Graham Whitfield had not slept in forty hours.
He knew the exact number because he had started counting at noon on Tuesday, lying in his bed in the Hampstead house, staring at the ceiling and waiting for sleep that never came. It was now six in the morning on Thursday, and his body was running on adrenaline, caffeine, and a hatred so pure it felt almost medicinal. The meeting had been called by him at three AM via encrypted text — an emergency session of the partnership, code red, Geneva compound. The kind of summons they had established twenty years ago for moments of genuine crisis and had never actually used.
He had not packed a bag. He had not told his wife where he was going. He had simply showered, put on a suit that cost more than most cars, and driven himself to the private airfield in Biggin Hill. His hands on the steering wheel were steady. His eyes in the rearview mirror were not.
