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billionaires were rapidly buying up large country houses, whole blocks of Knightsbridge flats, the occasional football team and most of the masterpieces sold at high-class art auctions. The Bentley and Rolls-Royce dealers hadn’t had it so good since the days of the Indian maharajahs.
    With the billionaires came some unsavoury connections to the Russian mafia, which were more the concern of the new Serious and Organised Crime Agency than MI5. But the presence in the UK of so many characters of dubious origin with so much Russian money, a number of them openly hostile to the regime in Moscow, was bound to interest the Russian intelligence officers in London. And that, as Brian Ackers insisted, was in turn interesting to the Counter-Espionage Branch.
    Liz felt a tap on her arm and Peggy pushed across a note. “Got to go” it read. She nodded, and Peggy slipped out as Brian Ackers asked for other reports. Liz’s mind began to wander. She wondered what was happening in Counter-Terrorism and how they were getting on without Charles. She was jolted back to the meeting by the sound of people beginning to stir in their chairs, sensing the meeting was coming to an end. But Ackers wasn’t finished yet. “If we could go back to Nysenko for a moment,” he said, and Liz thought she heard a small groan from Michael Fane.
    “I have to say, the approach to Maples strikes me as very poorly executed. Almost amateurish, in fact,” Ackers mused, and it struck Liz that he was almost feeling let down by the incompetence of his old adversaries.
    He looked over at Hadley. “Nysenko’s very young, isn’t he?”
    Hadley nodded. “In his twenties.”
    “So he’s green,” said Ackers. “Too green. I’m puzzled. They needed an experienced officer for that kind of operation. Someone who’d have taken more time to sound out Maples before making his approach.”
    Michael Fane spoke up. “Maybe Nysenko was the best they’ve got in London.”
    “I don’t believe that for a minute. We know they’ve got some much more senior officers here.” Ackers didn’t look at Fane, and Liz sensed he was thinking out loud. “Unless,” he said, his eyes slowly widening, “the whole thing was intended as a distraction. From something more important.”
    No one said a word. Brian Ackers’ pale eyes swept across his audience, as if daring anyone to challenge his reasoning. “That certainly could be the answer,” he declared firmly, with an unmistakable note of elation. “Yes. There could well be something else going on that we don’t know anything about. That’s the worrying part.”
    But if he were worried, thought Liz, he didn’t sound it. Brian Ackers was scenting the enemy and that made him a happy man once more.

7
    G eoffrey Fane was not a modest man, but neither was he ostentatious. He moved quietly and unobtrusively among a wide group of acquaintances in various overlapping circles at the upper end of London society. He knew the inside of most of the embassy dining rooms, and all of the St. James’s clubs, but Rupert’s Club, where he had been invited to meet Sir Victor Adler, was virgin territory.
    As he lifted the knocker on the front door of the small Georgian town house in a quiet street on the west side of Berkeley Square, he allowed himself to wonder for a moment what he would find inside.
    Adler was a man he had known for a very long time—socially they had met at the occasional dinner party and embassy function—but their contact was mainly professional. Adler had for years supplied MI6 with what was perhaps little more than gossip which he had picked up on his regular visits to the Soviet Union and now to Russia. When Fane, who kept a close eye on these things, knew that Adler had returned from a visit, he would invite him to MI6’s headquarters at Vauxhall Cross for a chat. The contact was low-key, very civilised and understood by everyone, including the Russians. Fane was curious to know what had caused Adler to break