CHARLIE BROOKS
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About the Author

Charlie Brooks’ education came to a grinding halt when he left Eton to become a stable lad. He has since worked as a racehorse trainer and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and GQ magazine. He lives on a farm in the Cotswolds with his wife and daughter. His autobiography, Crossing the Line, and his first novel, Citizen, were widely acclaimed.

To Rebekah – the best wife in the world – who inspires me with her sense of decency, her clarity of thought and her integrity.

Table of Contents

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Also by Charlie Brooks

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Moscow

Max Ward knew something was up. Things often weren’t as they seemed at the British Embassy on Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya, but that particular afternoon Max’s antennae were twitching more than usual.

For a moment his attention switched from his immediate superior, Colin Corbett, to Pallesson, who was crossing the main atrium. Max watched through the heavy glass partition as Pallesson, the department’s golden boy, gave some unfortunate underling a sharp dressing-down, then continued on his way with a quick glance at his watch. Max was now so far beneath Pallesson’s sphere of operation that he didn’t even warrant a greeting when they passed one another in the corridor. Their relationship had been poisoned long ago. It was unfortunate that they were now posted in the same city, but Max hadn’t let Pallesson faze him in the past and he refused to let the bastard do so now.

Max pulled his focus back to Colin Corbett, the source of his current unease. Corbett was an efficient section chief and a pretty good communicator. A team player and as straightforward as they came, but something was radiating off him now that was arousing Max’s instincts.

Considering he was the wrong side of forty, Corbett was in good shape. Mainly due to his obsession with tennis. Which was why no one ever questioned his exit from the office in his tennis gear every other afternoon. But something was different about him this Thursday and it had Max puzzled.

Max feigned interest in his terminal as he watched Corbett shuffle his papers. He had on his usual dark-blue tracksuit and the usual dark-blue bag lay on the floor with three racket handles sticking out of it. Corbett got up to go to the water machine. It was then that the first tangible evidence supporting Max’s unease struck him. Corbett was wearing hiking boots, not tennis shoes.

When Corbett finally left the office, it was a full half-hour later than normal. Max decided to follow him. This was a man of regular habits behaving out of character. Of course, Max had nothing to go on. It was just a hunch. Besides, it would make a refreshing change from yet another afternoon spent trawling through endless chatter, looking for patterns that 12.5 million euros’ worth of software couldn’t see.

In a nondescript office car-pool Skoda, Max pulled out on to the Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya, which ran alongside the Moskva River. In the thick traffic, it was relatively easy for Max to follow him without being spotted. As they approached Park Pobedy it was at an absolute standstill. Corbett’s car was a couple of hundred metres ahead of his, but neither of them were going anywhere.

Max believed Corbett to be a good man and an honest one. But something was most definitely up.

Max allowed his mind to drift back to the day’s seemingly intractable problem. Seven offshore accounts. Numerous holding and shell companies. Millions flowing through and then suddenly disappearing around the same time every year. Always the second two weeks of March.

Then it hit him. Time zones. Specifically, that small window every year when London and New York are only four hours apart. A disconnect that invariably led to missed conference calls with Langley and red faces at Vauxhall. An anomaly that allowed the final issuing bank to hide its annual transfer outside its creaking accounting software. In his line of work it was so often about what happened in the gaps.

The traffic was moving again. Corbett continued out of the city, heading west by southwest, taking first Mozhayskoye Shosse, then Minskoye Shosse.

Corbett checked his tracking device. He was ten kilometres behind his target, which was about right, total gridlock notwithstanding.

After 120 kilometres the tracker finally left the major artery and turned off on to a smaller road. Corbett followed ten minutes later, unaware that Max was shadowing him. Five kilometres further on, Corbett’s target quit the main road and went into the forest down a dirt track. After a couple of kilometres the track split into two. His target had come to a halt a further 500 metres along the left-hand fork. He went off to the right, drove for a couple of hundred metres, then pulled over into the trees.

Max had eased back, giving Corbett a little more space now that he was more exposed, but he could see the dust cloud thrown up by Corbett’s car floating above the right-hand track. Max decided he’d driven as far as he dared. He reversed his car off the track into a clump of low-hanging trees and set off on foot.

After five minutes he found Corbett’s car badly hidden in the trees. Careless, he thought. He tried the door handle. It opened obligingly. Very careless. Can’t be too much to worry about. Perhaps Max was making a complete fool of himself ? Maybe Corbett never played tennis. Maybe his was a different game. Naughty old Corbett. It’s always the quiet ones. Not that he wanted to expose him in any way. After all, it had been Corbett who’d stuck his neck out for Max after Saudi Arabia.

Max noticed the passenger glove compartment was hanging open. A large telescopic sight lay within. The kind that could find a target half a mile away. Well, if you’re having a bit of fun, I might as well do the same, Max smirked. He’d get an access-all-areas view of Corbett on the job. Max grabbed the scope and headed up the hill to his left through the trees. Wherever Corbett had ended up, Max was more likely to be able to watch him from the high ground.

As Max approached the top of the hill, he heard a plane coming in low towards him from his right-hand side. It was either landing or crashing … but on what? Max scrambled to the brow of the hill, cursed that he was dressed for his desk, not for shimmying around rocks and scrub. He peered over. What he saw dispelled his flippant mindset.

A sea plane had landed on a narrow lake and was now taxiing across the water to a small dacha on the far bank. There was nothing pretty or enchanting about it. It was just a rectangular concrete box by the side of a lake with a stone terrace and a wooden jetty.

Max lay on his stomach and increased the scope’s magnification as far as it would go. Then he centred on the three individuals standing on the terrace. Max gave a start as Pallesson’s face came into focus. That was clearly who Corbett was tailing.

Max shifted his body in a vain attempt to get comfortable. He focused on the other two figures. Unmistakably Russian. One appeared to be almost disabled as he moved across the terrace. The other was shaven-headed. But there was something strange about his scalp.

Why was Pallesson with them? And where had Corbett got to?

Max trained the scope back on to Pallesson, who pulled out a cigarette case and offered one of the Russians a smoke. That told Max all he needed to know about Pallesson’s relationship with them.

Max squinted as the sun emerged from behind a cloud, and instinctively covered the scope’s lens with his hand. Corbett clearly hadn’t been quite as fast. As Max squashed his body even lower to the ground he could see the shaven-headed Russian pointing towards a spot directly beneath his position while speaking into a radio set. Max quickly scanned his side of the lake.

Corbett had secreted himself into a duck-shooting hide. Crafty, but not lucky. Max looked back towards the dacha.

Before he could think of a way to warn Corbett, Max saw two men converging on the hide. Where the hell had they come from? What could he do about it? He didn’t even have a gun and there was absolutely nothing to be gained from giving away his own position.

Max watched helplessly as Corbett was dragged out of the hide. A launch roared up to the shore. With two machine pistols now trained on him, Corbett was bundled into the craft, which then set off back across the lake.

Pallesson took a long draw on his cigarette. The granite-faced Russian mafia chief Sergei Kroshtov limped towards him. His hip had been shattered years ago by a truck trying to run him over. Pallesson tried to look unruffled.

‘I thought you said this place was secure?’ he said disdainfully.

‘It is,’ replied Kroshtov coldly. ‘Whoever that is won’t be leaving here.’

Kroshtov looked over towards Oleg and inclined his head in the direction of the dacha.

‘Get my hunting rifle.’

Pallesson’s eyes followed Oleg into the dacha. The proud, circular scar around his scalp gave the impression that someone had once tried to remove the top of his head. The lumpy scar looked like two pieces of leather, crudely sewn together.

Barry Nuttall unclipped his seat belt and pushed open the passenger door of the sea plane. He did a bit of piloting himself, but when he was on a drugs run he liked to have someone else ‘at the wheel’.

He had his own airstrip on the Essex coast. They’d stayed low until they were away from the coastline to keep off English radar screens. It was a long way to come to pick up a hundred kilos of heroin, but a few routes had been shut down recently and supplies were tight.

He’d been going over the maths again during the flight. By the time the gear hit the streets, his investors would turn the two million euros he’d brought with him into twenty million. And he would take the cream off the top.

The Essex boy told his pilot to open the hold, straightened his Burberry cap and jumped down into the launch.

A few seconds later, the pilot passed down two black cases to the heavies in the craft. ‘Don’t drop those, for Christ’s sake,’ Barry joked. ‘It really would have to go to the laundry then!’

Barry sat down on the centre bench and the launch sped towards the dacha.

‘This is all very sociable,’ Barry said drily to Pallesson as he placed the two cases on a folding wooden table. He nodded his head towards Kroshtov.

‘How’s it going, mate?’ Barry asked Kroshtov with an air of casual indifference.

Kroshtov nodded.

‘Who’s our friend?’ Barry asked Pallesson as he glanced towards the hooded Corbett. Oleg was binding his hands behind his back twenty metres from them.

‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ Pallesson assured him.

‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Corbett said in a muffled, but perfectly audible voice. Oleg punched him in the side of the head. Hard enough to knock him over.

‘So, going according to plan?’ Barry queried.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Pallesson confirmed. Kroshtov barked some orders towards the door of the dacha. A bottle of vodka appeared in an ice bucket with three tumblers. Kroshtov filled them half-full and handed one each to Pallesson and Barry Nuttall. He raised his glass to them and took a large swig.

‘Budem zdorovy!’ Kroshtov toasted.

‘Let’s stay healthy,’ Pallesson chimed, translating for this Essex-boy partner.

‘So … who is this?’ Kroshtov asked Pallesson, pointing at Corbett as he banged his vodka glass on the table hard enough to make it quite clear that he expected a straight answer.

Pallesson would have liked to have been able to lie. It didn’t look good, getting followed to a drop by one of his own. But it wouldn’t be hard for the Russian to discover who Corbett was. Dead or alive.

‘He’s one of ours,’ Pallesson admitted. ‘He must have followed me.’

‘Why are you here? Who sent you?’ Kroshtov asked the hooded Corbett, who was still lying sprawled on the terrace.

‘Pallesson asked me to cover his back.’

‘He’s full of shit. Oleg can dispose of him,’ said Pallesson.

Kroshtov took orders from no one. He picked up his hunting rifle, made sure there was a shell in the breach and handed it to Pallesson.

‘Your problem. You solve it. Take him down to the jetty.’

Kroshtov clearly welcomed an opportunity to demonstrate that he was in command. Barry Nuttall knocked back the rest of his vodka as he watched Oleg frogmarch Corbett out on to the jetty. He wondered how Pallesson could be so sure their gatecrasher was working alone. The last thing they needed was MI6 crawling all over them. He admired the man’s balls, though, even if he did dress like a Hampstead queer.

Max laid completely still behind the rocks he was using as cover. He knew there was every chance they’d be scouring the hillside, looking for any sign of movement. If he didn’t attract attention, they’d probably miss him. Unless they had heat-seeking equipment.

Small, sharp stones were sticking into his elbows, and the undergrowth was clawing at him through his thin trousers. He tried to push all discomfort from his mind. The slightest movement would expose him.

This situation really was an utter shambles. That was the problem with instinct. The fact that your instincts had proved right counted for nothing if you didn’t have the ability to deal with the scenario facing you. Max challenged whatever was stabbing his thigh to hurt even more. It focused his mind.

One of the Russians led Corbett halfway along the jetty and left him there. Max could see Pallesson was following closely behind with the rifle. It was pretty clear what was going to happen next.

‘You bastard,’ Max muttered under his breath.

It crossed his mind that he could create a diversion to buy Corbett time. But putting himself at such risk went against his training. His heart was telling him to do one thing; his head another.

He assumed that Corbett would be talking to Pallesson through the hood. Whatever he said made no difference. Without warning, Pallesson raised the rifle to his shoulder.

Max saw Corbett’s head explode before he heard the shot echo off the other side of the lake. The body slumped on to the jetty.

Pallesson walked back up to the dacha and handed the rifle to Kroshtov.

‘Good thinking, getting him on to the jetty. Very messy,’ he said coolly. ‘Now, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’

Kroshtov issued some more orders. A man emerged from the dacha with a small metal case, followed by another carrying kilo bricks of heroin wrapped in heavy black plastic.

Pallesson had felt fear many times in his life; not least when his father used to come into his bedroom to beat him with his belt for not being asleep. But he had learnt to mask his fear by focusing on a particular spot on the carpet. He’d never let his father see that he was afraid.

As he walked over to the table and opened the metal case his hands were shaking. By placing his body in the way, he made sure Kroshtov couldn’t see his fingers fumbling with the catches. He’d killed before, of course. Not that anyone had ever pointed the finger at him when his brother died. It had been accepted as a tragic accident. Two young boys ragging in a pool. The elder hit his head and drowned. After that the beatings stopped.

He tore himself back to the present and opened the metal case. Inside gleamed the Fabergé egg that he’d lodged with Kroshtov as collateral. A show of good faith that he and Barry Nuttall were good for the two million euros. Once the deal was completed, he would resume ownership of the treasure.

Pallesson was momentarily transfixed by the forbidden treasure. It had been made in 1894 and on the top of the egg was the image of Nicholas II, encircled by rose-cut diamonds. It was covered by translucent, dark-red enamel patterned with diamonds and was lined with off-white velvet. Sadly the ‘surprise’ inside the egg had long gone.

