The room was exactly what you would expect to find in a typical low-budget motel. There was a bed; a desk with a chair; a television on the desk; a kettle with little sachets of tea and coffee and sweeteners. Milton hauled the suitcase onto the bed and opened it: three pairs of boxer shorts and three white tee-shirts, still wrapped in paper; three pairs of thick woollen socks; a pair of leather brogues; a pair of Timberlands; two pairs of Levis; a pair of fur-lined gloves; a thick woollen scarf; a new toilet bag with a comb, a toothbrush, a full tube of toothpaste, a pack of disposable razors and a bottle of shaving cream. It looked as if Delaney had stopped at the shop on her way through the airport and, knowing that he was incarcerated and likely had nothing with him, had bought everything that she thought that he might need. He unzipped the garment carrier and took out the items that were inside. There was a charcoal Hugo Boss suit, single breasted, expensive, and a thick overcoat. He checked the tags: the measurements were more or less what he would have ordered if he was buying it for himself.

What didn’t she know about him?

He looked at the socks, the gloves, the scarf and the coat. They weren’t chosen for Texas weather.

Where did they want him to go?

Milton undressed and went into the bathroom. It was simple and clean and he stood beneath the shower for twenty minutes, letting the hot water slew off the sweat and grime that had accumulated over the course of the last couple of days. He scrubbed his face, softening the stubble that abraded his palms, and then spread on a handful of the cream and shaved.

He turned off the tap, wrapped a towel around his waist and stood at the mirror. His eyes were a cold greyish blue, his mouth had a twist to it that could sometimes make him look cruel and there was a long horizontal scar from his cheek to the start of his nose, the memento of a knife fight in a Honolulu bar. There were other scars all across his body. His hair was long and a little unkempt, a frond falling over his forehead in a wandering comma. The job hauling ice around San Francisco had improved his fitness and there was more definition in his arms and shoulders now than there had been since he had stopped working for the Group. He turned away from the mirror, catching a quick glimpse of the angel’s wings tattooed across his back, and changed into a fresh tee-shirt and a pair of jeans from the suitcase. They fit him very well. Delaney knew exactly what she was doing.

He pulled the door closed behind him and crossed the veranda to the room next door. He knocked, twice, and heard the soft footfalls as Delaney approached. She took the door off the chain, opened it and welcomed him inside.

Milton scanned the room. Force of habit. It was an analogue of his own, just in reverse; the furniture was arranged on the right, not the left. He went over to the bathroom and checked inside. It was the same as his, and empty.

“Relax,” she told him. “It’s just you and me.”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “I’ve no idea who you are. Being here is against my better judgment.”

“So why are you here?”

“Let’s just say you’ve got my attention.”

“I’ve order burgers. I hope that’s alright?”

“Fine.”

“You want to sit?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll stand.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I’m going to sit. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed. Milton leant back against the wall.

“Who are you?” he said. “Really?”

“My name is Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko. I work for the SVR.”

“You’re Russian intelligence.”

“That’s right, Captain Milton.”

“Which Directorate?”

“Is that really important?”

“It is if you don’t want me to walk out of that door and disappear.”

“Directorate S.”

“Operations?”

“Correct.”

Milton couldn’t help the smile.

“What is it?”

“This is the first time I’ve been busted out of jail by a Russian spook. What are you — undercover?”

“For the last ten years.”

“Frances Delaney.”

She smiled. “That’s me.”

“But not FBI?”

“No. That was just a useful story.”

“Okay, Anna. You better tell me why you risked your cover to get me out of there. You know I’m not going to talk to you.”

“It would be easier if I showed you,” she said.

She got up, crossed the room to her suitcase and removed an iPad. She activated it and jabbed her finger against the screen until she had opened the attachment to an email. She handed the tablet to Milton, the screen realigning as he held it up to look at it. It was a photograph of a man. He had short cropped black hair shot through with threads of silver and grey, a slab-like forehead and a nose that had been broken too many times. He had been beaten: his right eye was closed up, a livid purple bruise around the socket. There was a bloody welt on the side of his forehead and abrasions scraped down his left cheek. He was staring into the camera, the defiance on his face belying the punishment that had been meted out to him.

“Do you know him?” Anna asked.

Milton gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the tablet. “Yes,” he said.

The man in the picture was Captain Michael Pope.

She watched Milton’s reaction. “We know you and Captain Pope have history. You were in the army at the same time. You are the same age, give or take a year or two, and you were both in Iraq during the first war, although you were in different battalions. Once the war was over, Captain Pope transferred into the First Battalion, B Company. The same Company, the same rifle platoon as you. You served in Northern Ireland together.”

Milton dropped the tablet back on the bed. “Very good,” he said. “You’ve done your research.”

“We know that he joined Group Fifteen a little while after you. An excellent reputation, although not in the same league as you, Captain Milton, of course. We believe he replaced you as Number One after you left. Is that correct?”

“You can’t expect me to comment on that.”

“No, I suppose not. And nor do I need you to. We know.”

“So stop wasting my time. Are you going to tell me what happened to him?”

“Captain Pope was arrested two months ago in Monaco. He entered the country with a false passport. He was apprehended with a Barrett M1 sniper rifle and a hundred rounds of ammunition. The weapon with which you made your name, I understand? The operation in North Korea?”

“Again…” Milton said, shrugging.

Anna ignored his reticence. “He was transferred to Moscow. He has been questioned, of course. At great length. He has been as”—she searched for the right word—“stoical as you would expect a man of his training to be, in the circumstances. We believe that his purpose in France was to assassinate my commanding officer. He has a holiday home there. Captain Pope had hired a motorboat. We believe his plan was to take the boat adjacent to his estate and make the shot from there. An audacious attempt, had it been allowed to proceed. Our experts considered it foolish, apart from those familiar with the skill of your country’s cleaners. It would take tremendous skill to snipe a target from a moving boat. You, perhaps, Captain Milton… a shot that you would have taken?”

Milton said nothing. He looked down at the bed, at the tablet, at Pope’s battered and bloodied face. The last time he had seen him was in Juárez. Pope had orders to bring him back to London, dead or alive. It would have been easier to have shot him — Callan had wanted to — but Pope had forbidden it. There was no question about it: they were on different sides now, but he had saved his life.

“Where is he?”

“Captain Pope is in a gulag in Siberia. You will be aware of the quality of life an inmate in a Siberian gulag can expect. If he survives five years, I would be surprised.”