground, it sometimes felt the tremblings of unlaid ghosts.

Or so Molly put it.

“You’re on your own a lot, aren’t you?” said Lamb.

They had worn out the possibilities of new discovery. Everything they knew about Nikolai Katinsky, about Alexander Popov, could fit on a sheet of paper. A set of interconnecting lies, thought Lamb, like one of those visual puzzles; the outline of a vase, or two people talking. The truth lay in the line itself: it was neither. It was pencil marks on a page, designed to fool.

“What now?” Molly asked.

“I need to think,” he said. “I’m going home.”

“Home?”

“I mean Slough House.”

She raised an eyebrow. Cracks had appeared in her make-up. “If it’s quiet you want, I can find you a corner.”

“Not a corner I’m after. It’s a fresh pair of ears,” Lamb said distractedly.

“As you wish.” She smiled, but it was a bitter thing. “Someone special waiting over there?”

Lamb stood. The stool creaked its thanks. He looked down at Molly: her overpainted face, her round body; the absences below her knees. “So,” he said. “You been all right then?”

“What, these past fifteen years?”

“Yeah.” He tapped a foot against her nearest wheel. “Since ending up in that gizmo.”

“This gizmo,” she said, “has outlasted most other relationships I’ve had.”

“It’s got a vibrate setting?”

She laughed. “God, Jackson. Use that line upstairs, they’ll prosecute.” And she put her head to one side. “I don’t blame you, you know.”

“Good,” he said.

“For my legs.”

“I don’t blame me either.”

“But you stayed away.”

“Yeah, well. New set of wheels, I figured you’d want some private time.”

She said, “Go away now, Jackson. And do me one favour?”

He waited.

“Only come back when you need something. Even if it’s another fifteen years.”

“You take care, Molly.”

In the lift, he tucked cigarette in mouth in readiness for the great outdoors. He was already counting the moments.

River said to Griff, “Why’d you come looking for me?”

They sat in the back of the jeep; the soldiers up front. He’d returned both their guns. This was borderline risky—there was a chance the kids would shoot them and bury them somewhere quiet—but once they’d clocked his Service card, they’d slipped into cooperative mode. One was on his radio now. The hangar would soon be crawling with military.

Yates’s face was grim. His handkerchief was a butcher’s mess, but he’d only succeeded in smearing blood across his features. “I said, man, I’m sorry I—”

“Not what I’m asking. Why, specifically, did you come looking for me?”

Yates said, “Tommy Moult …”

“What about him?”

“I saw him up the village. He asked if you’d got back all right. Made me worried you’d been, you know. Hurt.”

Blown up, he meant.

“Shit,” River said. “It was his idea, wasn’t it? Leading me onto the range? And leaving me there?”

“Jonny—”

“Wasn’t it?”

“He might have suggested it.”

The jeep had no doors. It wouldn’t have been a second’s work to tip the bastard out.

“Tommy Moult, man,” Yates said. “He knows everything happens in Upshott. You think he just sells apples from his bike, but he knows everyone. Everything.”

River had worked that out already. He said, “He made sure I was there. And saw what I saw. Made sure I’d be freed in time to do something about it.”

“What you on about?”

“Where was he? This morning?”

“Church end.” Yates rubbed his cheek. “You really a secret agent?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why Kelly—”

“No,” said River. “She did that because she wanted to. Deal with it.”

The jeep cornered, braked sharply, and they were at the flying club, with its toytown airstrip, and empty hangar.

River hit the ground running.

Roger Barrowby had gone white, which gladdened Diana Taverner’s heart. Her morning was new-made. Ingrid Tearney was out of the country; as Chair of Limitations, Barrowby could claim First Desk, but it looked like the only snap decision he’d be making was which direction to throw up in. The arch comments were history. He should have stayed in bed.

She said, “Roger, you’ve got four seconds.”

“The Home Secretary—”

“Has final say, but she’ll base that on our best info. Which you now have. Three seconds.”

“An agent in the field? That’s all it comes down to?”

“Yes, Roger. Like in wartime.”

“Jesus, Diana, if we make the wrong call—”

“Two seconds.”

“—what’s left of our careers will be spent sorting the post.”

“That’s what keeps life interesting on the hub, Roger. One second.”

He threw his hands up. Taverner had never seen this cliché happen before. “I don’t know, Diana—you’ve got half a message on a mobile from a slow horse out in the sticks. He didn’t even cite his protocols.”

“Roger—you do know what Code September means?”

“I know it’s not an official designation,” he said peevishly.

“I’ve run out of numbers. Whether this is real or not, keep it from the Home Sec any longer, and you’re in serious dereliction of duty.”

You’re—she enjoyed that syllable.

“Diana …”

“Roger.”

“What do I do?”

“Only one thing you can do,” she said, and told him what that was.

They’d been talking for ten minutes, but nothing meaningful had been said. Arkady Pashkin was sticking to Big Picture topics: what was going on with the Euro, which way Germany would lean next time one of the partners needed bailing out, how much money Russia’s World Cup bid cost. Spider Webb had the air of a dinner party host waiting for a guest to shut up about their children.

Marcus seemed more serene but was watchful, his attention divided evenly between Kyril and Piotr. Louisa remembered Min—she barely ever stopped remembering Min—and how he’d distrusted this pair on sight. Partly because that was his job, but partly because he was Min, and yearning for action. Her mouth filled, and she swallowed. Pashkin dragged the topic onto fuel prices, the ostensible reason for the meeting, but Webb still didn’t look happy. It wasn’t going the way he’d intended, Louisa thought. All he’s managed is I see and Oh yes. He planned this as a recruitment exercise, but he’s got no idea what he’s doing. And Arkady Pashkin had his own agenda, which seemed to consist of wasting time until …

Until a high-pitched looping wail came from everywhere at once; above, below, from outside the doors. It didn’t pierce so much as throb, and its message was immediate and unmistakable. Leave now.

Marcus turned to the huge windows as if to spot approaching danger. Webb got to his feet so suddenly his chair hit the floor. He said, “What’s that?” which Louisa decided was the stupidest question ever. Which didn’t stop her echoing it: “What’s happening?”

Pashkin, still seated, said, “It sounds like the emergency we discussed yesterday.”

“You knew about this.”

Reaching into his briefcase, Pashkin produced a gun he handed to Piotr. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I did.”

The hangar looked bigger in the Skyhawk’s absence. The doors hung wide, and sunlight fleshed out its corners, drawing attention to everything that wasn’t there. Those bags of fertiliser headed this list. There was a faint spillage where they’d been, as if one of the bags had a rip in it, but that was all.

Behind him, Yates said, “She went up earlier. I saw her go.”

“I know.”

“There’s something wrong, isn’t there? With the plane?”

Except it wasn’t only in that one place—sinking to his knees, River scanned the floor from as low an angle as his battered frame would allow.

Another jeep pulled up outside, and he could hear the clenched barking of an officer. New arseholes were being torn.

Across the concrete, a faint trail of crumbly brown dust snaked away to the side door.

He had the feeling he was on the end of a long piece of string. And the bastard at the other end kept tugging.

Yates said, “If Kelly’s in danger …”

He didn’t finish. But judging by his blood-streaked face, it would involve punching something until it turned to jelly.

“What’s going on?”

And here was the officer, in an officer’s uniform, a detail he seemed to think outweighed his being on civilian turf.

River said to Yates, “You tell him,” and headed for the side door.

“You! Stop right there!”

But River was already outside, on the east wall of the hangar, with a view of the mesh fence bordering the MoD range; of the range itself, which was a bland expanse of overlapping greens; of a brim-full wheelie-bin chained to one of the fenceposts; and of a stack of bags of fertiliser, the topmost of which was split down one side. A gentle trickle had spilled onto the ground. River kicked the stack, but it remained solid and real.

