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‘I need to kiss you,' he said.

Not the most original line. But efficient and, in his case, effective. It had been five years. Both her and Katya's lives were on the line. And she needed Jake to help her retrieve the Rose. She glanced at his lips, imagined them kissing her nipples, and felt the skin around them tingle.

She held the door firm. ‘What about your girlfriend?'

It didn't seem to faze him.

‘History,' he replied.

‘Does she think so?'

‘Does now.'

Good answer. He said nothing more. Most men would have babbled or bull-shitted on, digging themselves in deeper, killing the moment. Jake just stood there, waiting for her answer, not pressuring her. But her heart had already sped up. She hadn't felt like this since before… she flushed the thought away. Slick and Pox had owned her too long. But thinking about it made her realise something shocking. It was the anniversary, almost to the day – five years. She ground her teeth, banged her brow against the door.

‘Are you okay?' Jake asked.

‘No,' she replied.

Five fucking years. No, five
non-fucking
years. She'd slept with one man in her entire life, and now there was a CIA agent possibly sent to kill her. Slick and Pox, Kadinsky, her mother, her father, even Katya. Her life was defined by other people. What about her? What about
her
needs?

She made up her mind, and took a deep breath. ‘Just a kiss,' she said, and opened the door, standing behind it.

He entered and then turned around, next to her bed, not that there was anywhere else to stand. His mouth dropped open. She wanted to undress him there and then. But she folded her arms across her breasts, watched his eyes to see if they would glance downwards. Of course they did.

‘How did you know which room I was in?'

He shrugged. ‘Fi texted me.'

Nadia worked it out: Fi wanted Claus, but Claus had been after Nadia all night long.

‘You said you wanted just a kiss.' She unfolded her arms. ‘You're a liar aren't you?'

He hesitated, then nodded. He put his hands on her waist, and kissed her while the fingers of one hand traced slowly up her body. The other hand slid around to her buttocks. She began undressing him while his hands caressed her where it mattered. Her body took over, and she pressed her groin against him, felt the hardness there. He kissed her again, and she wanted to drown in that mouth. He gripped her buttocks hard, the way… Unbidden, Slick and Pox flashed into her mind.
No! Don't you dare ruin this!

She stopped him, came up for air. ‘Listen Jake, I don't want you on top of me. It's a rule I have. Something happened once.'

He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers, then brushed her lower lip with his thumb. He took her hands, kissed her palms one by one, then placed them on his bare chest.

‘Not a problem,' he said.

His voice nudged her over the edge. ‘Good,' she said, and pushed him back onto the bed.

Chapter Nine

Danton aimed to be nondescript. He had fuzz on his chin that could be a beard or just a couple of days' growth. He sometimes wore glasses, sometimes not, and didn't need them. His clothes were baggy, always in shades of beige and grey, hiding his lifelong body-building obsession. His hair was somewhere between brown and blond, medium length and a little unkempt. People didn't notice him. He never looked people in the eye, because his eyes were a startling emerald green – you would remember them. He'd meant to bring contacts to dull their colour, but he'd had to leave Frankfurt in a hurry.

He'd always been a fan of martial arts movies, having practised enough in his earlier years, from ju-jitsu to kendo, ending up with
Systema
, as it was so effective and devastating in ordinary street situations and close quarters. Danton knew all the pressure points on the body, and always hit them hard. Besides, all the top Russian assassins – and they were the best in the world – were trained in Systema, the CIA preferring the equally tough
Krav Maga
style developed by the Israeli Special Forces.

But his idol, as with all true martial artists in his view, was Bruce Lee. Danton knew every one of his films backwards, and recalled a scene from
Fist of Fury
, where Bruce had needed to get information, and in order to do so, in the space of a few seconds he'd transformed his upright, fighter-like posture into that of a decrepit, insignificant old man. As Danton waited in the throng to disembark the Scillonian ferry at Hugh Town, he mimicked his legend. He stooped a little, stared at the ground, trudged along like the others around him, occasionally muttering to himself as if caught up in his private little world, which made people want to ignore him even more.

