At 5 p. m. Asmat Dzabrati's family are contacted by officials of Pokrovskaya Hospital with a request to collect his body. There is, apparently, no suggestion that the Pakhan died of anything other than natural causes, although there is some confusion about the fact that two ambulance teams appear to have attended the bathhouse where he suffered a fatal heart attack. This is Russia, however, and such misunderstandings occur. Pokrovskaya is a busy public hospital, and the duty physician who certified Dzabrati dead on arrival from the Elizarova banya, and issued the requisite certificates, saw no reason to authorize a post-mortem examination. Apart from anything else, it appears that the mortuary is full. All of this is relayed to us by Dasha, following her long and difficult phone conversation with Dzabrati's tearful ex-wife Yelena. Dasha then convenes an emergency meeting of the three other Kupchino Bratva brigadiers, who arrive within the hour.

Kris, Oxana and I have dinner in the kitchen. After winding herself around me like a cat all afternoon, and practically dragging me into bed, Oxana is now in a simmering fury. When we sit down to eat, she sips Dasha's vintage Riesling, announces that it tastes like petrol, and helps herself to champagne from the fridge. I know better than to ask why she's so angry, but I'm certain that it's because she hasn't been invited to attend Dasha's gangster conclave. Though why she thinks she should be invited, I have no idea. So as Kris and I dart anxious glances at each other, Oxana spoons down her borscht with sour cherries, scours out the bowl with a hunk of bread, flips her spoon into the sink, and walks out without a word.

"I guess."

Kris peels a banana. "She loves you. You know that, don't you?"

"OK. Thank you."

"I know. Dasha's got your passports and money in our room. She's had them for two days. I'll miss you."

"I do, yeah. You're going soon, aren't you?"

"I think I'm OK. I'm not sure."

"I'll miss you too, Kris. How do you feel about Dasha becoming the Pakhan?"

Kris nods. "There are things Dasha doesn't tell me, but I'm not stupid. I know that you and Oxana were involved in what happened today. I'm not going to ask you about it, but I just want you to know that I know."

"Eve, you prove to Oxana that she exists. You're the only reality that she has outside herself. It's that basic."

"I wonder. There are times when I think that she just conceivably might. Then there are others when it's hard to believe that she even likes me."

"Not really. If I'm honest."

"You think her insecurity's that deep?"

"Was it awful?"

"Are you all right? Oxana's obviously dealing with it in her own way, but --"

"Sorry," I say. "Again."

"About?"

"About this life. About the vorovskoy mir. Gang leaders don't grow old." She winds the banana skin around her finger. "I love Dasha and I don't want to see her die."

Kris shrugs her narrow shoulders. "It's what she wants, although I've never understood why. I mean, fuck. Those bratva guys. They're jackals. You take your eyes off them for a second, and they rip you apart." She looks away. "I have a lot to be grateful for, Eve, truly. And unlike Zoya, I don't have to sleep with some horrible old guy to support myself. But I worry. I worry all the time."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to bring it up. And we did make a mess. I still feel bad about that."

"I'd say she can look after herself pretty well, having seen her in action."

"At the factory, you mean?"

"Don't. The whole place burned down earlier this week. There was literally nothing left, so the insurance claim will be massive. But bring your glass. There's something I want to show you."

She takes me into the bedroom she shares with Dasha. I've never been in here before and I look around with amazement. The bed is a four-poster with purple damask curtains, the walls are decorated with framed posters of Amazonian women riding dinosaurs and giant dragonflies, the shelves hold velveteen unicorns, Beanie Babies and statuettes of Marvel Comics heroines.

"It's sweet."

"This look is more you than Dasha, isn't it?"

"Cool. I'm guessing your side of the bed is the one without the gun."

"She said I could have it how I wanted. What do you think?"

Kris shoves the butt of the Serdyukov automatic under the pillow. "You guess right. I hate that it's there, but she insists. Apart from that, I love it in here. It's where I come when everything gets too much." She gestures for me to make myself comfortable on the bed, then turns down the light, takes a DVD from a shelf, and slips it into the player. It's a cartoon, very old-fashioned, about a hedgehog going to meet his friend, a bear cub, so that they can count the stars in the sky. Thinking that he has seen a beautiful white horse, the hedgehog tries to follow it and gets lost in the night.