And then he had company.

“You attacked my men,” he was told. “And they say you claim you’re with the secret service. Exactly what’s going on?”

“I need a phone,” River said.

Up in the skies and miles to the east, over London’s outer settlements—massed clusters of red and grey rooftops, connected by winding stripes of tree-bordered tarmac and interspersed with golf courses—Kelly Tropper could feel excitement building. This was no ordinary flight. It would have a different ending.

As if to underline this, the radio was babbling. They should identify themselves immediately. If they were experiencing difficulties, they should state them now; failing which they should return to their filed route now, or face severe consequences.

“What do you think that means? Severe consequences?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Damien Butterfield said, “I thought we’d be closer before they noticed us.”

“It’s okay. Tommy said this would happen.”

“But he’s not here, is he?”

This wasn’t worth replying to.

Like the other flying club members, she and Damien had grown up together; the children of incomers, whose parents had moved from bigger, brasher places to pretty, vacant Upshott. An unfathomable decision, the children had agreed, and yet they too had all remained rooted there. For Kelly, it was the only way she could have access to the aeroplane, owned by Ray Hadley, but for which she and the others paid maintenance and rental fees. Sometimes she had wondered if there weren’t more to it than that; if it weren’t cowardice that had anchored her in her childhood village; a fear of failing in the big world. Though Tommy had told her—

It was funny about Tommy; everyone thought he just sold apples from his bike, but he knew everyone in Upshott, and everything that happened there, as if he received reports from everyone—as if he were the centre of a web. You could always talk to Tommy, and he always knew what was going on in your life. This was true for her; true for her friends; true for her parents too. Her father never failed to chat with Tommy on the mornings he was outside the shop, or doing his rounds of the village, picking up the odd jobs that sustained him, though he disappeared mid-week, and nobody had ever found out where. Perhaps he had another village somewhere, where he lived a similar existence with a different cast, but Kelly had never discussed the idea with anyone, because you never did discuss Tommy Moult—he was everybody’s secret. So yes, it was funny about Tommy, but a kind of funny she’d long ceased to question; he was simply part of life in Upshott, and that was that.

What Tommy had told her was, there were ways of proving your bravery to yourself, and making your mark on the big world. Many ways.

It was hard, now, to remember whose idea this had been; her own, or Tommy Moult’s.

Beside her, Damien Butterfield said, “Are we nearly there yet?” and laughed at his own joke.

The radio squawked again, and Kelly Tropper laughed too, and turned it off.

Somewhere to the north west two more planes took to the air: sleek, dark, dangerous and on the hunt.

The taxi driver had kept up a relentless stream of invective about bloody marchers, who were achieving nothing except mucking hard-working cabbies about, and if anyone really wanted to know what to do about the banks—“Here’s fine,” said Ho.

He threw a note at the driver, and jumped out into the path of Shirley Dander.

“Sh-sh-i-i-i-it,” she managed, in a kind of elongated hiccup. Ho was pleased to observe she looked like crap.

They were right by the forecourt of the Needle, through whose huge glass walls Ho could see a living breathing forest—but before he could comment on this, a barrage of sirens erupted, as if every car alarm in the City had been triggered at once.

“What?”

For a moment, Ho thought the rally had arrived—he could hear it not far off, a rumbling mobile chant like a rootless football match. But the types pouring into view from doorways all around were wearing suits and smart outfits: more marched against than marching. Through the Needle’s revolving doors they came too, appearing unsure as to their next move; pausing, most of them, to look back at the building they’d emerged from, and then staring round as it became clear that whatever was happening was happening everywhere.

Shirley was upright again. “ ’Kay. In we go.”

Ho said, “But everyone’s coming out.”

“Jesus wept—you’re aware you’re MI5, right?”

“I’m mostly research,” he explained, but she was already shoving her way through the emerging crowds.

The gun looked natural in Piotr’s fist, no more surprising than a coffee cup or beer bottle. He pointed it at Marcus. “Hands on the table.”

Marcus laid his hands on the tabletop, palms down.

“All of you.”

Louisa complied.

After a moment, Webb did the same. “Shit,” he said. Then, “Shit,” he said again.

Pashkin snapped his briefcase shut. The alarm was still looping, so he raised his voice. “You’ll be locked in. Those doors, they’re pretty good. You’ll be best off waiting for help.”

Webb said, “I thought we were—”

“Shut up.”

“—doing something here—”

Kyril said, “You were. You were helping us out.”

“Thought you couldn’t speak English,” Louisa said.

Marcus said, “They’re not just going to lock us in.”

“I know.”

Kyril said something that made Piotr laugh.

The alarm wailed on, swelling then diminishing. Other floors would be being evacuated; the lifts would have frozen, and the doors into the stairwells automatically unlocked, allowing access either way. Crowds would assemble at designated points outside, and names be checked off against lists held by security, or matched against the keycards currently in use. But no one on the seventy-seventh floor would appear on either of those lists. Their presence was off grid.

Webb said, “Look, I don’t know what the alarm’s for, but I promise—”

Piotr shot him.

Seventy-seven storeys below, people trooped onto the streets; some wearing that fed-up look that comes with unwelcome interruption; others happily lighting unscheduled cigarettes; and all—once they realised that not only their own but every building in sight was evacuating—changing mood: standing still, looking skyward. All were used to drills and false alarms, but these happened one at a time. Now, everything was happening at once, and the grim possibilities took root and flowered. The City broke into a run. Its directions were various, but its intentions clear: to be somewhere else, immediately. And still people kept appearing, because the buildings were ten, fifteen, twenty storeys high, and each floor was packed with workers. Whether at desks, in meeting rooms, huddled round watercoolers or chatting in corridors, all were hearing the same thing: their building’s alarm, instructing them to leave. Those who paused to look from their windows saw scattering crowds below. This was not conducive to orderly evacuation. Jostling gave way to shoving. Ripples of panic became waves, and the voices of reason drowned in the swell.

This didn’t happen everywhere, but it happened often. As the City warned its worker bees of a possible terrorist event, some of those bees turned on each other, and stung.

Most of the resulting injuries, it was later calculated, happened in those buildings containing bankers. Well, bankers and lawyers. It was too close to call.

Smoking again, Jackson Lamb slouched across a highwalk in the Barbican complex, heading for Slough House. Above him rose Shakespeare or Thomas More, he could never remember which tower was which, and ahead was a familiar bench. He’d fallen asleep on it once, clutching a cardboard coffee cup. When he’d woken, it held forty-two pence in small change.

He sat on the bench now to finish his cigarette. Above and behind him loured the 1970s, wrought in glass and concrete; below him the middle ages, in the shape of St Giles Cripplegate, and to the east, the up-to-the-minute sound of sirens, which had been building for some while, but only now crashed through his absorbed state. A pair of fire engines blared along London Wall, followed by a police car. Lamb paused, fingers halfway to his lips. Another fire engine. Dropping the cigarette, he reached for his phone instead.

Taverner, he thought. What have you done?

Webb was thrown to the floor as a thin pink spray fritzed the air, then laid a pattern across the carpet. Marcus and Louisa dropped at the same moment, and a second shot carved a chunk from the tabletop, coughing up splinters. But there was no other shelter. They had a second, maybe less, before Piotr crouched and fired directly into their heads—panic blooming, Louisa looked to Marcus, who was ripping something from the underside of the table, something which fitted his hand as naturally as a coffee cup or beer bottle. He fired and someone screamed and a body hit the floor. Raised voices swore in Russian. Marcus scrambled up and fired again. The bullet hit closing doors.

On the far side of the table, Kyril lay clutching his left leg, which was all messed up below the knee.

