…? No problem, Alan Millet had said, no problem there. The ransom money's under lock and key in the Scrubs, and a bloody good laugh he'd had as he said it. Nothing for Holly to worry himself with, and of course it wouldn't come to that anyway. A bloody good laugh… The street lights picked out the man who stood against the river parapet, and who stared down at the ruffled water. Must have been the antibiotics he had been taking to stifle the influenza bug, must have been that which had loosened his tongue. A field man should never have been given a guarantee.

But Millet had offered Holly a promise.

It won't happen, of course… but there's a man in a cell at Wormwood Scrubs. Of course it won't happen… but if it did, well, there'd just have to be a swap.

Bloody marvellous, wasn't it? And all the spadework done through Belgrade, all the ribbons tied. All ready for the flight to Berlin, and the only haggle was over which crossing-point, what time, which day.

Michael Holly for Oleg Demyonov. Them happy and us happy.

But now a man lay in the mortuary of the Hammersmith hospital and Alan Millet's promise was a worthless thing.

Chapter 2

His weapon against the rusty binding of the bolt was a fifty kopeck coin.

For more than an hour he had crouched on the floor, bracing himself as the speed changes of the train and the unevenness of the track destroyed the momentum of his painstaking work. With the milled edge of the coin he chipped at the red-brown crust that had formed between the lower lip of the cap of the bolt and the metal sheet plate of the carriage flooring. He had something to show for his effort. A tiny pile of dust debris was collected beside his knee, and some had stained the material of his grey trousers.