It was a pleasant day, unseasonably warm, and she was in a good mood as she crossed the pavement, opened the gate and then the front door.

“I’m home,” she called out.

There was no answer.

That was strange. Her husband, Lucas, was a web developer and he worked from the second bedroom upstairs. It was past four o’clock as well, and so their daughter, Isabella, should have been home from school. She took off her jacket and hung it up. Perhaps they had gone to play in the park. She unfastened the clasps of her shoulder holster and took it off. She unclipped the leather strap that held the Sig Sauer in place, withdrew it, and popped out the magazine. She laid the gun and the magazine on the table. She had a gun safe upstairs and would put them away just as soon as she had poured herself a glass of water.

She went through into the kitchen. There was a pile of unopened post on the counter. She flipped through them with idle interest: bills, junk mail, nothing interesting.

She took the glass of water into the sitting room.

She dropped the glass.

Lucas was sitting on the sofa. Isabella was next to him. He had his arm around the girl’s shoulders.

Number Five was sitting in the armchair facing them, a silenced semi-automatic laid across her lap.

Number Eight was standing by the door to the hallway, a silenced semi-automatic in his right hand, aimed at her.

She built a quick mental picture of possible weapons that were within reach: the letter opener on the sideboard; the paperweight next to it; a series of books in the bookcase, some of them hardback, some of them reasonably heavy; the switchblade in her right front pocket; the glass bowl that they used to hold fruit.

She was suddenly rabbit-punched in the kidneys; a sharp pain blossomed through her chest all the way down to her diaphragm. She stumbled forwards a step, bracing herself on the sideboard, before strong hands gripped her around the shoulders and spun her around. She glimpsed the cruel face of a third agent, Number Ten, as he drew back his head and then butted her in the nose.

She dropped down onto her backside, blood over her face.

She got to her hands and knees.

Ten kicked her in the ribs and she thudded into the sideboard again, sweeping her arm across the surface so that the lamp toppled over and so the letter opener fell between the furniture and the wall. She lay flat, her hand inches away from it; it was too far away to get it without noticing.

Kick me again.

She raised herself up again and Ten booted her in the ribs for a second time. She landed against the sideboard, reached beneath it for the opener and palmed it, reversing it and sliding the blade up into her sleeve.

“That’s enough,” Five said.

She bore her weight on one arm and pushed up.

“You’re going to play ball, right, Beatrix?”

She wiped away the blood.

“Because, you know, it’ll be so much better if you do. I don’t want to have to murder you in front of your daughter.”

She looked up. Her husband looked back at her with pained, confused eyes. He didn’t know what she really did for a living; he thought that she was still in the military.

Beatrix felt a pit opening in her stomach and, for a brief moment, the strength drained from her legs.

She mastered it quickly.

“I’m going to play ball,” she replied.

“That’s right. Are you armed?”

“No.”

“So where’s your weapon?”

“Outside. In the hall.”

“Any others in the house?”

“No.”

“Alright. Get up.”

She did as she was told and stood. She moved gingerly, her ribs blaring with pain; it felt like a couple were broken.

She looked through the window as another two agents walked down the front path. Number Nine and Number Eleven.

Five, Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven.

Five of them.

Beatrix knew them all.

Five’s name was Lydia Chisholm. She had joined the group after a career in the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Its agents operated in plainclothes, often submerged in deep cover, and it employed a unit of forty women dubbed ‘the Amazons’ by a lazy and unoriginal commanding officer. Five had been the pick of the bunch. She tall and broad and muscular and Beatrix knew that her record had been excellent since she had transferred, with a series of flawlessly executed kills.

Eight was Oliver Spenser. Beatrix had supervised his training. He had demonstrated a lack of control and a propensity to aggression and she had recommended against his selection; Control had overruled her. His Special Boat Service background was more traditional for the Group. He was more of a blunt weapon; if Five was a knife, Eight was a cudgel. Both were dangerous.

Ten, the agent who had knocked her to the ground, was Joshua Joyce. Nine and Eleven, the agents who were just letting themselves into the house, were Connor English and Bryan Duffy. All three were SAS.

“What do you want?”

“You need to come with us,” Five said calmly.

“Fine,” Beatrix said. “There’s no need for this to be messy.”

“I agree. No need at all.”

She had no intention of going with them and it was most certainly going to be messy. She would have gladly sacrificed herself for the lives of her husband and child but she knew, for sure, that there was no outcome that she could negotiate that would not end with her family being shot.

She heard Ten shuffle his feet. Three or four feet behind her.

She felt the cold metal of the letter opener as she held it against the inside of her wrist.

“Control doesn’t trust me?”

“He wants to be sure that he can.”

She could guess what their preferred outcome was: they would offer the safety of her family for her cooperation and then, when they had satisfied themselves that she had not kept any of the evidence that she had retrieved from the car, they would execute all three of them. They would leave no clue that might explain what had happened. The police would investigate, find nothing, describe it as a senseless tragedy and close the book.

“What do I have to do to prove it?”

“Let’s start with the photographs. Did you copy them?”

“No,” she said.

“And the flash drives? Look at them?”

“No.”

“Copy them?”

“No. I told him I didn’t.”

“I know you did. He doesn’t believe you.”

She worked hard to keep her focus clear but it was almost impossible. Isabella was looking at her with a dumb mixture of incomprehension and terror and Lucas, while he was fearful and confused too, also wore a look of betrayal and that, Beatrix had to accept, was fair enough. She had always done everything that she could to leave her work at the door; usually it was possible to leave it at the airport arrivals gate. She had never entertained the possibility that it might find her here.

“You mind if the others have a look around the house?”

“Knock yourselves out.”

“Go upstairs,” Five said to Eight. He disappeared into the hallway and started upstairs. She heard Nine and Eleven follow him. She looked over at Ten. “Check the kitchen.”

Beatrix fixed them all in her mind, working out the order she was going to have to attack them: Five, Ten, then whoever came down the stairs first.

“Keep nice and still,” Five said.

She kept the gun aimed at Lucas.

Chapter Eight

Beatrix would wonder about what she did next for the next decade of her life, running the sequence of events through her mind in the squalid rooms and opium dens that would become her home. She knew that this would be the only chance that she had; the odds were against her, and unless she was prepared to sacrifice either her husband or her daughter she knew, beyond question, that they would all be dead within a matter of minutes. She would wonder, too, during the long lonely nights of her exile when she numbly chased the dragon, whether Lucas had looked at her with a flash of understanding — and perhaps even silent approval — just before she dropped the letter opener down into her hand, spun it, and leapt for Five.