“So you resigned,” she said.

“I tried. It wasn’t accepted.”

“You know you can’t…”

“Yes,” he interrupted. “So he kept telling me.”

He explained about the attempt to murder him in London that had very nearly been successful, how he had been shot by Callan and how he had fled to South America. He told her about Ciudad Juárez, and Control’s second attempt to bring him back in, and about how he had escaped and fled to San Francisco.

“So you’re a wanted man?”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Control isn’t the sort of person you’d want chasing you.”

“He certainly is relentless,” he said with a wry smile. “Is that enough for you?”

She withdrew her hand from the bag. “For the time being.”

“So what about you?”

Her posture stiffened. “What about me?”

“Why are you here?”

“It’s a long story.”

The waiter looked over at her with a friendly, knowing smile. “The usual, miss?”

“Please.”

She put her hand back into her bag and, for a moment, Milton thought she was going for the gun again. She rummaged for a moment, unable to find whatever it is she wanted.

“Cigarette?” Milton offered.

“You still smoke?”

“Tried to stop,” he said.

“It’ll kill you.”

“So will lots of things. I decided I might as well have one vice. They let you smoke in here?”

She looked at him with mild amusement. “Seriously, Milton? Look around. You can do whatever you want.”

He took the unfinished packet from his pocket and offered it to her.

She took it and held it up. “Winstons?”

“Afraid so. They’re not great.”

“You want to tell me why you’ve got a packet of Russian cigarettes?”

“I was in Moscow the day before yesterday. That’s why I’m here.”

She took two, leaving one on the table. Milton took out his oxidised Ronson lighter, thumbed the flame and held it out for her. She dipped her head to it, the blouse falling open at the neck and revealing the angular points of her clavicle. Milton took one for himself and left the packet on the table.

She leaned back and inhaled hungrily. “So who’s the pretty girl?”

“Her name is Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko.”

“Where is she?”

“At the hotel.”

“She looked unwell last night.”

“You were at the restaurant?”

“Outside. What’s wrong with her?”

“I drugged her.”

“How chivalrous.”

“I wanted to see you on my own.”

“What is she? Russian intelligence?”

“SVR,” Milton said.

She drew down on her cigarette. “So what does a pretty Russian intelligence agent have to do with you?”

He leant back in the chair and drew on his cigarette. “She was sent to recruit me.”

Isabella cocked an eyebrow at that. “For what?”

The waiter returned with two cups of Indian chai tea. She thanked him and waited until he had returned to the counter before she spoke again.

“To recruit you for what, Milton?”

“They wanted me to find you.”

She shook her head sharply. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”

“Just hear me out.”

“Do you think I’d be somewhere like this if I wanted to be found?”

“Just let me give you a little bit of background first. I’ve come halfway around the world to find you. Humour me.”

She settled back in the chair and fixed him with a steady glare. She moved her hand close to the mouth of the bag again. “Give me another fag.” He did as she asked. “You’ve got five minutes and then I’m gone.”

“Do you remember my first assignment?”

Her eyes narrowed just a little. “Of course I remember it. It was a disaster.”

“You remember the two targets?”

“Yes,” she said carefully.

“DOLLAR and SNOW. We never knew anything about them.”

“What’s your point, Milton? We never knew anything about any of them. They’re just names.”

“DOLLAR was Anastasia Ivanovna Semenko and SNOW was Pascha Shcherbatov. They were both Russian agents. Turns out Shcherbatov is a colonel in the SVR now.”

“Where are you going with this? It doesn’t matter that they were spooks. I killed my fair share. You would have, too.”

“I know. That’s not the point. Semenko and Shcherbatov weren’t targeted because they were spooks. They were sent to London because the Russians had a tip-off that Control could be bought. They had assets inside the Iraqi government who said he was introducing arms dealers to the right people. So Semenko set herself up as a dealer, said she wanted an in with the Syrians. Control said he could arrange that for her — for the right price. They had him. Photographs, financial records, everything they needed. They were going to flip him or they were going to burn him. He’d proposed a meeting to talk it over. They were going to see him when we hit them. He set the whole thing up. The whole operation was all about him trying to save his own neck.”

She listened intently, her brow occasionally furrowing, chain-smoking her way through another two cigarettes. “How do you know this?”

Milton told her about his trip to Russia to meet Shcherbatov and the story he had told him in the dacha. She didn’t look surprised by any of it.

“And what does this have to do with you?”

“Shcherbatov wanted me to find you.”

“But why would you do anything for him?”

“There’s another agent. Michael Pope. You won’t know him, he joined after you disappeared.”

“No, I do remember him,” she said. “Tall, dark hair? We looked at him before we chose you,” she said, punctuating the words with an absent stab of the cigarette.

“He was made Number One after I got out.”

“How did he end up in Russia?”

“There was a job in the south of France. Control sent him after Shcherbatov again. He got caught. If I don’t help him, he doesn’t have much of a future.”

She waved that away. “Those are the breaks,” she said. “He would have known the risks.”

“True,” he said, “but he saved my life once. And I can’t leave him there.”

She knocked a long ash into the empty teacup. “You haven’t explained what any of this has to do with me.”

“Shcherbatov thinks you took evidence from the car.”

She shrugged. “So?”

“Did you?”

“No,” she said dismissively, although he saw the flinch before she spoke.

“Beatrix?” he pressed. “Did you?”

“I said no,” she said sharply, although he registered the movement in her eyes and he knew that she was lying. “I can’t help you, Milton.”

“And I can’t leave Pope to rot in a gulag.”

“That’s very valiant but there’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

“I need your help. Please, Beatrix.” The respect between them was old, frozen by the passage of time, but he hoped there was enough of it left for her to consider helping him. “Pope needs you.”

“I can’t.”

“I think you need me, too.”

Now her eyes flashed with sudden anger. “Why would you say something stupid like that?”

“Beatrix,” he said carefully, remembering her temper. “Look at where you are. Look at yourself.”

“Fuck off, Milton.”

She waved an impatient arm at him and the motion caused her sleeve to ride a little up her arm, revealing the lower part of a cursive tattoo that he remembered. The fragment said ‘—ABELLA” and Milton remembered seeing it before, and asking what it meant. He took a breath and thought about what he was going to say. He knew it would be inflammatory but he didn’t have any other cards left to play.

“The tattoo,” he said, pointing, “on your arm. You told me that was for your daughter, Isabella. Do you remember?”

She stood up.

“What happened to her? Where is she?”

“We’re finished,” she said. “Don’t try and find me again. I don’t want to be found. Do you understand?”

She stalked away from the table without a backward glance.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

He stayed at the table for thirty minutes, smoking a couple of cigarettes and worrying about the content of their conversation and how weak and ill she had looked, and how little he had achieved. He was about to settle the bill when Anna arrived. Her eyes flashed with fury; with him, and, he guessed, with herself. He had played her very well yesterday, persuading her that he was warming to her to lower her guard just enough that he could put her out of the way for a few hours. He had brought it to an expert conclusion at dinner. He knew that she would feel embarrassed; she had offered herself to him and he had not only rejected the offer, he had turned the tables completely and used the detente between them as a means to incapacitate her. She was a beautiful girl; he doubted that she was used to being treated like that. There might have been some consolation for her if he had admitted that he found her almost irresistibly attractive, but he did not. He guessed, from the steeliness in her eyes, that she would have hit him. He would have deserved it, too.