There was no point in keeping up the pretence any longer. ‘What do you want?’ Ben asked quietly.

‘An opportunity has just arisen. I have a job for you.’

‘What kind of job?’

‘The job you were trained to do.’

‘I’m retired.’

‘Come now, Major,’ Kroll said. ‘I know everything, and I do mean everything, about you, so please save yourself the trouble of lying to me. I can even tell you the name of the client who hired you for the Turkish assignment from which you were returning home when you went to meet Leigh Llewellyn. You escorted her to Langton Hall in Oxfordshire, where you damaged some precious equipment of mine. You’ve been a trouble to me ever since. Now-let me show you how I deal with people who are a trouble to me.’

‘I think I get the picture,’ Ben said.

‘Indulge me, please.’ Kroll reached out to a remote keyboard and tapped with a long, thin finger. Images flashed up on the screens. ‘This was broadcast on the ORF2 television news earlier today,’ Kroll said.

The female reporter was dressed in a heavy coat and fur hat. Snow was streaking down as she spoke. Behind her, the ruins of a grey-stone building were smouldering and smoking. Black timbers littered the burnt-out shell, and little patches of flame still flickered here and there. Emergency vehicles bumped across the rough terrain with lights flashing, and a helicopter was thudding overhead.

The building was so completely devastated that it took Ben a moment to recognize it.

Kroll saw the horror in his face and smiled. His bony hand touched the remote and the volume rose.

‘…disaster. It is believed that the blaze, in which at least twenty-five Dominican nuns perished, may have been caused by a spark from an open fire. The tragedy has already prompted a demand for new health and safety regulations across…’

‘What have you done with Leigh and the child?’

Kroll hit the remote again and the picture cut to black. ‘I was coming to that. I have some bad news for you. I am afraid the beautiful Ms Llewellyn did not survive the incident.’

Behind him, Glass suppressed a snigger.

‘I would have preferred to take her alive,’ Kroll went on. ‘I was looking forward to meeting her in the flesh. But unfortunately for her, it appears that someone taught her how to operate a firearm. I wonder who that might have been?’ He smiled. ‘She took it upon herself to open fire on my men, and they were obliged to take her down.’

Fingers of ice curled around Ben’s spine and held it tight. ‘You’re a liar.’

Kroll reached into his briefcase and laid something on the desk. It clunked on the wood. ‘Is this familiar to you?’

It was a gold locket. Dull, dirty, and spattered with russety spots of dried blood.

Glass’s shoulders quaked and a grin spread across his face. Kroll shoved the locket across the desk. ‘Look more closely.’

Ben picked it up and turned it over in his hands. They were beginning to shake. The letters LL were finely engraved on the back.

‘Open it,’ said Kroll.

Ben pressed the little catch with his thumb and the locket popped open. His heart was pounding, and when he saw what was inside all hope left him and he closed his eyes. The miniature photos faced one another inside the opened locket. On one side was Oliver, on the other Richard and Margaret Llewellyn.

The last time Ben had seen it, it had been hanging around Leigh’s neck.

He slowly snapped the locket shut and let it fall back on the desk.

He swallowed. His mouth was dry. ‘That’s no proof.’

‘Very well. I wanted to spare you this, but you are stubborn.’ Kroll tapped another key and suddenly Leigh was on the screen.

She was lying sprawled in a thicket.

Her eyes were glazed and dead. There was blood on her face and all down her front.

He sat still for a moment. It was impossible. But his eyes were telling him it was true. Screaming it. She was dead. Leigh Llewellyn, gone like smoke.

There was so much he’d wanted to say to her.

He felt faint, drifting in a black void. He swayed in his chair. His eyes clamped shut.

‘Beautiful even in death,’ Kroll said, gazing at the screen. ‘But she won’t remain so for long, after the wild animals have found her. They may have done already.’

Ben couldn’t speak. Then, out of the emptiness inside him, a massive wave of rage came surging up. He snapped open his eyes. The first thing he saw, the only thing he could see, was Kroll sitting there with that impassive look on his face. It was the look of a scientist observing the death throes of a laboratory animal and calmly noting the details.

Ben hurled himself across the desk. The blow he aimed at the old man’s neck would have crushed his windpipe against his spine. They could have done what they wanted to him after that, but he would have had the pleasure of watching Kroll die a panicked and tortured death within about fifteen seconds.

But Glass was quick, and the frame of the 9mm came down hard on Ben’s head before he could reach the old man. Kroll kicked out with his shiny shoes and his executive swivel chair rolled out of range. The door burst open and the guards stormed in. They grabbed Ben and threw him back in his chair. His wrists were cuffed roughly behind his back with the chain through the steel tubing.

Kroll wheeled himself back towards the desk and straightened his tie. ‘Evidently you cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner.’

Ben shook blood out of his eye. ‘You’re a dead man, Kroll.’

‘I doubt that,’ said Kroll. ‘We haven’t finished yet. There was one survivor of the incident in Slovenia.’ He pressed another key and brought up another image.

Ben’s shoulders dropped.

It was Clara Kinski. They’d taken her.

The cell looked small and dank. She was tied down to a bare mattress on an iron-framed bed, her small wrists and ankles strapped to the bars with duct tape. She was blindfolded and struggling weakly, as though her strength was giving out.

‘That is a live webcam image,’ Kroll said. ‘I can prove it to you by sending an email order this very moment to have one of her fingers removed as you watch. Would you like that?’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I wouldn’t. But I know what I would like to see.’

A strange, wild light in the prisoner’s eyes disconcerted Kroll for an instant, but he hid it with a smile. ‘You are in no position to be defiant, Major,’ he said. ‘I am about to make you a proposal, and I suggest you consider it carefully. Based on your decision, the child either lives or she dies. It’s as simple as that.’

Ben shut his eyes for a long moment. In his mind, Leigh was looking at him. She smiled. He opened his eyes again, controlling his heartbeat and his breathing. ‘I’m listening,’ he said quietly after a long pause.

‘Tell me if you recognize this person.’ Clara disappeared from the screen and was replaced by a picture of a handsome man in his early forties. He was well-tailored but casual, and the snap looked as though it had been taken at some kind of VIP function.

‘I don’t know who he is,’ Ben muttered truthfully.

Kroll watched him closely, as though assessing whether or not to believe him. He nodded. ‘You should follow politics, Major. That is Philippe Aragon. The candidate for the EU Commission Vice-Presidency. He is your target.’

‘I’m not an assassin.’

‘That is precisely what you are. And you like to keep your skills well-practised. It isn’t long since you gunned down five men in cold blood on your little mercy mission in Turkey.’ Kroll waved that aside. ‘Anyway, I didn’t say I wanted him assassinated. We want you to bring him to us. We will take care of him.’

‘I imagine you will,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve seen the sick things your Order of Ra does to people.’

‘The Order of Ra!’ Kroll’s wrinkled face split into a yellow smile and he twisted his neck to grin up at Glass. Glass smirked.