Until recently, it had been stored in a vault under the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. But its presence had now been erased from the records.

Pallesson took the egg out of its box and held it in front of him. He wanted to see it glint in the sunlight.

‘Two million euros?’ Pallesson confirmed with Barry.

Barry Nuttall nodded and opened his cases. He fondly ran his hand over the two million euros, giving them a paternal parting pat. Then he walked over to the bricks of ‘gear’ and picked one of them up.

‘A hundred kilos?’ he checked. Kroshtov nodded.

‘Well, if it’s okay with you, I’ll get this lot loaded up and be on my way back to Blighty. Budem zdorovy, as they say in Essex.’

Pallesson snapped the Fabergé egg’s metal case shut and turned to Kroshtov.

‘Looks like we’re done. Nice doing business with you, Sergei.’

Max lay on his back and focused on the clouds. He’d just witnessed his nemesis blow off the head of his colleague in front of a bunch of Russians of whom he knew nothing. He had no idea what had been going on outside the dacha. He didn’t even know whether either Pallesson or Corbett were on official business. His instincts told him Pallesson was working for himself. And that he’d just murdered a British agent.

Max had known for too long that Pallesson was an evil son of a bitch. It was time to stop him. Time to get revenge. But he also knew that Pallesson was a master of compromise and blackmail. If he reported what he’d witnessed to someone under Pallesson’s spell, it would be he who would be destroyed, not Pallesson.

He wasn’t sure he could even risk confiding in Tryon, the man who’d recruited him into ‘the Office’.

1

Monaco

Max Ward had to get out of bed when room service arrived with their breakfast. Gemma was pretending to be asleep. He slipped a ten-euro note into the waiter’s hand and asked him to park the trolley by the window.

Max wanted to have breakfast with Gemma, so he poured her some coffee, added the exact amount of hot milk that she expected and took it through to the bedroom.

She was lying with her back to him, welded to the sheets in semi-slumber.

‘Coffee?’ he asked, sitting on the bed. She made an appreciative noise and rolled on to her back, keeping her eyes shut. Max slid his clenched hand under the sheet and found her knee. Then he started to stroke the inside of her thigh with the back of his fingers. She pulled the pillow over her face. Max opened his hand and rubbed an ice cube up her thigh.

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said as her head jolted up from under the pillow.

‘Breakfast then?’

While Gemma headed for the bathroom, Max sat down at the small table and gazed across the harbour. A wooden water taxi struggled from one side to the other, dwarfed by the super yachts.

Gemma barely bothered to do up her dressing gown as she ambled towards him. Max thought about grabbing her and taking her back to bed, but his boiled eggs were getting cold. And they’d cut his toast soldiers half an inch wide, exactly as he liked them.

As she sat down, Gemma looked out of the window. Two women were power-walking down the Parcours Princesse Grace – followed discreetly by a bored minder. She wondered when they’d last had sex with their husbands.

Max leant over and kissed her. Then he set about his eggs.

‘Why did they do that?’ Max wondered aloud as he returned his attention to the window. ‘Why did they cover this place in higher and higher concrete boxes? Jesus, you’d be pissed off if they’d trashed your view with that monstrosity, wouldn’t you?’ he asked, pointing at a recent erection that had blocked the sea view – any view, in fact – from the equally offensive apartment blocks behind it.

‘Greed,’ suggested Gemma.

‘No one lives in them anyway,’ Max said as he decapitated one of his eggs. ‘They’re tax bolt-holes. As long as you get your cleaner to run the taps every day and turn on the lights, they can’t prove you’re not living here.’

‘Fine, I suppose, as long as you don’t have to live in this ghastly place.’

‘It’s not that bad. And of course you have to pay someone to drive your car around too. But it’s cheap living here, compared to paying tax anywhere else.’

‘Could you live here?’

‘Well, if you came to visit me every weekend, I might think about it.’

‘Really? Where would you put your other girlfriends at the weekend then?’

‘I’d send them back to Saint-Tropez, of course,’ Max replied without missing a beat.

He looked around the room. Everything was so perfect. The orchids proudly erect in their pot, the imposing gilded mirror frame that perfectly matched the candle holders and standard lamps. Even the rails holding the thick, white curtains were coordinated. And yet everything wasn’t perfect. It never was in Gemma’s life.

‘I get frightened sometimes, staying in places like this,’ she said pensively. ‘It reminds me, in a weird way, of what it’s like to have nothing. Look at those little pots of jam. We’re just going to send them back, even though we’ve paid for them. I didn’t have any fucking jam when I was a kid.’

Max stood up, put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She was haunted. He wished he could do something about that. But she’d chosen someone else.

As they stepped into the lift, Max pressed the first-floor button for the spa and the ground floor for himself. He held the leather document holder loosely in one hand, deliberately keeping his eyes off it.

‘Aren’t you a bit overdressed for a massage?’ he asked flippantly.

‘Very funny. Actually, I’ve ordered a male masseuse who’s going to strip me naked, cover me in chocolate and lick it off. It’s a hotel speciality. Then I’m going shopping. What time will you be back?’

‘Oh, I’d say about three o’clock. Then we can explore together.’

As the lift ground to a halt, Max kissed Gemma’s neck under her long auburn hair.

‘Stop it,’ she said, taking a step away, but giving in to a wide smile. ‘Or I’ll drag you back upstairs. And then you’ll be late for your mysterious meeting. Go on, tell me. What’s in your holder?’

‘You know I can’t. Or I’d have to kill you with my bare hands.’ With that he gave her neck a small bite.

‘Call me to say where you want to meet.’

She waved as she exited down the corridor.

Max watched Gemma walk away. He wondered whether she swung her arse in that rolling manner for him. She still took his breath away. Her long flowing hair falling down her back, her dress clinging to her body just enough to be tantalizingly sexy, and best of all those exquisite calf muscles.

She was such a confused soul. Spoilt and self-centred on the one hand, and yet generous and insecure on the other.

He wondered why she half turned and took her sunglasses off in that mock-coquettish manner. Maybe she wanted to be sure that he was still watching her.

Max marvelled at the main reception of the Hôtel de Paris as he walked across the multicoloured marble floor. It was twelve o’clock in London, according to one of the clocks above the concierge’s desk.

They built things beautifully in the eighteen hundreds. The high ceiling, the aged mirrors lining the walls and the glass atrium that flooded the whole area with natural light.

He looked at the old ladies sitting on the delicate Louis XV chairs and wondered what they did all day. They made him think about his mother. Was she sitting around in some hotel in Spain? Maybe she’d moved on? After all, she wouldn’t have bothered to let him know. As usual, he cast her from his thoughts as quickly as she’d invaded them.

Max stopped in front of the wooden revolving door to let a woman in an apron come past. She was carrying a huge bunch of red and yellow roses, all perfectly coming into flower. Some guy must have been caught swimming outside the ropes, he thought to himself.

As he waited, he admired the magnificent bronze of Louis XIV on horseback, waving his sword around with an air of imperious egotism. The French had probably been all right, Max mused, until they had a revolution and became ridiculous socialists. Since then, they’d been nothing but trouble.

Max nodded to the doorman, bid him ‘bonjour’ and stepped into the revolving door. It was a beautiful February day in the Casino Square, but the fresh, cold air made him reach for his coat buttons. He was a bit early and he knew he only had a couple of hundred metres to walk.

He had time to nip into the casino. Just to have a look around. No harm in that, although he knew he’d win if he had a crack. No one would know. It could pay for dinner. But a sign at the foot of the steps said: Ouvert tous les jours à partir de 14 h. Maybe that was a good thing.

Max’s mind flashed back to his last ‘gambling’ dressing-down on the Embankment in London from his then immediate superior Colin Corbett.

Max had been leaning on the black railings watching the seagulls, opposite Vauxhall Cross.

‘Do you have any idea why we’re having this conversation here, and not in that building?’ Corbett had asked, pointing across the river.

Max felt like saying, ‘The weather?’ but thought better of it.

‘Well, I’ll tell you why. We’re here because I have to decide whether we let you go, or stay with you. And I’ll be honest with you. Your file doesn’t make particularly good reading. So I didn’t want this conversation on the record. For your sake, Ward.’

Corbett was referring to the incident in Saudi Arabia that had led to Max being sent back to London in disgrace.

‘My file?’

‘Your file. History’s repeating itself, isn’t it?’

‘No. What are you talking about?’

A squat Filipino woman walking a Yorkshire terrier had shuffled slowly past them. Corbett had instinctively shut up until she was out of earshot.

‘Thrown out of Eton for gambling. Thrown out of Saudi for gambling. Any pattern revealing itself there?’

‘I was trying to make some contacts.’

‘We’re not idiots, Ward. Don’t think we don’t know what happened. You let some card game compromise your work. And we had to bail you out of there.’

‘I told you, I was trying to make a few contacts.’

‘No. You weren’t. You got sucked in like a mug. Because you have a weakness. Just like your father …’

‘That isn’t fair. He was a bookmaker.’

‘He shot himself, Ward. Because he lost all his money.’

‘That’s cheap. Very cheap,’ Max had said, watching the seagulls float on the air above the Thames. He hadn’t known whether to smack Corbett in the face or just walk away. A seagull had perched on the railings a couple of feet away from them.

‘They have a knowing look, don’t you think?’ Max had asked, buying time to compose himself.

‘Fuck the seagull. Do you actually want this job? According to Nash, not that much.’

Max had paused, as if making up his mind. In truth, he was trying to control his anger.

‘My father made a big sacrifice to send me to Eton. I wish he hadn’t, because it killed him, one way or another.’ Max’s voice had wavered. ‘So of course I want this job. Otherwise it was all for nothing. This bloody job is all I have to show for his sacrifice.’

Corbett’s face had betrayed his relief. It was exactly what he’d needed to hear. Passion. And maybe the beginnings of regret. If he was to justify hanging on to him, he needed to believe that was what Max was feeling.

‘You’re going to have a couple of very boring years riding a desk. Step inside a casino and all bets are off.’

Max turned away from the casino and crossed the road to admire the fountain. Not just any fountain, either. Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror.

His mind flickered to the dacha outside Moscow. Corbett being shot in cold blood. If nothing else, this mission could at least destroy Pallesson.

Wrestling his thoughts back to the present, Max admired the way the mirror reflected both the sky and the casino. As he watched his own reflection, he noticed someone standing on the steps behind him. When he turned around, the guy walked off towards the harbour. He didn’t look back.

Max loved the adrenalin of being out in the field; loved the feeling of being on his toes. Being alert. Ready to react to anything. All the more so because it was such a rare occurrence these days, though he was certain nothing would happen in Monte Carlo. Or at least nothing he couldn’t cope with.

He walked around to the other side of the square. There was a policeman standing in the middle of the road doing nothing, as far as Max could see. Nice work if you can get it. The policeman took a long look at him, as if he’d read his thoughts.

Max glanced at the clientele of the Café de Paris as they sipped their coffees. A man on his own with a newspaper open on the table seemed to be looking at him. Or was he looking at the leather document holder?

Finally, Max left the square and headed downhill towards his destination. He stopped just around the corner by the Zegg & Cerlati watch shop to see if anyone was following him. The watches were mesmerizing: Zenith, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breitling, Franck Muller, Patek Philippe. They were all stunning. But one particular watch by Vacheron Constantin caught his eye. The 1907 Chronomètre Royal was a watch that Max had always thought was perfectly him. It looked classic, unembellished, but distinguished. He loved the eleven Arabic numerals in black enamel and the burgundy-red twelve, all set against a white face inside rose-gold casing. And definitely a brown strap, not black. Max looked at the price. Thirty-five thousand euros. That was about right.

After a while, Max realized that he was being scrutinized by a woman inside the shop. She beckoned for him to enter. He still had time to kill, so he went inside.

Gemma arrived at the end of the long, empty white marble tunnel. Instead of turning left into the hotel spa, she turned right, out into the street, and set off down the hill towards the harbour. She pulled up the hood of her coat, but resisted the urge to look back towards the hotel. Max would be long gone by now.

After fifty metres she walked past the Théâtre Princesse Grace. At the bottom of the hill she took the first steps on her left towards the water, then doubled back on herself along the seafront. All the big fuck-off yachts were moored next to each other along the harbour wall. Gemma was familiar with a few of them. There were a couple belonging to the Formula 1 crowd, a medium-size vessel from an oligarch’s ever-growing fleet, plus the flagship of a minor Saudi prince, which she’d been aboard more than once.

Gemma walked past Clementine, Paloma and Lady Nag Nag – a joke, the cost of which didn’t make it any funnier. The yachts were registered in Georgetown, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Douglas, though the one she was heading for was registered in Montenegro.

Two crew members in immaculate white shirts and blue shorts were waiting for her at the end of the walkway. Gemma knew the form. She handed her shoes to one of them before she boarded. A third member of staff offered her a hot hand towel. Not for her own comfort, she suspected, but more in deference to her host’s OCD.

He was waiting for her beyond a large set of double glass doors. It was a bit too cool for sitting around on deck.

‘Gemma.’ Alessandro Marchant beamed gushingly. ‘Great to see you. Like the refurb? My new designer helped me.’

Gemma was relieved to see there were crew everywhere. At least he wouldn’t be able to try it on, as he had done when her husband Casper and she had been staying with him in Corsica.

