He stared at her. As he sat there on the edge of the table in this strange flat with a woman he’d never met before, the memory of the previous day’s briefing filled his mind. The rough, grainy photographs of the targets. The picture of his brother. And the Ops Sergeant’s stark warning. Your targets are British citizens. They’ll be speaking English. That shouldn’t distract you from the job in hand.

A silence. Sam stood up and looked again through the blinds.

‘Why are you here, Sam?’ Clare asked suddenly. ‘Who gave you this copy of my article?’

Sam sniffed. ‘I wish I knew.’

‘You said you were in the military. Care to elaborate?’

‘Not really.’

‘But you knew about the training camp. The one in Kazakhstan.’

Sam nodded.

‘And you seem to know more about how MI5 work than the average joe.’

‘You need to stop thinking so hard, Clare.’

Out of the blue, she slammed her hand down on the table. ‘I need to know what’s going on!’ she announced with sudden spirit. ‘Holy Mother, half an hour ago I thought you were going to kill me. I think I deserve an explanation, don’t you?’ She paused and caught her breath. ‘I’m not stupid, you know. You’re in the military and you deal with MI5. In my book that makes you special forces. Right? Right?’

Sam stayed quiet.

‘Damn it!’ she exploded. There was a fire in her now that he hadn’t expected. All of a sudden she was no longer the frightened woman who had wept uncontrollably. She stood, then strode over to him, her arms raised and her fists clenched. ‘Tell me what’s going on!’ Sam blinked, then realised she was actually going to try to hit him in the chest in fury.

He grabbed her slender wrists. Her eyes flashing, Clare struggled, but without success. Sam kept hold of her and for the second time he smelt her perfume. He pulled her towards him and felt her breasts pressing lightly against his torso. She was warm. Almost comforting.

The struggle stopped and they stared at each other. Clare was blushing faintly. Maybe it was the anger; or maybe, Sam thought, it was something else. Her breathing trembled. Sam knew what it meant. He knew how easily some women would give themselves up to a man they thought could protect them.

He knew, even as he spoke, that he should keep his mouth shut. That sharing what he knew could lead to trouble for both of them. But his natural caution had been replaced by other emotions. ‘I’m SAS,’ he said. Calm. In control. ‘An operation has just been ordered. We’re to deploy to the training camp in Kazakhstan and neutralise all the British citizens there. Looks to me like you’ve opened up a can of worms. Five have got a covert network across the country. It’s started to spring a leak so they’re shutting it down. Permanently.’

Clare drew away slightly. ‘Neutralise?’ she asked. ‘You mean… kill?’

‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘Kill.’

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘How many of them are there?’

‘Twenty.’ He felt his face tensing up as the image of Jacob, bearded and rough, passed into his head. ‘Maybe more.’

Clare breathed deeply as she assimilated the information. Sam noticed that she didn’t pull her wrists away from his hands.

‘I still don’t know why you’re here,’ she whispered. ‘I still don’t know what this is all about.’

‘It’s about someone trying to warn me.’

‘What of?’

Sam knew he shouldn’t tell her. He knew he should keep it to himself. But he could feel her warm breath and could sense that she was looking at him through different eyes. And anyway, maybe she was right. Maybe he did owe her some sort of explanation.

‘One of the targets,’ he said quietly, ‘is my brother. And if anyone thinks I’m going to go out there to put a bullet in his head, they can think again.’

She had stopped asking him questions soon after that. She’d stopped crying too. But she hadn’t stopped looking at him, that look which was a mixture of apprehension and something else. It was edging towards morning when Clare slipped into her bedroom, leaving Sam sitting at the table, the lights dimmed almost to nothingness, the document and his gun laid out in front of him. She wanted to be alone, she said. She wanted to think. That was fine by Sam: he knew she wouldn’t want to be by herself for long.

It was a Regiment tradition to laugh at Five, to take the piss out of the suited goons who turned up at HQ with a slew of orders and an unwillingness to get their own hands dirty. Civil serpents, they were called. Fags. Tossers. And a lot more besides. But beneath all that, away from the bravado and everything that went with it, there was at least some sort of respect. The Security Service was secretive; it was difficult to understand; it had sent the Regiment on operations that most people would find morally dubious. But nobody doubted that they were on the same side.

At least that was what Sam had always thought. In the last few hours, though, he had become less sure. He didn’t know whose side he was on, nor even what the sides were. All he knew was that somewhere, in some godforsaken shit hole in central Asia, his brother was a target. He didn’t know why and he didn’t know how; all he knew was that Jacob had been shat on by the Government once before. He was damned if he was going to let it happen again.

A noise. His hand grabbed the gun at lightning speed.

It was only Clare. She stood in the doorway, her pretty features softened by the dim light. She was wearing a nightdress that fell to just above her knees. One of the straps had slipped slightly down her shoulder, but she made no attempt to adjust it. They stared at each other for what seemed like an age.

Sam stood up. Almost absent-mindedly he brought the gun with him. As he stepped towards Clare, he saw her lips part slightly. She was several inches shorter than him; as he grew closer she raised her head.

His gun hand was pressed into the small of her back now. The nightdress was satiny and so thin it might as well not have been there. Her body felt warm, but she was trembling.

‘Stay with me,’ she whispered.

Sam nodded, then pressed his lips against hers.

She kissed him nervously at first, as though she shouldn’t be doing it. But that timid kiss soon turned into something else. Something more passionate. Gently Sam slid the straps of her nightdress from her shoulders. The garment fell to a silent, gossamer heap on the floor, leaving Clare naked. She pulled her lips away and opened her eyes. There was still a look of anxiety on her face. No smiles. That was good. Sam didn’t feel like returning one.

She turned and walked to the bedroom. Sam followed, laying his gun on a small table by the doorway. Clare was standing by the bed. The bright moon shone through her bedroom window illuminating her body. His eyes followed the line of her hips, the curve of her breasts. He placed the gun on a chest of drawers and stepped towards her.

Clare’s breath was heavy. Shaking. She stretched out a nervous hand and slid it between the buttons of Sam’s shirt. He started to undo them and as he felt her hand wander over his torso, he felt at least some of the tension of the past twenty-four hours ease away. He pulled Clare towards him and kissed her again, before gently but firmly pushing her onto the bed. She gazed up at him as he removed his shirt.

‘Don’t go,’ she whispered.

Sam gave her a serious kind of look. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

He lay on the bed, softly ran his hands over her breasts and then kissed her again.

‘Not yet,’ he said.