My blood turned to ice. I’d never understood that phrase before. I did now.

18

‘Where are they? Can I see them?’

Just being with them would be one step closer to getting them out.

‘My people found her in Vinnitsa, Nick. They hurt her. Quite badly, I’m told. They had to. We knew Frank had called you in. The bodyguard supplied us with your first name, and hers, and a rough description of you both. But he proved difficult to trust, and we knew so little about you. We needed her to tell us who you were, and to help us find you.

‘Sadly, she wasn’t keen to do so.’

He sighed. But not with regret.

‘They may have fucked her. I don’t know for certain. I didn’t question them too closely.’

His brown eyes glistened.

I shifted my viewpoint and stared out of the front window at the skeleton of the mobile crane.

‘She remained silent, though. For days. I have the impression that she once loved you … very, very much …’

He let the silence lengthen before moving in for the kill.

‘It was only when they began to damage her child that she began to tell us the things we wanted to know.’

He paused.

‘Your child too, of course …’

I lowered my arms. Felt my fists clench. I couldn’t help it. I also wanted to test the tightness of the cuffs.

I lifted my right boot no more than a millimetre. Maybe I was going to take a step forward.

The laser sight closest to Dijani took first pressure.

I stayed just where I was.

‘We know very many things about you now, Nick. Interesting things. We know you were in the Special Air Service. We know you fought in Iraq. And Afghanistan. We know what you did there. And what you did in Somalia. And Libya.

‘We know you killed many of our brothers in these places. Many soldiers of Allah. We know what you have done in Switzerland. And what you have done here. Now you will pay the price for all these things.’

‘Whatever.’ I kept my voice as level as possible.

‘But I need to see Anna and the boy first.’

‘Of course.’ He gestured towards Rexho. ‘Give him back his torch. We must not keep them in the dark.’

He picked up the blueprint and turned back to me. ‘Frank Timis took a great interest in this ship. If he hadn’t, it’s possible that he might still be alive today, and that none of this would have happened.’

Rexho handed me the torch and spun me back towards the door. At the top of the ladder he told me to turn and climb down backwards. He didn’t want me to jump on top of him and take him down. But I would have belly-crawled all the way on broken glass if it meant getting to Anna and our son.

One step closer. If we’re all breathing, we’re all winning.

He led the way. The plasticuffs weren’t making things easy for me. The two triggers followed. I could see that they were itching to fuck me up. The front one waved his muzzle at me whenever I slowed or looked set to deviate, and the red dot danced across my chest. But I wasn’t going anywhere, not yet.

Rexho reached the bottom rung. A gust of cooler air brushed past me as he opened the door into the hold and the hum got a little louder.

19

The hold wasn’t completely empty. Two layers of containers were tethered to the racks below deck level, but no one seemed to care about them. They aimed me at an open hatch between the furthest two.

There was a bit more space down there, and the laser sights kept their distance, from me and from each other.

I followed Rexho down through the hatch. Another ladder, and the hum turned into a throb. I knew from the blueprint that we were as far into the bowels of the ship as it was possible to go, but the sudden cold and the dim lighting could have told me that on their own.

A line of low-wattage bulkhead lamps led down the entire length of the passageway. Each had a door beside it, with a centrally mounted, four-spoke wheel that rotated to engage and release the locking mechanism.

I was experiencing at first hand the place that had got Frank worried. When I saw the lead lining on the half-open door at the pointy end of the ship, I was worried too. And I couldn’t see any sign of a vent.

‘No vents, Nick …’

The key phrases from his briefing in Courchevel finally filled my head. ‘And the lead can only mean two things. You know this. They need to store something in there that they don’t wish to be traced. Or something that requires a radiation shield …’

But that shit was for another day. All that mattered now was that if Anna and Nicholai were being held on the boat this was where they would be.

Rexho stepped behind the heavy steel panel so that he could pull it fully open and leave me room to enter the pitch-black compartment.

There was no movement from inside, no voices.

‘Anna!’

Nothing.

I launched myself forward, grabbed the barrel of the SAW in my plasticuffed hands, and wrenched it to one side. I thought the guy holding it might loosen his grip to prevent himself being pulled down.

He didn’t. Three rounds kicked off into the door, echoing down the hold, as he hung on tight and nosedived towards the deck and took me with him. My back hit the metal, and now my head did too – hard enough to stop me bouncing straight back up.

I lay there for long enough to see a red dot on my chest.

But he didn’t fire.

Keeping the dot in position, he stepped back and left Rexho room to kneel by me.

The stiletto went back up my nose.

And took the side exit.

Blood spurted across my cheek and into my right eye and mouth as the pain catapulted itself around my head. And Rexho’s hand closed over my throat.

I felt his sour breath on my skin.

I knew he was itching to squeeze the life out of me.

I balled my fists and prepared to swivel and twist and bring them up and—

He said one word: ‘Don’t.’

But he didn’t tighten his grip.

He got to his feet.

I couldn’t see anything now. My eyes were gummed up with blood, and my face felt as big as a beach ball. The pain pulsated with my heartbeat.

He stepped over the coaming, then gripped my arms and dragged me into the darkness. There was a metallic echo as the thing clanked shut.

It wasn’t the only echo in my head. Hesco’s words had forced their way in there too. ‘You … cannot imagine … how much pain … you will be in …’

20

I turned and leant my head against the lead and closed my eyes.

‘Nick …’

Voices.

‘Nick …’

Women’s voices. One of them sounds … Russian …

‘You stupid little—’

Not that one. That’s my mate Gaz’s mum. I’d know her anywhere. She’d caught us throwing condoms full of tomato sauce off the roof of his block of flats …

Fuck, my head hurt. I wanted to try to stop the warm capillary bleeding that was flowing down my neck, but there wasn’t any point.

Even when you can’t see in a confined space, you know if you’re not alone.

I was not alone.

‘Anna? Nicholai?’

I flicked on my torch and played the beam across the side wall, across the ceiling ten centimetres above me, along the floor. The space was four metres long and three wide. I took my time scanning it, because I was in no hurry to find what I was now certain I was going to find.

She sat there looking at me. Wedged into the far corner, her back against the wall, her legs stretched out in front of her. She was clutching a bundle to her chest.