Louisa pulled out her phone. Marcus ran for the doors, gun in hand. When he pulled them they gave just enough to reveal the U-lock threaded through the outer handles—another gift from Pashkin’s damned briefcase. He tugged again then leaped back as a bullet slammed into the doors from the other side.

In the lobby, the alarm swirled. Beneath its noise, Marcus could make out the sound of the two men entering the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

As the rally neared the City—its head winding round St Paul’s; its tail back beyond the viaduct—a new awareness rippled through it, a morphic resonance fuelled by Twitter, allowing its entire length to hear the rumours at once: that the City was collapsing, its buildings emptying. That the palaces of finance were crumbling at the mob’s approach. With this news came a change of mood, spilling over into aggressive triumphalism; the kind that wants to see its enemy spread on the pavement with its head split open. Fresh chanting broke out, louder than ever. The pace picked up. Though already, in counterpoint to the hints of victory, another tremor was wavering west: that the rug had been pulled, and danger lay ahead.

At first sight, this took the form of official resistance.

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, this rally has now been cancelled. You’re to turn and calmly make your way back towards Holborn where you’ll be able to disperse.”

The black armoured units that until now had been discreet shadows had disgorged bulked-up shapes in shields and helmets, and barriers were blocking Cheapside. Somewhere behind them was a man with a loudhailer.

“The streets ahead are closed. I repeat, the route is closed, and this rally is now cancelled.”

The sound of sirens wafting from a distance underlined his words.

For two minutes that stretched into four the head of the mob went no further, but swelled in size, filling the junction on the Cathedral’s eastern side. And still, up and down its length, messages were relayed, the way a worm communicates to itself the news of its own dicing. At intervals behind them, more tactical units were breaking the march up, rerouting groups into narrow streets and squares, and sealing their exits. Singing died and curdled into anger; tempers frayed and broke. Cats and dogs, witches and wizards, clung to their parents’ legs, while once-mild protestors sprayed spittle in the faces of unmoving policemen. Overhead, the whump-whump of helicopter blades throbbed in and out of hearing, sometimes drowning the shrill alarms from the City, sometimes becoming its rhythm section, while from the City itself a less organised procession fled the rumours of destruction, arriving in a rabble behind the police rows blocking Cheapside.

“The streets ahead are closed, and this rally is cancelled.”

The first bottle appeared in a low arc from the middle of the crowd. It spun neck over base, spraying liquid which might have been water, might have been piss, onto the heads of the policemen below, before shattering on the road. It was followed by others.

And up and down the route of the march, tucked away inside what had been a mob, and was now a collection of smaller mobs, those who’d come with masks in their pockets recognised their cue and slipped them on. The time for breaking glass had arrived, and for torching cars, and throwing rocks.

The first flames burst into being like early blossoms of spring: easily caught on the wind, and scattered for miles.

“It’s a credible threat, Lamb.”

“Credible? Some Sunday aeroplane’s going to crash into a City building—you sure about that?”

“Sure enough not to take the risk.”

“You’re gunna shoot it down?”

“There are Harriers in the air. They’ll do what’s necessary.”

“Over Central London?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Are you mad?”

“Jackson, look. This—this is what we’ve worried about for years. This or something like it.”

“What, a cut-price 9/11? You think a clapped-out Soviet spook would do this? Katinsky’s a Cold War survivor, not a New World Order barbarian, for Christ’s sake!”

“And you think it’s a coincidence that Arkady Pashkin’s meeting—”

“This is not about Pashkin, Taverner. If Moscow knew you and Webb had cooked up some scheme to recruit him, they wouldn’t do this. They’d wait till he got home and run him through a compactor.”

“Lamb—”

“We’ve been led here, every step. Killing Dickie Bow, laying a trail to Upshott, they’ve lit a damn flare path. Murdering Min Harper’s the only thing they’ve tried to keep wrapped. Whatever’s really going on, it’s not what we think. What’s happening at the Needle?”

Taverner said, “We’ve alerted security. There are fire teams on the way.”

Lamb said, “What happens when that building goes into lockdown?”

In the flying club’s office, things had changed: the fridge remained, and the chairs; the old desk was still cluttered with paperwork, but the stack of cardboard boxes was a tumbled pyramid, and its plastic sheet lay crumpled on the floor. River dropped to one knee and foraged through the boxes. They’d contained paper, stacks of A4-sized sheets, several copies of which were stuck to the bottom of one. Both showed the same design.

Griff Yates burst in, panting. His face was still streaked with blood, but in his hand he had a phone. “I borrowed this.”

River grabbed it, his thumb pressing numbers before his brain could process them. “Catherine? It’s not a bomb.”

For a moment, she didn’t reply.

“Catherine? I said—”

“So what is it, then?”

“Did you sound an alert?”

“River … You called a Code September.”

“That’s not even a—”

“I know what it’s not. But I know what it means. So I told the Park. What’s going on, River?”

“What did the Park do?”

“Put the City on terror alert. Imminent danger.”

“Oh Jesus!”

“High buildings are being evacuated, especially the Needle, because of the Russian thing. River, talk to me.”

“There’s no bomb. The plane’s not … It’s not a terror attack.” He looked at the papers in his hand. They were reproductions of the same image: a stylised city landscape, its tallest skyscraper struck by jagged lightning. Along the foot of each page ran the words STOP THE CITY. “They’re leafleting the demo.”

“They’re bloody what?”

“Leaflets, Catherine. They’re dropping leaflets on the rally. But somebody, somebody wanted us to think there was a bomb. The terror alert, that’s the whole point. The evacuation.”

“The Needle,” she said.

Louisa had no signal. Nor did Marcus. The microphone-shaped device on the table was gone; taken by Pashkin and Piotr, but still nearby, and blocking their phones.

She checked Webb. The bullet had hit him in the chest, but he was alive, for now. Shallow breaths bubbled out of him, and whistled back in. She did what she could, which wasn’t much, then turned to Marcus, who was standing over Kyril.

“You put that there yesterday?”

The gun, she meant. But how else could it have got there? Taped to the table’s underside.

“Fixing the odds,” Marcus said. “I don’t wander into situations blind. Not with hostiles.”

Kyril was conscious and moaning; a dull counterpoint to the alarm’s shrill wail. Louisa put her hand on his wounded leg. “This hurt?”

He swore in Russian.

“Yeah yeah. You don’t speak English. This hurt?” She pressed harder.

“Jesus bitch you fuck!”

“That’ll be a yes. What’s going on?”

Marcus left her for the kitchen.

“They’ve left you behind. You think they’re coming back?”

“Bastards,” he said. He might have been talking about his absent comrades.

“Where’ve they gone?”

“Downstairs …”

From the kitchen, she heard breaking glass. Marcus reappeared with the fireaxe in his hand.

Louisa turned back to Kyril. “Downstairs,” she said, and understanding dawned. “Rumble? Their new iPhone? That’s what this is about? You’re stealing a fucking prototype?”

Marcus swung the axe, and the doors shuddered.

She put her hand on the fallen man’s wound once more. “Before he gets through that,” she said, “you’re going to tell me why Min died.”

Outside was warm spring air and a drift of pollen. The irritated officer had heard enough to know that whatever was happening was bigger than a trespass on MoD land, and was currently on his phone, establishing the level of national alert. Griff Yates was washing his face somewhere. And nearby, at forlorn attention by the jeep, stood one of the two soldiers they’d had their altercation with.

River showed his Service card again. “I need to be somewhere.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And you’ll need a friend once this morning’s done,” River added, thinking So will I. “Get me back to the village in the next two minutes, and you’ll have one.”

“You’re James Bond, are you?”

“We use the same gym.”