The ‘refurb’ had obviously cost a fortune, and had clearly been done by someone who’d had a taste bypass. They’d had one idea in their mind and stuck with it. Gold.

‘My chef is cooking lobster for lunch.’

My this, my that … He hadn’t changed.

Gemma was disgusted by her husband’s craven submission to Alessandro Marchant and, even worse, the creepy Pallesson. So dark and vile was Pallesson that no one even applied a first name to him. And when he said jump, Casper leapt.

After they first got married, when she’d challenged Casper about it, he got very agitated and ranted that he would have no hedge fund, and she would be living in a council house, if it wasn’t for Pallesson and Marchant. Now the whole subject had become off limits.

When she drank too much, she invariably brought the subject up. And threw in the likelihood that any money Casper was handling for them would almost certainly be bent. If he’d had too much – which increasingly seemed to be the case – he became abusive. Their marriage was falling apart. It was hardly surprising that she needed Max.

‘Champagne?’ Marchant asked expansively.

‘Coffee.’ It was a statement, not a question. She had to toe the line with Alessandro, but only up to a point.

‘So what else brings you down here, Gemma?’ Alessandro asked as he lay back on a sofa that had been made all but uninhabitable by a plague of cushions. He knew there would be a cover for her bringing him the memory stick.

‘I’m here with a girlfriend. We’re looking at an interior design job. It’s going to be amazing.’ At least, that was what she’d told Casper.

‘You should use my girl,’ Alessandro interrupted. ‘She did all this.’

‘Yes,’ Gemma replied, with the minimal amount of appreciation. ‘Probably not quite what we’re looking for though.’

‘You must both come and have dinner tonight.’

Gemma’s stomach tightened. Monaco was too small for her layers of deceit.

‘We can’t, sadly. Hooked up with our client, I’m afraid. Obviously not allowed to say who. Oh, before I forget, your memory stick. Casper said he’d kill me if I lost it.’

2

Monaco

Max thanked the sweet girl who had tried every gambit in the book to sell him the Vacheron Constantin and stepped gingerly back out on to the pavement. The two guys digging up the road stopped and looked at him. He told himself not to be paranoid and walked another fifty metres down the street. He could feel the cold flushing his cheeks.

He was glad the Restaurant Rampoldi was right there. The Sass Café would have been his choice, but it was closed at this time of year. And Rampoldi was very cosy. There were only a couple of other diners inside, so he had no problem getting the table right at the back of the restaurant. The owner, who looked like he’d had an eventful life, showed him over to it.

Max liked the simplicity of the place. The starched white tablecloths; the black-and-white cartoon prints of fat, jolly waiters. The unashamed stuffiness.

He quickly flicked to the red wines when the sommelier brought the wine list. And he was impressed. They had two of his favourites.

The 1997 Solaia made by the Antinori family was, in Max’s opinion, the finest wine to come out of Tuscany for a long time. He was amazed they had it. The production had been small and it was hard to find outside Italy. At eight hundred euros a bottle it was expensive, but rightly so. Yet how could he ignore the Château Lafite Rothschild 1990? Such an understated wine. He loved the clever combination of delicate and yet powerful and intense flavours. They also had the 1982 and 1986 vintages, but they were, as far as Max was concerned, for ignorant tourists. Any idiot could buy the most expensive wine on the list. So he went with the Solaia.

Under normal circumstances, such wine would have caused ructions had it appeared on his expenses. But he’d been told to look after his guest, so look after him he would.

Max knew Jacques Bardin would be getting on a bit, so when an old boy, probably in his seventies, with thin eyes above a beaky nose, wire-framed glasses and a long, scruffy tweed coat walked in, he was sure it was his man.

Jacques hesitated a moment to talk to the jovial maître d’ by the door. He declined the offer to take his coat, then headed over towards the table. He was much frailer than Max had imagined.

‘Monsieur Bardin?’ Max smiled formally as he stood up to greet his guest. Jacques simply bowed his head in acknowledgement and sat down.

‘A little red?’ Max asked, trying to put his guest at ease.

‘Thank you,’ Jacques said, again nodding his head. He took a sip as soon as the waiter had poured, and smiled. The waiter showed him the bottle, but he didn’t comment on the wine or the year, which surprised Max.

‘Très bon,’ was all he said.

There was a slight silence, which Max filled awkwardly.

‘Hope it wasn’t too much bother to get here?’

Jacques pursed his lips. He never told anyone where he lived. ‘It was no trouble.’ He helped himself to some bread. Clearly, this put an end to the subject.

Max took the hint. Jacques was not a conversationalist – or, if he were, not with strangers.

‘Tryon is sorry he couldn’t join us. He was most intrigued by your communiqué.’

Jacques took another sip of his wine and contemplated the young Englishman in front of him.

‘Tell me a little of this Tryon, please?’

Max now occupied himself with his wine glass to buy himself some time. ‘Well, obviously, I can’t say too much. But he is my immediate boss. Though he’s based in London, he keeps an eye on what’s going on around the world. He is the overview, let’s say. Out of interest, how did you come to contact him?’

Jacques thought about this question for a moment, as if it were a trap, and was silent. Max didn’t fill in the silence. He wanted to draw the old man out. Eventually, Jacques answered.

‘I have a friend in French Intelligence – through my work. When this problem got out of hand, he gave me Tryon’s number.’

‘And that is why I am here. To sort out this problem. But I need you to explain it all to me.’

The prospect clearly did not appeal to Jacques. He sipped his wine, tore off a piece of bread and then drank some more wine.

‘I was a forger,’ he finally volunteered.

‘Unusual profession,’ Max interjected.

‘I was brought up to it. It was all I knew. When I was a child, I swept the floor of a great man’s studio. He was a genius. And he took me under his wing. Han Van Meegeren. You have heard of him?’ Max nodded.

‘Everyone said he hated people. And passed on nothing. But he taught me everything.’

‘How many paintings have you forged?’

‘Hundreds,’ Jacques answered matter-of-factly.

‘So how does that work? How do you pass them off ?’

Again Jacques paused and thought about his answer.

‘Can you help us?’

‘Yes. But only if you tell us everything. We’re not the police. We don’t care how many paintings you have forged.’

Jacques seemed to accept this.

‘The forger has to deceive the so-called experts who pretend to know everything. I think Van Meegeren was more interested in fooling them than making money. I just did it because I was fortunate to be chosen by him. You pick an artist and create a work that he might have painted. So Van Meegeren created an entire period of Vermeers and managed to fool the idiots that they had discovered a whole lost period. During the war he fooled Göring into thinking that he was buying great masterpieces. And then the idiots threw him into prison for collaborating with the Nazis.’

Max kept nodding. He knew about Van Meegeren. It was Jacques he wanted to know about.

‘So how did you pass off your forgeries?’

‘By creating provenance. It is one thing to create a new painting. It is another to place it. So I would forge invoices, letters, magazine articles, pages from auction catalogues – anything that would place the painting in the past. You would be surprised by some of the people who have helped me. If you own a large château, and you can’t afford to put a new roof on it, what could be easier? Go to some Parisian expert and tell him you’ve discovered a great work in your loft. Just pretend it must have been in the family for generations and no one realized.’

The memory seemed to cheer Jacques up. A philosophical smile spread across his face and he took another sip of wine.

‘How come you got into copying paintings for Pallesson? It doesn’t sound like you needed the money.’

The smile left Jacques’s face as quickly as it had appeared.

‘There is no art to copying paintings. No creativity. Any idiot can do it.’

‘Why do it then?’

‘Pallesson. He’s a clever bastard. He caught me.’

‘How?’

‘He bought a Jan van Goyen that I created. Usual subjects – boats, windmills … The painting was perfect. But I made a mistake with the provenance. I forged a magazine article that referred to the picture, amongst others. Only for some reason the magazine wasn’t published the month I chose. Pallesson checked it out, which was bad luck, and then traced the picture back to me.’

‘What did he do about it?’

‘He said I had to copy some paintings for him. All Dutch masters.’

‘Which you did?’

‘I had no choice. He said bad things would happen to my family if I didn’t.’

Max nodded. That was Pallesson all over. First you find a way of compromising someone. Then you blackmail them.

Max smiled. ‘As I’m sure Tryon has told you, art forgery or copying are not really our business. So why have you come to us? And why now? Why not before?’

Jacques tore another piece from the roll in front of him. He ate it slowly, considering what to say next. While he was thinking, the maître d’ sidled up to their table and asked if they were ready to order. Jacques had the menu open in front of him. Max was pretty sure he hadn’t looked at it; or the label on the wine bottle, for that matter. Which was strange for a Frenchman.

Jacques asked the maître d’ about the specials and went for the carré d’agneau. Max chose the eggs florentine followed by oysters. He had no truck with the bollocks that oysters didn’t go with Solaia. While the maître d’ refilled their glasses, Max casually took the Vacheron Constantin brochure out of his top pocket and pushed it across the table.

‘These are beautiful, don’t you think?’

A look of concern spread across Jacques’s face. He didn’t reply.

Max had figured out that Jacques’s near vision had deteriorated.

‘Jacques, why don’t you tell me what the problem is, exactly?’ Max asked bluntly.

The confidence and control that Jacques had up until this point been trying to exude rapidly evaporated. He suddenly looked vulnerable. He drank some wine and paused. Max waited.

‘It’s my daughter, Sophie,’ he said at last. ‘She is a very talented artist. And recognized, unlike me. She has a great future. She has work hanging in Paris, London, Milan, Amsterdam …’

‘So what does she have to do with Pallesson?’

‘I should have told Pallesson that my sight was gone. Finished. But I was too frightened of the consequences. Sophie helped me. I didn’t want her to be involved, but she saw that I was struggling and how distressed I was. And then he tricked me. He worked out that she had helped me. Now he is blackmailing both of us. He says he will finish her career. That is why I come to you now. Can you protect her?’

Jacques’s shoulders were stooped as he stared at the tablecloth. Max felt sick for him. His mind cast back to Pallesson trying to compromise him at Eton. And blowing Corbett’s head off. He had to destroy him before his evil spread any further.

Max stretched his hand across the table and placed it on the old man’s wrist. But compassion wasn’t the foremost emotion churning in Max’s stomach.

‘Jacques, when did you send him the copy?’

‘A week ago,’ the old man replied. Which meant that Pallesson could make the switch any time.

‘You’ve come to the right people,’ Max said. ‘We’ll trap him. We’ll finish him.’

He was going to nail the bastard, if they weren’t already too late.

‘So how long will it take Sophie to make a second copy of The Peasants in Winter? We’re against the clock,’ Max asked.

The waiter had cleared the table and served them with coffee. Now they were talking specifics, Jacques seemed much happier.

‘Five days. It shouldn’t take her longer than that. She has the work in her head. After all, it was only a few weeks ago that she made the first copy. It’s ironic, really.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, Pieter Brueghel the Younger was a great painter. Certainly better than his brother, Jan, in my opinion. But he did sometimes copy the work of his father. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the case with The Peasants in Winter. He wasn’t quite as subtle as Pieter the Elder, which makes Sophie’s work a little easier. But it didn’t stop him being a great artist. And it didn’t stop him getting the recognition he deserved.’

Max picked up the undertone and switched the conversation back to Bruegel the Elder, who happened to be one of the few artists Max knew anything about.

‘Was their father one of the greats?’

‘Certainly.’ Jacques nodded, taking another sip of his wine. ‘He painted some great art. The Massacre of the Innocents is my favourite. Such movement, such detail. His style at its best, if you ask me. He could paint timeless landscapes, but at the same time he filled them with real people going about their lives.’ Max could feel Jacques coming alive. Energy was suddenly emanating from the tired old man.

‘What about The Bird Trap?’

Jacques hesitated and pursed his lips.

‘I’m impressed. You know your art?’

Max smiled bashfully and shook his head. ‘Only a little, I’m afraid. And The Bird Trap is pretty much all I know about Bruegel the Elder.’

‘Well, that is a good start. The winter landscape, c’est magnifique. The shades of colour are truly incredible. The figures on the ice are exquisite. The painting is so alive. But …’ Jacques said, pointing his finger at Max, ‘Bruegel’s students made any number of copies of The Bird Trap. They were commercial. And yet history has not condemned him,’ he said indignantly.

Max looked at the old man. He’d got himself into a mess. Just as Max’s father had, and ultimately it had finished him off. Irrespective of what Jacques had been up to, Max was coming to his rescue.

‘The canvas you asked for,’ Max said, pulling his thoughts back to the present while he lifted a painting from the leather holder under the table.

‘Is it the right age?’

‘Apparently. No idea who the artist is, but it’s 1600s. Don’t suppose he’d have been too happy if he’d known when he painted it that you were going to strip his paint off one day.’

Jacques shrugged his shoulders and turned it over to look at the back of the canvas. He seemed satisfied.

‘And the pigments?’

‘Exactly as you requested.’

Max met Gemma in the American Bar at the Hôtel de Paris. Gemma had arrived back first and taken the small table in the corner looking out on to Casino Square.

‘Shall we go to the casino this evening?’ Max asked as he drew up a chair. He was feeling elated. Revenge was going to be sweet.

‘And gamble?’

