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She closed her eyes and recalled his beautiful face, his caustic laugh, his way of looking at everything and everyone sideways, how good he'd been at his job, and seeing him praying one time when he thought everyone was asleep. She'd go find a Catholic church later, light a candle for him.
Find peace, Sammy
. But she knew what he'd say. ‘
I'll find peace after you find the fucker who did this to me, and kill him, Nadia. You owe me.
' And she thought of her father, and that day he'd been dragged away and she hadn't used the gun to protect him.

Thinking of her father helped. He'd have counselled her to see things as they were. There were killers after her. She must use her wits.

She picked up the Beretta, and weighed it in her hands. Holding a loaded gun always helped her think. And then it came to her. It hadn't been sloppy. The CIA – if that's who it was – had let the whereabouts be known. They must have tipped off the local police. But why? Why throw away an asset? Had the interrogator become a risk? Then eliminate the risk, send in a clean-up crew, and sell the apartment for a profit. Don't put it on BBC World!

The floorboards squeaked in the corridor outside her room. Someone heavy. She slowed her breath, took aim down the sightline at the eyehole on the door, let her finger caress the trigger. The footfalls passed. Whoever it was didn't even slow down. She breathed normally again. There were two other rooms on the top floor.

The CIA hypothesis didn't add up. She released the Beretta's magazine, let it drop onto the bed where it bounced and ended up resting cool against her thigh. She took aim at the door again. She focused on her breathing, imagining the torturer who'd killed Sammy, his head in front of the door. As soon as she did, her aim was off. Anger – and maybe fear – offset her psychomotor coordination. She focused on her breathing again, and her aim steadied.
Click
. Once more, this time imagining the CIA agent, the one who had ordered Sammy's torture, standing in front of the door, his left eye just in front of the eyehole. Her father had said it was important to pick an eye, not to shoot between them like in the movies, because that was ultimately cowardly. Look your enemy in the face as you shoot him, and snuff out his life. Her aim was solid.
Click
.

She back-tracked. Janssen had tried to double-cross Kadinsky. The Rose must be worth twenty million at least, probably more. Who was the buyer? A number of nations would be interested – China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, to name a few; not counting the terrorist organisations who'd love to get their hands on it, some of whom could afford that kind of money. But there would have to be an intermediary. Janssen, first, then… Who else? A CIA agent on the take? It began to take shape. A rendezvous planned, but Janssen never pitched up. Maybe Janssen had told the CIA agent about Sammy. Nadia joined the team late, and Janssen probably thought she wasn't worth mentioning. The CIA spook tracked down Sammy, had him tortured, and then ratted out the torturer as a distraction while he came here, knowing exactly where the Rose was. Which meant he knew about her.

Lowering the gun, she checked the contents of the cartridge – eight rounds left – then reinserted it and sat up, cross-legged.

She'd told Kadinsky seventy-two hours. If she didn't retrieve the Rose by six pm tomorrow, time was up. What would
he
do? He'd send someone. She let the end of the barrel rest cool against her forehead, pointing at the ceiling.
Think
.
Think like him
. He'd send someone else. But that wasn't right either, it seemed off, like her aim earlier.

The floorboards again. Lighter this time, possibly female. Somebody paused outside her door. One of the girls? Elise?
Wrong door, girl, he's not here
. The floorboards retreated again, fading into the general hubbub percolating upstairs from the bar.

Good, she needed to concentrate. Eyes closed, Nadia let her finger touch the trigger. What else? She'd seen two people who didn't belong. One was CIA. The other one, who was he working for? The nose of the barrel moved up and down, between her eyes, her finger on the trigger, as she tried to coax it out of her head.

Her eyes flicked open. She put down the Beretta.
Kadinsky had already sent someone
. The bastard was playing her. Pretending to give her three days, showing that her sister was still alive, when all the time he'd fucking sent someone. She got up and paced her small room, wishing she was back home where she would have finally gone out into the woods with a rifle to hunt something.