Danton loved crowds: the anonymity, the security. For him, ninety-nine per cent of people were sheep. They had the herd instinct, even if they kidded themselves they were individuals – or worse, managers, bosses, supervisors, whatever – like they had some authority over others, like they were leaders. Bullshit. Push them just a little out of their comfort zones and they'd stare around bewildered to see what everyone else was doing, scared of their own shadows. Hollow men.

No, there were only two types of men who mattered, both rare: those who rose to the top, whose egos needed adulation and absolute power, like the old Japanese
shoguns
. If you disobeyed them you'd lose your head in an instant, and your family would lose theirs, too. Kadinsky would have been a shogun. The second type were more like Danton:
ronin
, renegade samurai, warriors who still had a code, but no master. He was more than happy being a ronin.

He lingered a while on the metal gangplank, taking in the lay of the land, then stepped onto the concrete quay. The other tourists drifted off in various directions, some meeting friends or
family, others greeted by tour guides, a few independent travellers making their way towards the tourist office to seek out accommodation, brandishing maps, Lonely Planet Guides, smartphones and tablets. He threaded his way through people taking selfies with the Scillonian or the harbour in the background. Danton headed down the esplanade away from them all. It was early, so the tourists already lodging there hadn't emerged yet, most probably still stuffing their gobs with fried eggs and toast in the cheesy hotels strung around the bay. As he walked, he smelt a familiar odour of smoke, ash and melted plastic. There had been a fire last night. He didn't
do
coincidences. Someone had been busy. He didn't yet know who, but Adamson and Nadia were top of his list.

After buying a broad-rim straw hat from a beachside stall opened early, he found an Italian café with a traditional espresso machine and a dopey waiter. Danton ordered. Macchiato.

No, not a caramel macchiato for Christ's sake, a regular one. Inside the cafe. I don't care if the view is better outside, I know it costs more
.
Jesus Christ!

He took his seat, calmed himself down. No point taking it out on the waiter. He took stock as the boy went behind the bar to fix the coffee. Danton had barely gotten out of Frankfurt alive. First Lazarus had visited him. After that he'd spent the night with Linda, which he was pretty sure was her real name. She reminded him of Gloria, and he'd stayed longer than usual and left her a hefty tip, then returned to his street to find it swarming with cops. He'd spun around and headed to his back-up safe room ten blocks away, picked up his getaway gear and taken a taxi to Bad Homburg, a train to Cologne, a plane to Heathrow, a coach to Penzance, and then here.

Who the fuck had given him away? Not Lazarus for sure; he was the one who had told him she was in the Scillies, and not Land's End. No, his money was on the suit, Adamson. If the rogue CIA fucker had sold him out, he'd end up in the chair, squealing like a stuck pig, begging for his death. Pliers and blowtorch. Never failed.

He pulled his Nikon from his rucksack, switched it on and aimed it out from his dark alcove to the bright sea beyond, zooming in. A naval patrol boat, a few fishing vessels loitering here and there, and the blue and white Scillonian already cruising out of the bay on its way back to Penzance.

The young waiter, looking hungover, arrived and plonked the macchiato down on the table – no glass of water like in civilised countries – eager to leave as more customers arrived and installed themselves on metal chairs and tables outside, tourists who looked like they would tip. Danton raised a hand, made the boy wait; he was hungry, hadn't eaten anything on the ferry. What he wanted was protein, ideally bacon, and he'd separate the rind himself. But he shouldn't solicit attention, he had to be just another tourist. Full English, he said, extra bacon. The boy nodded absently, scribbled a note on a pad, probably dreaming about last night, the girl he missed while getting pissed.

Danton went back to surveying through his camera, then took a look at the message just popped up from his phone. Lazarus. There was an image of a girl, not unattractive, not stunning. Nadia. Good. Now he could find his target.

There was a ruckus outside, a couple of young kids, both with toy machine guns.

‘You're dead!' one of them yelled, the taller one, eyes full of fire.

‘I shot you first!' the younger one pleaded.

The older one raised his gun as if to smash the other boy's face with it. ‘I said you're dead.'