The film is short, lasting perhaps ten minutes, and when it ends Kris's eyes are shining with tears. "What did you think?" she asks me.

"I just love it. I feel like that all the time. Like I'm lost in the fog, and all I can see are the outlines of monsters. But it ends happily. The hedgehog is saved, and he finds his friend, and they count the stars together, like they always do. And that's all I want to do, really. Count the stars with Dasha."

In the bedroom Oxana is asleep in one of my T-shirts. The curtains are undrawn, and on the boulevard outside the fresh snow glitters beneath the street lights. Oxana's face is turned toward the window, and I watch the flutter of her lashes as she dreams. What stories is her mind creating? Am I there with her?

The next morning Dasha joins us for breakfast. "It's been great having you," she tells us. "And thank you for your help with my predecessor. But you need to leave St. Petersburg today. I'm the acting Pakhan of the Kupchino Bratva now, so…"

Dasha doesn't need to finish. We all know what she means. She's discharged her duty to us, just as we have to her. Now it is time to go, before our presence makes life complicated for her. "Your passports," she says, handing Oxana an envelope.

I don't know what to say, so I reach for her hand. "You will," I tell her.

I pull the covers over her. Her eyes don't open but her hand snakes out and her fingers lock around my wrist, strong as steel. "G'night, bitch," she murmurs, and starts to snore.

"Thank you. I won't forget what you've done for us."

Dasha gives me one of her sharp little smiles. "Sorry about hanging you up by the wrists. Must have been uncomfortable."

Back in our room, Oxana and I pack our rucksacks and inspect the passports. These appear to be new, and issued in the names of Maria Bogomolova and Galina Tagayeva. I'm Galina.

"I did punch you on the nose."

"You did, didn't you."

It takes us very little time to get ready to go. We've decided to take the train to Sochi, a modern city on the Black Sea, find a cheap guest house, and review our options. I'm sad to be saying goodbye to Kris. She and I have become good friends in the time we've been staying here, and I decide to give her the blue velvet coat from the Mikhailovsky Theatre. Kris is touchingly excited -- I know that she wishes she'd seen it first at the Kometa vintage store -- and she puts it on at once, posing self-consciously. Dasha accompanies us to the entrance hall of the building. I shake her hand, unsure of the protocol, while she and Oxana exchange a fleeting hug. Kris, looking like a minor character from Anna Karenina in the velvet coat, steps out of the front door. She's walking with us to the Metro station. There's been no snowfall this morning, and Kris stands there for a moment, a slight, wistful figure. The wind blows an escaping tendril of hair across her face, and she's lifting her free hand to brush it away when there's a smacking sound, not loud, and she lifts from the pavement and flies back through the open door like a blown leaf, landing on her side between Dasha and me.

"Dasha," I say, my voice shaking.

"They'll have it covered," she says. "We've got to go back up to the apartment. We need the service staircase."

"Get inside," Oxana says, wrenching me away from the entrance. "Dasha, move." But Dasha's on her knees, gazing at Kris's surprised eyes and twitching body. As I back away toward the stairs, I see the fist-sized hole and the mess of blood, bone and velvet below her left shoulder.

When they've gone, Oxana and I grab our rucksacks and race through unlit corridors to the rear of the building. Outside, visible through heavy glass-paneled doors, is a snow-covered car park and garbage collection area. Oxana gives it a single wary glance and pulls me back the way we came.

"Get upstairs," Oxana orders. Her Sig Sauer's in her hand, and her eyes are as flat as a snake's.

Still she doesn't move. Then she slips an arm below her dying lover's knees and another below her shoulders, and lifts her like a sleeping child from the widening pool of blood.

"Who are 'they'?" I ask Oxana, and she just looks at me. We both know who they are.

