She was wearing a black jumpsuit with a wide embroidered sash around her waist. It had always been one of my favourites, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever told her that. A grey fleece too, unzipped. And trainers.

Nicholai was in a check shirt and jeans I’d bought for him at GUM when he wasn’t even crawling. Anna had taken the piss out of me relentlessly for getting an outfit that was about fifty-three sizes too large. I guess I must have been thinking about a time when we’d go hiking and do boy stuff together.

There were smudges of blood on our little boy’s clothes. It had leaked from the places her fingernails used to be.

There was a lot of bruising and grazing on her face. But Anna still looked like the blonde one from Abba. She still looked beautiful.

I didn’t think she had died in that position. The fuckers had propped her up like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

I felt a flood of bile burn the back of my throat as I knelt beside her. I managed to swallow it back as I brushed her cheek with my fingertips. I leant forward to kiss her forehead. She was cold and tasted of salt and my blood.

Dijani had said they’d threatened to damage Nicholai.

I couldn’t bring myself to turn him over at first. Then I did. His face looked … peaceful.

I picked him up and wrapped him in my arms; tucked his head between my shoulder and my cheek. It was a while before I realized I was rocking backwards and forwards.

I didn’t need to do that.

He was already asleep.

I gave him back to his mother.

How long had they been there?

It would have been dark.

So dark.

He’d have been frightened.

She was hurting.

She’d have known that they’d run out of oxygen at some point.

An adult breathes in just short of two cubic metres of pure oxygen per day.

The air we inhale is about twenty per cent oxygen.

The air we exhale is about fifteen per cent …

I knew I was trying to lose myself in another sum.

It wasn’t working.

She’d have taken him in her arms and told him not to be afraid. That she was here for him. That she loved him. And his dad would be here soon.

She’d have sung to him. She always did that when he woke in the dark hours of the night.

I wondered whether she had smothered Nicholai before he started hurting too.

I hoped so.

21

The bile wasn’t the only thing that burnt in me.

Rage did too.

The kind that starts low down in your belly and fills every fibre of your being.

It can fuck you up badly. I’d seen that happen all too often. It can breathe all your available oxygen, and make you do stupid shit.

But if you point it in the right direction, it can give you fuel when it’s most needed.

I leant forward again, untied Anna’s embroidered sash, and shoved it against my face in an attempt to stop the blood flow. And, maybe, to smell her for the last time.

I touched her cheek again. Told her and Nicholai I was going to get us all out of here, then kill the fuckers that had done this.

I hung the sash around my neck and went back to where the rounds had hit the door. They hadn’t made much of a dent in the steel, but had buried themselves in the lead coating. I worked the top one backwards and forwards until it came loose. Then I shoved my finger into the hole and tried to peel it back. If I could get beneath the skin at the centre of the panel, maybe I could access the reverse side of the rotating lock.

If not, they’d be back for me soon, now they’d had their laugh. I’d be waiting. Just like infantry who run out of ammo while the enemy are still attacking. They take off their helmets and get ready to batter the fuckers to death, or get killed trying.

The lead didn’t move a millimetre.

I undid my belt, raised the buckle and tried with the prong instead. At the fifth or sixth attempt, I started to get somewhere.

After an hour of hard graft with the prong and the buckle frame I’d managed to make some progress. I was starting to drip with sweat, but I’d opened up about a twelve-centimetre gash in the lining and the longer it became, the easier it was to apply the leverage I needed to open it further.

I wiped the sweat and blood off my face with the end of Anna’s sash, and carried on. At least the flow had almost stopped.

I was doing some thinking too. Thinking about what Dijani could have brought here, and where he might have brought it from. Odessa was where Minerva’s voyage had begun.

A WMD?

I didn’t think so. Putin’s people kept a close watch on those.

But you could still help yourself to bits that glowed from the rusting hulks in the submarine pens on the Arctic coast.

After another hour, I’d got to the place I was aiming for. I could see four concave bolts, which must have anchored the wheel mounting. And fuck-all else.

What had I been expecting? A rotating head like the ones that helped you gain access to a toilet cubicle?

I wiped my hands on the front of my jeans and took a deep breath.

Then I heard a noise directly behind my metalwork, and a series of clicks as the locks disengaged. I stood, a chunk of lead in each hand, ready to slam them into the first face I saw and then keep going until they were down or I was.

Deep breaths, ready to go for it.

Finally, the door swung open.

The first figure I saw was in black kit, head to toe, with ‘CARABINIERI’ written in gold across his chest, and a badge on his left sleeve: the GIS’s version of the Regiment’s winged dagger. He didn’t enter, just stepped back into the passageway, leaving room for Luca to come into my cell, his torch burning a hole in the darkness.

He took one look at me, then at the bodies in the corner.

He didn’t ask the question. He already knew the answer.

He just gritted his teeth, gripped my shoulder briefly and beckoned me outside.

‘Nico—’

‘Don’t.’ I put a finger to my lips.

More GIS moved aside as Luca followed me back along the passageway and up through the hatch into the hold. I didn’t stop until I’d walked down the gangway and was in among the flashing lights on the quay.

I scanned the immediate area – unsuccessfully – for the BMW and the Land Cruiser.

Then I was ready to listen.

The GIS had stormed in twenty minutes ago, too late to nail Dijani and Rexho, but soon enough to persuade the two guys guarding the hold to hand over their weapons.

‘SAWs? Laser sights?’

Luca shrugged. ‘Maybe. These things all look the same to me.’

The hatch had been open, so they hadn’t wasted time searching the containers.

I gestured towards the entrance gate. ‘Did security see them lift anything off the boat?’

‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘They said it looked like a coffin.’

‘Mate, when they get the bodies to the hospital, ask the pathologist to test for radiation poisoning. I don’t think that’s what killed them, but the lead is down there for a reason.’

‘You can ask.’

He pointed to what was left of my face and I realized he could hardly speak. He was drowning in the pain I was doing my best to cut away from.

‘No. You got a car here?’

He pointed at a mid-size Alfa Romeo a short distance beyond the ring of VM 90s, and handed me the fob.

‘A spare phone?’

He sorted me there too.

‘And a weapon?’

I knew from his expression that he would have if he could have.

The coffin confirmed my suspicions about the activity in the barn. The graveyard must be where they’d hidden what they’d taken off the boat. And now the GIS were on his doorstep instead of messing about in Brindisi, I reckoned Dijani would be forced to change his plans and lift it out again before first light.