Escobar moved the curtain to one side to more clearly see the rain-soaked street below, then clasped his hands behind his back. From the window, he could see grey skies, grey streets, grey people. He hated Switzerland. It offered certain… benefits… but the weather was not one of them.

“I need some time to think. Give me an hour.”

He listened to footsteps on carpet, then the click of the door closing.

The world was slowly turning to high-grade horse shit around him: Tyurin, unassessed but dubiously rumoured to be a Class 2 sender, gone to ground; Koslov, location unknown, rumoured to have an unheard of Class 0; and no imminent marketable talent coming from the nurseries in Chile, Nigeria or Afghanistan. It was a simple equation: no talent = no buyers = no revenue and a ruined reputation.

He could reassign a couple of Class 3 agents to locate Koslov but, judging from Kseniya’s report, he needed a Class 1 to deal with Tyurin and he had none. There was no choice. He needed to recruit one.