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destination, or it turned off early.’ Lish paused, perhaps embarrassed by what he then had to say. ‘Because then,’ he finally continued, ‘God knows how, but we lost the damn ship. That was three days ago. Radio contact disappears, somehow the satellite loses it. Presumably, again, it goes into port and reappears under new guise, or more probably does all that changeover at sea under cover of cloud, night, a giant mosquito net – all three ... I’ve no idea. But it does disappear. Twenty-four hours later the head of the man who gave us the information turns up.’
    Burt watched Anna. She was curling back one of the thick lips from the opened mouth. She was peering inside the mouth. Then she spoke for the first time. ‘Russian dental work,’ she said without looking at either of them.
    She was, as always, Burt thought admiringly, completely unimpressed by anything or anyone, even here at the Agency’s HQ.
    ‘That’s what we concluded,’ Lish agreed. ‘But we assume his name isn’t Yuri Saltyakov and we have no other leads. That’s why we wanted you to come in, Anna. On the off chance.’ He looked at Burt. ‘Thank you for being so prompt.’
    ‘Happy to oblige, Theo,’ Burt said magnanimously, allowing the implication of Cougar always being there, ready and helpful, to get the CIA out of a spot of difficulty, to hang gently in the air.
    ‘He’s Russian,’ Anna said. ‘But they left just the head because his hands would show he wasn’t a dock worker. And a head is easier to transport. So it probably came from the south of the country. Not Kiev, but the Crimea itself, perhaps.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ Lish said uncertainly, slightly fazed by an analysis he hadn’t, so far, received from any of his own team. ‘Do you recognise him, Anna? Anything you can help us with?’
    ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’ve never seen him, or a picture of him, before.’ Her voice measured, giving nothing away. You would never penetrate her thoughts, Burt told himself, unless she wanted you to.
    Burt looked at her quizzically. ‘Sure?’ he said.
    ‘Yes. Sure.’ She was looking at the place where the neck had been cut. ‘It’s not a Russian execution,’ she said. There was a long pause in the room. ‘Or, at least, it’s not meant to look like a Russian execution,’ she finally added.
    Burt looked sharply at her this time, but he didn’t want to pursue the implications of these appended words in front of Lish. That would be something for him and Anna alone, later.
    ‘What kind of an execution is it?’ Theo Lish enquired.
    ‘It’s like something the Chechens do,’ she replied. ‘It’s a specifically Islamic execution. Or that’s how it’s meant to look,’ she added, reinforcing the doubts she had already expressed.
    Lish enquired no further.
    They went upstairs in a warm elevator to the ground floor and all three loosened their coats until they’d warmed up enough to remove them.
    ‘I’m going to have a chat with Theo,’ Burt said to Anna. ‘Do you mind waiting?’
    She didn’t mind. She never minded what was happening, Burt thought. It was his view of the world exactly. All that’s important is what’s happening. Forget the rest.
    In an office on the fourth floor, which was not Lish’s but which he cleared of two young men in crisp white shirts and ties, Lish sat in a swivel chair and offered Burt a comfortable-looking sofa that was more suited to his bulk.
    ‘Do you have a decent cognac?’ Burt asked, without a great deal of hope.
    ‘I don’t think we do, Burt,’ Lish replied with a softly apologetic tone, and Burt felt satisfactorily confirmed in his decision to leave the CIA ten years before, after a glittering career, in order to set up a private intelligence company awash with decent cognac and, more importantly, awash with government contract money.
    He’d served with Lish in the Agency for many decades, more than three, anyway. They’d joined together back in the sixties – Burt, the