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.’ the man sniffed dismissively as he waved his hand ‘. . . he simply was not up to the task.’
    Valentin pictured the statistics, the ones about smallpox, the ones that had worried him each year more and more as he’d watched his own children grow up and have children of their own.
    The effectiveness of the vials had increased exponentially over time because the otherwise globally eradicated smallpox virus was no longer vaccinated against. Conservative estimates, based on the recent computerized projections he had seen, suggested current national and international quarantine regulations and existing ring vaccination programmes would fail to prevent a global pandemic, were the virus to be purposefully released and propagated. Many millions would die.
    ‘I’m going to take the tape off your mouth now to enable us to talk,’ the hawk-faced man said, ‘but if you start shouting, I’ll set her on you again. She will, of course, take your other ear. But, trust me, that is probably the least she will do.’
    Valentin believed him. He felt himself nod. And there – right then, in his moment of spiritual resignation – a sudden hope surged through him. Because his head had moved, even if it had done so only fractionally. He’d moved it himself.
    The hawk-faced man pulled back the hood of his jacket, revealing ice-blue eyes and a shock of white-blond hair, which dispelled Valentin’s previous nightmare vision of some beast culled from a childhood story. This man’s eyes shone with intelligence, with a kind of enlightenment, even. There was something about his bearing that was studiously refined.
    Without warning, he tore the duct tape from Valentin’s mouth and waited patiently as Valentin heaved air into his lungs.
    ‘You,’ Valentin said, ignoring the pain, his voice little more than a rasp, his tongue so swollen he could barely speak. ‘You killed Nikolai . . .’
    The man gazed evenly back. ‘Zykov? Yes.’
    ‘You set him up, so that it would look like Russia was behind the assassination of that envoy.’
    ‘Quite so. Bravo.’
    ‘And Shanklin?’ Valentin said.
    Danny Shanklin . . . Even now, even here, in so much agony, his training was kicking in, compelling him to gather whatever intelligence he could. In case he ever made it out alive. And Valentin had to know. Was his source right? Had Shanklin also been framed for the London massacre? Or had he been working with these monsters too?
    ‘Shanklin should have been dead by now,’ the hawk-faced man said.
    Should have been . . . Valentin almost smiled. So this man who held him captive now
was
fallible, after all. Somehow Shanklin had disrupted his plan. Instead of lying there alongside Nikolai Zykov in a London morgue, set up and then disposed of like poor old Nikolai had been, Danny Shanklin had escaped.
    ‘Why—’ Valentin started to ask.
    ‘Are we doing this?’ The hawk-faced man’s eyes showed only disdain. ‘You are a man of so-called principle. You’d never understand.’
    For profit, then, he guessed. For money. They’re going to sell the smallpox to whoever will pay them the most.
    Again he pictured his family. His heart grew cold as steel.
    ‘As you’ve no doubt already guessed,’ the man said, peering into Valentin’s eyes, ‘Zykov told us everything we needed to know about locating the smallpox vials. You will now aid us similarly, telling us exactly what intelligence you think you have on us, and how you are planning to hunt us down.’
    Strength. Valentin felt it then. His right hand made a fist. He felt his calf muscles flexing too. The drug they’d used to incapacitate him was finally wearing off.
    ‘Go fuck yourself, traitor,’ he said – not only because he knew Lyonya and Gregori were listening but because he was certain that, once he gave these people the information they wanted, he’d be useless to them. He’d be dead.
    ‘Traitor?’ The man gazing into his eyes smiled thinly. ‘To what? To Russia? Which Russia?