Two hours down the road and halfway through "American Pie", the radio dissolved into a fuzz of static. Goren & I reached simultaneously for the controls. He got there first. I listened with half an ear to a blend of "American girls, all weather and noise…. Fzzzt …. Always the real thing….freak weather warning, just in…. screeeeeee…… the senator claims… fzzzzt…" With a shrug, he turned the radio off. We sat in silence for a while. I decided to make the effort.

"Thanks for letting me drive." If in doubt, be polite.

"No… no problem." A pause, then, "Usually my partner drives anyway."

I assumed he meant his colleague. "Detective Eames?"

"Yeah. She's a better driver than I am, plus I like having the time to think."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm sorry but I… I didn't quite catch your name."

Which was interesting coming from a man who was supposed to have a photographic memory and perfect recall. Then again, at least he hadn't said "You have an interesting name", which most people tend to lead off with.

"Sienna. Sienna Tovitz."

"It's pretty."

Oh God, this was going to be hard work. "Yeah. You want to know how I got it?" A shrug with outspread hands; international sign language for Yes, if you want to tell me. "Most people assume there's a family history there, but truth be told, my mom was redecorating the spare room during the pregnancy – this was before they realised that wasn't a great idea. She saw the name on a sample chart, thought it sounded pretty."

I waited. And waited. Five minutes later, I was impressed. "By the way, thank you."

He wriggled round in the seat to face me and tipped his head on one side.

"Usually when I tell people that story, they come back with "Well, I guess you were lucky not to end up being called 'Hint of Beige' or 'Sky Blue'", or something like that."

He grinned. He actually had rather a nice smile; I couldn't help responding. "Thought you might have heard that a few times. You're welcome."

This was going better. "You know, I didn't believe what Shorokogat was accused of at first. Thought it was just some horror story from the internet, something one of my idiot colleagues had stuck on my desk as a joke… How can people believe that? Believe that injecting the remains of foetuses makes them live longer?"

He waved a hand. "Well, in our society, people inject poison into their foreheads to make them look more youthful… there's a long history of that kind of thing, belladonna drops in the eyes, white lead facepaint… but, well, people can rationalise anything if they want something badly enough."

I sighed. "I suppose I shouldn't be horrified. I mean, I believe in abortion, at least in abortion with some safeguards, so I guess I don't get to complain about people using the remains. It just seems… wrong.. somehow."

"One way to see it would be like this. If you had a choice between saving a work of art and a person from a fire, what would you save?"

"The person."

"But that doesn't mean that, if you could rescue both, it would be okay for you to throw the artwork into the fire because you felt like it. It's still valuable… just not as valuable as the person… saying that things have different… levels.. of value isn't to say that things which are less valuable have no value at all."

"Hmm. I'm going to have to think about that." I noticed he'd avoided giving his own views on the subject.

"Then again," said a voice from behind me, "you could argue that something is either valuable, or it is not valuable; when you talk about degrees of value, you're on the slippery slope." Davenport's face loomed into my vision in the rear-view mirror; he sat up and propped his arms against the back of the chairs.

"I thought you were asleep," I replied, twitching the wheel to swerve round a pothole.

"This is more interesting." Davenport grinned. He had scruffy blond hair, a pointed nose and a face which might be best described as unremarkable.Apart from his eyes, which were light grey, and extremely sharp. "I don't need so much sleep anyway, but for this I want to be ready; two years of my life I've spent tracking Shorokogat. Not just me, of course, but I'm the one here."

"And you think you won't have to after tonight?" Goren turned round to face Davenport.

"I have a good feeling, and my feelings are very rarely wrong. This time tomorrow, he'll be in custody, and, thanks to us, the world will be a marginally better place." He glanced out of the window, possibly picturing whatever reward awaited him back home in England.

"Let's not count our chickens," I contributed, although secretly I was pleased to hear Davenport was so confident. Frankly I was nervous enough about the whole thing. Everyone else had years of experience of this kind of thing. I had a lot of experience of translating Russian & Ukrainian into English, but usually I didn't have to do it on my own, in the field, taking sole responsibility for the results.

