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earlier.
    The back door led into the garden, but he knew better than to go that way. There might be more than one watcher, and the odds were that a second man, if any, would be at the rear of the house.
    A side window gave onto the drive. He unlocked the dead-bolt and opened it without a sound. A blast of cold air took him unawares. The wind was rising. There was a roll of thunder, very far away, moving behind unseen clouds. The storm was coming.
    He dropped to the ground, poised against possible attack. Here, beside the house, the darkness was complete. Clouds came up fast, obscuring the stars. He crouched, listening. Beneath the pounding of his heart, he heard cold waves turning on the shore. Above him, branches shifted. His skin felt taut and nervous. In spite of the cold, he was sweating.
    Crossing the gravel of the drive took an eternity. Then grass, then the fence dividing him from the
    next house. A frosted lawn led down to a low wall on the other side of which lay the road. From here he could still see the street lamp, but there was no sign of the watcher. Automatically, he checked the knife: the other man would carry a gun, he was sure of that.
    Though he knew the darkness hid him, he felt utterly exposed as he sprinted across the road. On the other side, he vaulted the sea wall onto the path that wound along the beach. The tide was well in now, a heavy swell pushed by rising winds. The thunder sounded again, nearer this time, a low, animal growl threatening violence.
    He kept to the sand, crouching low. The waves covered any sound. The man was still standing where Patrick had last seen him, in the shadows just beyond the lamp. His back was to the sea. He moved restlessly, trying to keep warm. About six foot, Patrick reckoned, and well built. There would be a car nearby, perhaps another man waiting in it.
    Patrick removed his shoes. It was bitterly cold, but he had to be sure of silence. He slipped behind the wall, then over, never letting his eyes wander from his target. The frost felt like daggers on his bare skin. With his right hand he slipped the knife from his belt. Thunder like stones in the sky. Darkness closing in. The sea tormented, moving landward from the night.
    He was behind the man now. Without a sound, he set his shoes down. Faint as gossamer, his breath hung in front of his face, trembling. He braced himself and reached with both hands at once. His left grabbed a clump of hair, pulling the man’s head back fiercely, while the right brought the knife round hard against his throat. He could feel the blade touch flesh, the Adam’s apple neat on steel.
    ‘Kneel.’
    The old voice out of the darkness; his own voice, and yet not his voice.
    The man grunted, about to scream, his throat bulging unseen against the blade. Then, slowly, his legs buckled and he lowered himself to his knees. Patrick moved hard behind him, a knee in his back, the knife well poised, the long throat taut. He could feel the stranger’s fear, acrid in the sea air, in the electric presence of the storm.
    ‘Take your gun and throw it to the ground. Please don’t force me to hurt you.’
    The man struggled for words.
    ‘No ... gun ... I ... swear.’
    ‘Who are you?’
    Silence. The wind moving, cold as death.
    ‘Who sent you?’
    The knife again, a trickle of blood, frost on the blade. Silence. Death hovering breathless in the thin air. The man’s fear was rapidly giving way to something else: Defiance? Indifference? Transcendence?
    ‘Why are you watching me?’
    Silence. Then a roll of thunder that echoed across the bay.
    He switched to Arabic.
    ‘Min ayna ta’ti? Where are you from?’
    No sign of comprehension.
    He tried Persian.
    ‘Az koja amadi?
    No answer.
    Suddenly lightning flashed, turning the world to light for an instant. An image fixed itself in Patrick’s mind: a dark-haired man, his head held back, a knife against his throat, a thin line of blood across bruised flesh.
    Patrick blinked, and in that instant the