It's not personal, she told herself, never is, and even if it was it never helped to treat it that way. Kadinsky wanted the Rose badly. Janssen had tried to cheat him, so why should Kadinsky trust her? He knew she was itching to leave his operation with Katya in tow, which would make her a liability more than an asset in a high-stakes operation. He'd sent a heavy, the guy with the straw hat. She wished she could remember his face. If he delivered the Rose back to Kadinsky her life wouldn't be worth shit, nor would Katya's.

She stopped pacing, went to the sink, splashed cold water on her face. What to do? Cut and run? Not an option. What if she failed to retrieve the Rose? Same outcome, plus they'd torture her to find out where it was. She had no misguided belief she could hold out against a skilled interrogator. No one could in her estimation, such bravado being the stuff of films and TV, not reality. And if she retrieved the Rose, one of these two men – the rogue CIA agent, or Kadinsky's man – would be waiting to take it from her. Probably both.

The solution came to her.
Crossfire
. Play them off against each other. Get one of them to take the other one out of the equation. Even the odds. But which one?
No contest
. CIA man. He'd be more civilised, even if just as ruthless. She'd need to find him, do a deal. He'd lie of course, but he'd watch her back at the critical stage, if only to ensure he got the Rose.

How to find him? She remembered hunting the bear with her father. He'd said you don't just track a bear, you need to consider its habits, its motivations, and most of all the environment. She looked at the clock. 10:30pm. Where would he be? He'd arrived quite quickly when Kennedy's went up in flames. CIA. American. Where would he stay? Not some little B&B. Either the
Splendide
or the
Grande
. And what would he be doing? Maybe in the bar… No, he'd stay out of sight, or at least not be somewhere where someone might strike up a conversation with him. He was most probably jet-lagged, so 10:30 pm to him was at most early evening. He'd be wide awake. A CIA man, alone, probably away from home often. Maybe he'd be horny, in the Scillies surrounded by semi-bare young flesh all day, but unable to risk any kind of entanglement, not even a hooker in his room, wherever that was. If he was professional, he'd be in his room polishing his gun. But he was rogue, which meant he didn't play by the rules.

It was a long shot, but she switched on her smartphone and started searching for massage parlours. She found one in the street behind the two big hotels. She'd swing by the two hotel bars just in case, and then stake out the parlour. She saved the address, stowed the Beretta in her jacket, and headed out. Descending the stairwell, she spied Elise standing outside Jake's room, hesitating. Elise turned and glared. Nadia paused for a second, then walked straight up to Elise, looked her in the eye, knocked hard on Jake's door, then left before he had a chance to open it.

***

Adamson wasn't happy. His branch of the Agency used a five-stage coding system for mission status, from one,
routine
, to five,
catastrophic
, the latter invariably applied posthumously. His current mission status was three,
unstable
, because factors had arisen that were outside his control. Standard protocol for level three was to call in back-up. The one thing he couldn't do.

He found it difficult to sleep. He'd been out for a walk earlier in the day, and spotted someone he'd not expected to see. Why the hell was Danton here? It complicated everything further. Danton should have been arrested back in Frankfurt, the raid on his apartment had been at 4am as planned. Evidently he'd not been there, and now he'd showed up in the Scillies. Revenge? Unlikely. Danton might have figured out who gave him away, but he'd have gone to ground, laid low. Besides, Danton might be sadistic but he was no idiot, and knew how the game worked.

Adamson had tried to follow Danton but had lost him in the crowds when a trio of policemen on mountain bikes had appeared in his path. Besides, he'd not had his silencer, and taking on Danton hand-to-hand in some back alley was not an option. Instead he'd anonymously sent a photo of Danton to Reuters in the afternoon, but the news agencies hadn't posted it yet, probably waiting to verify it. But as soon as they did, he could alert the local police – anonymously, of course – that he'd seen someone fitting Danton's description walking around Hugh Town.

And there were other complications. The girl was still around, which meant she hadn't retrieved the device yet. His clients, the Kilanoa family, the first so-called fourth generation Colombian drug cartel, operating out of Medellin – it was always Medellin, the Silicon Valley of drug cartels – were getting antsy. He'd ridden that one out. A minor delay. They were used to that. But he did wonder who the other client was, the one Kadinsky was working for. At least the Kilanoas would never actually
use
it, except for leverage with the US. He was actually doing the world a favour, making sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands.

