Jacob put his hands on his head.

The driver’s side door was opened. Chatter from the soldiers. Russian. It made no sense to Jacob. A few of them swarmed round the back. It wouldn’t take them long to find Jacob’s own AK stashed away with the fuel canisters. He needed to be careful not to make any sudden moves. With his hands still on his head he stepped out of the car. There were two AK-47s pointing right at him, and they were just the ones he could see.

And then he spoke. Not in his own language, but using the small amount of Russian at his disposal, the words that he had been practising in preparation for this moment over the past twenty-four hours.

‘Menya zovut Jacob Redman. Ya rabotayu v Federalnoi Sluzhbe Bezopasnosti. Ya hocu vstretit s nachalnikom etogo faculteta.’

‘My name is Jacob Redman,’ he said. ‘I am working with the FSB. Take me to the head of this facility.’

PART THREE

EIGHTEEN

Vaziani Airbase. Georgia. Sixty miles from the Russian border. If anybody had been looking into the dawn sky, they would have seen the lights of the RAF C-17 Globemaster glowing in the distance as it made its approach. But nobody was watching. Aircraft were hardly a curiosity here, either for the Georgian nationals that manned the base or for the small platoon of British troops who kept themselves to themselves, but were not welcomed with much enthusiasm by their hosts.

So it was that the Globemaster, which had made its way from the UK over commercial airline routes – only to stray off piste towards Vaziani at the very end of its journey – was little more than a blip on the air-traffic control screens until it thundered towards the runway, its emissions causing the air all around to wobble and become hazy. As it turned off the runway and started taxiing towards the hangars, it passed an area of bombed-out land, scars of the attack on the base by Russian fighter jets in the late summer of 2008. The attack had not been so bad as to damage the infrastructure of the base itself, and the Globemaster came to a halt without any problems.

The engines had almost wound down to silence by the time three forklift trucks had trundled up to the aircraft. Unusually, though, they were shadowed by two military vehicles. The Georgian airbase staff were unimpressed with the British troops’ insistence on accompanying them every step of the way; but the troops themselves had their orders, and that was to make sure they were present at all times during the unloading of the Globemaster’s cargo.

It didn’t take long. It was a small cargo for such a large plane. Eight cases, each of them about the same size as a small van; wooden, and with the words HUMANITARIAN AID emblazoned on the side in big black letters. Under the watchful eye of both the troops and the loadies from the Globemaster, the forklift operators carefully transported each box into one of the nearby aircraft hangars. When they had completed their task, they left with their vehicles, without even a gruff nod at any of their guests.

The hangar doors were swung shut. It was a huge, cavernous space lit by industrial strip lighting, and in which the voices of the troops echoed and rebounded. They had made the place their own in the weeks that they had been here. In one corner of the hangar were low tables with full ashtrays; a few mattresses were unfurled on the ground; someone had even cadged an old black and white TV set, but it was largely unused. Russian-language TV didn’t hold much interest for them.

In the centre of the hangar, just metres from where the crates had been unloaded, stood a man. He was the only person in the place who wasn’t in army camouflage gear; instead he wore perfectly ordinary civvies, and not very fashionable ones at that. He was approaching middle age, wore rimless glasses and had a balding head, which he disguised by careful brushing of what remained of his thin hair. The guys called him ‘Doc’. Their standard joke was to ask him for remedies for imaginary ailments that they’d made up on the spot – usually some grotesque affliction of the genitals. The Doc took it all in good humour. He had long since given up telling them that the letters after his name were not a medical qualification but a scientific one. After all, there weren’t so many jokes to be made about the scientific engineering that was his particular area of expertise.

The Doc held a clipboard with an inventory list. Eight cases. He ticked them off. Then he turned to the nearest three soldiers and waved his pencil vaguely at them. ‘Would you mind?’ he asked politely.

One of the soldiers grinned at him. ‘Don’t know what you’d do without us, Doc,’ he said good-naturedly. He strode to one corner of the hangar before returning with a large metal crowbar. The wooden crate made a splintering sound as the guys forced it open, revealing its contents.

‘That what you ordered, Doc?’ None of the soldiers appeared remotely surprised that the contents of the crate, whatever they were, were most decidedly not humanitarian aid. There were several long, wide-calibre metal cylinders; there were conical warheads and various other intricate bits of machinery. The Doc ticked these items off on his list before asking for the crate to be sealed once more, while the others were opened and checked.

‘Hope you know how all this stuff fits together, Doc,’ a voice called from behind him. ‘Looks like a fucking overblown Meccano set to me.’

The Doc didn’t take his eyes from the clipboard. ‘Yes,’ he said vaguely, before turning round and peering at the soldier over his glasses. ‘You might want to put that out,’ he said, indicating the cigarette hanging from the soldier’s lips.

The soldier blinked, then dropped the cigarette on the floor as if it were suddenly red hot. He ground it out with his foot.

The Doc nodded with approval, then turned back to his clipboard with a faint, unnoticed smile. A cigarette, of course, would cause no damage whatsoever to the components that had just been delivered. But the guys were keen enough to take the mickey out of him. He didn’t see why he shouldn’t have a bit of fun of his own.

He continued with his inventory. It took the best part of an hour to check all eight cases, but at the end of that time he was satisfied that everything was present and correct. He cleared his throat and issued his polite instruction.

‘All right,’ he called to the assembled company. ‘Everything’s here. You can load the cases up and move them on. And please, be gentle with them. You might all have the heart and soul of Spanish baggage handlers, but we really don’t want to be throwing these things around too much, now do we?’

You’ll be sent a package. It will contain everything you need. Only open it when you’re alone. Don’t let anybody else see what’s in it. The abrupt instructions of his handler, the dark-featured former soldier who had trained Jamie Spillane and the others in Kazakhstan, had scarcely left his head since he had called a few days ago.

The package had arrived two days later. Jamie Spillane didn’t know who had sent it, but he decided not to think about that too much. The landlady who owned the bedsit where he was staying had been unable to disguise her interest in the box. She brought it up to his room and stood in the doorway for far too long a time after she had placed it in his hands and received a curt word of thanks from Jamie, who had been forced to shut the door in her face. Nosy bitch.

He had looked at the package for a good long time before opening it: half because he was waiting for the landlady to piss off, half because he was nervous. It just sat there on the bed in its tightly wound brown packing tape and neatly typed label. Jamie smoked a cigarette, locked his door from the inside and paced the room before he even attempted to open it.