"Heh, yes. Rumours of a hurricane…" Davenport was still staring out of the window. Goren & I exchanged puzzled glances.

"I'm sorry?"

"Uh?"

"You said just then… rumours of a hurricane. What does that mean?"

"Oh, sorry. Where I come from, it means, 'famous last words'. When I was a kid, the village I lived in was hit by a hurricane. The night before it happened, the weatherman came on TV and said 'There won't be a hurricane'. Several million pounds' worth of damage and fifteen dead later, they realised they'd got that one wrong."

"I didn't think you got hurricanes in the UK."

"We didn't used to either. That's climate change for you; you get freak storms blowing up out of nowhere."

"Like 'global warming'?" I asked.

"Nah. According to a friend of mine, once the Gulf Stream shifts, we're on course to end up with the same weather as everyone else on our latitude. I hear Moscow is lovely in January."

"It's not," I said, from bitter experience. "How about New York?"

"Will cease to exist once the ice sheets melts. Like places on the coast worldwide… everyone moves inland, or drowns."

"You're very calm for a man talking about the deaths of millions," Goren contributed. Thanks to his sunglasses, I couldn't quite judge whether he was kidding Davenport or meant it seriously. Davenport shrugged; he looked faintly surprised by the question. "It's not my problem. Shorokogat is my problem."

I took a deep breath. "Can I ask a favour?"

Two nods and a couple of "Sure"s. "I've had Shorokogat stuck in my head for the past month. I need a break from him for an hour or so if I'm going to be translating live in a couple of hours. Can we talk about something else?"

"Okay." Two more nods. Goren turned to face me. I noticed as he turned his head that he had a few silvery threads in his dark hair, and wondered idly how old he was. Late thirties, maybe forty? Not much older... I was twenty-six, that put about ten to fifteen years between us. "So… what do you want to talk about?"

"Not sports," Davenport declared. "All American sports just look wrong to me. How about you start by telling us how you got into this?"

He evidently lacked Goren's talent for the indirect approach. I shrugged and prepared to give my potted life history. "I'm a US citizen; my father's a second-generation Russian immigrant. We moved back to Russia when I was just a baby; he went to work in his brother's business. I grew up in Moscow with Ukrainian neighbours; went to the local schools, so I speak both Russian & Ukrainian, along with a smattering of other European languages. Moved back to the States when I was fourteen, went to college, got my degree in Russian & Eastern European languages, bummed around Europe & Asia for a while travelling, realised I needed to earn a living, didn't fancy translating for oil companies, decided the world needed me to fight crime, so I joined Interpol. I spend most of my time based over in Europe working with the European police forces; they tend to be the worst affected by the Russian Mafia… but, you already know that. How about you?"

Davenport shrugged. "I was a copper for a year after leaving school. Got tired of doing the same thing every day, also I realised I hated wearing a uniform and taking orders. Quit, went to university, got my degree, six years later, here I am." I nearly pointed out that that was missing out some fairly important bits of his life, then remembered he almost certainly couldn't tell us anything about them.

"You know where the phrase 'copper' comes from?" Goren asked.

Davenport didn't. I did. "Bastardised form of the Latin verb capere, meaning 'to capture'. Either that, or it's a reference to the copper buttons they used to have on their uniforms." I felt rather than saw two smiles, one surprised, one amused. "I spend a lot of time working with policemen. So, how about you?"

Half an hour later, we'd learned that Goren had been working with his new partner for the past nine months, having been through three others before her, that Davenport had studied Philosophy at college (of all subjects – Goren guessed it on the third go), I'd told the story of how I'd spent one summer travelling Europe with a backpack from one protest or summit to the next as a member of the Babel group of volunteer translators, nearly getting blown up by a landmine during a trip to some of the former Yugoslavian states (Davenport seemed to find this amusing), and we'd found out that between us we could remember only half the words to 'Hotel California' (I managed to briefly tune the radio to a station that played instrumental-only versions of very old songs).

I'd also found out how Goren knew German; he'd been a soldier himself before joining the NYPD. I'd never have pictured him in the Army when we'd met earlier in New York, but somehow it was easier to see when he was wearing fatigues. By now I was feeling a lot more relaxed about the next 24 hours, and Shorokogat had temporarily vanished from my head. Perhaps this was going to work after all. Suddenly, a faint blob appeared on the horizon.

