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TWENTY-EIGHT
28
I try not to react.
"Can you explain?" Patterson asks.
"No."
"Not even a vague notion."
My mind was racing through the possibilities, but I couldn't think of any.
"Do you know this woman?"
"I met her in Moscow when I went there with Amber Chase. Her name is Elmira. She was General Ozdoyev's, the Russian Deputy Prosecutor's escort for the night. She tried to take Mrs Chase's handbag, but Mrs Chase slapped her around the face to stop her."
Numbness rather than shock seeps through me. I felt like someone had walked up and hit me in the back of the head with a piece of wood, with the noise still ringing in my ears.
"Why weren't they found sooner?"
"The five MI6 operatives went off the grid five days ago. General Ozdoyev's girlfriend went missing the day after. Felixstowe has nearly four thousand lorries passing through every day.
If Customs searched everyone, there'd be ships queued back to Rotterdam."
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