4 PM

KIT was furious about the sleeping arrangements.

He sat in the living room with his father, his nephew Tom, his brother-in-law Hugo, and Miranda's fiance, Ned. Mamma Marta looked down on them from her portrait on the wall. Kit always felt she looked impatient in that picture, as if she could hardly wait to get out of her ball gown, put on an apron, and start making lasagne.

The women of the family were preparing tomorrow's Christmas dinner, and the older children were in the barn. The men were watching a movie on TV. The hero, played by John Wayne, was a narrow-minded bully, a bit like Harry Mac, Kit thought. He found it hard to follow the plot. He was too tense.

He had specifically told Miranda he needed to be in the cottage. She had been so sentimental about his joining the family for Christmas, she had practically gone down on her knees to plead with him to come. But, after he had agreed to do what she wanted, she had failed to fulfill the one condition he had made. Typical woman.

The old man was not sentimental, though. He was about as softhearted as a Glasgow policeman on a Saturday night. He had obviously overruled Miranda, with Olga's encouragement. Kit thought his sisters ought to have been called Goneril and Regan, after the predatory daughters of King Lear.

Kit had to leave Steepfall tonight and come back tomorrow morning without anyone knowing he had been away. If he had been sleeping in the cottage, it would have been easier. He could have pretended to go to bed, turned off the lights, then sneaked away quietly. He had already moved his car to the garage forecourt, away from the house, so that no one would hear the engine starting. He would be back by mid-morning, before anyone would expect him to be up, and could have slipped quietly back into the cottage and gone innocently to bed.

Now it would be much more difficult. His room was in the creaky old part of the main house, next to Olga and Hugo. He would have to wait until everyone had retired. When the house was quiet, he would have to creep out of his room, tiptoe down the stairs, and leave the house in total silence. If someone should open a door—Olga, for instance, crossing the landing to go to the bathroom—what would he say? "I'm just going to get some fresh air." In the middle of the night, in the snow? And what would he do in the morning? It was almost certain that someone would see him coming in. He would have to say he had been for a walk, or a drive. And then, later, when the police were asking questions, would anyone remember his uncharacteristic early morning stroll?

He tried to put that worry out of his mind. He had a more immediate problem. He had to steal the smart card his father used to enter BSL4.

He could have bought any number of such cards from a security supplier, but smart cards came from the manufacturer embedded with a site code that ensured they would work at only one location. Cards bought from a supplier would have the wrong code for the Kremlin.

Nigel Buchanan had questioned him persistently about stealing the card. "Where does your father keep it?"

"In his jacket pocket, usually."

"And if it's not there?"

"In his wallet, or his briefcase, I expect."

"How can you take it without being seen?"

"It's a big house. I'll do it when he's in the bath, or out for a walk."

"Won't he notice it's gone?"

"Not until he needs to use it, which won't be until Friday at the earliest. By then I'll have put it back."

"Can you be sure?"

At that point Elton had interrupted. In his broad south London accent he had said, "Bloody hell, Nige! We're counting on Kit to get us into a heavily guarded high-security laboratory. We're in trouble if he can't nick something off his own fuckin' father."

Stanley's card would have the right site code, but the chip in it would contain Stanley's fingerprint data, not Kit's. However, he had thought of a way around that.

The movie was building to a climax. John Wayne was about to start shooting people. This was a good moment for Kit to make a clandestine move.

He got up, grunted something about the bathroom, and went out. From the hall, he glanced into the kitchen. Olga was stuffing a huge turkey while Miranda cleaned brussels sprouts. Along one wall were two doors, one to the laundry and the other to the dining room. As he looked, Lori came out of the laundry carrying a folded tablecloth and took it into the dining room.

Kit stepped into his father's study and closed the door.

The likeliest place for the smart card was in one of the pockets of his father's suit coat, as he had told Nigel. He had expected to find the jacket either on the hook behind the door or draped over the back of the desk chair; but he saw immediately that it was not in the room.

He decided to check some other possibilities while he was here. It was risky—anyone might come in, and what would he say? But he had to take chances. The alternative was no robbery, no three hundred thousand pounds, no ticket to Lucca—and, worst of all, the debt to Harry Mac unpaid. He remembered what Daisy had done to him that morning, and shuddered.

The old man's briefcase was on the floor beside the desk. Kit went through it quickly. It contained a file of scatter graphs, all meaningless to Kit; todays Times with the crossword not quite finished; half a bar of chocolate; and the small leather notebook in which his father made lists of things he had to do. Old people always had lists, Kit had noticed. Why were they so terrified of forgetting something?

The top of the pedestal desk was tidy, and Kit could not see a card or mything that might contain one: just a small stack of files, a pencil jar, and a book entitled Seventh Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.

He started opening the drawers. His breath came fast and he felt his heartbeat speed up. But if he were caught, what would they do—call the police? He told himself he had nothing to lose, and carried on; but his hands were unsteady.

His father had been using this desk for thirty years, and the accumulation of useless objects was staggering: souvenir key rings, dried-up pens, an old-fashioned printing calculator, stationery with out-of-date phone codes, ink bottles, manuals for obsolete software—how long was it since anyone had used PlanPerfect? But there was no smart card.

Kit left the room. No one had seen him go in, and no one saw him go out.

He went quietly up the stairs. His father was not an untidy man, and rarely lost things: he would not have carelessly left his wallet in some unlikely place such as the boot cupboard. The only remaining possibility was the bedroom.

Kit went inside and closed the door.

His mother's presence was gradually disappearing. Last time he was here, her possessions were still scattered around: a leather writing case, a silver brush set that had belonged to her mother, a photograph of Stanley in an antique frame. Those had gone. But the curtains and the upholstery were the same, done in a bold blue-and-white fabric that was typical of his mother's dramatic taste.

On either side of the bed were a pair of Victorian commode chests made of heavy mahogany, used as bedside tables. His father had always slept on the right of the big double bed. Kit opened the drawers on that side. He found a flashlight, presumably for power cuts, and a volume of Proust, presumably for insomnia. He checked the drawers on his mother's side of the bed, but they were empty.

The suite was arranged as three rooms: first the bedroom, then the dressing room, then the bathroom. Kit went into the dressing room, a square space lined with closets, some painted white, some with mirrored doors. Outside it was twilight, but he could see well enough for what he needed to do, so he did not switch on the lights.

He opened the door of his father's suit cupboard. There on a hanger was the jacket of the suit Stanley was wearing today. Kit reached into the inside pocket and drew out a large black leather wallet, old and worn. It contained a small wad of banknotes and a row of plastic cards. One was a smart card for the Kremlin.

"Bingo," Kit said softly.<............