By the time we get upstairs Kris is dead. Dasha carried her body to their bedroom, and when she emerges, her face like stone, she's all business. She hits the phone, issuing orders and summoning her soldiers from their various apartments in the building. Oxana, meanwhile, crouches at one of the front-facing windows, scanning the street with a pair of binoculars. I busy myself checking and re-checking my Glock, and keeping out of the others' way. I'm light-headed with shock. I keep thinking about Kris's coat. The coat that I've worn at least every other day for the last fortnight. The coat that I gave her.

As she finishes speaking, there's an urgent triple buzz at the front door of the apartment. It's three of the boyeviki, carrying automatic weapons and spare magazines. Dasha hurries them in, a heavy Makarov pistol in her hand, and issues a terse series of orders. Two of the soldiers return through the front door to take up position on the stairs and landing outside, the third starts upending tables and heavy furniture in the apartment's entrance hall. Oxana, meanwhile, runs around switching off lights and pulling curtains closed. In a firefight darkness favors those who know the terrain.

The Twelve have found us.

"We have three men in a black Mercedes," Oxana says after a couple of minutes. "I'm pretty sure they're… Yes, they're all armed. Getting out of the car. Approaching the building now."

"It's me they want," I tell Dasha, suddenly sure of my words. "They shot Kris because she was wearing my coat. Send me out to them. Please, don't risk anyone else's life."

Dasha frowns distractedly. "Go to my bedroom," she says. "Shut yourself in."

Kris, her eyes still open, has been laid out on her back on the double bed. The ghastly exit wound can't be seen. The only visible sign of the shot that killed her is a neat hole in the blue velvet coat, over her heart.

Seeing her there, surrounded by her fairy posters and unicorn statuettes, I begin to weep. I feel so lost, so useless, so guilty. I know that Oxana, Dasha and the bodyguards know what they're doing, and that I'd only be in the way, but this powerlessness is horrible, particularly since I'm responsible for Kris's death. And then there's Dasha. I don't warm to her, but Oxana and I have brought nothing into her life except mayhem, and the vengeance of the Twelve. And now Dasha is putting her life on the line to defend us.

"Do it, Eve," Oxana confirms, and I obey. I feel as if I'm sleepwalking, as if I'm no longer in charge of the business of putting one leg in front of the other.

From the street, far below, I hear a faint splintering, as the attackers kick in the front door of the building. It's followed by a sporadic popping sound, at first distant, but soon rising in volume as the boyeviki engage the attackers. I should feel fear, but I don't. Sitting on the bed, loaded weapon in hand, I feel nothing except a flat sadness. From the other end of the apartment there's a shattering crash as the front door gives way, followed by confused shouting and staccato bursts of gunfire. Someone is screaming, and although I know that it's not Oxana's voice I'm weak with terror at the thought of losing her. The screaming dies to an intermittent groaning.

Touching my pocket to check for spare Glock magazines, I make for the door, and turn the key with trembling fingers. Outside a passage leads to the darkened reception room where we gathered before dinner with the late Pakhan.

I have to help. Or at least try to.

As I step into the passage, the tears drying on my cheeks, a ringing silence prevails. There's the crack of a handgun from the entrance hall, shockingly amplified in the enclosed space, and silence again. I creep through the reception room, fearfully hugging the wall, and edge toward the open door and the entrance hall beyond. This is also dark, but I can make out the main features. Just meters in front of me, a marble-topped table has been pushed on its side, spilling a pair of heavy onyx lamps onto the floor, and behind the tabletop, in profile, crouch two men dressed in street clothes and armed with submachine guns. Beyond this pair, his body slumped over the vertical tabletop as if arrested in the course of a dive, is a third man. I can't see who is facing them at the other end of the hall but I pray that one of them is Oxana.

Buried in darkness, breathing air sharp with gun smoke, I attempt to take stock. I don't recognize the man nearest me; he could be one of Dasha's soldiers. Then I see the pale chevrons of impacted snow on the treads of his combat boots. He's just come in from the street. He's an attacker and I decide to kill him, or try to. "… if we're going to survive, you're going to have to be a bit more like me."

Very slowly, I raise the Glock, lining up foresight, backsight and the man's ear.

I'll deal with him next, I promise her, and squeeze the Glock's trigger.