‘Well, you could. Maybe a little blackjack? Stick on twelve if the dealer has sixteen or less.’

‘You and your risk-assessing brain, Max. Always calculating the odds.’ In fact, she was working out what chance there was of running into Marchant with him.

‘Disappointing, this bar, don’t you think? Very plain. No imagination. No feel to it. How was your meeting? Productive?’

‘Yes. I think so. Drink?’

‘Bit early for me. I’ll have a cup of tea, please.’

Max caught the eye of a waiter who was busily doing nothing.

‘Monsieur, vous avez du Earl Grey? Et je voudrai également un grand whisky s’il vous plaît, Du Grouse, et une petite bouteille d’eau gazeuse.’

‘You’re quite sexy when you speak French,’ Gemma said from behind her newspaper.

‘I’d be even sexier if I could write it properly.’

This was a sore point for Max, Gemma knew, but she didn’t feel like hearing yet again how Pallesson had trashed him going to university. She put her hand on his thigh and rubbed it.

‘Tell me about your meeting.’

‘Well, anything I tell you would have to be erased from your mind. As for my mind, it’s currently contemplating something else,’ he whispered, reciprocating rather more daringly with his own hand.

‘Are you sure you had lunch with an old man? You seem to be—’

‘How was your massage?’ he interrupted.

‘Intimate. Very intimate. Anyway, I thought we were going to explore?’

But Max was having none of it.

‘We could go upstairs and explore,’ he said, downing his Scotch.

Gemma again made the mistake of walking out of the bathroom without tying her dressing gown. She may have got away with it that morning, but not now.

Max pushed aside her long hair and kissed the back of her neck. He felt a familiar response as her body shivered. Though he’d learnt most of his foreplay tips from the sex column in GQ magazine, over the years Gemma had taught him how to turn her on. Today, though, Max was in a rush. He was bursting.

As he pulled her closer to him, she could feel him rubbing against her La Perla-clad bottom.

Max had bought her the underwear a week before, after they’d shared a few glasses of champagne at the Harrods caviar bar. He’d tried not to show his shock when the shop assistant asked him for the best part of three hundred pounds in return for the small swatch of black lace. Now, as he pulled off her dressing gown, he could see it was money well spent.

‘Someone’s come back horny,’ Gemma whispered. ‘Who did you meet, again?’

His response was muffled as he carried on kissing and nibbling at her neck. His left hand reached round and unclipped her bra. She stopped asking questions and knelt on the bed in front of him.

Max just wanted to lose himself in an old-fashioned quickie.

‘My God. Something’s woken you up.’ Gemma was totally in his grip. Max was squeezing her bum as hard as he could. He was feeling uncontrollably selfish.

‘That wasn’t very gentlemanly,’ Gemma teased as Max collapsed on the bed next to her. ‘You don’t deserve it, but there’s a present for you under your pillow,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘Now that you’ve finished.’

He ran his hand underneath the crisp linen pillowcase and felt a small box. He flipped it open and found himself looking at the Vacheron Constantin watch. He was now wide awake.

‘Gemma! How did you know? This is …’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Like it?’ He kissed her on the nose. ‘I love it. But how …?’

‘Oh, a little bird told me. Rather a sexy little bird, actually. If you hadn’t flirted so much with her, she might not have remembered.’

‘You shouldn’t have. You spoil me.’

Gemma stroked Max’s arm and put her head on his shoulder, looking away from him.

‘I wish you had swept me up and given me security, Max,’ Gemma said, surprising Max with such sudden intensity.

Having been given such an expensive gift, Max felt guilty as his brain rapidly calculated what giving Gemma security would cost. And then wondered if Casper would find the watch on Gemma’s credit-card bill. Probably not. It would get lost amongst everything else.

‘You wish I were Casper?’

‘No, of course not. But you do understand why I married him, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do,’ Max said as he looked at the watch.

‘You know I love Casper. In a way. We should probably have had children. That was my fault. I wasn’t sure at the time and it’s probably too late now. In more ways than one. But I can’t bear the thought of having nothing again, Max. Does that make me a bitch? Being here with you?’

‘No. Of course it doesn’t. If you don’t hurt Casper, how could it?’

Gemma didn’t really register his answer. Her mind was doing what it always did when the present was threatened by the past: desperately trying to rationalize the status quo.

‘Max, you wouldn’t marry me even if I wanted you to. If I left Casper. Would you?’

‘I’m not the marrying type, Gemma. The stay-at-home reliable husband …’

‘Not all women are like your mother,’ Gemma interrupted. ‘You don’t have to run away from all of us.’

Gemma had no idea how cruel her remark was. Max had never told her how or why his father died. So he couldn’t be angry with her now. He stood up from the bed and poured himself a large glass of Scotch.

‘Enough of this,’ he said lightly. ‘I want to take you out wearing my beautiful watch. At least if I run away from you tonight, I’ll be able to time myself.’

3

Amsterdam, six months earlier

Paul Wielart was a man of strict routine. Six days a week he arrived at his offices near the flower market at seven o’clock sharp. The bells of the local clock tower could have been timed to him turning the key in the door.

To the unknowing eye, his offices reflected the image of a dour accountant. It was well ordered, old fashioned and immaculately clean. You could straighten your tie in the reflection of the brass plate outside the front door. The black-and-white-squared marble floor gleamed in the hallway; as did the internal glass windows, which gave the offices a semi-open-plan feel.

Wielart’s private office, however, was a lair shut away behind a heavy oak door. With the exception of his long-serving battleaxe of an assistant, none of the staff ever set foot in there. And not many of the firm’s clients were permitted to grace the stiff brown leather chairs or the nineteenth-century velvet-upholstered chaise longue.

Wielart was a small, unimposing man. He wore a suit and tie every day of his life and a black homburg whenever he set foot outdoors. In his early twenties, he had married a cousin, who was glad to have a prosperous husband and knew her place. They had one daughter, Josebe, who’d never done anything wrong, but hadn’t done much right either.

Having inherited the company from his father, together with a steady stream of respectable but mundane clients, Wielart quickly learnt that there were people who would pay extremely good money to have their accounts ‘organized’ and certified by a respectable accountancy firm.

Wielart bought his clients businesses on whose balance sheets cash could appear. Hotels, clubs and restaurants were initially his stock in trade. And then Wielart was introduced to Jorgan Stam.

Stam dealt in pretty well anything that was illegal. He’d started by trafficking prostitutes from Eastern Europe and then got into ‘hard’ drugs. The casino that he now owned – the Dice Club – had a rigged roulette table and only catered for losers. Any half-serious player was thrown out. Whatever Stam touched threw off cash.

It hadn’t taken Stam long to persuade Wielart that it would be in both their interests to team up. Wielart would keep the façade of his accountancy business going but devote his skill and energy to legitimizing Stam’s money trail. A fifty-fifty partnership, which Stam assumed would bind them inextricably together.

Wielart added a whole layer of supply companies to their operation. One of them, a vegetable retail business, turned over in excess of a million euros per annum. And yet it never so much as handled a sprig of broccoli.

The hotels and restaurants that bought these fictitious vegetables marked them up three hundred per cent, as the taxman expected, and sold them on to their customers – the vast majority of whom happened to be cash buyers.

The profits that all of these businesses made appeared to be legitimate. As did the money the vegetable farms made at the end of the chain. And their profits were constantly expanding.

There was some tax to be paid, but the bulk of the proceeds Wielart converted into more land or fresh businesses before the taxman got his hands on any liquid profits. And all the while he maintained the image of the dour accountant.

Wielart was the epitome of the respectable husband, though he cared little about his wife or daughter. He spent as little time at home as possible, and the rest of his hours behind his desk. His wife was plain, dull, excelled at nothing and appealed to few. Josebe took after her.

However, Francisca Deetman – Josebe’s only visible friend – was everything that Wielart’s daughter wasn’t. A brilliant linguist, the best violinist in the school, as well as their most athletic hockey player, Francisca was traffic-stoppingly beautiful and rode like an angel on horseback. Her long blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders and her deep blue eyes paralysed men in the rare moments when she overcame her natural shyness and looked them in the eye.

Wielart wasn’t interested in women, per se. But the sixteen-year-old Francisca stirred something in him. And he started to make sure he was at home when Francisca was coming over.

She didn’t say much to him, but whenever he asked her about her father’s shipping company, she not only knew exactly what was going on, but could articulate it with the precision of a financial journalist. As she got to know him, she began to look him in the eye when she spoke to him. It stirred a feeling deep inside him that he knew was wrong, though he soon became a slave to it.

Francisca came on Wielart family holidays over the next two years. She played and read and sang with Josebe. In fact, they were utterly inseparable.

By the time Francisca was eighteen, Wielart was totally infatuated with her. He couldn’t be in the same room as her without darting a glance at her from behind his thick, round glasses whenever he thought no one would notice. She now had the body of a woman, not a girl, and he longed to see it, to touch it, to smell it. Occasionally, feigning innocence, he would walk into Josebe’s room at an inopportune moment in the hope of catching a glance of Francisca in a state of semi-undress. But he never had any success.

Wielart’s long-held aversion to swimming – his father had fervently believed that professionals must never risk being seen by their clients in anything other than a suit and tie – had robbed him of any chance to see Francisca in a bathing costume. All he could do was lust after her with growing desperation, while concealing his obsession with mounting self-loathing.

Pallesson made the short journey from The Hague to Amsterdam by train. Having deliberately left an hour’s slack in his schedule, he headed southeast across the Centraal Station concourse rather than taking a more direct route to his assignation through the Magna Plaza.

As he walked past the magnificent spires of St Nicolaaskerk, Pallesson didn’t have a religious thought in his mind. Far from it. In fact, the anticipation of the little treat he was about to give himself was making his armpits wet. He could feel the beads of sweat dripping down his ribcage.

A cold smile creased his face as he turned down the Oudezijds Achterburgwal. He looked approvingly at the swans gliding with menace along the canal – patrolling territory that stretched deep into the red-light district.

Pallesson hesitated as he walked past the first row of girls displaying themselves in the window, beckoning to him with their fingers. They beckoned to everyone. They had to. The only way they made any money was if they could earn more than the cost of the window they hired by the hour.

The top end of the red-light district offered the cheapest girls. They catered for a diverse range of tastes. Pallesson loved the illusion the windows gave that they were locked in cells. Animals in cages.

Like most bullies, he wasn’t naturally brave. So it took him a few metres to slow his walk until he finally stopped by the window of a small brunette desperately trying to entice him. He laughed at her. She took no notice and kept beckoning to him. And he kept laughing. He was safe. What was she going to do about it?

After a few seconds, he moved further down the street, buoyed up by his entertainment. He felt empowerment coursing through his veins. His next target was an Asian girl. She was pretty, smiley and had a great body. Pallesson stood in front of her window with his arms crossed. A dark frown crossed his face, as if something was concerning him. He fixed the girl with his cold, grey eyes, and shook his head. The girl kept smiling and opened her door ajar to encourage him.

‘Fifty euros for good time,’ she said. ‘Fifty euros.’

He gestured with his hand to dismiss her – though it wasn’t as if she was going anywhere – and moved on.

A hundred metres further along the pavement Pallesson turned down a narrow side street. An observant tourist would have noticed that all of the windows in the alley either had a whip hanging inside the window, or a small card proclaiming S&M. Pallesson checked his watch. He had forty-five minutes.

The curtains of the first two windows were shut. He wasn’t bothered. He’d used them both over the last few months. He wanted to try the last girl on the left. He’d noticed her before. She was large, strong-looking and, with any luck, German.

He was nearly shaking with excitement as he approached her window. The curtain was open. She was sitting on a high stool, talking to someone on her mobile phone. He caught her eye, expectantly. Unlike the other girls, she didn’t rush to open her door or beckon to him. She just carried on with her conversation and made him stand in the narrow alley like a prick. He felt demeaned. He was now desperate to have her.

She knew what she was doing. This little jerk wasn’t going anywhere. And she could see by the way he was dressed that she could up her charges. In her own time she opened the door and gestured with her head for him to enter. He stepped into her narrow window without saying a word. She drew the curtains behind him.

He left half an hour later, but without the shifty look that most of the punters had when they stepped quickly back on to the street and walked one way or the other, trying to blend into the general crowd. He liked being in control, not skulking about.

He checked his watch again. He had ten minutes to get to the jetty in the Oude Turfmarkt. He walked briskly along the canal past the magnificent houses that border the red-light district, making a mental note of the one he would like to live in. He then cut through the university campus, which brought him out opposite the Hotel de l’Europe. As he walked down the street he could hear the clock tower across the canal by the flower market chiming noon. He was bang on time. As he always was.

The old merchant’s boat waiting to pick him up was tied to the jetty used by the tourist boats.

‘Good morning,’ he said to one of the thickset lumps of muscle standing on the jetty.

The man barely registered his presence.

‘Let’s go,’ Pallesson said, unfazed.

The small boat had one cabin with a long narrow table and bench seats either side. One of the thugs shut the double doors behind him without so much as a word. He was now trapped in his own glass-sided cell, looking out on to the canal as the boat pulled away from the jetty.

Wevers van Ossen was the proprietor of the old merchant’s boat. He was also a vicious psychopath. And leader of the Kalverstraat gang, which was notorious for its brutality. For over a decade he’d been running a ruthless protection racket in Amsterdam.

