The plane, fast and low, engines echoing through the valley.

“John?”

He followed the sound of the voice back out of the dream, forcing himself out of the desert and back into the cabin of the jet: the endless drone of the engines, the clink of cutlery on china plates, the sound of a baby crying in the back of the plane.

“John?”

He turned to Anna and forced a smile onto his face.

“You were moaning, Captain Milton.”

“Bad dream,” he said. “Sleeping tablet. Must have disagreed with me. What time is it?”

“Eleven.”

They had been in the air for three hours.

“Are you sure you’re alright? You missed dinner.”

She looked at him and, for a moment, he wondered if there was something on her face beyond the dutiful concern of an intelligence agent responsible for the wellbeing of an important asset. Her hair shimmered in the shining cone of the overhead light, her green eyes glittered.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Not hungry.” He reclined his seat until it was flat and covered himself with the thin blanket that the airline supplied. “Get some sleep. We’re going to be busy tomorrow.”

PART FOUR

HONG KONG

Chapter Twenty-Two

Hong Kong tended to enjoy dry winters; the guidebooks all suggested that December was one of the better times to visit, with pleasant temperatures and dry days. As the Airbus descended from thirty thousand feet, however, it passed through a deep carpet of cloud that became progressively darker and angrier until it was almost pitch black outside the windows. The rain, as they sank into it, was a deluge, a torrential flood that had hammered on the city for three days and showed no sign of abating. The pilot came over the intercom and did his best to reassure his passengers that, although they were in for a bumpy landing, it was not unusual for Chep Lap Kok. His words did not go very far and, as the plane started to be buffeted by powerful gusts of wind and the rain sheeted against the windows, several passengers closed their eyes and clasped their hands and prayed to whatever deity they thought would protect them. Milton had been to Hong Kong six times before and had been there long enough ago to remember the old airport, Kai Tak, where jumbos seemingly aimed at the ramshackle apartments blocks before banking at the last minute to line up for the approach to the runway. In comparison, a bit of nasty weather at Chek Lap Kok was nothing to get too worked up about.

The details of the new facility resolved from out of the rain-lashed murk: the reclaimed land, the hangars, the servicing areas, the jumbos lined up at the terminal building and then the runway, demarcated by arrays of red and yellow lights. The plane bumped as it descended, the rear wheels screeched as they bit into the asphalt, the front wheel followed, the flaps popped open and the engines squealed as the plane’s headlong rush was arrested.

Milton packed away the book he had been reading and allowed his thoughts to wander a little. Beatrix Rose: that was a name he hadn’t heard for many years. She had disappeared after the botched operation to assassinate DOLLAR and SNOW; or, as he knew now, Pascha Shcherbatov and Anastasia Ivanovna Semenko. There had been nothing from Control that might have explained her absence but that, in itself, was not unusual. Group operations were typically one or two member jobs and, even where Milton had been paired with another, it was usually a different agent each time. Group Fifteen was carefully segmented so that each agent was independent of all the others. It was their own form of the cut-out that had shielded the agents who worked with Mamotchka; should one of them be captured, it would not matter how badly they were tortured since they would not know anything about the other members of the Group. Everyone breaks eventually during torture; it is a simple matter of biology. But you cannot reveal details that you do not know.

Milton knew a little more about Beatrix because she had presided over his selection and training but, even then, his knowledge was limited. He did not know very much about her private or professional lives, where she lived, what she had done before she joined the Group. He did not know her politics, her likes or dislikes, anything that might allow him to dab a little colour on the empty tracing of her personality. He did know that she was a brilliant agent, terrifyingly clear in her focus and relentless when she had been given a target. Of all of the men and women he had worked with during his career with Group Fifteen, Beatrix Rose, who would always be Number One in his eyes, was the most impressive by far.

He realised now, as he remembered her, that he had never really given the question of her disappearance much thought save her luck must have run out during a job. That happened. But now that he knew that she was alive, and hiding in a place like this, he began to wonder. He had experience of Control’s ruthlessness. He had form for seeking to terminate his top agent when he lost his trust in them. It did not seem so far fetched, especially given what Shcherbatov had told him, that he had done the same to her.

He looked out at the multitude of lights that twinkled amid the throbbing power of the storm. Finding a person in a city like this, an abundance of millions crammed onto an island that was much too small for them, was going to be difficult. He hoped that the leads that Shcherbatov had uncovered were enough.

The plane drew up to the gate and the pilot extinguished the Fasten Seat Belts sign. Across the aisle, Anna stood up and muscled her carry-on luggage down from the overhead bin.

“Here we are,” Anna said.

“Here we are.”

Their passports recorded them as Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. For the purposes of their cover story, they were a couple from London in Hong Kong for a vacation. Milton had questioned whether Anna’s accent would raise suspicion but she modulated it effortlessly: the light southwestern twang that she used while in America had been superseded by a more guttural Russian inflection while they were in Moscow and now that, in turn, had been replaced by a flatness that could very easily have located her in the English Home Counties. She was an excellent chameleon.

They followed the snake of passengers down the aisle and disembarked onto the air bridge. As the corridor widened, Anna moved alongside him and slipped her hand in his. Milton did not resist.

* * *

They made it through immigration with no issues and took a cab to the city centre. Anna asked their driver for the Landmark Mandarin and he piloted them through the drenched streets, the tail lights of the cars ahead of them smeared as stripes of red against the sodden asphalt. Milton looked out of the window, reminding himself of the city: everything was tight and cramped, the skyscrapers jostling each other shoulder to shoulder, the buildings sheathed in black glass. They reflected the vast neon signs that flicked between advertisements: a pretty Asian girl, all perfect skin and red lips and gleaming teeth, selling insurance; an SUV, too bulky for these choked roads; confectionary and instant noodles and gambling websites and catwalk models and more cars and online catalogues. The streets were crammed and hectic.

The Mandarin was an expensive, luxury hotel. The reception was neat and functional and the girl behind the desk processed their reservation with good-natured efficiency. Only as they exited the elevator on the fifteenth floor did Milton pause to consider their sleeping arrangements. They were husband and wife; their cover demanded that they share the same room.