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Vale called him with familiarity – to identify the man with the given name, and capture and interrogate him. The identity of the man, and the reasons Purkiss was to question him, weren’t of interest to Grabasov. What mattered was that they provided a place and time where Purkiss would be found.
    The date and time specified had been four p.m. On Tuesday 28th October. Yesterday. Grabasov had instructed his London contact, the man who’d intercepted Vale’s phone call, to wait for Purkiss at that location. The man had reported back at five-thirty p.m. There was no sign of Purkiss. No sign of anybody else. The location was a stretch of walkway beneath Waterloo Bridge on the north side of the Thames. Grabasov trusted his man, trusted that he hadn’t been observed. Purkiss simply hadn’t turned up. Nor, apparently, had the person he was supposed to be taking in for interrogation.
    Vale had hoodwinked them. He’d made a faked phone call. Which meant Purkiss was somewhere else at that time. Grabasov had no way of knowing where.
    And now his man, the one who’d waited for Purkiss, had given him a lead. Purkiss had travelled to Rome four days ago. Grabasov would need an updated report on how exactly his man had discovered this, but it could wait. His man had probably obtained the passenger lists for every flight out of London within the last week, as a starting point, and had gone through them painstakingly. Either he’d discovered Purkiss’s name on one of the lists, or he’d noticed one of Purkiss’s known aliases listed.
    Either way, the lead was a tenuous one. If Purkiss had indeed flown to Rome last Friday, he could be anywhere by now. He might even have returned to London.
    So pursuing him wasn’t a realistic option. But ambushing him might be.
    *
    G rabasov’s office was on the eleventh storey of an 18-floor tower block in the Presnensky district of Moscow. It was the city’s financial powerhouse, dominated by the mighty skyscrapers of the International Business Centre, which were among the tallest buildings in Europe.
    He ascended the elevator after passing through the security checks with obsequious greetings from the various personnel stationed at each one. Grabasov despised the fawning, the combination of terror and hopeful wheedling in the eyes that darted quickly away from his, but he recognised these as essential aspects of the Russian power dynamic that was played out daily, here and in countless other locations throughout the city and the country as a whole. He responded in kind, displaying neither friendliness nor hostility.
    He was the boss, and he expected deference. It was not to be rewarded with a smile.
    The elevator was smooth and slick up until the eighth floor, when it caught and stalled. This had happened a few days ago, and before that last week. There was obviously some flaw in the mechanism, and despite himself Grabasov felt a profound irritation. How could a body of staff so desperate to make a favourable impression upon him allow such a simple problem to go uncorrected?
    From experience, he knew the lift would wheeze back into life after thirty seconds or so. While he watched the digital floor display above the doors, Grabasov thought about John Purkiss.
    Two years earlier, to the month, the Englishman Purkiss had saved the life of the Russian President in the Baltic coastal city of Tallinn. The name John Purkiss appeared in no news report, although the event had made international headlines for weeks afterward. But the Kremlin identified Purkiss quickly, and negotiated a deal with the British government. It would be an embarrassment to the Russian state if it were to become public knowledge that a Briton had prevented an assassination attempt on the Russian leader. Therefore, Whitehall was cordially requested to keep this detail secret. In return, Purkiss would enjoy a degree of protection from the Russian intelligence services. It was assumed that Purkiss worked for MI6, and although any