"Hey, is that Whitefield and the others?"

I squinted. "Yep, looks like it." I could make out the small blob that was the other Jeep, and behind it a larger blob that must be the surveillance building.

"They set off a lot earlier than us."

I shrugged and feigned nonchalance. "I must have been driving faster than I thought." Liar! "You think I should slow down."

Davenport grinned, a shark's grin that I saw in the rear-view mirror. "No, I think we should catch them up. Let's not delay things here."

I turned to Goren. "How bothered are you about enforcing the speed limit?"

He returned my grin. "I'm not watching the speedometer."

"Excellent." I floored the gas pedal, and felt the Jeep surge forwards. We began to close on the other Jeep and I twitched the wheel from side to side to avoid the potholes. As the other Jeep's rear view loomed large in the windshield, I could sense Goren twitching slightly beside me. I let the front of the Jeep nose up to them, until I could see Whitefield's eyes widening slightly in their rear-view mirror. As we drew up to the surveillance building, I waited until the last possible minute, then tapped the brakes, let them draw ahead a few feet and rolled gently to a stop behind them. As I pulled the parking brake on, I could see Davenport grinning, and Goren looking… well, relieved is probably the best way to put it. I hopped down from the Jeep. Whitefield & the CIA men were already beginning to unload their gear from the trunk.

Whitefield looked us over from behind his sunglasses. "Well, you're a few minutes late." (Did I mention he has a sense of humour?)

"Sorry. I'll drive faster next time."

"Get in here as fast as you can. We've got an hour before they come into range." He turned and followed Smith and Timkowski inside. I looked the building over. It looked like nothing so much as an abandoned holiday home, built by someone who liked extreme privacy with a nice seaview, but the walls were solid stone, the windows were tiny, and I guessed the locks would be the best available. Neither the army nor the CIA are fond of anyone playing with their toys.

"Do you always drive like that?" Goren asked as he climbed out of the Jeep, stretching to get the kinks out of his back. Well, when you're given an opening like that…

"Nah. Sometimes my driving is just terrible." Behind me, Davenport retrieved our bags from the trunk of the car. He almost bounced towards us, looking exhilarated. It was infectious; I caught myself grinning back, catching the predator's smile from him and Goren. I could feel the same sense of purpose coming from both of them; the prey was in sight. Well, they couldn't catch it without me. (Perhaps if I kept repeating that, it wouldn't sound quite so terrifying.)

I walked round the Jeep to hand Goren the water bottle; and was suddenly aware that he somehow looked a lot bigger all of a sudden. I wasn't sure if it was the boots adding to his height, or just the fact that he'd pulled himself up to his full height and thrown his shoulders back a little. Broad shoulders, big chest, large hands… The besuited, awkward-limbed city detective I'd met back in New York seemed to have gone, and I realised why one of the people Tim & I had spoken to prior to our flying to New York to set up the surveillance had referred to him as a chameleon. He did look extremely at home in the fatigues. A random evil thought flitted across my mind, wildly speculating about whether he'd be equally at home getting out of the fatigues… and why was I thinking this now? This really wasn't the time to develop inappropriate attractions to co-workers. I was aware suddenly that I was staring, and quickly flicked my eyes away, but not quickly enough. Goren caught my eye, and smiled. "Let's play."

I followed him and Davenport towards the building. Inside I could hear the others moving around, setting up the equipment. Before stepping through and shutting the door, I took a last look around at the outside world. We wouldn't be seeing it for a while. I took in the two Jeeps, spattered with mud, the battered stone of the surveillance building, the utter silence of miles of land with no-one else around us, the steep drop down the cliffs to the water below. I looked out at miles of dark water, shimmering slightly in the late afternoon's heat.

Somewhere out there, Shorokogat was enjoying his new boat, not suspecting that he was (we hoped) about to put himself away for life, if not in fact get himself the death penalty. I reminded myself where he'd got the money to buy the boat, squared my shoulders, and followed Goren and Davenport in. Let's play, indeed.