The bartender’s name was Marcel. He’d spent more than thirty years serving drinks, watching the games that play out when men, women, and alcohol collide. He thought of himself as a connoisseur of the art of seduction. So the moment the girl stepped into his domain, then shone her smile at the man in the corner, Marcel’s interest was piqued.

He was reasonably certain that this was some kind of con. The man was a mark and she was playing him. After the second martini, she’d discreetly switched to sparkling water, but the man had stayed with his liquor. Marcel chuckled to himself and looked forward to the evening’s entertainment.

The bar was beginning to fill up now. A group of businessmen had come in, each in turn checking out the brunette and smirking to one another as they ordered their drinks. Then a bizarre figure strode up and perched on one of the long-legged chairs by the glossy wooden countertop. He was almost two meters tall, dressed in battered, patched jeans and a T-shirt printed in lurid shades of yellow and purple. He had hair like a black man, except it was a pale, sandy color, and his eyes were Nordic blue.

Marcel sighed, sadly, bemoaning the loss of proper standards. Nowadays it was impossible to tell the difference between the beggars and the millionaires. A man in tratty denims could be a rock star, an actor, or one of those American computer tycoons people kept talking about. Maybe he was the hippie son of a wealthy family. When he ordered a Heineken, he gave the number of a junior suite. His watch was a Breitling Navitimer – an expensive chronograph, but also a serious, functional one. He had good manners too. Businessmen tended to place their orders brusquely, without a please or a thank you. But this white Rastaman took the trouble to converse a little in a calm, easygoing voice. He showed respect for Marcel’s job and his dignity. Maybe the clothes could be forgiven.

“Would you like some matches, monsieur?” Marcel said, nodding at the Camel cigarettes on the counter, next to the beer glass.

The man smiled. “No thank you, I’m trying to give them up. Keeping them there is like a test. If I can have a couple of beers without smoking a cigarette, I’ll know I’m getting somewhere.”

He glanced across to the corner of the room, turned back to Marcel, and said, “Have you seen the couple in the corner? She just stroked his face. Then he took her hand and kissed it. Isn’t love great?”

Marcel winked. “L’amour, toujours l’amour…”

In the earpiece hidden beneath his dreadlocks, Thor Larsson could hear Carver’s voice. “Yeah, I saw it. It’s almost scary how good she is at this.”

Inside the Camel pack there was a miniature video camera pointing through a pin-size aperture, with a signal transmitter linked to a video monitor and recorder in Carver’s room. A microphone and an audio transmitter were hidden in Alix’s bag. Everything she and the banker did, every word they said, was all going down on tape.

“I wonder what she’s like in bed,” mused Larsson, apparently for the bartender’s benefit.

Carver laughed. “Well don’t expect me to tell you.”

“If only I could hear what they’re talking about.”

“Don’t worry. I’m getting the audio feed from Alix, clear as a bell.”

“Could you get me another beer, please? And some nuts, if you’ve got them. I think I’ll stick around.”

Grigori Kursk was a patient man. He’d learned that lesson in Afghanistan. Too many of his comrades had rushed into combat, hoping to overwhelm the mujahidin guerrillas with sheer weight of firepower, only to be outsmarted, ambushed, and sent straight to hell. Kursk could wait for hours, days, as long as it took to make the other man move first and expose his position. Only then would he strike.

So he did not care whether it took Carver all night or all week to return to his apartment. He would be ready for him whenever he came.

The two men he’d sent up to the apartment had reported that the door was steel-framed and secured with deadbolts to the top and bottom as well as the side. The hinges were reinforced. The only way to force entry would be with a bomb or a bazooka. Kursk himself had examined the windows through his binoculars. The glass was extra thick, almost certainly bulletproof.

It was no more than he had expected. Carver was no fool: He was bound to take precautions against men just like himself. In the meantime, Kursk needed to take some safety measures of his own. A call to Moscow gave him the contact number he needed, a Swiss-registered mobile.

“I work for Yuri,” he said. “I need to dispose of a car, a BMW 750. It has something in it. That has to go too, you understand?… I’ll send a man with the car. Also, I want a van, like a phone company or a delivery van, something like that. My guy will pick it up. Twenty minutes. You’d better have what we need. You don’t want Yuri to hear you let me down.”

Kursk sent Dimitrov away with the car. Papin was still in the passenger seat, kept upright by a tightly strapped seat belt. Now Kursk was alone in the street. It was quiet, respectable, a place where he stuck out like a bear in a china shop. He needed to escape the prying eyes that lurked behind all those flower baskets and net curtains. A sign caught his eye a little way up the road: Malone’s Irish Pub. Perfect.

He took his beer and a whisky chaser to a seat by the window where he had an unobstructed view down the street. No one could get in or out of Carver’s building without him seeing. Kursk savored his drink and looked around the pub. He’d known places just like this in Moscow. He guessed there were a million like it, all around the world. But it was okay. Compared to some of the places he’d sat and waited, this one was a palace.

Jennifer Stock had left the car and gone for a little walk, looking in shop windows, stopping for an early evening cup of coffee, and spotting Kursk and all three of his men. There were, she reflected, tremendous advantages to being female, if only because the instinctive male refusal to take one seriously was impervious to any amount of supposed sexual equality. You could wander up and down and they just thought you were a silly woman who had no sense of direction or couldn’t decide where to go. You could poke your nose into nooks and crannies and they just put it down to feminine curiosity.

It was far easier to talk to people too. The nicest man could arouse a certain amount of suspicion or even fear when he approached a stranger. Children were taught to shy away from men they did not know. But anyone of any age or gender would talk to a woman. In fact, it was the big-eyed, tousle-haired son of the local café owner who’d told her all about the Frenchman who’d been asking his papa questions that morning, and the funny men in baggy coats who’d got out of the big black car.

“Oh yes, I saw them,” she said, ruffling the little boy’s hair. “They were funny, weren’t they?”

It was while she was sitting in the café, drinking her double espresso, that Stock took the call from London. It was Bill Selsey.

“Hi, Jen, just got a hit on that BMW with the Italian plates you were asking about. Turns out it’s registered to a company called Pelicce Marinovski. They supposedly import furs from Russia.”

“Really? The men in that car didn’t look much like furriers.”

“Yes, well, Pelicce whatever-it-is doesn’t look much like a legitimate import-export company, either. Can’t find any proper accounts anywhere, no premises, no evidence of any sales.”

Stock frowned. “Is this some sort of front for the Russian mafia?”

“Possibly, so be careful, all right? These are not nice people to do business with.”