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punched in the number. When the signal reached the phone it would complete a circuit which would mix the two explosive liquids and send an electric charge to the anti-tank mines.
    Dimitriy studied the mechanism with the bemused concentration of a drunk man peering at a keyhole. He was lying in a pool of his own blood and his vision had begun to fade. He knew he hadn’t got long. He looked at the mobile phone. It was of a type more familiar to his son, but some instinct told him to remove the battery. He reached out towards it. Maybe now they would give him a raise.
    The leader opened the van door and listened for the familiar muted thunder of the explosion. After two or three anxious minutes he turned accusingly to the armourer.
    ‘I can go back . . .’ the man offered.
    The leader shook his head. The helicopter would be at the rendezvous and they could be in Finland and home free within the hour. He banged on the partition between the rear and the driver’s seat and the van took off.
    ‘We’ve got what we came for.’

IV
    IN HIS OLD Bond Street office, four storeys above the well-heeled shoppers who could afford to buy from the expensive shops he walked past every day, Jamie cleared a space for the maroon pay book and the journal among the auction catalogues and art history books piled haphazardly on the desk.
    He hesitated, torn between the fascination of the journal’s ruled pages and the pay book, which he knew would give him an immediate insight into the grandfather he had never truly known. The journal must once have been an expensive purchase and was of a type he guessed had been used to record the meetings of exclusive gentlemen’s dining clubs. It was three-quarters of an inch thick, A5-sized and bound in what had once been fine quality blue leather, now scuffed and faded with age. There had been a clasp to hold it shut, but that had long since disappeared and the book was now held closed by a piece of tightly knotted silver cord. The pages appeared well-thumbed, but something told him it hadn’t been opened for many years.
    Reluctantly, he laid it aside and opened the little maroon pay book.
    The first page came as a surprise. Jamie knew that most soldiers who served in the Second World War had been volunteers or conscripts, civilians in uniform who reluctantly stepped forward to serve their country against the Nazis. He had expected his grandfather to be one of them, but Matthew George Sinclair had signed up with the Royal Berkshire Regiment on August 17 1937 at the age of nineteen. The pay book recorded his height as 6 feet, his chest expansion as 40 inches and his weight as a 180 pounds. His appearance was described as – eyes: green; hair: dark; no distinguishing marks. Jamie felt a slight shiver as he recognized himself in his second year at university as a member of the Officer’s Training Corps. On graduation, he’d had an offer from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and he had almost completed the selection process before his mind had rebelled against the lifetime of discipline he was letting himself in for.
    Other dog-eared pages contained information on Matthew’s pay and allowances, deductions, training received and courses taken (rifle shooting/rated sniper) and his commission with the rank of lieutenant in September 1939. But the most interesting was ‘Record of Specialist Employment Whilst Serving’. Here was revealed the mystery of the awards he’d found in the metal box. The African Star and clasp, the France and Germany Star, the 1939–45 Star, the Defence Medal and the War Medal, all dated and initialled by his commanding officers. And finally, the Military Cross for ‘acts of gallantry in the area of Augsburg, south Germany’.
    But who was the man behind the medals?
    Only now did he feel able to pick up the journal and work with his fingers at the knot holding it closed. He opened the book at the first page. Each entry was preceded by a date and laid out in the neat