I don't kill him. The 9mm round smashes a hank of hair and bone from the back of his head, and as he whips round to face me, submachine gun leveled, Oxana rises into view on the far side of the room and fires two shots in fast succession. Both rounds punch through the man's throat and he sinks to the floor, choking.

The second man returns fire but Oxana has vanished. He turns to me, and I squeeze off a round that tears through his cheek and rips one ear from his face. There's a flare of orange at his gun barrel, and a fiery whiplash streaks across my back. I'm dimly aware of the crack of a third weapon -- Dasha's Makarov -- and watch detachedly as his knees fold and a slew of brain matter pours from the side of his head.

And the second guy? It's as if she's whispering in my ear.

"My back. I've been hit."

"Sit up. Let me look." She switches on the reception room lights, pulls off my leather jacket, and wrenches my blood-sodden sweater over my head. Sprawled in front of me in the unlit hall, just a few meters away, the three attackers lie in twisted, grotesque repose. The second attacker is still alive, and his eyes follow Dasha as she walks over to him, slaps a fresh magazine into her pistol, and fires a single shot through the base of his nose. Then she heads for the front door. "I'm going to check the stairs. See if any of my people are still alive."

Oxana walks away, returning with a military-issue first-aid box and a wet bath towel. It's very cold, and as she cleans up my back I feel savage waves of pain. "You were lucky," she murmurs. "A centimeter deeper and you'd have been paralyzed. Dasha saved your life. What the fuck were you thinking? We told you to --"

Dasha and Oxana rise to their feet, and Oxana races across to where I'm lying. "You dumbass!" she screams. "You fucking idiot."

I'm so sick with guilt I can't even look at Dasha, let alone respond. I think of Kris, lying lifeless in their bedroom.

"OK," Oxana says.

"I know. Everything's fucked."

"Have you done this before?" I murmur.

"And I guess you did help. But Jesus, Eve."

"I know you did. I wanted to help."

"Just don't move." She presses the towel hard against my back. "I thought I'd lost you, you stupid bitch."

"No, but we did sewing at school. I made a crocodile. It had teeth and everything."

"I'm sorry," I repeat.

"You will be, because I'm going to stitch you." She kneels beside me and sets to work with a suturing needle. It hurts a lot, but I'm glad of the pain. It means I don't have to think.

Dasha walks back into the flat, her face wiped of all expression. She's accompanied by two men and a woman, and she's no longer holding the Makarov. That's now in the right hand of a strongly built young woman with cropped blond hair, broad features, and eyes the color of slate.

I recognize her instantly from a CCTV clip that we had on file in Goodge Street. Lara Farmanyants, Oxana's former lover and companion in murder, recently released from Butyrka jail. Beside Lara, cradling a submachine gun, is the man I know as Anton, formerly a squadron commander in the Special Air Service and now the head of the Twelve's "housekeeping" or assassination department. The second man is Richard Edwards, my former boss at MI6, and a long-term Twelve asset.

When they've disarmed us, the newcomers look around them, registering the upturned furniture, the bodies, the spattered walls and the congealing pools of blood. All three appear entirely at home among the carnage.

Pain folds into paralyzing despair. It's over.

In the clip, sent to us by the Italian police, she and Oxana were strolling down the Calle Vallaresso in Venice, window-shopping. With her straw cowboy hat tilted just so, Lara looked like a catwalk model. In the flesh, with a state-of-the-art sniper rifle slung across her chest and Dasha's Makarov in her hand, she looks a lot more dangerous.

"So," Oxana says, continuing to stitch my back. "You."

"Me," Lara replies.

"Is she the one who killed Kristina?" Dasha asks, her voice so low I can hardly hear her.

"Are they the one," Lara corrects her. "My pronouns are 'they' and 'them' now. But yeah, that was me. Sorry."

Dasha frowns. I know that she wants to scream, to hurl herself at Lara and inflict agonizing violence on her. But she is a Pakhan, and does none of these things. "Just know this," she says to Lara. "I will kill you. That's a promise."

Dasha turns to Oxana, her green eyes steady. "These are your people?"