“Huh …”

A bird of prey wheeled overhead, loudly mewing.

“What the hell. Get in. Quick.”

River used the two-minute journey to speak to Catherine again. “Have they called the Harriers off?”

“I don’t know, River.” There was an unaccustomed tremor to her voice. “I’ve called the Park, but—are you anywhere near a TV?”

“Not exactly.”

“All hell’s breaking loose in the City. Half the world’s trying to get out, and the rally’s trying to get in—Jesus, River … That was us.”

Me, he thought.

He said, “And they told me I’d never top King’s Cross,” but a tight knot of dread had formed in his stomach.

“And you’re sure now, are you? The plane’s not heading for the Needle?”

“We’ve been played, Catherine. Me, Lamb, everyone. You don’t need to send a plane into a building to cause chaos. You just have to make us think it’s going to happen.”

“There’s more to it. That Russian, Pashkin? He’s not real.”

“So who?”

“Don’t know yet. Louisa’s phone’s dead. So’s Marcus’s. But Ho’s on his way there now. With Shirley.”

“It’s all part of the same thing,” said River. “Must be. Don’t let them shoot that plane down. Catherine. The pilot’s been played, just like us.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

River slapped the jeep’s roof in frustration. “Here,” he said. “Here.”

Church end, Yates had said. That’s where Tommy Moult had been. The church end of the high street.

The jeep crunched to a halt by St John of the Cross’s lychgate, and River left it at a run.

As Marcus swung the axe a crunch shook the floor, and Louisa shrieked—“Jesus, was that you?”

He paused, the axe inch-deep in the door. “Plastic,” he said, and pulled the axehead free.

Plastic. She looked at Kyril. “That’s the plan? The building goes into terror-mode, and you bust into Rumble with plastic explosives?”

“Millions,” he said, through gritted teeth.

“It’d have to be. No one goes to this effort for petty cash.”

Another dull crunch from below. They were blowing open doors down there, and it wouldn’t take them long. Then all they’d have to do was head for ground level and slip away with the crowds. No one would check off their exit, because no one had signed them in. There’d be a car waiting, and one less to share the proceeds with.

Thwack! went the axe, and splinters flew.

She kicked Kyril. “Min saw him, didn’t he?”

The Russian groaned. “My leg. I need doctor.”

“Min saw Pashkin, or whoever he really is. When he was supposed to be in Moscow being a fucking oil baron. Except he wasn’t, he was in a dosshouse on the Edgware Road, because the Ambassador’s a little pricey when you don’t need to be there, isn’t it? When you’re not really a fucking oil baron, just a fucking thief. And that’s why Min died.”

“Didn’t mean it to happen. We were having a drink, that’s all—gah! My leg—”

Thwack!

“Tell you what, Kyril. Once I’ve put your scumbag friends in a box, I’ll come back and see what I can do about your leg, yeah?” She leaned in close. “We’ve got a fucking axe, after all.”

Nothing about her expression suggested she was joking.

The next thwack was followed by a thunk.

“Through,” said Marcus.

Louisa patted Kyril’s shattered leg again, and made for the door.

She’d never flown in radio silence before, and it added an odd dimension to the morning, as if all this were taking place inside a dream, in which the bluntly familiar—the panel of instruments before her; the view of empty skies; Damien by her side—rubbed surfaces with the strange. London was gathering shape; coagulating into an uninterrupted mass of rooftop and road, its districts strung together by buses and cars.

Stacked behind them were masses of the leaflet she’d designed; the one that would tell the marchers what they were doing—stopping the city; smashing the banks. The details remained vague, but it was enough to be a part of the crusade. There was greed and avarice and corruption in the world, and probably always would be, but that was no excuse for not attempting to make a change …

“We should put the radio on,” Damien said. “It’s dangerous. It’s illegal.”

She said, “Don’t worry. We’re too low to be on anyone’s flight path.”

“I didn’t think we’d be so …”

“What do you think they’ll do, for Christ’s sake? Shoot us down? You think they’ll shoot us down?”

“Well no, but—”

“A few more minutes, we’ll be over the centre. They’ll see what we’re planning on doing, and yeah, they’ll escort us home and we’ll be arrested and fined and all that. We knew that before setting off. Grow some balls.”

But she could hear, beneath the hum of the Skyhawk’s engine, a bass note, a growl, a pair of growls, and in that instant a different future occurred to Kelly Tropper; one in which, instead of proving herself a radical daredevil, scattering her self-designed leaflets on the marching crowds below, she became an object lesson in the lengths to which a once-bitten nation might go to protect itself. But that seemed so far-fetched, so at odds with the scenario she’d planned, that she was able to dismiss it, even as Damien began to babble louder, and with audible fear, that this wasn’t the good idea it had sounded back in the Downside Man; that maybe they weren’t invulnerable after all.

That last part, though, surely couldn’t be true, thought Kelly. And on they flew towards the heart of London, its buildings growing closer together now; its spaces further apart; even as the noises she could hear beneath her own plane’s hum grew louder, and took up more room, and swallowed everything else.

Tommy Moult, or the man who used to be Tommy Moult, was in St Johnno’s graveyard, on the wooden bench dedicated to the recent memory of Joe Morden, who loved this church. This faced the church’s western wall; the side on which its bell tower stood, and through whose rose window the setting sun would warm the church’s interior with soft pink light. At the moment, it remained in shadow. Moult had lost his red cap, along with the sprigs of hair that had tufted from under it, and which had been as familiar a sight in the village as the hawthorn trees flanking the lych-gate. Bald, older-looking, he did not rise at River’s approach. He seemed lost in contemplation of the medieval church, around which earlier versions of Upshott had risen and fallen. In one hand he nursed an iPhone. The other, dangling over the arm of the bench, hid from view.

River said, “Busy morning.”

“Not round here.”

“You’re Nikolai Katinsky, aren’t you? Lamb told me about you.”

“Some of the time.”

“I guess that makes you Alexander Popov, too,” River said. “Or the man who invented him.”

Now Katinsky seemed interested. “You worked that out yourself?”

“Seems kind of obvious at this point,” River said. He sat on the bench, leaving a foot of space between them. “I mean, all these hoops you’ve had us jumping through. That’s not the work of a language school scam artist. Or even a cipher clerk.”

“Don’t knock cipher clerks,” Katinsky told him. “Like any other branch of the Civil Service, all the work’s done low on the food chain. Everyone else just has meetings.”

In the shadow of the tower he looked grey, and though his head was mostly smooth, bristle stubbled his chin and cheeks. This was grey too, as were his eyes, which looked like the covers placed on wells to prevent accidents: things falling in. Things climbing out.

“On 7/7,” River said, “London kept a stiff upper lip. It’s how we knew we’d won, no matter how many bodies we buried. But this morning, the whole damn City looks like day one of the Harvey Nicks’ sale.”

Katinsky waved his phone. “Yes. I’ve been watching.”

“That’s what all this was about?”

“Only incidentally. Your Mr. Pashkin—not his real name either, I’m afraid—he’s taking advantage of the chaos to relieve the Needle’s tenants of some of their assets.” Moult glanced at his phone again. “He hasn’t rung, though. It’s possible not everything’s gone according to plan.”

“His plan. Not yours.”

“We have different aims.”

“But you’re working together.”

“He has access to various things I needed. Andrei Chernitsky, for a start. Some years ago, Andrei and I abducted your friend Dickie Bow. I was building the Popov legend, and wanted one of your people to get a glimpse of him, though nobody so reliable their words would be trusted. When you’re making a scarecrow, you don’t do it in plain sight, you understand.”

“I get the picture.”

