There was something funny about how death always seemed to take you by surprise. Death was inevitable, but every time it happened it was shocking.

His father had been the last living link to Uncle Bobby, the first real socialist he’d ever heard of.

They were all socialists, of a sort, of course, everyone on that side of the family. Family, friends, neighbours. Almost everyone in and around Glasgow was. The industrialised Central Belt of Scotland, blackened and scarred by heavy industry, had fought back to produce people who wanted to create a cleaner, brighter future – Keir Hardie, Manny Shinwell, Uncle Bobby.

They had all hoped that socialism would be the answer, apart from his dad that is, but their efforts had been absorbed by democracy or deflected by the establishment or blocked by the law. Actually, Richard never knew if his father was a socialist or not. Richard assumed he wasn’t, somehow. He seemed very sceptical of socialism. He was also ambitious. He had got a better job and taken the family down south for a few years until they returned to Glasgow after Richard’s maternal grandmother died.

Stories of Uncle Bobby – in fact his Great Uncle Bobby – were legendary in the family. But Uncle Bobby, for all his good intentions, had ended up dying in prison. An unknown failure.

Richard didn’t want to fail. He wanted to avenge the memory out of principle.

Over the next two days he went through the software instructions again and again. He had to be sure this was for real and could be done. He wondered why he had been so slow to realise Mitchell was telling him to wake up. His failure to react must have made Mitchell uncertain of his intentions, which would explain why he had not gone straight on to give him the operational instructions. Unless he had done that too, and those instructions had been waiting in his drawer ever since Helsinki. That might explain why, this time, he had not disguised the word “Zima” in any way that made the message ambiguous.

Richard felt such a fool for not reacting immediately – when Mitchell might have helped or given him more information. Now, whatever he had to do, he would have to do by himself, totally alone.

For some reason he couldn’t control his doubts. He didn’t like the idea of doing this with no help and no clear instructions. Furthermore, such a lot had changed since this whole idea started, back in the seventies. Technology, politics, everything. Would this operation still be relevant? Was deploying this piece of software his only task? What would it achieve? Would it be something destructive enough? Would it be worth the risk?

The doorbell rang. It was a loud shrill ring that made Richard jump. Not now! Why would the bell ring now? In three years of staying at the apartment in Glentworth Street, he had never heard the doorbell ring. He had never had a visitor. Why on earth was someone ringing the doorbell right now, at the very moment Operation Zima was initiated?

He hesitated, wondering if he should answer or not. The memory stick, the instructions spread out all over his desk, his home computer, switched on and still showing the PDF of the Chennai team’s covering letter. It was all evidence and all incriminating. With trembling hands, he grappled to clear it all away.

The doorbell insisted on ringing. The fact it kept ringing was all the more suspicious and worrying. Had he been set up? Were the police already there to question him? Or, if not the police, who?

He felt his heart thumping. His mind was racing. What really happened to Mitchell? He didn’t seem to be the suicide type. Perhaps he was pushed under the train? This person ringing the bell…?