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couldn’t decide whether they were caused simply by his age, or by the sad tales he had to tell of a land filled by perpetual snows and suspicion. Now Harry was here, and the old Russian’s stories seemed to be coming to life.
    Sydykov had returned, bringing with him a hairdryer, a preposterously large contraption that Martha immediately claimed and held aloft as though she had just won an Oscar.
    ‘Thank you so much, Mr Sickof.’ She made a point of mispronouncing the name. ‘Back with you in five minutes, gentlemen,’ she declared, disappearing in the direction of her room.
    They waited for Martha, then they waited some more. Bowles tapped his foot in exasperation, Proffit meandered off in search of a drink, Malik sat in a corner studying his briefing notes while Harry asked himself yet again what the hell he was doing here. He had no plan, or at least nothing he regarded as shower-proof let alone watertight. The closest he’d got was a plan so simple it bordered on the preposterous. Its sole merit lay in the fact it was so outrageous, it might just take everyone else by surprise, too, catch them napping. He would simply ask them to release Zac.
    Outrageous, certainly, but perhaps not as stupid as it sounded. There were ties between Britain and Ta’argistan. The Central Asian state was desperate for aid, for experts, for sound advice, anything that might help it drag itself out of their yurts and into the twenty-first century. Many homes were still heated with dried camel turd, their walls built of mud, and the industrial infrastructure consisted of little more than haystacks and holes in the ground. The Ta’argis also needed help in clearing up the irradiated rubble left behind by the Soviets. In return for help in these matters, Britain’s rewards were likely to be less tangible. She’d gain a friend in a sensitive part of the world, and Britain had grown rather short of friends in recent years. If they were lucky, the Brits might discover that the Ta’argis, like some of their Central Asian neighbours, were sitting on an endless supply of oil or natural gas or uranium, buried somewhere deep inside the Celestial Mountains. That was a long shot, of course, but modern diplomacy was little more than a crap shoot, and you had to be in the game to stand any chance of winning.
    A new world was waiting only to be discovered, yet for the moment it would have to wait on Martha. Sydykov paced up and down the foyer, examining his watch, his smile growing more forced with every glance. When, finally, she reappeared, blown and brushed, Bowles exploded in a theatrical gesture of impatience. ‘Really, Martha!’ he snapped.
    ‘Why, Roddy,’ she said as she breezed past in the direction of their waiting bus, ‘you’d spend more time with your hair, if you had any.’
    His hand came up defensively to the sparse patch on the back of his head, as though to brush it away. He gave a snort of rebuke. Then he followed.
    Soon they found themselves heading for the White House, the Presidential Palace. It proved to be an uncomfortable, angular building of six floors set in the centre of the city behind ornate railings, its name coming not in imitation of the US President’s home but from the pale stone cladding used in its construction. Harry recognized the style; Soviet, nineteen-sixties, built off a plan drawn up in some office in Moscow, presumably the same office that had supplied the plans for Lenin’s mausoleum. The entrance was guarded by young soldiers in exaggerated flat felt hats the size of dinner plates who snapped to attention as the visitors approached. Inside, the reception hall was vast, largely empty, like an aircraft hangar, every step echoing on the pink-marble floor. By contrast, the lift up to the top floor was claustrophobic and slow. They found themselves disgorged into a reception room, where they were greeted not by the President but by a man of slightly less than average height with a lean, pinched face