“Well, since then, like a regrettable number of former colleagues, Andrei has turned to private enterprise to earn his crust. In short, he was in the employ of one it’ll be simpler to keep calling Arkady Pashkin.”

“And you needed him to lay a trail Dickie Bow would follow.”

“Precisely. So Pashkin and I came to a mutually beneficial arrangement, which even now he’s reaping the benefit of. Or trying to. Like I say, he hasn’t rung.”

River shook his head. He ached all over, but underneath that a sense of wonderment pulsed. For the first time in his life, he was facing the enemy. Not his enemy, exactly, but his grandfather’s, and Jackson Lamb’s; he was putting a face to the history that previous spooks had battled with, and it was happening here, in a country churchyard, witnessed by the uninvolved dead.

He said, “And that’s it? You bring the City to a grinding halt for a morning, and that’s it? Christ, what a waste of effort. A few hand-wringing editorials and it’ll be forgotten.”

Katinsky laughed. “What’s your name? Your real name?”

River shook his head.

“No, I suppose not. You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”

“They’re bad for you.”

“Is that a sense of humour poking through? There’s hope for us yet.”

“That’s what this is to you? One big joke?”

“If you like,” Katinsky said. “So tell me. Do you want to hear the punchline?”

He must be on the twentieth floor, Roderick Ho thought, chest heaving, breath thick with the taste of blood. At least the twentieth. He’d crashed through the lobby in Shirley Dander’s wake; had waved his ID at the lone security guard, who was sticking to his post though the City crumbled; had followed his pointing finger to stairs that led forever up. And now he must be at least on the twentieth floor, and Shirley was out of sight. All he could hear was the crashing boom of the alarm, louder in the stairwell as it bounced off walls and skittered off the staircase, while he panted like a dog, on all fours, his forehead resting on the stair above. Drool unspooled from his lip. Everything was a blur. What was he doing this for?

Louisa and Marcus in trouble—didn’t care.

Pashkin not who he said he was—didn’t care.

Shirley Dander thinking him a wuss—didn’t care.

He should be back in his office, deep-sea diving on the web.

You’re aware you’re MI5, right?

Yeah: he didn’t care.

It occurred to him that the program he’d written to fake his work-pattern would have kicked in by now, and anyone checking up on him remotely would find him hard at work on the archive: sorting and saving, sorting and saving. If he’d had breath to spare, he’d have laughed. It was a shame he had no one to share the joke with because it was, after all, pretty funny.

What was her name: Shona? Shana? The chick from the gym he’d planned to meet, once he’d trashed her relationship. Except, he thought, he’d never do that, would he? Trash her relationship, yes; or at any rate, throw a virtual spanner into its works—he could handle that, no problem. But actually going up and talking to her? Never going to happen. And even if it did, how would he explain to her about the program he’d written to fake his work pattern?

Catherine Standish, on the other hand. She knew about it. And you know, Roddy had the feeling she actually found it pretty amusing.

And that’s what he was doing this for, come to think of it. He was here because she’d told him to be here. To help Louisa Guy and Marcus whatshisname.

Sighing, he hauled himself to his feet, and staggered up towards what must be the twenty-first floor

Though was in fact the twelfth.

Marcus went through the fire doors low, arms outstretched, gun pointing ahead, then left, then right, then up. Nothing. He said, “Clear,” and Louisa followed him out of the stairwell. They were on the sixty-eighth, and the logo on the glass doors read Rumble in a streamlined font. There were lights on inside, but no one visible. The reception desk, in front of a huge repro of A Bigger Splash, was uncrewed. Marcus tried the door. It wouldn’t open.

“Maybe they locked it behind them.”

“They’re using plastic,” Marcus pointed out. He took a step back, braced himself, and kicked, to no effect. The noise this made was swallowed by the alarm. No one appeared inside the Rumble suite.

“Ideas?”

“Maybe they went through a wall.”

“Or maybe …”

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

Louisa said, “Maybe he was lying. What floor are the diamond people on?”

One breath, two breath. One breath, two.

There was a City challenge, Shirley had seen a poster for it—you ran to the top flight of a ’scraper, then down, then ran to another one and did it again. It must be for charity, because it couldn’t be for fun. She wondered how many folk died halfway through.

Her legs were soup. A label on a fire-door read 32. She’d seen nobody since the twentieth, when a dishevelled couple had burst into the well, asking, “Are we too late?” as if they’d missed the emergency. Shirley had pointed the way down, and carried on climbing.

And now she must be getting used to the constant wail of the damned alarm, fishtailing round the stairwell, because she was hearing other sounds too—some kind of explosion some minutes back: nothing you wanted to hear this high up.

She’d not been able to raise Louisa or Marcus, but had talked to Catherine, who’d told her the alarms were false; no terrorist bombs were expected … It had sounded like a bomb to her though, if a small one.

One breath after another, at least one of which was a sigh. Arkady Pashkin wasn’t who he said he was, and had two thugs in tow. Shirley had no weapon, but she’d put people on the floor with her bare hands before now. Come to think of it, that’s why she was in Slough House in the first place.

It didn’t matter that her legs were soup, or that she was less than halfway up. The City was coming apart, and that seemed to be Pashkin’s plan. So she wasn’t going to lie here panting while Guy and Longridge stopped it by themselves. Not if a ticket back to Regent’s Park was involved.

Grinding her teeth, she took the next flight.

From way above her, more noise. It might have been a gunshot.

The sixty-fifth. de Koenig. The diamond merchant’s. Its outer room was kitted out on a desert theme, with silks hanging off the walls and a clutch of palms forming a centrepiece, though these had been bent and torn by the blast that had shaken the floor twelve storeys up. Smoke still hugged the ceiling, and any furniture not fixed into place was scattered against the right-hand side of the room. Midway along the facing wall a metal door hung off its hinges.

“They’re gone,” she said.

“Never assume.” Marcus went through the metal door the same way he’d entered the suite: every direction covered. Louisa followed.

It had been a secure room, lined with narrow deposit boxes, a good dozen of which had been blown open. From the floor glinted a shard of broken glass, which wasn’t broken glass, Louisa realised—Jesus, it was a diamond, the size of a fingernail.

And Piotr too, a chunk of his head removed by a bullet, and smeared on the nearest wall.

“Pashkin’s travelling light,” Marcus said.

“He must be on the stairs.”

“So let’s go.”

They ran for the stairwell again, but at the firedoor Louisa paused. “He could be on any floor.”

“He wants out. Once the scare’s over, it won’t be so easy.”

He had to bend into her ear to speak. The scare wasn’t over yet, though the alarm seemed to be winding down, as if running on a tired battery.

Louisa checked her phone. “Still no good,” she said. “And Webb’s bleeding out for all we know. I’ve got to find an outside line.”

He said, “Okay. I’ll keep going.”

“Shoot straight,” Louisa said.

Marcus continued down the neverending stairs, and Louisa went back into de Koenig’s.

“You were a Kremlin brain.”

“Yes. Until I became, instead, a Moscow cipher clerk. With just enough of the right sort of information to be granted entry into your Jerusalem.”

“You invented Popov, who we knew was a legend. So we thought the cicadas were a legend too, but they were real. Why’d you bring them to Upshott?”

“They had to be somewhere,” Katinsky said. “Once Moscow fell apart. Besides, they were sleepers, and where better to sleep?”

“They were agents of influence.”

“They were bright talented people, with access to people with access, and they reached right into the heart of the establishment. It would have made for an interesting game, if it hadn’t come to a premature end.”

“You mean if you hadn’t lost, you might have won,” River said. “Do they even know? About each other, I mean?”

Katinsky laughed. He laughed so hard he started to wheeze and had to put a hand up as if instructing River to stop right there, put everything on hold. It was the hand that held his iPhone. The other remained out of River’s view.