His authority, however, was now being challenged by Eastern European gangs who were prepared to stand their ground. And one Dutchman – Jorgan Stam. The level of violence employed by Stam’s men was escalating fast. The balance of power was being tested.

So van Ossen had made a strategic decision. He was diversifying into drugs. It was simple for him. There were any number of desperate ‘mules’ prepared to take the risk of bringing heroin to Amsterdam by boat or land. All he had to do was warehouse and redistribute it. At no risk, given his position in Amsterdam. He’d ‘protected’ the docks for years. And Pallesson was the conduit and fixer for his first deal into England.

The two minders on van Ossen’s boat could have been twins, with their shaven heads and wide noses. Both were reckless killers. They’d left behind their birth names when they walked out the back door of the garrison at Doorn, Utrecht, and assumed the new identities that van Ossen had created for them: Fransen and Piek.

As members of the Dutch Maritime Special Operations Forces (MARSOF), they had come through the most brutal of training regimes in every extreme terrain possible; and thrived on it.

During their tour of duty at Camp Smitty near As Samawah in Southern Iraq, they had fought in conjunction with AH-64 attack helicopters, clearing out subversives. They had put their lives on the line for the Coalition forces and their British commander. And they had bailed out wounded British troops, pinned down by sniper fire. Their heroics had gone well beyond the call of duty, and because of this the British had covered up for them.

Fransen and Piek had gone off-piste while on patrol in a village called al-Khidr. They had told their Dutch compatriots to turn a blind eye and cover their backs while they cleared up a small matter.

The small matter was a meeting of six civilians in a house on the edge of the village. Six civilians who, their informants had told them, were collaborating with those still loyal to the Republican Guard.

Fransen and Piek wanted to send a message to the other villagers. A message that reminded them they should work with the Coalition forces, not the insurgents, if they valued their lives.

The six men, who were all unarmed, didn’t have time to react. They were shot dead with the Glock 17 sidearms that the Dutchmen were carrying. But that in itself would not have been a strong enough deterrent to the other villagers, desensitized as they were by the ravages of war. So Fransen and Piek cut off their victims’ heads and lined them up outside the house.

There was no concrete evidence that the two Dutchmen were the perpetrators of this crime. The British commander had two options: either to bust them and put them through the military’s disciplinary system, or to lose them fast. He chose the latter option. Within twenty-four hours the pair of them had been secreted back to Doorn garrison. It was their good fortune that the al-Khidr atrocity would be wiped from the record. As indeed would they.

Doorn’s sergeant major had long been van Ossen’s recruitment officer. The arrangement suited the military as much as it did van Ossen. He took embarrassing situations off their hands, and in return got the hardest recruits on the block. Van Ossen would be a hard man to usurp as long as this was the case. A fact that was not wasted on Pallesson.

Pallesson watched a large tourist boat passing them in the opposite direction. It was packed full of stereotypical sightseers. Some of them gawped at him as they glided past. He ignored them.

They passed the big, ugly Stadhuis-Muziektheater, built on the old Jewish quarter, then turned left by the Hermitage museum. Pallesson had no idea where they were going. Finally, they doubled back into a smaller canal and pulled over by some houseboats.

Van Ossen stepped aboard one of them, aided by another sour-looking bodyguard, and climbed down into the glass-sided cabin.

‘Good to see you again, Mr Pallesson. I hope you don’t mind a little ride on the canal. Do you like my boat? It was originally owned by a merchant, who used it to entertain his clients. Sadly, we had a little disagreement and he forfeited the boat. We don’t have time for entertainment right now. Maybe one day.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘So, are you still in? You have the painting for me?’ van Ossen asked bluntly.

‘Everything is in order, I can assure you.’ Pallesson was ruffled, but he kept his voice even. ‘I’ll have the painting next week. As agreed.’

‘I want to bring the deal forward. End of this week.’

Pallesson had dealt with van Ossen’s kind before. They liked to push people around. Partly to show they could, but also to protect themselves by changing locations, times. The only option was to stand up to them.

‘That isn’t possible,’ Pallesson said calmly. ‘Barry Nuttall won’t have the money by then. And I personally guaranteed that The Peasants in Winter would be our bond. It can’t be extracted until next week – I can’t hand it over until then – that was our agreement.’

‘So how do I know you’re good for the deal?’

Van Ossen was irritated. And reluctant to sit on the drugs a day longer than he had to.

‘Our deal is agreed. Barry Nuttall will bring over two million euros in used notes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ve done five deals as his partner – Russia and Turkey – never a problem. He’s a pro.’

Van Ossen was renowned for his explosive temper. He was not someone you wanted to cross, a fact that many unfortunate associates had reflected upon as they were sinking to the bottom of a pitch-black canal. In spite of the cashmere overcoat and dark-blue suit, it was obvious which side of the tracks van Ossen came from.

‘He better be,’ van Ossen said with as much malice as he could muster.

Most people would have been unnerved by an irritated van Ossen. Not Pallesson. Faced with danger and threat, he had learnt to draw strength from the dark forces that he believed watched over him.

So a drug-running Dutchman didn’t bother him. He was quickly back on the front foot.

‘You know who I’ve dealt with in the past. Never a problem. And I think you’ll find I’ll be useful across several areas of your supply chain. Especially with the UK borders tightening up,’ Pallesson said, holding his composure. ‘We’ll be ready next week. And then the beautiful Brueghel will be yours to treasure for a few days.’

The Hague

Max breezed straight off the plane from Nice and strolled into the British Embassy in The Hague as if he owned the place. It was a surprisingly drab set-up. Three months earlier, when he’d first arrived from Moscow, Max had been expecting something much grander.

The semi-open-plan layout emphasized the seniority of some of its occupants. The ambassador had a large glass-fronted office with a secluded back room. Anyone else who merited private space got their own square glass box, which offered a degree of seclusion. Unfortunately, when Max had arrived, no ‘executive’ office had been available. So he’d had to muck in with the foot soldiers and take a desk in the open-plan area. This suited Max, as it gave him the chance to interact with the staff. It also secretly pleased Pallesson, underlining the chasm of importance that he believed had opened up between the two of them.

Max always paused at the front desk to talk to Arthur, who’d worked at the embassy for over twenty years. Max knew Arthur liked to have a chat. It broke up the routine of sorting the mail and making sure the office ran smoothly. He was a fanatical Queens Park Rangers fan, which gave Max the opportunity to take the piss out of him most weeks during the football season.

‘See the game on Saturday? You lot were terrible.’ Max had never watched so much as one kick of a QPR game, but Arthur seemed oblivious to the fact.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Arthur would always reply, shaking his head.

Arthur had a son he was very proud of. Young Arthur was currently on manoeuvres in Germany. Max never forgot to ask after him.

Max had a very distinct view on office life. It wasn’t about the number of hours that you spent rubbing your brow and sending emails. It was about solving whatever was put in front of you as efficiently as possible – and then having a bit of fun.

The open-plan office afforded Max the perfect opportunity to work on Pallesson’s attitude towards him. It suited Max perfectly that Pallesson should think of him as ineffective and a bit of a joke. And there was no better way to act the fool than playing office cricket.

Max had enlisted the aid of an unlikely recruit to perpetuate this sham. His immediate boss, Graham Smith, had played cricket for Chelmsford in his youth. Smith liked to be different. He liked to feel he was ‘on it’ and outside the box; young for his age, trendy and a bit of a rebel against the normal order. So he could be persuaded to bowl at Max as long as he was confident that the ambassador was nowhere near the building. He got used to Max’s challenges arriving via email.

From: Max Ward

To: Graham Smith

Subject: Centenary Test, Lords 1980

DK Lillee bowling to DI Gower. Desperate run chase for England, but Gower still up for having a go at Lillee, who is throwing everything at it.

Play resumes at 5 p.m. sharp.

Smith knew Max would be standing at the end of the passage, bat in hand, at precisely five o’clock. He had to knock over the waste-paper basket behind Max with his tennis ball, or get tonked around the office.

His first ball that afternoon was short and Max pulled it to square leg. The tennis ball flew through Pallesson’s open door and crashed into some photographs on his windowsill. It startled the hell out of him.

‘Did that carry?’ Max asked Pallesson as he retrieved the ball.

Pallesson could barely mask his contempt.

‘For God’s sake, can’t you grow up?’ Pallesson spat. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You think everything’s a bloody game. You’re not the school hero any more, Ward. Maybe you should think about that. Maybe you should think about why you’re going bloody nowhere.’

‘So I can put that down as a six then?’ Max replied nonchalantly as he wandered back to his crease. He resisted the temptation to throw a ‘It’s not going to kill anyone, you know’ line, at the murdering little creep. If he was going to play Pallesson, he had to be smarter and more disciplined than his quarry. And he had to play to win.

The thought of Pallesson relentlessly climbing the diplomatic ladder terrified Max. The higher he got, the more disastrous the consequences would be. Max knew that Pallesson’s loyalties lay with himself. He would betray his country in a heartbeat. He had to be stopped.

Gower’s innings came to an abrupt end when the ambassador made an unscheduled entrance. Smith managed to lose the tennis ball and look industrious, but Max was still tapping down the carpet with his bat when they came face to face.

‘Oh, you’re in today, are you?’ the ambassador asked. He had an air of superiority about him and enjoyed being a hard arse. Most of the staff were intimidated by him, but Max thought he was a pompous, pen-pushing prick.

‘Ah, Ambassador. Good to see you.’ Max smiled.

The ambassador didn’t smile back. He was on the verge of asking Max why he was holding a cricket bat, but he knew he’d be on the receiving end of something flippant.

‘How’s Mrs Ambassador? All well? You must both come to dinner one night,’ Max suggested. He didn’t get a reply.

When Max got back to his desk, a harassed-looking Data Dave was waiting for him holding a USB key. Everyone called him Data Dave; indeed Human Resources were probably the only ones who knew his surname.

‘We need this translated yesterday. It’s the last twenty minutes of an arms deal. Sadly, that’s all the tech boys could recover. There’s Belgian, Dutch and Afrikaans in there. Should be a doddle for you, Ward.’

Max shook his head with mock resignation.

‘And if you can work out where the arms are coming from, then that would be great too. There’s nothing flashing on any of their standard routes.’

Max took the key and waved goodbye to the next two hours of his life.

Max was about to head off for the evening when a text message arrived on his phone. He wasn’t going to look at it right away, but something told him it might be in his interest.

U fancy a drink tonight? it said anonymously. That’s a bit strange, Max thought. But he was intrigued.

Well, give me a clue, he replied.

Arthur gave me your number. I’m sucking my pen, was the instant reply.

Max smiled as he looked up from his phone and glanced around the office. In the far corner, a very pretty, if slightly overweight, brunette was sucking her pen.

Well? she texted as Max hesitated.

Where did you have in mind? Max replied, even though he wasn’t sure this was a particularly good idea.

Anywhere with a cold bottle of champagne.

Max and Louise ended up drinking two bottles of champagne in the bar of the Hotel de l’Europe. There had been a frisson of expectancy about their conversation.

Finally, Louise said, ‘Shall we go now?’

‘Where did you have in mind?’ Max replied noncommittally.

‘Your bed, of course,’ Louise said, dropping her hand on to Max’s thigh.

Max drained his champagne glass to buy time.

‘Louise, that would be very nice, but I’m very unreliable. Here today, gone tomorrow. Very unreliable.’

Louise gave him a broad smile. ‘Don’t panic, Max. I don’t want to go out with you. I have a perfectly nice boyfriend in England, as a matter of fact. So don’t take this personally. Ever heard of a one-night stand?’

Max suddenly admired Louise. Direct, uncomplicated and thoroughly honest. And no games. He’d been up front with her, and she with him. Perfect.

‘Louise,’ Max said seriously, looking into her eyes, ‘why aren’t there more women like you?’

By happy coincidence, Louise had the next day off. Max made her a cup of tea, but she showed no interest in leaping out of bed.

‘I have to get to the airport. London today. What’s your plan?’

‘My plan is to lie in your bed until I can think of something else I’d rather be doing. Why don’t you get back in for ten minutes?’ she suggested, pulling at his arm.

‘Can’t think of anything nicer, but I’ll get shot if I’m late. So to speak.’

‘Max,’ Louise said, ‘can we do that again?’

Max kissed her on the bridge of her nose.

‘Well, you’d better check with your boyfriend first, don’t you think?’ he suggested, with an air-kiss on his way out the door.

‘You’re good,’ she shouted after him, and rolled over to go back to sleep.

4

London

Max was used to curious looks when he was stuck in slow traffic. Most people had never seen a DMC-12 before.

John DeLorean had manufactured the light sports cars in Northern Ireland in the early eighties. The gull-wing doors and stainless-steel panels of the DMC-12, combined with a chassis designed by Colin Chapman at Lotus made the car totally unique. And as the company had gone bust fairly quickly, not many of the cars were now driving around London.

One of the punters who used to bet with Max’s dad had given him the keys when he couldn’t settle his account. Which was a slightly double-edged sword. On the one hand, the car was worth a few bob. On the other, Houston, Texas, was the only place you could get spare parts for it after an American company bought up the wreckage of the company. But the car had memories for Max and he wouldn’t drive anything else until the day the spare parts stopped arriving.