The younger boy looked as if he might cry, then lowered his gun and lay on the floor. The older boy grinned and put his foot on the chest of the other boy, raising his own gun in the air, and yelled something Danton didn't understand, maybe a reference to a video game or a movie. He saw the look in that boy's eye, the feeling not only of triumph, but power through domination. Being able to make another person obey you, submit to your authority through fear. The kid probably didn't understand it fully, nor the fact that he should relish it before life – society – would chisel it out of him or put him in prison, unless the kid became either a soldier or a boxer or a killer, like Danton.

The waiter shooed the kids away. The younger boy sprang up and both ran off, as if pals again, but Danton knew harm had been done, the younger kid had been made to eat shit. His spirit would remember it. If he was smart he'd have learned a lesson today, that rules don't mean anything where raw power was involved. And if he was dumb, well, he'd just end up another sad loser like most people, and vent his frustration on anyone who was vulnerable later in life.

But Danton knew exactly how the bigger kid felt, because for him, that feeling of power over someone had become an addiction. He remembered the second time he'd killed, after some punk had cheated him in a high-stakes poker game. Danton had lost a year's wages, knew the fucker had cheated, but the entire game was rigged, and there were too many heavies around. He waited outside the backstreet gambling joint for two hours, hiding behind the rubbish bins, then followed the guy from a distance until he neared the deserted docks at 3am.

Surprising the guy and beating the crap out of him had been easy, but he'd only gotten a fifth of his money back – obviously the others had shared the winnings. Anger brewed in Danton like a firestorm. He tied the schmuck's hands behind his back, using the guy's own belt, and shoved a handkerchief in his bloodied mouth to stop him begging for mercy. That was when he spied a run of rusted chain nearby. At first, he did it just to scare the crap out of the guy, which worked, as Danton wrapped the heavy chain around the guy's legs in a crude knot, and rolled him closer to the water's edge. The pure terror in the guy's eyes drove Danton on. It was like a kid's game: see how much he could frighten the dolt. To top it all, Danton heaved the guy up, doing a deadlift with him, chain and all, and staggered over to the drop.

The guy and chain weighed a lot, easily two hundred and fifty. Danton thought about the weightlifting championships, how a shot at an Olympic title had been torn away from him a year earlier, and in that moment all the pent-up rage from being screwed over in life too many times surged through him, and he felt so good, holding this man's life, writhing and squirming and whimpering in his bare hands, felt the absolute pure God-like power of life over death. He tossed the guy into the cold water below.

Never even knew his name.

Danton didn't sleep that night, dizzy with elation, and ended up in a brothel in the red light
district, taking one hooker after another till dawn, fucking like a lion. In a way, looking back now, he'd been like the smaller boy, but he'd managed to gain the upper hand and kill the older one. Would that younger boy have gone so far? Course not. Unless he'd been shafted by life again and again. Danton hadn't had a great life, but after that first kill, word had got around once the bloated body was found and the local mafia put two and two together. Nobody messed with Danton any more. In fact they gave him work. Respect. That was what mattered.

Danton downed the macchiato. Breakfast arrived. Lots of bacon, and a glass of water, the waiter looking apologetic. Okay, Danton decided, he'd leave a tip after all. A small one.

***

Nadia stirred, eyes closed, then remembered last night. A smile played on her lips. She reached for Jake, but found the bed empty. Her eyes snapped awake, and her hand automatically reached under her pillow, searching for the Beretta. It was gone. Then she recalled hiding it under the bed. It was still there. But where was Jake? The door was locked from the inside. She heard nothing but checked the tiny bathroom just in case, then glanced upwards.

In jeans and t-shirt she poked her head through the skylight, and spied him, staring out to sea. He looked like the male version of those figureheads at the front of tall ships. One she wouldn't mind sailing in for a while. Another lifetime. But as she watched, he mouthed a few words lost on the breeze, closed his eyes as if in prayer, and hung his head. She felt she was intruding on a very private moment, so she ducked back down, waited a minute, then came up again, opening the skylight wide with a loud creak.