I got as close as I could to the front of the vehicle without showing myself in open ground, then crossed the pavement, keeping low. I paused beside the radiator grille to do a quick one-eighty behind me, then got behind the wheel. Keeping my speed down and using just gears to keep the brake-lights off, I didn’t put the headlamps on until I’d turned four or five corners. Then I put my foot down.

I followed signs towards Zürich. It seemed as good a place as any to head for to sort my shit out and decide on my next move.

I looped back on to the Autobahn and drove towards it for forty minutes. I felt I should be thinking more clearly now – but my mind was whirring.

I flipped open the Pitbull case one-handed and fed the CD into the player. Maybe I could clear my head with some angry music. I pressed the eject button before I’d heard three chords.

This wasn’t going to work.

All I could hear was Stefan yelling, ‘Pitbull is the man! This shit is for real!’

All I could see was him pumping his fist.

All I could feel was that I’d been given the world’s most important task – to look after a man’s son – and I’d failed.

21

Fuck this. I needed to get a grip.

As fingers of light began to scrape across the sky I pulled into a service station and topped up the tank with diesel. I also bought a five-litre container and filled it with unleaded.

I threw two boxes of matches, an energy bar, a couple of cans of Monster and a two-litre bottle of water into my shopping basket, then ordered a strong black coffee, a bread roll and a sausage the size of a fire hose to go. I parked up between two artics and took a bite. It had absolutely no nutritional value, but who gives a fuck?

I necked half the water before switching on Hesco’s HP.

The photograph of the Maserati kicked in as soon as I’d typed in the password, and was then overlaid by file and document icons, some with Russian labels, some with English. My first objective was to find out how many of them had been downloaded from Frank’s laptop. Every time I looked at the thing I pictured him turning his screen towards me in the green room, and showing me something that came close to sending him into meltdown.

I double-clicked on each of the top row, then a random selection, and got nowhere. Every single one had its own access code. I don’t know what I expected, but I probably should have guessed that nothing Hesco volunteered would ever come for free.

I tried his calendar, hoping it might give me a lead on Dijani’s whereabouts over the next few days, but that was also locked. Even the name of the second gate of Paradise failed to work its magic. I let my mind wander back to the Iraq prison and managed to remember the names of four or five others.

baabassalaat

baabassadaqah

baabalhajj

baabarrayyaan

None of them let me in.

There was another gate whose name I could never get my head around. But it was an eight-word sequence, and was reserved for those who hugged trees and were big on forgiveness, so that wasn’t going to be one of his favourites.

I powered down again and slid the thing back into its sleeve. I needed a computer geek to sort it out for me, and I wasn’t going to find one here.

I tried to gain access to Hesco’s iPhone. The second gate didn’t sort it. Nor did any of the others I could remember.

I slotted a SIM card and battery into one of the Nokias and texted Moscow instead. Pasha called back when I had the brew halfway to my lips. I put the cup down on the dash and thumbed the green button.

‘OK. The first thing you need to know: the president had no love for Frank, but there’s no evidence to suggest that Dijani and Uran work for the Kremlin.’

So Zac hadn’t been talking bollocks about that, at least. If a solid Putin connection didn’t surface in the next couple of days, I’d tell Pasha to give Anna the all-clear. Maybe she’d start liking me again when she and Nicholai were back in Moscow.

‘Who do they work for?’

‘Good question. You were right about Dijani. The Lebanese bit, anyway. Once-strong affiliations with the Saudi political elite. Educated in America. MIT. But no criminal connections, as far as we know. Until four months ago.’

‘What happened four months ago?’

‘He chose Uran as his security chief.’

‘And Uran isn’t a completely law-abiding citizen?’

‘To put it mildly. Born in Lushnja. One of three brothers.’

I knew about Lushnja. It made Palermo look like Pleasantville. ‘Albanian Mafia?’

‘Albanian Mafia. Into everything. Prostitution. People-trafficking. Drug-trafficking. Brutal. Even Cosa Nostra are scared of them.’

‘Zac was on his way to Naples. So that’s where I’m going. Do you have people on the ground there?’

‘No. But I have a good contact. He writes mostly for Il Diavolo – tough, investigative stuff – but does the occasional piece for us. Luca. Luca Cazale. We Skyped this morning. He’s been on the trafficking story since the Balkan wars. It’s out of control.’

‘Sounds like Luca could use some good news. Tell him Zac is staying in Switzerland, after all.’

There was a silence at Pasha’s end of the line.

‘How long for?’

‘For good. His jet-setting days are over.’ I paused long enough for Pasha to take on board what I’d just said. ‘Mate, could you keep digging for stuff about Frank’s southern European business network? And about Dijani? He’s the key to this thing. He keeps turning up in all the wrong places. I’d also like everything you can get me on the other Uran brothers. Including imagery. Zac seems to think I’m not on their Christmas-card list.’

‘They’re Muslims, my friend. They don’t send Christmas cards.’

‘It’s a Brit expression. A joke. Kind of.’

‘Ah.’ He wasn’t laughing.

Nor was I. There wasn’t much to laugh about.

‘Do me a favour, will you? Get hold of Luca. Tell him I’ll be in touch, and soon.’

‘So you can share your English jokes with him?’

‘Something like that.’

I cut the call. Then I dialled the number Laffont had given me. I didn’t care how early it was. Frank had paid him a fortune, and he’d reversed away from Stefan at warp speed. It was time for him to get the fuck out of bed and step up.

It rang eight times before his recorded voice invited me in three languages to leave a message.

I didn’t.

I took the Nokia into the back of the van, cut the SIM into slivers that were small enough to swallow and smashed the rest of it to bits with my hammer.

The coffee and Monster had done nothing to fight the fatigue. I couldn’t afford to mess up. I needed to get my head down. Even an hour would be better than nothing. I curled up in the far corner; the only bit that wasn’t completely soaked with blood or Fanta.

‘Nick …’

‘Stefan?’

I heard my own voice echo in the load space.

‘Maybe you could be my actual dad … Would that work for you?’

‘Go to sleep, mate. I am.’

I wasn’t, though. I was caught in a place where the dead walked and talked.

‘Hard routine, Nick …’

‘This shit is for real …’

Did he say that, or was it me?

Fuck …

My head was pounding like a jackhammer. My back was on fire.

I’d had the night sweats before. It was just part of the shit I had to live with.

But I’d never had a problem snatching twenty minutes of oblivion to recoup and regroup.

Wherever.

Whenever.

It made no difference.

Halfway up an Arctic ice wall.

At the edge of a wadi.

In the tropical rainforest, with humidity so severe you didn’t know if you were breathing or drowning.