As he sat in the West London gridlock, Max’s mind drifted back to his first meeting with Tryon in a dimly lit vodka bar under the Leninsky Prospekt in Moscow. Tryon, the elusive overlord who had no title, but seemingly no superiors either.

After Max had witnessed Corbett’s execution, he’d thought long and hard about his course of action. In the end he’d gambled on Tryon being the right superior to inform. Because if he’d chosen the wrong man – one potentially compromised by Pallesson – he would place himself in dire danger. But it had been Keate who had introduced the two of them, so he felt safe knowing that he was dealing with a friend of his old tutor.

Tryon hadn’t said much. He’d acknowledged that he’d received an anonymous allegation that Pallesson had murdered Corbett. He’d refused to divulge why he was certain it came from Max. Having listened to the whole story with an impassive face, the old hand had simply stood up and left.

Until Max’s orders had come through to move from Moscow to The Hague, he’d wondered whether Tryon had been running Pallesson from the very beginning, and still was. But if that were the case, surely he wouldn’t still be alive?

The reason given for Max’s addition to the Netherlands team – that they needed someone who could unravel local chatter across six different languages; chatter that centred on Dutch drug cartels that appeared to be doing business with Saudi-backed terrorists – seemed plausible. Whether Pallesson, who had made the same move six months before Max, had bought the story, he couldn’t be sure.

As a bus carved him up, Max’s mind went back to the school library at Eton. The vast dome-shaped room lined with learned books and populated by nerds who spoke in whispers. Max avoided the place like the plague.

He remembered the exact table where Pallesson had arranged to meet him. It was right in the centre of the building and very visible. He’d been baffled at the time as to why the slimy toerag wanted to see him, though his surprise quickly evaporated when Pallesson laid out the full financial record of Max’s gambling syndicate on the table in front of him.

‘Where did you get that?’ he’d asked, without looking at him.

‘You know I can’t reveal my sources,’ Pallesson had replied smarmily.

Needless to say, Max had wanted to thump the smug seventeen-year-old. He knew what Pallesson’s angle was. Blackmail, plain and simple. But Pallesson had been wise to a hot-headed reaction – hence meeting him in a public place where any lack of decorum wouldn’t be tolerated.

‘I have copies, just in case you have anything rash in mind,’ Pallesson said quietly.

Max had felt disgusted by Pallesson’s cold, grey eyes, his slightly greasy black hair and his immaculate appearance. His tails, waistcoat and stiff white collar always looked brand new. Unlike his fellow pupils, whose uniforms were always frayed around the edges.

‘I’m going to be your partner,’ Pallesson had told him.

‘No, you’re fucking not, Roderick,’ Max had replied.

Pallesson had imperceptibly winced at the sound of his Christian name, but hid it quickly. No one used his first name, and that was how he liked it.

‘Look, we could make a great team. And I’m not just talking about now. We have a great future. Max. You and I can go as far as we like.’

‘You and I are going fucking nowhere,’ Max had replied, loud enough to attract the attention of one of the library wardens.

Max suddenly realized he was gripping the steering wheel like a maniac. Stop it, he told himself. Relax. Stay focused. After all these years, maybe this was his chance to nail Pallesson.

Yet again, Max went through the few details Tryon had told him when they’d met a week earlier in Amsterdam – ticking off each fact as he scrutinized it for subtext and gloss; anything that would give him even the smallest insight.

Pallesson, it transpired, was blackmailing a French forger, Jacques Bardin, who had contacted Tryon through the French security services. No one had asked how or why. So, nothing out of character there, as far as Max was concerned.

The forger was alleging that he had copied The Peasants in Winter for Pallesson. After a few enquiries, the painting had been traced to the British Embassy in The Hague. On loan from the Dutch Government. The only possible conclusion, Max told himself as he edged forwards in the traffic, was that Pallesson was going to steal the original and substitute the copy he’d had made.

When Tryon had first outlined the art theft, Max was very happy. After all, they got Al Capone for tax evasion. Serious theft would end Pallesson’s career. Although Max knew that was only scratching at the surface.

He parked in a wide, nondescript Chiswick back street. The pavement was like a skating rink. As he buttoned his thick black Russian overcoat, he wondered why they didn’t just chuck some grit on it. He tried walking down the road, but it was no better.

At the end of the street there was a narrow alley leading down to the river. An officious-looking sign informed the public they had no right of way after six in the evening. Max checked his watch. It was four. He was going to be late. The alley ran between two large houses whose owners clearly didn’t like the public wandering about, either. A CCTV camera with a red light glowing was trained on his route. Max wasn’t overjoyed at being filmed, but he had nothing to fear, he told himself. And at least the path was dry.

Max timed how long it took him to walk halfway down the alley: two minutes and thirty seconds.

Where the alleyway met the river, Max had no option but to turn left, as he’d been told to. To the right was a metal fence with spikes and a STRICTLY PRIVATE sign glaring at him. Max cursed again. The river was lapping across the path.

When he’d turned the corner on to the towpath, Max stopped and checked his watch. The Thames was in full spate, bursting at its banks. It looked cold and hostile. Not a boat in sight. No one would survive a minute in there. He wondered where his body would be found. Maybe it never would.

He checked his watch again. One minute and fifteen seconds had passed. He felt suddenly exhilarated as he poked his head around the corner. But the alley was empty.

Trying to stick to dry land, he made his way along the footpath, but it was futile. By the time he’d gone fifty feet to the edge of the boathouse slipway, his feet were sodden.

Max paused and looked up the concrete slope. The boathouse was Art Deco simplicity. The whitewashed walls were cracked. And the big green metal shutters had seen better days. The place looked locked-up and sullen.

He imagined the frenzy of Boat Race day. The bleak concrete slope teeming with cameras and a macho Oxford crew carrying their boat down to the water. The boathouse bursting with last-minute nerves. All a far cry from this cold, damp, deserted winter evening.

Max was feeling increasingly on edge. It wasn’t an evening for hanging about. His feet were already freezing. He gingerly walked up the slipway to the left of the boathouse and looked for the door. When he reached it, he could see that it was ajar. Tryon’s bicycle was propped up against the wall. That was a good sign. The old hand had showed.

Max stepped tentatively inside. There wasn’t much light coming in through the high windows. A mass of fragile-looking boats were stacked on metal shelves. He walked stealthily between them towards the back of the boathouse. As he’d been told.

He thought about shouting a friendly ‘hello’, but decided against it. It really wasn’t the right way to announce your arrival at a clandestine meeting. Although he was a bit out of practice on that front. These days he spent more time poking around for a scrap of phonetically transcribed Flemish.

Max smelt the unmistakable aroma of pipe tobacco. Again, he was relieved. Not that he had any need to be. He was on home turf this time, after all.

‘You’re late, Ward,’ barked a voice from behind a stack of boats.

‘And wet,’ replied Max with a deliberate lack of subservience. There was no point in producing an excuse, because there never was one. Never had been, in fact.

‘What the hell were you doing at the bottom of the alley?’

‘Just checking. How did …?’

‘CCTV. There’s only one way into this place when it’s locked up. And I like to see who’s dropping by.’

Tryon was sitting on an old wooden folding chair. He was digging away at his pipe with a look of focused intensity.

‘Anyone follow you?’

‘No. Couldn’t we have met in Amsterdam again? Would have been a lot drier.’ He looked down at his feet to reinforce the point.

‘Very funny. The op’s now live, and one never runs an off-books op from inside the theatre.’ Tryon finally looked up from his pipe. ‘So how did you get on in Monaco?’

Max looked around for something to sit on. There was a workbench just to Tryon’s right. It was the bench of a very tidy craftsman, Max noted. He picked up a tin of varnish and sniffed it.

‘Didn’t know they still used this stuff.’

‘They don’t. Must be for an old boat. All carbon fibre now. How did it go?’

‘Pretty good,’ he replied airily. He studied Tryon for a moment. He was thin and gaunt, but on closer inspection as hard as nails. Still sporting the same scruffy brown raincoat and battered green trilby he had worn a week before. The same rustic tie and heavy cotton shirt. But today he looked tired, something employees of the Racket spent years cultivating the ability to hide.

‘Jacques seemed happy with the canvas I took him. And Cornelissen’s had sent the paint they asked for. All good.’

‘Gemma enjoy herself ?’ Tryon asked flippantly, as if to pass the time while he fiddled with his pipe again.

‘I think so. No hassle in her jet. Nice hotel.’

‘Ask much? About what you were up to?’

‘Not really. Told her I had a wee mission. Chance to get my feet out from under the desk. She didn’t seem that interested.’

‘Did she mention anything she might have been up to herself ?’

‘No. Up to what? Forget about her. Look, we’re dealing with a bloody traitor. A murderer. And I have to walk into an office every day and pretend he’s a valued colleague. It’s pretty pathetic that all we’re going to do is nail him for some sort of art theft.’

‘It goes a bit deeper than that – quite a lot deeper, in fact.’ Tryon lit his pipe. ‘While you were having lunch with Jacques in Monaco, do you know who Gemma was meeting?’

Max could literally feel his blood defying gravity and flowing to his head. ‘What are you talking about? She didn’t meet anyone.’

‘I know people down there, Ward. It’s how Jacques found me in the first place. Through them,’ Tryon said evenly. ‘Gemma met someone behind your back. Someone we’re really not sure about.’

‘She probably just ran into them. She knows people everywhere.’

‘She ran into him on his yacht in the harbour.’

Max had learnt to appreciate the old hand’s desert-dry wit, though not so much when he was the intended target.

‘She did say she was going down to the harbour for a walk. Who did she meet?’ asked Max, conceding defeat.

‘Alessandro Marchant.’

‘Rich?’

‘Rich! Either Marchant has psychic powers that enable him to see how currencies and stock are going to move – or he’s one of the biggest financial insider dealers in the world. And guess who he deals through?’

‘Go on.’

‘Casper Rankin. Whose wife you happen to be sleeping with. We’ve been intercepting their emails, and listening to their phone conversations. But we can’t nail them. They’re careful how they pass information around.’

‘Are you suggesting …?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything, Ward.’

‘Look,’ Max said intensely, ‘if I can’t trust Gemma, I can’t trust anyone. Not even you. Gemma is—’

‘I know,’ Tryon interrupted. ‘You told me. It’s just that I’m not entirely sure whether I sign up to your version.’

Tryon had made it plain that he suspected Max might have been targeted by Gemma. Which amused Max no end – or at least it had until now – as it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Max had first clocked Gemma at the opening of some dull art exhibition at a gallery in St James’s. He’d then persuaded a mate of his, who also happened to know her husband, to have her to stay in the country for the weekend. Thankfully, her husband had been away.

It was a typical, wild Gloucestershire weekend party. Everyone drank far too much and a few people ended up doing things they shouldn’t. Max remembered flirting with her and having no idea whether she was responding to him. One minute she seemed to be fascinated by him – the next, totally oblivious. Max had followed her upstairs to bed. By the time he knocked on her door, she was wearing the skimpiest of nighties. She’d let him in, and then resisted – to start with. But then she’d cracked. Once she had, Max remembered being taken aback by her urgency. She’d literally ripped the buttons off his shirt. His back had scratch marks for days.

‘Well, if we’re lucky, this relationship of yours could be very useful to us. Or you’re being set up. Because guess who Casper Rankin’s best mucker was at Cambridge?’

‘Go on.’

‘Surprise, surprise. Your old pal, Pallesson. Gemma tell you that?’

‘This is all a bit tenuous. She might not know.’

‘So she hasn’t told you.’

‘No. How do you—’

‘You can be certain that Casper Rankin has laundered the proceeds of Pallesson’s Russian enterprises. By now the money’s probably found its way to Montenegro. Rankin has been investing in property down there. He seems to have second sight as to what the Montenegrin government is about to do. Gemma mention anything about that?’

Max didn’t answer. He pushed himself off the workbench and landed on both feet. They were numb now.

‘She has no idea what her husband does. And less interest. They’ve drifted apart. He works and works. Never in the same place for that long. She goes where she likes. Does up rich people’s houses for them.’

‘Pallesson is up to a lot more than art theft,’ Tryon interrupted, as if he suddenly wasn’t interested in Gemma any more.

‘I’m not fucking stupid, Tryon. ‘Of course he is.’

‘We have a mole inside the operation of a nasty piece of work called Wevers van Ossen, based in Amsterdam. He’s into trafficking, prostitution, protection.’

‘What do we care?’

‘We didn’t – until now. He’s moving into drugs in a pretty spectacular way.’

‘So?’

‘The source of his drugs is using the proceeds to fund operations in Somalia, which we care about a lot. More to the point, guess who’s lined up with van Ossen to move the gear over here.’

‘Our old friend?’

‘Exactly. He’s brought his unpleasant habits with him from Moscow. And you’re going to nail him. All on your own.’

‘Why all on my own?’

Tryon didn’t reply. He appeared to be studying the boats, and his pipe had gone out again.

‘By the way, how was Jacques?’

‘His sight’s gone,’ Max replied, happy to let his question hang. ‘Had to get his daughter to help him copy paintings for Pallesson. The cunning little shit worked that out – that’s how he blackmailed both of them.’ Max walked over to one of the larger boats and stroked its sleek side.