It wasn't good if the Brits got to keep it either. Peace was never the result of one side having a significant advantage. Rather, it was always down to staring along your own barrel at your adversary and finding another barrel pointing back at you. The key to peace, ever since the atomic bomb, was the prospect of mutual annihilation. Trusting in human nature ignored millennia of harsh history. He was helping the world avoid a dangerous loss of equilibrium, and getting rich into the bargain, to the tune of thirty million.

But the Office were asking more and more questions. How had he missed what was going on in Frankfurt? Why hadn't he sent his report? Why had the Heathrow lead gone dead? Adamson had played it up, saying he was busy chasing secondary leads, and worried about Sandy and Arnie, that they should go to his sister's, that he only trusted Jorgenson to look after them. It had been a difficult phone call, but he'd secured another twenty-four hours before they'd expect him back in Penzance.

Twenty-four hours before they'd consider him a risk.

Jorgenson had upped his stake to three million. Fair enough, as now he'd take the family to Sandy's sister's place as agreed, then on a boat trip down the Florida coast. Once Adamson had the Rose, Jorgenson would fly them to Cartagena where the luxury villa awaited them all. Sandy didn't know, but this wasn't the first time she and Arnie had had to go into protective custody. And then… and then everything would be fine. Easy living for the rest of their lives, private schooling for Arnie, and the next kid… Sandy had told him yesterday she was pregnant. Talk about bad timing. After three years of trying and firing blanks…

Twenty-four hours. The only good news was that the weather was deteriorating. Most dive boats wouldn't be going anywhere. Kennedy's had been taken out of the picture, which worked in his favour. He wasn't sure if it was the girl or Danton who'd torched his dive shop. Could they be working together? Not likely.

The two SEALs would arrive in the morning. They'd retrieve the Rose from the Tsuba – he'd worked that one out from talking to Ben, and seeing the Tsuba listed on the weekly dive schedule at Kennedy's. The SEALs would have to search for it, but they had rebreathers, and could stay down there a long time. Besides, he had the locator code. As long as they could get within thirty metres, it was a cinch. The 4pm Scillonian ferry tomorrow would do. It could sail in heavy weather. He and the Rose, tucked safely in his diplomatic bag, could travel onwards to Bristol, then Paris Beauvais airport, a quick taxi across to Charles de Gaulle, down to Lisbon, across to Rio, then Bogota where the trade would take place. Two more days. Then nothing could touch him, and the world could carry on screwing itself for all he cared.

Still, he couldn't sleep. He was wired. But he needed to be in tip-top form tomorrow. He knew what he had to do to get some relief. Sex between him and Sandy had been difficult in recent months, and he'd even started to wonder if she was seeing someone else. Jorgenson, who'd been keeping an eye on her, said no. Truth was, she was cut up by Arnie's falling behind in school, somehow blamed herself, and meanwhile he was never at home, always travelling. The job, always the fucking job. Well, all that was going to change. Soon they'd have all the time in the world together, would get their marriage back on track and get Arnie the best help money could offer.

But right now… He'd seen the right sort of establishment on the previous night's walk. Picking up his coat and holstering the Smith & Wesson, he was about to leave when he decided to take one more item, as a precaution, in case Danton turned up. He had to protect his family, in case things went south. He fished the device out of his case. It looked harmless. But it would obliterate anything – or anyone – in a five-metre radius.

He considered the worst case scenario: Danton found him, whether here or at the parlour, dragged him somewhere and tortured him until he begged to be killed, which realistically wouldn't be that long, and wouldn't be soon enough. No, better to take out Danton if he was caught. That way Sandy and Arnie got full pension, Jorgenson would stay quiet, all suspicions would be swept away, and he would die a hero. Clean cut, even if not exactly best case scenario. He stared at the device. It was in two parts, a small cylinder disguised as a deodorant stick, and a remote on a key fob, which required three of six buttons to be pushed in sequence. He could enter the code with his eyes closed, and the cylinder would do the rest.
Eau de C4
, he called it. Arming the device, he pocketed the cylinder and put the key fob around his pinkie, concealing the remote in his left palm. He headed for the elevator.