"You've already killed three of our soldiers," Richard says. "For a local bratva, that's impressive."

"Not anymore." I feel her pull the final stitch tight.

"You've heard of Dvenadsat?" says Richard. "The Twelve?"

"So you've been extending your hospitality to two people with whom we have issues, Miss Kvariani. Mrs. Polastri here, my none-too-bright former employee. And her somewhat unstable girlfriend." He inclines his head in our direction.

"I've heard of them," says Dasha. "So?"

"And for this you murder an innocent young woman, storm my building with assault weapons, seriously injure two of the men who are trying to defend me, and kill a third? Fuck you and fuck your Twelve."

"Our condolences for the loss of the girl. That was unintentional." He looks at Lara. "She mistook her for Eve."

"Your condolences?" My voice shakes. "You have a daughter her age, Richard. How would you feel if someone shot Chloe, and then turned to you and said it was 'unintentional'? You fucking monster."

"They mistook her," says Lara.

Richard ignores me and continues to address Dasha. "All that we want from you is Villanelle."

"Who's Villanelle?" Dasha asks.

"I used to be," says Oxana. "Long story."

"She's ours," says Richard. "Bought and paid for."

Richard flicks her a brief smile and switches his gaze to me. He's wearing a velvet-collared overcoat and beneath it an old school tie, black with a pale-blue stripe.

"Wrong, asshole," Oxana says. "Those days are over."

"No. Westminster. Bit of an oik, our Kim. And a traitor of course, which I'm not."

"So, did Kim Philby go to Eton too?" I ask him.

"And how are you not a traitor, Richard, may I ask?"

"If I could show you the big picture, Eve, you'd understand. But right now none of us has the time for that." He moves away from me and cursorily examines the three dead men on the floor. "You'll be glad to know that your attempt to fake your own death delayed us for a whole twenty-four hours. A convincing piece of work. We allowed your husband a glimpse of the photograph, and he was quite upset. This time, though, it's going to be for real. Anton, would you kindly do the honors?"

My mind empties. At least it'll be her.

"Villanelle, shoot Eve in the head. Quickly please."

Oxana doesn't move. She's calm, her breathing steady. She stares at the Sig, frowning.

Anton takes Oxana's Sig from his pocket, and weighs it in his hands. "No. I've got a better idea." Popping out the Sig's magazine, he removes all the rounds except one, and then hands the gun to Oxana.

"If anyone harms Eve, I'll shoot myself," Oxana answers, raising the Sig and pressing the barrel to her temple. "I'm serious. I'll blow my brains across the room."

"Am I going to have to do it myself?" Anton says. "Because I'd be very happy to. I just thought it might be more intimate this way." He regards us with fastidious distaste. "I know how… fond you two are of each other."

"And if I say no?"

"Get on with it," Anton says.

Richard gives her the thinnest of smiles. "Villanelle, we have a job for you. The one that all the others have been leading up to."

"You won't say no. This will be the greatest challenge of your career. And afterward, you'll be free to go, with more money than you'll ever be able to spend."

"And Eve?"

"Right now, her knowledge threatens us all. Kill her and move on."

"They can't wait," says Lara.

"If you decline the contract, then you and your… girlfriend"-- he says the word as if it nauseates him --"will be loose ends that we have to tie up. And we will. No faked deaths, no last-minute escapes. Just two anonymous bodies in a landfill." Swinging the barrel of his weapon toward me, as if to warn Oxana not to try anything, he takes back the Sig. "But don't let's spoil the moment. You won't decline this one. And the really heartwarming news is that you'll be working with Lara again. She can't wait."

Richard regards her patiently. "Villanelle, there are other women. This one's really very ordinary. She'll hold you back."

"Of course. You'd really let me go."

"You'll learn in due course. But I guarantee that you'll be impressed."

"We really would. The world would be a different place."

"And if I'm not?"

Her eyes a frozen gray, Oxana returns the barrel of the Sig to her temple. "Eve lives. Agree, or I fire."

"Who's the target?"

"No. Eve comes with me."

Anton regards her expressionlessly for a moment. "If Eve lives, you accept the contract."