‘This is probably my favourite place in the world,’ Tryon said, watching him. ‘I still row a couple of times a week. There’s no better feeling than being on the water in an eight. Going full tilt. I rowed in the Boat Race one year, you know.’

‘Oxford?’

Tryon nodded.

‘Did you win?’

Tryon nodded again.

‘Of course you did. This would hardly be the best place in the world if you lost, would it? I never went near the river at Eton. Apart from crossing it to get to Windsor Racecourse.’ He swung round to face Tryon. ‘So why on my own?’

Tryon paused as if he was confirming in his own mind what the plan should be. After a few seconds spent hunched over his pipe, he had clearly decided.

‘He’ll use this painting to get into a drug deal – as he did in Moscow. You saw him holding something by the lake where he liquidated Corbett. He’ll be using the painting as collateral to cut himself into the deal with van Ossen. Same pattern. But we need to know where this deal is taking place. We’ll have to hide a tracking device on the second copy of the painting.’

‘How do we bust him?’

‘How do you bust him, you mean. We can’t rely on the Dutch police – they’re riddled with informants – but there is one officer we can work with.’ Tryon set himself to relighting his pipe. ‘This has got to be completely out-of-house on our side. Who knows who Pallesson has got to? Just you. Go and see Pete Carr. Get a tracking device from him.’

‘Who’s our mole? Why are you only telling me all this now?’

‘Grow up, Ward – you know how these things work.’

He handed Max a worn business card. Max read it a couple of times then handed it back to Tryon.

‘He’s not that secure, by the way. Chequered past. Don’t tell him anything. But we’ve got to take this outside the Office and he’s our best option at this stage. Then get down to Gassin. Fast. Did Jacques give you his address?’

‘No.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll email directions to the drop box. No satnav please. Get a flight back down there tonight. Commercial. Without your girlfriend. We’ve only got one shot at this. If you don’t steal that painting in the embassy before Pallesson, we’re cold.’

Max had one more question. ‘What happens if I get caught? Could be a bit embarrassing, to say the least.’

‘You won’t. But if you do, I didn’t make contact and we’ve never discussed this.’ He took several short puffs on his pipe and looked Max straight in the eye. ‘I’ve never even heard of The Peasants in Winter. Or in any other season, for that matter.’

Wevers van Ossen treasured his Sunday mornings. At eight thirty every week he bundled his eight-year-old daughter, Anneka, into the back of their four-by-four and strapped her in securely.

The drive to the stables where Anneka’s pony was kept only took ten minutes. And those minutes were packed with talk about which jumps Anneka was going to take on.

Van Ossen loved watching Anneka ride. But he was less keen on the jumping aspect of it.

‘Perhaps you should concentrate on your flatwork,’ van Ossen suggested. He’d even learnt the lingo they used at the stables. Anneka knew flatwork meant trotting and steady cantering – which wasn’t to her liking as much as jumping.

‘Mustang likes jumping, Daddy,’ Anneka objected. She knew she’d get her way. She always did.

Mustang was probably the most expensive pony ever sold in Holland. It hadn’t helped that Anneka had told the world that she was in love with Mustang before van Ossen could do the deal. He’d had to break all his principles to buy it. If it hadn’t been for Anneka he would have wiped the smirk off the stable owner’s face and walked away. Instead he gritted his teeth and wrote out the cheque.

Van Ossen pulled a couple of sugar lumps out of his pocket for Mustang, and placed them on the palm of his hand. He’d have liked to strike a deal: My daughter’s safety guaranteed, or no more sugar. (It was a bit late to couch the deal in more severe terms: Mustang was already a gelding.) Since there was no hope of the pony understanding the deal, he settled for a straight gift and a friendly pat on the neck.

As usual, van Ossen inspected Anneka’s tack thoroughly. He trusted no one with her safety. Reins, cheekpieces, girth, neck strap – each item was subjected to scrutiny. Then he went over her equipment, making sure her crash helmet was done up properly and her body protector zipped up.

For the next hour, Anneka did what she bloody well liked. Her instructor would have loved to grind some discipline into her. But he knew that wouldn’t be wise with Mr van Ossen leaning against the rail. The plastic safety rail that he’d bought to replace the old wooden fence that encircled the school.

Occasionally, van Ossen took his BlackBerry out of his pocket and surreptitiously went through a few emails. Anneka was alert to lapses of attention on his part and taking a call would inevitably spark a tantrum, so the constant calls coming in from Piek that morning irritated him. His man knew that he never took calls of a Sunday morning, so why did he keep ringing? There had to be a reason. In the end, van Ossen cracked and answered his phone.

‘We have a problem, boss. The new guy. He was seen in the wrong company last night. We’ve got him at the warehouse.’

Before van Ossen could reply, Anneka – having seen her father’s lack of concentration – furiously gunned Mustang at some poles that were far too big for him. The pony very sensibly jinked at the last moment and ducked out to the right. Anneka, however, failed to anticipate Mustang’s jink and flew out of the saddle. She hit the poles as she flew through the air, and then landed on the deck like a rag doll.

Van Ossen vaulted over the plastic rails and ran, heart in his mouth, to Anneka. Her instructor was already leaning over her. She was winded, and struggling for breath. The instructor was trying to loosen her body protector, but van Ossen pushed him out of the way.

‘Idiot! Why did you let that happen?’ van Ossen raged as he fell to his knees. His hands were shaking as he fumbled with her zip. ‘What have you done to her?’

The instructor was speechless with terror. Van Ossen’s eyes were bulging out of his crimson face.

‘If anything has happened to her …’

Anneka started gasping for air and groaning. The instructor could see she was fine, but he didn’t dare do or say anything.

‘That was your fault,’ Anneka finally said as she got her breath back. ‘If you’d been watching properly, it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘I’m so sorry, my baby. I’m so sorry.’

Van Ossen picked up Anneka and cradled her in his arms. Mustang had been caught by the instructor, but van Ossen didn’t once glance towards them. He carried Anneka towards the car. She could have perfectly easily walked, but she was enjoying being the priority.

No sooner had van Ossen dropped Anneka at home than he was on his way out again. Anneka promptly burst into tears – her mother’s sympathy wasn’t anything like as satisfactory as her father’s – and only calmed down when van Ossen promised he’d be back within the hour.

When he got to the warehouse, he was still steaming. How close had Anneka come to cracking her head on the wooden poles? Would the crash helmet have saved her? Why had the instructor left the jump in place? Van Ossen felt sick as he mulled over the near miss.

The ‘new man’ had worked for van Ossen for three months. He wasn’t one of the back-door army recruits but a drop-out from the police academy. Right now, he was a mess. His arms and legs were secured to the metal chair he was sitting on by leather straps. His face was swollen from the beating Piek and Fransen had enjoyed handing out.

‘Who was he with?’ van Ossen asked, expecting the answer to be the police.

‘He was in the Dice Club. We watched him with them for a couple of hours.’

For the second time that morning, van Ossen could feel the blood pumping to the back of his head. Anger raged inside him. How had he been taken in?

‘Who put you into us?’ he asked the terrified traitor. ‘Those Dice scum?’

‘No one, boss. I was trying to get some information from them.’

That was when van Ossen snapped. This episode had nearly claimed his daughter’s life. And someone was going to pay.

‘I HAVEN’T GOT TIME FOR THIS. I SHOULD BE WITH MY DAUGHTER. NOT HERE WASTING MY TIME.’

His eyes scanned the room for the metal bolt cutters, his preferred instrument of torture.

The traitor tried to broker a deal. ‘I can infiltrate them for you,’ he desperately babbled.

One glance at the boss’s face and Fransen knew what was coming next. He grabbed the traitor’s hand and pulled the thumb out as far as it would go. Van Ossen rammed the blades of the bolt cutter either side of the man’s thumb, and slammed them shut with a vengeance.

The ex-police cadet screamed his head off as his thumb was crushed. The bolt cutters failed to cut cleanly, so the severed thumb hung by a thread of skin. Blood spurted across Fransen’s face, and then gushed on to the floor. Then the traitor passed out.

‘I haven’t got time for this,’ van Ossen said impatiently. ‘Finish it off. Bring him round and cut his fingers off one by one. Let him bleed to death. Then dump him somewhere his friends will find him. Every finger,’ van Ossen screamed over his shoulder as he left the warehouse.

Anneka was playing in the garden when he got home. She’d built herself a jumping course using her mother’s best cushions. And she was now pretending to jump them on Mustang. The whole lot would have to go to the dry cleaners tomorrow.

‘First prize,’ announced Wevers van Ossen, striding on to the lawn, ‘is a big tub of ice cream.’ And he presented Anneka with the chocolate ice cream that he’d bought on the way home.

‘What about Mustang?’ Anneka demanded. Before he could be chastised again, Wevers dashed back into the kitchen to get some sugar lumps.

Her fall had rattled him. He was going to have to do something about that instructor.

5

Farnborough, Hants

Pete Carr worked out of a discreet industrial unit in Farnborough. The board listing the companies at the end of the road was full of electronic and aviation small businesses. But there was a blank next to Unit 46.

Max knocked and waited. A square of glass set in the door looked on to a narrow staircase. The place appeared to be empty. After a couple of minutes, a pair of feet descended the stairs. The door was unlocked and opened.

‘Carr?’ said Max.

‘Pete, please. Sorry about the delay,’ Carr said jovially. ‘Only me here this morning. Stuck on the phone. The boys are working on a tricky one. Someone’s nanny’s been a bit naughty. They’re out wiring up the kids’ schoolbags.’

Pete Carr didn’t mind what sort of business he took on as long as it paid. He sailed close to the wind. Broke the law, provided the client made it worth his while. Sometimes it was surprising who was prepared to sub-contract out illegal jobs. Governments, lawyers, even the police.

Max smiled. He liked him immediately. Carr was someone who clearly loved his job.

‘Come on through, mate. Coffee? Tea?’

‘Tea would be great, Pete. Thanks.’

Max followed him through to the back room. Got him talking.

‘Had a close shave yesterday,’ said Pete as he made the tea. ‘I was bugging a finance director’s computer – commissioned by his CEO. Wasn’t sure what he was up to. Anyway, bugger me, the bloke walks into his office as I’m halfway through the job.’

‘Trouble?’

‘Nah. Told him I was working on the IT system. So you’re one of Tryon’s spooks?’

‘Tryon? Never heard of him.’

‘Very good.’ Pete laughed. ‘I’ll tell him you said that.’

Max looked around the workshop. It was in stark contrast to the empty appearance of the front of the unit. The place was heaving with stuff.

‘How much is this kit worth?’

Pete did a comedy blow through his teeth.

‘Probably cost you four hundred grand at today’s prices. I’ve added to it as I’ve gone from task to task. Reason I get so many jobs is because I have everything here.’ Pete pointed around the room. ‘Bugging stuff, scanning gear, jammers, mikes, cameras … This jammer’s worth a few quid,’ he said, picking up a small box.

‘What would you use that for?’

‘I take it on the train. When some twat starts wah-wah-wah-ing it, I jam his phone.’ Pete grinned. ‘Doing loads of cars at the moment. The thieves have worked out where the manufacturers put the tracking devices, so they have them off and ship the cars over to Qatar before you can blink. They won’t find ours though. Only trouble is, most of the time it takes two trips. Nobody’s making bumpers out of metal these days, so we have to go round the night before and glue a metal plate inside the bumper. Then we fix the tracking device the next day with magnets. You see, the tracker has got to be able to see the sky.’

Pete would have chatted all day. He liked people. But he could see Max was ticking. ‘What can I do you for then, mate?’

‘How small a tracker have you got, Pete?’

‘What for? A human?’

‘A painting.’

‘A painting. Hmm. That isn’t so easy.’

‘And it needs to be hidden.’

‘Frame?’

‘No,’ Max said, shaking his head. ‘We don’t have access to the frame. Only the canvas and the wooden stretcher.’

‘You might be in luck. Got the very latest miniature tracker in, a couple of weeks back.’ Pete delved into a drawer, pulled out a few cardboard boxes and then held up something the size of a very thin box of matches.

‘How about this?’

Max nodded. He was pretty confident they’d be able to hide it.

‘That should be okay.’

‘Power, though. That’s the problem with trackers. They need power. How often do you need to contact it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if you want a constant signal, the battery will run out very quickly. But if we programme it to give off a signal, say, once every five minutes, the battery will last much longer.’

‘Once every hour is more than enough.’

‘How about geo-fencing it?’

‘What?’

‘I can get it to tell you when it’s leaving a certain location.’

Max thought about that, but it sounded too complicated. ‘Once an hour, Pete, that’s all I need.’

‘Okay. We can turn it off, anyway. Which is not a bad idea. It saves the battery and makes it harder to detect. We’ll follow the tracker on the Internet. Through a server based in France. Don’t worry, it will have its own account. No one else can see the information.’

‘Can you follow it for me?’

‘Sure. No problem.’

Nothing was a problem for Pete. Drilling into hotel bedroom walls to place listening probes, installing keyboard loggers into computers, or scanning rooms for listening devices. It all came easy to Pete, as long as he was paid.

Eton

It felt weird, driving under the archway into College Yard. The place hadn’t changed much since it was built in the 1400s. Max appreciated it more now than he had done when he’d walked there every day for the best part of four years.