At length he said, “On the whole, I think not. Though they may have suspicions.”

River said, “All these years, and you decided to come back to life. There’s got to be a reason for that. You’re dying, aren’t you?”

“Liver cancer.”

“That’s one of the painful ones. Too bad.”

“Thank you. You liked the girl, didn’t you? Young Kelly Tropper. I mean, I know you screwed her, but it went beyond business, didn’t it? Spies screw girls when they’re called upon to do so, and young men screw girls when the opportunity presents. Which were you when you bedded her, Walker?”

“Did it bother you, sending her out to die?”

“Sending her? She’d say it was her own idea.”

“I’m sure she thought so. Are you really waiting for a call?”

“I might be. Or I might be waiting to make one.”

“It’s over, you know.”

“It was over a long time ago,” Katinsky said. “But that’s the thing about dying. It encourages you to tidy up.”

“To settle scores,” River said.

“I prefer to think of it as redressing a balance. You don’t think this is about ideology, do you?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s about a heist. Why Upshott?”

“You already asked.”

“You didn’t answer. Nothing you’ve done’s been accidental. You came here for a reason.”

The sun was trying to clear the belltower, and given time and patience, would succeed. It always had done before. Behind them, gravestones were soaking in warmth, but the bench remained in shadow. Katinsky gave the impression that this was where he belonged. For all his solidity, River half-expected him to evaporate once the sun’s rays touched him.

“Why do you think?”

No, River thought; it wasn’t his grandfather the man reminded him of. It was Jackson Lamb.

He said, “It’s England.”

“Oh come on. So is Birmingham. So is Crewe.”

“Picture postcard England. Medieval church, village pub, village green. You wanted to park your network at the heart of a vision of rural England.”

Like a grudging tutor, Katinsky nodded. “Maybe. What else?”

River said, “When you chose it, it had a military base. Most of the town existed just to serve it. There was nothing else here.”

“A small place with no proper existence … Why would the man who invented Alexander Popov choose such a place, I wonder?”

A passing wind crawled through the neatly-trimmed grass, shaking the spray of daffodils in a tin vase by a headstone. For no reason he could think of, River remembered the O.B., his grandfather, reaching with a twig to rescue a beetle from a burning log in his grate. And then the memory fizzed and vanished, the way the beetle itself had popped when the fire swallowed it. But the connection had been made. Here in the quiet churchyard, River recalled a distant conflagration.

“ZT/53235,” he said.

Katinsky said nothing. But his eyes answered yes.

“That’s where you’re from,” River said, and even as he spoke, Katinsky’s words, I prefer to think of it as redressing a balance, swam into his mind, and despite the encroaching sunshine it grew colder on their bench.

Louisa found a phone; called emergency services, but couldn’t get through—what the hell was going on? Through the window, traces of black smoke spread inkily across the sky. Way down below, London was burning.

She called Slough House and filled Catherine in.

“He was still alive when you left him?”

“He was breathing. I’m not a doctor.”

She was having second thoughts about having left Webb on his own. Or not even on his own: the other Russian was there too. Also in pain, though that was of less consequence to her.

“Where’s Pashkin now?”

“On his way down, I imagine. With Marcus in hot pursuit.”

“I hope he’s careful.”

“I hope he kills the bastard.”

“I hope the bastard doesn’t kill him first. Or the others.”

Roderick Ho and Shirley Dander were on the scene too.

“It’s chaos out there, Louisa. God knows when you’ll see reinforcements.”

“We need medics first.”

“I’ll get a chopper sent.”

“Oh, shit,” said Louisa.

The roof.

“ZT/53235,” said River. “That’s where you’re from.”

“No legend worth the name springs from virgin soil. I gave Popov my own past, yes.”

“So you … you must have been a child.”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it? But apparently I carry the memory within.” He grimaced. “It wasn’t a healthy town to be born in. Even before you burned it to the ground.”

“Your own government destroyed it,” River said. “Because they thought there was a spy there. But there wasn’t. There never was. The town was destroyed for no reason.”

“There are always reasons,” the Russian said. “The spy wasn’t real, but the evidence was. That’s how the mirror world works, Walker. Your service wasn’t able to plant a spy there because security was too tight. So it did the next best thing, and planted evidence to suggest a spy. So the government did what governments do, and destroyed the town. What your Service would now call a result. Back then, they called it a victory.”

“It was all a long time ago,” said River, as if that meant anything now, or ever had.

“I came from a place that epitomised the Soviet world in English eyes,” said Katinsky. “And it was destroyed by fire. So here I am, in a place that epitomises England to the rest of the world. Tell me. What happens next?”

River moved at exactly the moment Katinsky revealed what his right hand held, and River pulled back but not fast enough. Katinsky caught his elbow with the Taser, and the force of the voltage threw him onto the path.

Katinsky stood. “I told you Pashkin had various things I needed. Where do you think I got this from?” Bending, he zapped River again. Sparks burst and the world swam red and black. “A source of plastic explosives was another. Being a career criminal opens all sorts of doors. Knows no borders, you might say.”

“There was no bomb,” River managed to squeak.

“No. The plane was a decoy, for Pashkin’s benefit. The plastic’s still here. All around us.”

He meant the gravestones, River thought dizzily.

Then: No.

He meant the whole village.

Katinsky said, “Each of the cicadas has enough to create one large bomb. And each has been told where to plant it. It’s the instruction they’ve been waiting for for years. Now they know why they were dispatched to Upshott. It was to be in place to destroy an enemy.”

“You’re mad. They won’t have done it.”

“I gave them everything,” he said. “Their identities, their start in life. And for more than twenty years they’ve been waiting, Walker. Waiting for the call that will activate them. That’s what cicadas do. They wake up and sing.”

“Even if they’ve planted these bombs. What good will it do?”

“I told you. It will redress a balance. And demonstrate that history never forgives.”

“You’re absolutely fucking insane.”

“You’re not so confident, then? That they won’t do it?”

River had been hoarding strength. All that energy that fizzed through his body, all of it that hadn’t been dissipated by the longest night of his life, was being summoned, and in a second he’d leap to his feet. Strange that he still felt fluid and helpless. “They’re not who you think. Not any more. They’ve been here too long.”

“We’ll see.” He held up the iPhone. “I’ll do a ring-round.”

“You’re going to ask them?”

Katinsky laughed and took a step back. “No, boy,” he said. “I’ll talk to the bombs. What, you think they’re attached to a fuse? They detonate remotely. Like this.”

He pressed numbers.

Webb was breathing, and his eyelids fluttered as Louisa bent over him. “Don’t die,” she said. He didn’t react. “Prick,” she added. He didn’t react to that, either.

Kyril wasn’t there. He’d handily left a trail of blood, though.

Still panting, she followed it. He’d made for the stairwell, but had gone up, not down. It must have been slow progress, judging by the blood. And came to an end two landings up, where he lay slumped against the wall, his face twisted into an agonized scribble.

“Making a run for it?”

“Bitch.”

It was a scratchy whisper. It didn’t seem likely he’d be shouting any warnings.

“He’s on the roof, isn’t he? You’ve got a chopper coming.”

But Kyril rolled his eyes and said no more.

He carried no weapon. If Pashkin was up there, she’d be a sitting duck. So she went through the last door carefully, or tried to. But the wind caught it and slammed it open.

Three hundred metres above London’s streets, there was a fair lick of breeze.

The mast was on the opposite side of the roof: a graceful thin blade reaching up into the blue. Between here and there was a shanty-like collection of air-con vents, aerial casings, lightning rods and what looked like concrete stylings of garden sheds, housing lift machinery or other staircases. Oddly seedy for a highpomp building, but most slick operations had their grimy underside: this is what was going through her mind when a bullet chipped the door behind her.

