Toni said, "I want you to ring each of these in the next hour. Just ask them if the number will be operational over Christmas."

"Very good."

She handed back the sheet. "Don't hesitate to call the police at Inverburn if you're the least worried about anything."

He nodded. "My brother-in-law Jack is on duty tonight, as it happens. My missus has taken the children over to their place for Christmas."

"How many people will there be at headquarters tonight, do you know?"

"On the night shift? An inspector, two sergeants, and six constables. And there'll be a duty superintendent on call."

It was a small complement, but there would be nothing much to do once the pubs had closed and the drunks had gone home. "You don't happen to know who the duty super is?"

"Yes. It's your Frank."

Toni did not comment. "I'll have my mobile phone with me day and night, and I don't expect to be anywhere out of range. I want you to call me the minute anything unusual happens, regardless of the time, okay?"

"Of course."

"I don't mind being woken up in the middle of the night." She would be sleeping alone, but she did not say that to Steve, who might have considered it an embarrassing confidence.

"I understand," he said, and perhaps he did.

"That's all. I'll be leaving in a few minutes." She checked her watch; it was almost four. "Happy Christmas, Steve."

"To you, too."

Steve left. Twilight was falling, and Toni could see her own reflection in the window. She looked rumpled and weary. She closed down her computer and locked her filing cabinet.

She needed to get going. She had to return home and change, then drive to the spa, which was fifty miles away. The sooner she hit the road, thc better: the forecast said the weather would not get worse, but forecasts could be wrong.

She was reluctant to leave the Kremlin. Its security was her job. She had taken every precaution she could think of, but she hated to hand over responsibility.

She forced herself to stand up. Her job was facilities director, not security guard. If she had done everything possible to safeguard the place, She could leave. If not, she was incompetent and should resign.

Besides, she knew the real reason she wanted to stay. As soon as she turncd her back on the job, she would have to think about Stanley.

She shouldered her bag and left the building. The snow was falling more heavily.

KIT was furious about the sleeping arrangements.

He sat in the living room with his father, his nephew Tom, his brother-in-law Hugo, and Miranda's fiance, Ned. Mamma Marta looked down on them from her portrait on the wall. Kit always felt she looked impatient in that picture, as if she could hardly wait to get out of her ball gown, put on an apron, and start making lasagne.

The women of the family were preparing tomorrow's Christmas dinner, and the older children were in the barn. The men were watching a movie on TV. The hero, played by John Wayne, was a narrow-minded bully, a bit like Harry Mac, Kit thought. He found it hard to follow the plot. He was too tense.

He had specifically told Miranda he needed to be in the cottage. She had been so sentimental about his joining the family for Christmas, she had practically gone down on her knees to plead with him to come. But, after he had agreed to do what she wanted, she had failed to fulfill the one condition he had made. Typical woman.

The old man was not sentimental, though. He was about as softhearted as a Glasgow policeman on a Saturday night. He had obviously overruled Miranda, with Olga's encouragement. Kit thought his sisters ought to have been called Goneril and Regan, after the predatory daughters of King Lear.

Kit had to leave Steepfall tonight and come back tomorrow morning without anyone knowing he had been away. If he had been sleeping in the cottage, it would have been easier. He could have pretended to go to bed, turned off the lights, then sneaked away quietly. He had already moved his car to the garage forecourt, away from the house, so that no one would hear the engine starting. He would be back by mid-morning, before anyone would expect him to be up, and could have slipped quietly back into the cottage and gone innocently to bed.

Now it would be much more difficult. His room was in the creaky old part of the main house, next to Olga and Hugo. He would have to wait until everyone had retired. When the house was quiet, he would have to creep out of his room, tiptoe down the stairs, and leave the house in total silence. If someone should open a door-Olga, for instance, crossing the landing to go to the bathroom-what would he say? "I'm just going to get some fresh air." In the middle of the night, in the snow? And what would he do in the morning? It was almost certain that someone would see him coming in. He would have to say he had been for a walk, or a drive. And then, later, when the police were asking questions, would anyone remember his uncharacteristic early morning stroll?

He tried to put that worry out of his mind. He had a more immediate problem. He had to steal the smart card his father used to enter BSL4.

He could have bought any number of such cards from a security supplier, but smart cards came from the manufacturer embedded with a site code that ensured they would work at only one location. Cards bought from a supplier would have the wrong code for the Kremlin.

Nigel Buchanan had questioned him persistently about stealing the card. "Where does your father keep it?"

"In his jacket pocket, usually."

"And if it's not there?"

"In his wallet, or his briefcase, I expect."

"How can you take it without being seen?"

"It's a big house. I'll do it when he's in the bath, or out for a walk."

"Won't he notice it's gone?"

"Not until he needs to use it, which won't be until Friday at the earliest. By then I'll have put it back."

"Can you be sure?"

At that point Elton had interrupted. In his broad south London accent he had said, "Bloody hell, Nige! We're counting on Kit to get us into a heavily guarded high-security laboratory. We're in trouble if he can't nick something off his own fuckin' father."

Stanley's card would have the right site code, but the chip in it would contain Stanley's fingerprint data, not Kit's. However, he had thought of a way around that.

The movie was building to a climax. John Wayne was about to start shooting people. This was a good moment for Kit to make a clandestine move.

He got up, grunted something about the bathroom, and went out. From the hall, he glanced into the kitchen. Olga was stuffing a huge turkey while Miranda cleaned brussels sprouts. Along one wall were two doors, one to the laundry and the other to the dining room. As he looked, Lori came out of the laundry carrying a folded tablecloth and took it into the dining room.

Kit stepped into his father's study and closed the door.

The likeliest place for the smart card was in one of the pockets of his father's suit coat, as he had told Nigel. He had expected to find the jacket either on the hook behind the door or draped over the back of the desk chair; but he saw immediately that it was not in the room.

He decided to check some other possibilities while he was here. It was risky-anyone might come in, and what would he say? But he had to take chances. The alternative was no robbery, no three hundred thousand pounds, no ticket to Lucca-and, worst of all, the debt to Harry Mac unpaid. He remembered what Daisy had done to him that morning, and shuddered.

The old man's briefcase was on the floor beside the desk. Kit went through it quickly. It contained a file of scatter graphs, all meaningless to Kit; todays Times with the crossword not quite finished; half a bar of chocolate; and the small leather notebook in which his father made lists of things he had to do. Old people always had lists, Kit had noticed. Why were they so terrified of forgetting something?