He pictured himself rushing under the arch in his tails and scholar’s cape. Terrified of being late for a lesson and placed on Tardy Book. Max Ward: one small insignificant dot in Eton’s history. A sometime scholar who’d completely wasted the opportunity to really make something of himself.

He looked at the immaculate lawn – showing the effects of winter now, but he remembered how regimentally striped it always was in the summer. Boys, of course, weren’t allowed to walk on it. He was tempted to saunter across it and see if anyone shouted at him.

You can leave Eton, Max mused, but Eton never leaves you: the ethos, the discipline, the respect, the fear of failure – even when you know you’ve already failed. Ten years on, and he still woke up with issues swirling around his head.

It was the physical aspects of school that he treasured. The smell of the cloisters outside the head master’s study. The organ bellowing out bass tones that reverberated through your ribcage. The vast expanse of playing fields sloping down to the Thames. The rowers thrashing up the river. And the mud being ground into your face while you played the Wall Game.

Strange, Max thought, that the situation he was now in was so closely linked to Eton. If it hadn’t been for the school, he wouldn’t have joined the Office. He wouldn’t have been sent to Saudi – and later to Moscow. And he wouldn’t be in The Hague now.

Pallesson cast a shadow over everything, but the endgame was fast approaching and only one of them was going to come out of this in one piece.

Max checked his watch. He was quarter of an hour early, and he knew that if anything annoyed M. J. Keate more than a boy being late, it was a boy that was early.

Max wondered if the other beaks at Eton realised what a dark horse Keate was. On the surface, a slightly bumbling tutor. But underneath, a covert, active spy. Max knew that Keate was always economical as to the extent of his work with Tryon. But he assumed it was more than he let on.

He walked round the corner, past the school office into the cloister below Upper School. To a passing tourist, the noticeboards stuck on the stone pillars were random information. To Max, the team sheets posted on them had meant the difference between exhilaration and utter depression. He remembered the day he’d walked up to see who else had been picked to play in the first eleven football team, assuming that he was a certainty. But his name hadn’t been on the sheet. Max felt sick even thinking about it now. He walked on through School Yard, past the Founder’s statue into the inner cloister. The last time he’d been here was when he was expelled.

In four years, he’d never taken in the spirit and tranquillity of this quadrangle. Jutting out from the walls were memorials to fallen Old Boys in both wars, dedicated by their mothers and sisters.

For Valour, one large slab of marble read. King Edward VII was quoted: In their lives … they maintained the traditions that have made Eton renowned.

The last Old Etonian, of many, to be awarded the VC caught Max’s eye.

1982 VC Lt Col H Jones Parachute Regiment

‘Colonel H – Falkland Islands,’ Max said out loud. He could remember being captivated by this charismatic soldier who led from the front and died in front of his men. Then he realized that time was running away from him and he was going to be late.

The gate at the foot of Keate’s garden path still made a nasty squeak. Max remembered suggesting that a bit of oil would do the trick. ‘It’s the noisy gate that gets the oil,’ Keate had chuckled to himself. ‘But still, don’t you dare. How else am I to know when someone’s coming?’

As Max walked up the path he knew Keate would be watching from the big Georgian study window. He didn’t look up though. If he waved, his old tutor wouldn’t wave back. And then he’d feel like a small, insecure boy. Or that was how he’d always felt in the past – at least, until he’d learnt not to look up.

Max knew the door wouldn’t be locked. It never was. He pushed it open and walked into the familiar hallway, which was clad with oak panels. How often had he stood in here, waiting for Keate to finish tutoring other boys? A hundred times probably, but only one day really stuck in his memory.

He remembered being taken aback when Keate had apologized for keeping him waiting. It was so out of character; the old boy never did that. And there’d been a sudden awkwardness about him.

‘It’s about your father, Ward,’ Keate had mumbled. ‘Not good news, I’m afraid.’ Then Keate had paused, as if he couldn’t get the words out. The delay only lasted for a second, but it felt to Max like an eternity. He remembered being frozen to his chair. Paralysed by whatever it was that Keate couldn’t say. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead. Terrible shock. Dreadful.’

Max hadn’t taken much else in at the time. Keate had spared him the details.

Trying to shake off the memory, he paused to look at the frieze on the wall opposite Keate’s study. He hadn’t seen it before.

‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ Keate said over his shoulder. ‘Some jacques took the oak panelling down to get at the pipes and found it underneath. Dates back to the sixteen hundreds. English Heritage went mad – told us we can’t smoke near it. Come on in.’

Max followed his tutor into a large, bright study.

‘Help yourself, old lad,’ Keate said breezily, as if they’d already talked at length that day. Max was used to his dismissive familiarity. He’d always been like that. Never one to make a fuss about a departure or a return. Even if they were divided by years. It was probably his way of dealing with being so close to his protégés one minute, and seeing them gone the next.

Keate beckoned towards his drinks cupboard in the corner of the room. For the first time, Max really took in the magnificence of the piece. The arched scallop frieze, the carved shell and Vitruvian scroll, the big heavy doors.

‘Beautiful cupboard, Keate,’ he remarked.

‘What’s the matter with you? Been there for years. My aunt Mary gave it to me, bless her. George II. Mahogany. Hopefully she’ll leave me her flat in Sloane Avenue, too. Cranmer Court. Rather nice block. Amazing old girl. Still does The Times crossword every day and rants about split infinitives. But there you go. I’m rambling. Are you in love? Old boys always come and see me when they’re in love. God knows why.’

Max wasn’t really listening to him. He stood with his back to Keate, studying the painting hanging behind the desk. The old man had always been blasé about it, as if embarrassed that he knew so much about the Flemish and Dutch masters. This ‘very poor example’ of Jan Asselijn’s work, he would say dismissively, was all he could afford.

But like all the great tutors, Keate had instilled his pupils with an everlasting interest in the subject that was his passion. Max remembered him taking a few of them to Windsor Castle to study Hendrick Avercamp’s paintings. Pallesson had been forensically attentive and ingratiatingly unctuous on that visit. As ever, he had to appear the most interested and enlightened.

‘Well, I might be,’ Max mumbled. ‘But that isn’t why I’ve come to see you.’

Max still had his back to Keate while he poured himself a weak glass of Islay whisky and water. It was at Eton that he’d been introduced to the peaty taste, drinking with a boy in his house whose father owned one of the distilleries on the island.

Keate watched him, remembering the boy he had once been. When his father’s accountants sifted through the wreckage after his death, they had found the coffers were empty. Keate, loath to see natural talent go to waste, had been prepared to make up the shortfall. But Max got himself kicked out. Keate had felt disappointed rather than let down. Nevertheless it had created a hiatus in their relationship.

Max sat down and faced his old tutor as he fiddled with some papers on his cluttered desk.

‘Why did the Office take me on, Keate?’

Keate took his glasses off and looked up at Max. ‘Why? Probably because no one else would have had you. You weren’t exactly flavour of the month on your departure from this establishment.’

‘That isn’t an answer, and you know it,’ Max replied impassively.

Keate couldn’t follow his drift. Why the sudden desire to go over old ground? He assumed his former student wasn’t looking for affirmation that he was a brilliant linguist – the best he had ever come across – or that he possessed an equally remarkable talent for lateral thought. Those were the skills he had used to sell Max Ward to Tryon, and they were hardly a secret.

But those weren’t the talents that had made him beseech Tryon to take Max on. Keate had an almost religious belief in the Instructions of Amenemopa, the great Egyptian leader. And in all his years he had never come across a boy in whom he had such faith to promote Maat – a world of truth and order. In Max, Keate saw the silent man: calm and self-effacing, knowledgeable, thoughtful and temperate. He saw someone who could make a difference.

The great irony – although Keate often wondered if it hadn’t been more than a coincidence – was that an incarnation of Isfet had come along at exactly the same time. Isfet being the tendency of men towards evil, injustice, discord and chaos. Pallesson, Keate had come to realize, was one of its princes.

‘What’s this all about, Max?’

‘Can I trust Tryon?’ Max asked bluntly, feeling no need to qualify his question.

Keate stood up from behind his desk and wandered towards a table crammed with lead toy soldiers. Their red-and-blue Napoleonic tunics were intricately painted. He picked one up, studied it carefully, then put it down again.

‘Can you trust Tryon?’ Keate repeated. ‘Well, I suppose that depends on whether you can trust me. And that in turn depends on whether you are helping or hindering.’ He paused to fiddle with his glasses and reflect. ‘I asked Tryon to see you were hired because I knew you had a talent that would be of use. A rare talent, if channelled in the right direction. More importantly, I felt that the Office would force you to develop the one thing you lacked: patience.’

Keate paused again and looked out of the window. Max followed his gaze. A couple of boys meandered out of the college entrance bouncing a football between them. Max recognized their long, woollen socks. The association football colours. For a second he felt jealous. Jealous of the expectation that he’d always felt before any game.

‘You were different. You were also a risk. I asked them to take you much younger than they normally would have done. I told Tryon you might fall between the cracks if they waited. That was why they parked you in Oman. To see if you would learn. I couldn’t explain that at the time; it would have upset the delicate flow of the process. But obviously they were pleased, otherwise you wouldn’t have been moved to Moscow.’

Max still said nothing. He’d come to listen. He took a long sip of his Scotch and water.

‘In your game, life is rarely simple. To fight for good, sometimes you have to collaborate with undesirable people to get the end result. Although I don’t know any details, there may be times when you won’t understand the big picture. But what you must have is faith. You should have faith in Tryon, Max. Make friends with the just and righteous man whose actions you have observed. Remember Ani, Max?’

Max nodded and put his glass on the small table next to his right arm. ‘Well, Keate, I hope you’re right,’ he said hesitantly.

The dining room was small, compared to the generous space of Keate’s study. The housekeeper had cooked them a fish pie, peas and cabbage. Neither of them said anything until they’d helped themselves and sat down. Max was the first to speak.

‘Wherever I go, I run into Pallesson. He arrived in Moscow, quite the little star from Cambridge. And he was very successful. Too successful. Did you recommend Pallesson as well?’

Keate finished his mouthful of fish pie. ‘It’s a complicated system. It’s not as simple as that.’

‘Bollocks. Did you underwrite him or not?’

Keate carried on eating his lunch. Max said nothing. He wanted an answer. For nearly five minutes neither of them said a word. Keate finished his fish pie, then ate the last pea on his plate. Finally he put down his knife and fork and gave Max a long look. Max didn’t meet his eye.

‘I was compromised,’ Keate said.

‘What do you mean, you were compromised? Compromised by whom? How?’

Keate really didn’t want to answer. He had never discussed the matter with anyone, had never intended to. He subtly shifted the conversation back on to Max. ‘Is it wise to be in conflict with Pallesson? You know how dangerous, how destructive he is. Keep your distance from those with hate in their hearts.’

‘Ankh-Sheshonk,’ Max observed.

‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with your memory.’

Max wanted to tell Keate what he knew. That Pallesson, one of his recommendations, had executed Corbett in cold blood. But he knew that would be crossing the line.

‘What do you mean by “compromised”, Keate?’ Max persisted.

Keate removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, not for one moment diverting his gaze from the dark-brown polished table. ‘He drugged me. He came round to see me one evening about some essay. I remember feeling very strange drinking my sherry as I went through it with him. I remember feeling dizzy. Then nothing. When I woke, I was on the floor …’ Keate’s voice tapered off. ‘I’m not gay, Max. Never have been. In fact, I’ve never been interested in sex at all. That’s the way I am. But that little bastard threatened to disgrace and humiliate me. Ruin my life. Yes, to answer your question, I pulled strings to get him into St John’s. Then when he graduated I had Tryon pull strings to get him hired by the Office. It’s as if he had the whole thing mapped out from the very beginning.’

Max was stunned into momentary silence. He was horrified. Horrified that it had happened, and horrified that he had dragged it out of Keate in such an inconsiderate manner.

‘Keate, it isn’t your fault.’ Max hated himself. He realized that he’d stumbled on something much worse than he ever could have guessed.

‘Yes, it is. I didn’t stand up to him. You did. He didn’t screw you over. You threw it all away rather than be under his thumb for evermore. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.’ Anger was now boiling inside the usually unflappable tutor.

‘There’s something else I need to know, Keate,’ Max said quietly. ‘Could he have compromised Tryon?’

6

Gassin

Max felt slightly morose. The contrast between flying in Gemma’s jet to Nice a couple of days before and making the same journey crammed into a commercial plane on his own wasn’t doing much for his spirits.

He buckled his seat belt and established squatting rights on the armrest with his elbow. How they got away with calling such tiny seats ‘club class’, he had no idea. He shut his eyes to avoid any contact with the girl sitting next to him. He hadn’t even noticed whether she was pretty or not.

It wasn’t long before his nemesis crept into his thoughts. Vivid images of Pallesson were haunting him: laying out his evidence on a drug op before his station chief in Moscow, smugness personified; and worse still, the memory of him obliterating Corbett’s head. Then the possibility that he had got Corbett killed by stumbling in on the party.

‘Bastard,’ Max said, not quite under his breath. He opened his eyes and glanced at the girl to his left, who was regarding him with a slightly perplexed look on her face. She was reading one of those crap magazines that girls of her age always read on planes.

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