She rolled behind a ship’s funnel-shaped vent and scrambled to a sitting position.

“Louisa?”

Pashkin. He had to shout to be heard up here, higher than the birds.

“Nowhere to go, Pashkin,” she shouted back. “The cavalry are coming.”

He was behind one of the shed-structures lining the building’s west side, it sounded like. The east side dropped a level to a flatter expanse, where a helicopter could land, but hadn’t yet. To left and right she saw no city, only sky, faintly smudged by oily smoke. A ludicrously thin railing marked the edge of the roof. If that was all there was to keep her from pitching into the void, she hoped the wind didn’t pick up.

“Yes,” he shouted back. “I’ve booked a ride. Have you got a gun, Louisa?”

“Of course I bloody have.”

“Perhaps I’ll come and take it from you.”

It seemed she was out of range of his signal blocker out here, because her phone rang.

“Kind of busy.”

“I sent for an air-ambulance. They say there’s already one on the way. Louisa—”

“Way ahead of you.”

Why arrange for your own pilot when you could hijack an air ambulance?

He was behind one of those shed structures, unless he wasn’t. Might even be right behind this vent, crawling round to her. Part of her hoped so.

Louisa wasn’t stupid. She’d brought the fireaxe with her.

“Louisa? Go back inside. Close the door. I’ll be gone in a few minutes. No harm, no foul, isn’t that what they say?”

“Not in this country they don’t.”

She hoped her voice sounded steady. A thin wisp of cloud above was scudding so fast it was making her dizzy. If she closed her eyes, she might roll to that railing, and beyond.

“Because otherwise, I’ll have to kill you.”

“Like you had to kill Min?”

“Well, you I’ll shoot. But the outcome will be the same, yes.”

Oh Christ, she thought. Crouching with her back to an air-con vent atop the City’s tallest building while a well-dressed gangster cracked wise. I’m in Die Hard.

“Louisa?”

He sounded nearer, but it was hard to tell. Last night, she’d have taken him with pepper spray and plasti-cuffs, and all this would have been over. But bloody Marcus had interfered so here she was instead, way above London, and Pashkin had a gun.

And what did I think I was doing, racing up here unarmed?

Though the answer was no further away than her memories of Min, whom this bastard had murdered for an armful of diamonds.

She thought she could hear a helicopter.

Choices, choices. She could do as he’d said, and head back in to safety. Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t shoot her in the back before hijacking the helicopter. On the streets below, all was chaos. He’d force it down in Hyde Park, disappear among the crowds. Think! She thought. Or rather, didn’t think: she stood instead, and launched herself across the gap between where she’d been crouching and the next place of shelter, a sturdy chunk of concrete inside which lift machinery silently waited.

She landed flat, expecting gunfire which didn’t come. The fireaxe skittered from her grasp, and came to rest a few feet away.

“Louisa?”

“Still here.”

“That was your last chance.”

“Toss the gun over here. That’ll knock a few years off your sentence.”

There was definitely a helicopter, and it was definitely getting nearer.

“You aren’t armed, Louisa. This won’t end well.”

The fireaxe had given that away. Nobody with a gun would have come hefting a heavy blade.

Which lay outside the range of her shelter. She stretched for it, and this time he did shoot: missing her hand but hitting the axe handle, making it spin wildly. She yelped.

“Louisa? Are you hurt?”

She didn’t reply.

The steady whump-whump of the helicopter blades grew louder. If the pilot saw an armed man, he wouldn’t land; he’d go whumping away … She had to show him Pashkin had a gun. If Min were here, he’d tell her what a stupid plan that was, but Min wasn’t here because he was dead, and if she didn’t do something now, the man who’d killed him would be whisked off. The axe might come in useful. She reached for it again, and a heavy boot crunched onto her hand.

She looked up into Pashkin’s eyes. He glared back, genuinely irritated that she was putting him to this trouble. In one hand he held a cloth bag, swollen to the size of a football. Lot of diamonds.

In the other he held the gun, aimed straight at her head.

“I’m sorry, Louisa,” he said. “Really I am.”

Then Marcus shot him, and Pashkin, gun and bag of diamonds dropped, though only the diamonds went scattering this way and that, like small bright marbles in a children’s game; some of them tumbling to the edge of the roof, and over.

Louisa could only imagine what that must have been like—tiny glass raindrops falling onto distant streets, while the whump-whump of the helicopter blades beat the air into slender nothings.

In the moment after Katinsky dialled the number to detonate the bombs, silence hung around the churchyard, around the whole village, like a plastic dome around a cake. Sunshine stopped, the wind paused, a blackbird choked off mid-note, and even River’s aches and pains were suspended as he waited for the series of cracks that would split the sky like lightning, and bring Upshott tumbling down. The weeks he’d spent here kaleidoscoped through his mind, and he thought of the pub and the village shop, of the graceful curve of eighteenth-century townhouses lining the green, of the one-time manor house, all turned into a series of craters to satisfy some dying spook’s vision of vengeance. It would be a rustic Ground Zero, memorial to a long-forgotten town that died in a long-forgotten fire; ZT/53235, an ancient casualty in the mirror-game played by spies.

It would be futile and useless, but would scorch the earth behind it.

And then the sun shone on, and the breeze stirred again, and the blackbird caught its breath and resumed its song.

Nikolai Katinsky was just an old man, staring at the phone in his hand as if its technology were beyond him.

River said, “See?” and his voice was close to normal.

Katinsky’s lips moved, but River couldn’t make out what he said.

He struggled to get up, and this time made it. Then he leant against the bench, his limbs still wobbly. “They’ve been here years,” he said. “They’re not yours any more. They don’t care what brought them here. This is their life. It’s where they live.”

There were cars arriving. He recognised the sound of jeeps’ engines, and felt a brief surge of hysteria as he wondered how this would play out; a village community revealed as a sleeper cell, one sleeping so hard, it had no desire to wake.

“Still,” he said. “Nice try,” and released his grip on the bench. There you go, River thought, you can stand; and thinking so, he set off along the path to the lychgate, through which military types would soon be swarming.

“Walker?”

He looked back. Katinsky was draped in sunlight, which this past minute had crested the bell tower.

“Not all of the bombs were theirs. One was mine.”

He hit another number on his phone.

The blast, which took out the west wall of St Johnno’s, killed Katinsky instantly, standing as he was right in its path. In later nightmares, River saw a chunk of ancient stonework cleave the old spook in two, but in reality he was bowled over by the shock wave, and by the time rocks were raining to earth was curled inside the lychgate itself, head between his knees. So he heard and felt, rather than saw, the slower death that followed Katinsky’s, as the belltower swayed and hovered and lost its grip on the vertical. When it dropped, it fell away from River’s shelter, or he’d have joined the old man in whatever afterlife was waiting. As it was, the tower’s descent onto the graveyard and the footpath beyond seemed to last for whole minutes, for acres of time, as befitted its brute removal from a skyline it had kissed for hundreds of years; and for hours afterwards it seemed to continue happening, as the shock reverberated through the suddenly emptier landscape, making new shapes out of silence and dust.

Marcus made sure Pashkin was dead, then helped Louisa to her feet.

He said, “I met Shirley on the stairs. He hadn’t passed her. So I figured maybe he’d come to the roof.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“Like I told you. They made me a slow horse ’cause I gamble. Not ’cause I’m a fuck up.”

The helicopter landed, and he went to meet it.

