I wondered whether the boys were still locked in the barn, or if their mum had given them a good bollocking and sat them on the naughty step. Claude was probably even sorrier that he hadn’t shot me in the head when he discovered that I’d fucked off with one of their ATVs. I wasn’t too worried about him fingering me in an ID parade, though. Our little drama had unfolded in shadow.

Stefan stayed quiet while I put my jacket back on and lay down again. I didn’t think he was sleeping. I wasn’t either. I had too much on my mind. Or too little. My memory of the hours leading up to the crash was still fractured. Every attempt I made to fit the pieces into some kind of recognizable pattern failed. Maybe a visit to Frank’s banker would fill some of the gaps.

A face appeared out of the darkness. A woman’s face. A sad, blonde face. Her lips parted. She was speaking to me. ‘Trouble always finds you. Nothing’s going to change that – it’s the way you are.’ English words, but definitely not an English voice. A Russian accent.

Anna? I may even have said her name aloud.

I stretched out. Tried to touch her.

But she was moving away from me now. Retreating to a place I couldn’t reach.

I’d switched off the TV as soon as Stefan had hit the sack, but as I let my mind drift, two words kept fighting their way to the surface. Putin … Ukraine … Putin … Ukraine … And I knew that, whether or not there was a connection between the bare-chested ex-KGB psychopath and the events on the mountain, I couldn’t take any chances.

I reached for my day sack and felt around for the second Nokia, a battery and the SIM cards. As I turned the key in the door, I heard a voice from the bunk. ‘Nick … Where are you going?’

‘Just need to make a call, mate. Won’t be long.’

I locked up behind me and kept the key fob in my fist. At close quarters it would do as much damage as my fucked-up Sphinx, and would be easier to explain away.

I went round the back of the accommodation block and eased through a gap in the hedge, then under the chain-link fence that surrounded the property. I crossed the stretch of turf behind it and headed towards the railway track. Once I was in the shadow of the refuse and recycling shed, I pushed the SIM and battery into the phone and sparked it up.

I tapped out an area code I had so firmly fixed in my mental filing cabinet that even a high-speed smash hadn’t been able to dislodge it.

It was ten to five in the morning in Moscow, but Pasha picked up immediately.

‘Mate, I need your help. Can you call me back on this cell from a secure line?’

Pasha Korovin was one of the main men on Russia Today, and one of the small handful of people I completely trusted. He had been Anna’s editor when she was busy campaigning to make the world a better place, and knew when to keep below the radar.

I pressed the red button and waited. The Nokia’s screen lit up seconds later.

Unidentified number.

I piled straight in. He didn’t need small-talk. ‘A couple of things. First, could you tell me if Frank Timis was on your supreme leader’s shit list?’

‘Frank was found dead yesterday. In the Alps.’

‘I know. I was there. That’s why I’m asking.’

‘There have been rumours. They have never been … the best of friends.’

‘Can you check?’

‘And second?’

‘Anna. Whoever killed Frank wants me dead too. So if this is a Putin plot, she could be in the shit as well. They might try to use her to get to me. They might just fuck her over for being in Frank’s phone book. Could you warn her? Tell her to make herself and the baby safe until I can sort this out? She’ll know what to do.’ I didn’t need to tell him no calls, texts or email, nothing traceable. I could have done that from here.

‘I will go now.’

There was a click.

I was about to dismantle the Nokia and crush the bits under my heel when the railway track started to hum. The hum became a series of rhythmic clunks and a few minutes later a beam of light swept along the line.

I waited for the goods train to draw level with me, then stepped out of the shadows, swung back my arm and lobbed the phone into the first open truck that passed. If Moscow’s answer to GCHQ had picked up my call, they’d soon work out that I was heading for Lyon. And if they hadn’t, so what? At least it had brought a smile to my face.

15

Anna had been a journalist when I’d first met her, the kind who would stop at nothing in the pursuit of justice and truth. So when our son was born, it didn’t take her long to spot that I wasn’t ideal husband and dad material. Husbands and dads are supposed to keep their family secure, and I’d always been a trouble magnet.

Before I’d said goodbye the last time, we’d talked about what might happen if they came under threat when I wasn’t there to shield them from the incoming fire. Frank had bought a couple of safe houses through a sequence of shell companies, which he assured us couldn’t be traced.

Even I had no idea where they were. Pasha didn’t either. His job was simply to let Anna know – if need be – when she had to evacuate the gated enclave on the Moscow margins that had been designed to protect them from everyone below Frank on the food chain.

Which didn’t include Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, prime minister of the Russian Federation, chairman of both United Russia and the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. A truly powerful man …

As I headed back to the motel I visualized Pasha delivering the message. I knew Anna wasn’t going to be impressed. She’d do what we’d agreed. Then she’d go into meltdown. I still missed her, but I was glad I wouldn’t be there when that happened. One of those laser-beam stares of hers could take your bollocks off more severely than a Flechette missile.

I circled the motel lot, then went back in the way I’d come out.

I unlaced my Timberlands before I got my head down, but still kept them on.

There was a familiar creak above me. ‘Nick …’

‘Yup.’

‘Have you been on a mission?’

‘Only a little one. It’s all good out there.’

‘Did you take the gun?’

‘Yup. I always keep it with me.’

Another creak.

‘I’ve never shot anyone before.’

‘Good.’

‘My dad showed me how to use a pistol. In the garden at our dacha. You came there. Remember?’

‘Sure I do.’ That wasn’t completely true, but I did have a vision of a high wall, woods, and a kitchen with the world’s biggest and most gleaming coffee machine. ‘Peredelkino, right?’

‘Yes. Peredelkino. We used real bullets, but we only fired them at beer cans.’

‘Rounds.’

I could almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain.

‘What do you mean, rounds?’

‘We don’t call them bullets. We call them rounds.’

‘Ah. R-r-rounds …’ He rolled the r around in his mouth like he was tasting it. ‘So my dad was shot … with r-r-rounds …’

I didn’t want to rush him back to a place he was only just starting to escape from. But, fuck it, I couldn’t keep tiptoeing around this thing. I hoped he’d be able to stay in mini-Frank mode for a moment or two longer.

‘Did you spot anyone else up on the mountain? Apart from your BG?’

He went so quiet I couldn’t even hear him breathe.

‘A guy in khaki combats, maybe? With a ring? A red ring, with a silver eagle on it? An eagle with two heads?’

Eventually he spoke again. ‘No. But I couldn’t see much from the back seat. And I was talking to my dad. About a maths problem.’

‘A maths problem?’

‘Yes. He used to set me challenges. Then something happened in front of us. With a truck, I think. A big truck. My … my BG pulled off the road … and stopped the car … and turned in his seat … and … and …’ He swallowed. ‘And that was where you found us …’