Pope laughed. “He wouldn’t have anticipated retirement. Not that sort of job.”

“My guess would be that he has been picking up work on the way. Bar work? Bouncing? Something that attracts migrants. Cash-in-hand, no questions asked. I don’t think we’ll be able to find anything substantial. How detailed shall I be?”

“Whatever you think is relevant.”

“There’s been no correspondence with any of the few contacts I was able to find,” she continued, casting a reproachful look at Control. “He has no family and there have been no emails, calls or texts to the friends he does have. He dropped off the face of the earth.”

“And yet you found him.”

“Mostly down to a stroke of luck. He was fingerprinted in Mexico. Ciudad Juárez. The Mexican police upload all their data to a central database in Mexico City and we picked it up en route. Pictures, too.”

She flicked to the page with the picture of Milton in the police station.

“And there he is,” Pope said.

“This was taken on Monday night. Standard procedure. The passport he gave to the local police is a fake.”

“He’ll have several,” Pope observed.

“I’m sure he does.”

“What else?”

“Knowing which passport he has been using made it much easier to get more on him — like where he’s been for the last six months, for example.” She flipped forwards to a double-page map of South America. “The red line marks the route that he’s taken. Passport data is collected at most borders these days and that data is very easy to find. Once I knew the number of the passport that he was using it was quick to find out where he’s been. He landed in Santos in Brazil in August. He came ashore from the MSC Donata, a cargo ship registered in Panama. It sailed from Liverpool two weeks earlier. From there, he started west. He crossed into Paraguay at Pedro Juan Caballero, then into Bolivia and Peru. Since then, he’s always headed north — Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala then Mexico. Most of the time he was photographed at the border, and I have those pictures, too.”

She flicked through to a series of photographs. The tall cranes of Santos appeared in one picture and the barren deserts of the Brazilian interior in another. Milton was looking into the camera for some of them, bored and impatient. Others had been taken without him noticing.

She scratched her head. The Foreign Secretary examined her with searching eyes. “So he’s been in South America since you lost track of him,” she said. “No idea what he’s been doing in between his border crossings. But we do know where he is now. He came across the Mexican border at Tapachula four weeks ago, travelling by bus. He’s been heading north and it looks like he got to Juárez earlier this week. We’ve got the police pictures and the prints and so I tried to find something else. I ran face recognition on everything I could think of and picked up this. They’re from CCTV from a restaurant in the city.”

She turned to the series of stills she had grabbed. Milton was approaching the camera across a broad parking lot. He had a rucksack slung over his shoulder. Black glasses obscured his eyes. He was tanned and heavily bearded.

“How did you find that?” Coad asked.

“The software’s pretty good if you can narrow the search for it a little. There was a disturbance at this restaurant the same day this was taken. A shooting. Seven people were killed. Footage from all of the cameras in the area was uploaded by the police. I was already deep into their data. Made it a lot easier to find.”

Control scowled at the pictures. “Was he involved?”

“Don’t know.”

“Was he arrested?”

“Don’t think so.”

Coad held up his hand. He paused for a moment, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the armrest of his chair before turning to her again.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No,” she admitted.

“You’ve checked hotels?”

“First thing I checked. Nothing obvious. He’ll be paying in cash.”

“So where do we look first?”

“Lieutenant Jesus Plato — the policeman who fingerprinted him. He’s the best place to start.”

“And if we should decide to send agents to Mexico to find him … what is your estimate of the odds that we would find him?”

“I can't answer that. I’d be speculating.”

“Then speculate,” Control said.

“If he’s as good as I think he is, he won’t stay in once place for more than a week or two and he’s been in Juárez since Monday. Plus there’s the danger that what happened at the restaurant might have spooked him. But if you’re quick? Like in the next couple of days? Decent odds, I’d say. He won’t know you’re coming. If he’s moved on, he won’t be far away. A decent analyst might be able to pick up a trail.”

Control looked across at Coad and, at the latter’s curt nod, he turned back to Anna. “We’ve been in contact with the Mexican government. They’ve given us approval to send a team into Mexico to bring him out. Captain Pope will be in charge. Six agents and you, Ms. Thackeray.”

“Oh.”

“Are you willing to go?”

“I’ll do what I’m told.”

Pope nodded at her. “Juárez is not a small place,” he said, “and, if you’ve done your research, you’ll know it’s not the easiest city in the world to find something. It’s overrun with the drug cartels. Normal society has broken down completely. We might need help tracking him down. And you know him as well as anybody.”

“Well?” Coad said.

“Of course,” she said.

Control nodded brusquely. “You’ll be flying from Northolt and landing at Fort Bliss in Texas. You’ll go over the border from there. Do you have any questions?”

“When?” she said.

“First thing tomorrow.”

* * *

Anna rode home, changed out of her leathers and went out for a walk. Pittville Park was nearby and she made her way straight for the Pump Room and the ornamental lakes. The building was a fine example of Regency architecture and the lakes were beautiful but Anna was not distracted by them. She slowed as she approached the usual bench. She sat and pretended to watch the dogs bounding across the grass. When she was satisfied that she was not observed, she reached down beneath the bench, probing for the metal bars that held the wooden slats in place. Her fingers brushed against the narrow plastic box with the magnetic strip that held it against the rusted metal. She retrieved the box, opened the end and slid the memory stick inside. It contained her full report on Milton, plus the regular updates that she provided on the operation and scope of GCHQ’s data-gathering activities. She didn’t know how long she would be out of the country, and she did not want to be late in filing. She paused again, checked left and right, waited, and then reached back and pressed the case back into its place. As she left for home, she swiped the piece of chalk that she held in her hand against the side of the metal bin next to the chair.

35

Captain Michael Pope took off his boots and his jacket and went through into his kitchen. It was late and his wife was asleep upstairs. He looked in the fridge but there was nothing that took his fancy. He took a microwave meal from its paper sleeve, pierced the film and put it in the oven to heat. While he was waiting, he reached the bottle of whisky down from the cupboard, poured himself a double measure, added ice and sipped it carefully to prolong it. He rested his hands on the work surface and allowed his head to hang down between his shoulders.

Did he know Milton?

He did. He knew him very well indeed.

* * *

They met twenty years ago. They had both been in the sandpit for the first Iraq War, young recruits who were too stupid to be scared. They were in the same Regiment, the Royal Green Jackets, but in different Battalions. Milton had been in the Second and Pope in the First. They hadn’t met in the desert but, once that was all over, Pope had transferred into the First Battalion. He was assigned to B Company.