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any random police activity.
    He slept most of the hour and a half it took to reach Brussels, lulled to sleep by the warm air and the hum of the engines. His dreams were vivid and random, a kaleidoscope of scenes from long ago, when life was very different, and those from more recent times. And among them, the image of Orti’s face swam up like a fish coming to the surface of a pool, staring up at him. He sat up with a jerk, wondering if he had said anything in the quietness of the carriage. But when he looked round, nobody had noticed.

EIGHT
    â€˜H arry?’ It was Deane’s voice, dragging him out of a restless sleep permeated with jagged images of narrow mountain roads, snow-covered slopes and war machines. And Paulton’s face. That never went away completely.
    Harry swung out of bed, the phone clamped to his ear. ‘Yes.’ He checked his watch. It was just after six. Too early to be anything good. ‘You gave me until noon.’ Deane had finally relented, seeing that Harry wouldn’t be pushed.
    â€˜I know. But our situation just got worse. Marble Arch, thirty minutes?’
    Harry debated telling Deane to go jump in front of traffic. He had a hospital visit to make. But he knew it would merely be delaying the inevitable. He was going to say yes in the end, and they both knew it. He gave his assent and put down the phone, then got washed and dressed and went out to find a cab.
    Deane was standing near the giant Fiddian-Green horse’s head sculpture, sipping at a mug of coffee. He handed a second mug to Harry.
    â€˜Sorry about this, but I got an alert from my office just over an hour ago.’ He led Harry away from a group of early-bird tourists planning their day. ‘Yesterday you mentioned one of the CP team. Orti?’
    â€˜Yes. French Foreign Legion. What about him?’
    â€˜I said this man – the Afghan – was coming.’ He stared out over the park. ‘Well, I think he’s already made his first move. Orti’s dead.’
    If the coffee didn’t blow away the cobwebs, this bit of news certainly did. Harry had seen death enough over the years, as a soldier and an MI5 officer, to have developed a reasonably pragmatic view of it. For men like Orti, it went with the job, especially in an elite Special Forces outfit like the Foreign Legion. Even so . . .
    â€˜How?’
    â€˜He was tied up and knifed late last night.’
    â€˜Where?’
    â€˜In his sister’s apartment in Paris. She was away and he was using it to bed down while on leave. He’d just got back from a bar in the same street, where he’d been drinking coffee. There were signs he’d been exercising in the apartment – he was due to report back today and was probably sweating off a hangover.’
    â€˜Nobody saw anything?’
    â€˜No. It was professional and quick – and no signs of robbery. The local cops think Orti must have pissed someone off, maybe an Algerian from way back; someone who recognized what he was and decided to get one back for old times’ sake.’
    â€˜So what’s wrong with that?’ There was something in Deane’s voice and manner that showed doubt.
    â€˜You were in Kosovo . . . you saw what they could do to each other.’
    Harry nodded. He knew all right. If every story had been reported in full, they would have had readers throwing up their cornflakes. He had seen the grim results of ethnic cleansing and the terrible revenge attacks by the Kosovars and ethnic Albanians. Gruesome failed to describe the horrors perpetrated on all sides in the name of nationalism and religion. Amid the killings, rapes and beatings that happened daily, there were numerous examples of torture, amputations and live burials.
    â€˜There was that thing some of them did,’ Deane continued, his voice thick. ‘They’d leave a calling card, to show they weren’t going away.’
    Harry remembered. It hadn’t been