Throughout the day of the aborted rally, parts of London burned. Cars were torched, a bus was set alight, and a Jankel—one of the police armoured units—was baptised by a petrol bomb on Newgate Street. A photo of St Paul’s obscured by oily smoke duly graced front pages next morning. But before nightfall, the rally that had become a riot became a rout: mindful of criticisms of too softly-softly an approach to recent disturbances, the police went in hard, and broke heads, and made arrests. Free-ranging mobs were dispersed, ringleaders bundled into vans, and those who’d spent the day kettled up in backstreets were allowed to make their way home. It had been, the day’s Gold Commander announced at the inevitable press conference, an effective demonstration of firm, no-nonsense policing. Which did not alter the fact that the City had been well and truly stopped.

Rumour had fanned the flames. It turned out that through the course of that morning, a whisper on Twitter—that a bombladen aeroplane had been shot down by the RAF—had cajoled its way into fact; the less incendiary truth, that a Cessna Skyhawk had been intercepted and escorted to an RAF base, where it was found to be bearing a load of amateurish leaflets, did not become general knowledge until the following day. At about the same time, responsibility for the headlong evacuation of the Square Mile was being laid firmly at the door of the Security Services, or more precisely, at the shoes of Five’s Chair of Limitations, who had effectively been First Desk at the time, and upon whose advice the Home Secretary had sounded the City’s alarm. Roger Barrowby impressed many with his ready acceptance of blame; he had the air, it was remarked, of a man who knew when he’d been castled. His resignation was discreetly handled, and he was reported to have been touched by his leaving gift, an imitation Mies van der Rohe chair.

In the immediate aftermath, many shops and businesses in Central London remained shut, and roads witnessed less traffic than usual. There was a communal holding of breath, and the general intention of having an early night. Even on some of the busiest streets, barely a mouse stirred.

But if a mouse wanted to, it could enter Slough House with ease. No mouse worth its whiskers would have problems threading under that long-shut door, nor up the uncarpeted staircase, whereupon—pausing on an office threshold—it might weigh up the attractions of a wobbling tower of pizza boxes and an array of still-sticky cans, and set them against the deterrent of a snoozing Roderick Ho, who, worn out by unaccustomed exertion, lies with his cheek on his desk, his glasses askew. It’s even possible that the dribble puddling from his open mouth might present a third lunch option for our mouse, but a sudden blart, halfway between a snore and a raspberry, decides the matter. And a tail is turned …

… and into the adjoining office our wee friend scurries, where its incursion is regarded not, as would once have been the case, as a possible test, but simply as enemy action, for an air of paranoia now taints this room, and it seeps off the walls and soaks into the carpet. Both Shirley Dander and Marcus Longridge know that one of them is thought to be Diana Taverner’s stooge, and as each knows it isn’t them, both believe it to be the other. The only words they have exchanged today have been “Shut the door,” and their post-Needle debriefings remain undiscussed. Had they pooled what each had gleaned, they might have reached certain conclusions regarding the likely official verdict: that inasmuch as James Webb had laid a trap for the gangster masquerading as one Arkady Pashkin, the operation had been worthwhile, but—its outcome having been badly compromised by the involvement of the slow horses—few citations for valour and even fewer recalls to Regent’s Park would be offered. This wouldn’t have lightened the atmosphere much, though, were he minded to do so Jackson Lamb could have improved matters, being aware that, in telling him one of the newbies was reporting to her, Diana Taverner was merely trying to mess with his head. Taverner is something of an expert in this field, as Roger Barrowby might attest, but any time she thinks she’s put one over on Jackson Lamb, thinks Jackson Lamb, she ought to count her pocket change. If she had an ear in Slough House, she’d have known of Webb’s having seconded two slow horses before Lamb told her. And besides, Lady Di already has a black mark against her name in Lamb’s book, since it was on her instructions that Nick Duffy did such a half-arsed job of investigating Min Harper’s death. For this there will be retribution. Meanwhile, in this office, a sense of betrayal hangs heavy, something no good-natured mouse can support for long, so off it goes again, up the stairs, seeking out new horizons.

Which it finds in the shape of River Cartwright. River is also quiet, having just ended a call to St Mary’s Hospital, which is where Spider Webb was taken, a little longer after being shot than Accident and Emergency Rooms recommend. The news of his former friend’s current status might be what he contemplates now, and our mouse cannot tell whether it brings pain or pleasure; though River might equally be occupied by other emotions; by the suspicion, for example, that the reason the name ZT/53235 came tripping so lightly from his grandfather’s memory was that it had long resided there, the O.B. himself having been responsible for convincing the Soviet authorities that the closed town nurtured a traitor. It was in 1951 that ZT/53235 burned, with the loss of thousands of lives, and David Cartwright would then have been much the age his grandson is now, prompting River to wonder whether he has it in him to play the mirror game as if the stakes were spent matches instead of human lives. And to wonder, too, if such thoughts will intrude the next time he visits the old man, or whether he will bury them like any spy’s secrets, and greet his grandfather as fondly as ever.

As this is not a problem our mouse can help with, it retreats, to find in Louisa Guy’s room a different kind of silence, the kind used to smother a soft noise. This finds no echo, as there is nobody to offer one, the spare desk here being just that: spare, untenanted, redundant. Given time, a fresh body will turn up to commandeer it—as Lamb has pointed out, Slough House is staffed by screw-ups, of which there’s never any shortage—and perhaps it’s that future occupation that causes Louisa to gently sob now, or perhaps it’s the current emptiness awaiting her at her flat, which once seemed too small for two, and is now too large for one; a situation unassuaged by her recent acquisition, currently nestled among her newer, less practical, now uncalled-for underwear, of a fingernail-sized diamond; its weight less than that of a doughnut, and its value a mystery to her. Ascertaining this would be another step over a line she never intended to cross in the first place, so for now it remains wrapped and hidden; its only promise that of an escape from one empty place into another, which is all the future seems to offer to Louisa; one empty space after another, like an infinity of mirrors reaching all the way to nowhere.

Small wonder she sobs; even less that our mouse tiptoes discreetly away from a grief it can’t comfort. Further up, on the final floor, it pays a brief visit to Catherine Standish, for whom a mouse holds no horrors, provided it’s real. Catherine has seen her share of phantom mice, small shapes that scurried from sight when she turned to look, but those days are long past, and the only day that matters is the one that lies ahead. Which she will deal with in the same calm manner she has come to deal with most things; a talent honed by daily exposure to the irritating Jackson Lamb, who is currently in his own room, door firmly closed, which presents as much an obstacle to our murine explorer as the inelegantly heaped pile of telephone directories, atop which it pauses at last, whiskers quivering, snout a-tremble. Jackson Lamb has his feet on his desk, and his eyes closed. On his lap is a newspaper, folded at a bizarre little story about a localised earth tremor in the Cotswolds, for heaven’s sake; a seismic shrug which caused a much-loved church to collapse, thankfully with only a single fatality. And so, thinks Lamb, the ghost of one Alexander Popov, as embodied by one Nikolai Katinsky, fades into nothingness in the heart of a village which in no way resembled the town he’d emerged from, except in the manner of the destruction he’d hoped to wreak upon it. As for the cicadas—that collection of long-buried sleepers, who’d slept so deeply their false existences had displaced the real—for them there’d be no awakening, cruel or otherwise, the school of thought from Them Down the Corridor being to let sleeping spooks lie. Lying, after all, is what spooks do best.

Thinking such thoughts Jackson Lamb reaches blindly out for something, probably his cigarettes, and when his questing hands come up empty, resorts to opening his eyes. And there in front of him—snout quivering, whiskers a-tremble—sits a mouse. For a moment Lamb has the uncomfortable sensation that this mouse is staring into a past he has tried to bury, or peering into a future he’d sooner forget. And then he blinks, and the mouse is nowhere, if it was ever there at all.

“What this place needs is a cat,” grumbles Lamb, but there’s no one there to hear him.