Early October

      He loved the ritual. It was as essential to his enjoyment of the countryside as the open space or clean air. A final stroll around the property before bed, the last of a cigar to smoke, the glowing embers of a good cognac warming his stomach. His only regret was that he didn’t come here often enough. Otto Heilmann stepped out of his dacha onto brittle grass; five below zero, he estimated, perhaps even ten.

      His guests had gone to bed. Their cars were parked beside the boat-shed; a black Mercedes 4x4 with dark glass, and an Audi A8 with an auxiliary engine and armour-plating. Frost had turned both windscreens opaque.

      Heilmann wandered to the edge of the lake, trailing clouds of breath and smoke. The silvery light of a three-quarter moon shone on the ice. He saw buttery pinpricks in the blackness of the far shore; two dachas, one belonging to a senior prosecutor from St Petersburg, the other to a Finnish architect.

      There was no cloud and only the faintest whisper of a breeze. Heilmann smoked for a while. As Bruno Manz, a Swiss travel consultant based in St Petersburg, he felt a very long way from the grim years of the German Democratic Republic. A long way from Erich Mielke, his Stasi boss during those years, and a long way from Wolfasep, the ubiquitous industrial-strength detergent that was the defining odour of the Honecker regime for millions of East Germans. Once smelled, never forgotten, a scar of memory.

      He tossed his soggy cigar stump onto the ice and continued his circuit. Along the lake shore, past the creaking jetty, up towards the wood-shed.

      ‘Hello, Otto.’

      A female voice. He thought he