None of his agents knew that. He had deceived them.

“Control, One. Report.”

“Target is waiting at the junction at Blackfriars Bridge.”

Control knew their itinerary for the rest of the day. Semenko and Shcherbatov were going to a meeting.

As far as they knew, the meeting was with him.

It was an appointment that Control had no intention of keeping.

Chapter Four

The Mercedes picked up speed as it turned onto Blackfriars Bridge. It found a small gap in the traffic. Beatrix opened the throttle in response, keeping the Mercedes a few car lengths ahead of them. Their intelligence suggested that the woman she knew as DOLLAR had an appointment with a contact on Victoria Embankment; it looked as if the intelligence would prove to be accurate.

Beatrix stayed between fifty and a hundred yards behind the car; Milton was another twenty yards behind her. She kept up a running commentary as they gradually worked their way south east, towards the river. “North end of the Bridge, turning off … onto the Embankment, heading west … passing Blackfriars Pier … coming up to Waterloo Bridge, following the river to the south.”

The traffic started to queue as they reached Victoria Embankment Gardens. Beatrix bled away almost all the speed, ducking in behind a bus that was idling opposite Cleopatra’s Needle. She could see the Mercedes through the windows of the bus and, beyond it, the Houses of Parliament.

“One, Control. Waiting at the lights at Embankment Pier.”

“Acknowledged,” said Control. “They’ll continue south.”

“Copy that.” The lights changed, the traffic started to move, the last pedestrians broke into self-conscious trots as they hurried out of the way. “He’s accelerating towards Hungerford Bridge.”

She gunned the engine and sped forwards, not about to get stuck should the lights turn against her.

Control’s voice crackled again. “Control, Group. This is as good a spot as any. Five?”

“In position,” reported Number Five. “Five, One and Twelve. Get ready. Here we come.”

Beatrix watched: a white van, not dissimilar to the one in which Control was watching, had been running parallel to them on Whitehall. Now though, it jerked out into the traffic from Richmond Terrace and blocked the road in front of the Mercedes. Number Eight — Oliver Spenser — was at the wheel. Number Five — Lydia Chisolm — was alongside him. Both agents were armed with SA-80 machine guns but the plan did not anticipate that they would need to use them.

Beatrix braked to thirty and then twenty. “One, Control. They’re stopping.”

“Control, One and Twelve. You have authorisation. Take them out.”

Beatrix rolled the bike carefully between the waiting cars: a red Peugeot, a dirty grey Volvo, an open double decker bus that had been fitted out for guided tours. The Mercedes was ahead of the bus, blocked in between it and the delivery van in front. Beatrix reached the car, coming to a halt and bracing the heavy weight of the bike with her right leg. Milton rolled up behind her. Neither of them spoke; they didn’t need to, they were operating purely on instinct by this stage, implementing the plan. Beatrix quickly scoped the immediate location: the inside lane was temporarily clear to the immediate left of the Mercedes, the pavement beyond that was empty and then it was the wide open stretch of the Thames.

No need to concern themselves with catching civilians in the crossfire.

Beatrix released her grip on the handlebars and unzipped her leather jacket. She was wearing a strap around her shoulder and a Heckler & Koch UMP was attached to it

She raised the machine pistol, steadied it with her left hand around the foregrip, aimed at the Mercedes, and squeezed the trigger.

The window shattered, shards spilling out onto the road like handfuls of diamonds.

Milton was supposed to be doing the same but he had stopped.

Beatrix noticed but didn’t have time to direct him. She was completely professional. Even as the machine pistol jerked and spat in her hand, her aim was such that every round passed into the cabin of the car. The gun chewed through all thirty rounds in the detachable magazine, spraying lead through the window.

The driver somehow managed to get the Mercedes into gear and it jerked forwards. He must have been hit because he couldn’t control the car, slaloming it against the delivery van, bouncing across the road, slicing through the inside lane and then fishtailing. It slid through one hundred and eighty degrees and then wedged itself between a tree and a streetlamp. The horn sounded, a long and uninterrupted note. The car had only travelled twenty feet but Beatrix couldn’t see into it any longer.

“Milton!”

She was fresh out of ammunition and he was the nearest.

“Milton! Move!”

He was still on the bike, frozen.

The passenger side door opened and SNOW fell out. The car’s wild manoeuvre meant that the body of the car was now between Beatrix and him; he ducked down beneath the wing, out of sight.

“Milton! SNOW is running.”

“I’ve got it,” Milton said, but she could hear the uncertainty in his voice. He was corpsing; Beatrix had not anticipated that. She ejected the dry magazine and slapped in another, watching through the corner of her eye as he got off the Kawasaki and drew his own UMP.

Beatrix put the kickstand down. There was a terrific clamour all about: the Mercedes’s horn was still sounding, tourists on the bus — with a clear view of what had just happened — were screaming in fright as they clambered to the back of the deck, and, in the distance, there came the ululation of a siren. Too soon, surely? Perhaps, but it was a timely reminder; the plan only allowed them a few seconds before they needed to effect their escapes.

She approached the car, her gun extended and unwavering.

It was carnage. The driver was slumped forwards, blood splashed against the jagged shards of windshield that were still held within the frame. The full weight of his chest was pressed up against the wheel, sounding the horn. DOLLAR was leaning against the side of the car, a track of entry wounds stitching up from her shoulder into her neck and then into the side of her head. Her hair was matted with blood and brain. Beatrix strode up to the car and fired two short bursts: one for the driver and one for DOLLAR. She kept moving forward, the machine pistol smoking as she held it ahead of her, zoning out the noise behind her but acutely aware of the timer counting down in her head. The man and the woman were unmoving. She looked through the driver’s side window and saw a briefcase on the passenger seat. They were not tasked with recovering intelligence but it was hard-wired into her from a hundred similar missions and so she quickly ran around to the passenger door, opened it, and collected it.

“Control, One,” came the barked voice in her earpiece. “Report.”

“The driver and DOLLAR are down.”

“What about SNOW?”

“He’s running.”

There was panic in his reply: “What?”

“I repeat, SNOW is on foot. Twelve is pursuing.”

Chapter Five

Milton left the bike behind him and sprinted. SNOW was already fifty feet ahead, adjacent to the Battle of Britain memorial. The great wheel of the London Eye was on the other side of the river and, ahead, a line of touring coaches had been slotted into the bays next to the pavement.

SNOW dodged through the line of stalled traffic; nothing was able to move with the shot up Mercedes blocking the road ahead. He turned his head, stumbling a little as he did, saw Milton in pursuit and sprinted harder. He was older than Milton but he had obviously kept himself in good shape; he maintained a steady pace, driven on by fear. Milton’s motorcycle leathers were not made for speedy running and the helmet he was wearing — he dared not remove it for fear of identifying himself — limited his field of vision.