A British Cabinet minister, a British double-agent and an ageing Russian spy lay brutally assassinated in London.

          Bruno Molina Díaz Lopez - better known as El Veneno, the Venom: narco leader of the most feared sicario death squads in Mexico - is on the run, his network blown and infrastructure destroyed.

          'Ma'am - intel just in ...' yells an MI6 intelligence coordinator in HQ, Vauxhall Cross, London. 

          'Go on ...' replies Caroline Seymour, head of Six, pacing across the ops room floor.

          'El Veneno's been located!' 

          'Where?' 

          'Still in Mexico - on a light aircraft approaching Cancun International Airport.' 

          However, with Mexican-UK political relations at an all-time low, Six can barely order chicken tacos, let alone send in the SAS to action the arrest warrant.

          'Hang on ...' countered Seymour. 'Why Cancun International?'

          'To catch a connecting flight?'

          'Yes, of course, Prime Minister - but to where? Who are the only people who could protect him?'

          'Oh, Lordy - no!'

          'Coordinators - check all flights. It'll be one leaving imminently. Veneno won't spend hours mooching duty free for fear of being spotted.'

          'Ma'am,' grimaced an intelligence coordinator. 'This flight's departing in fifty-eight minutes. I've name-checked every passenger, and only one doesn't add-up ... this one ... and the passport picture biometrics match! It's definitely El Veneno. Look ...'

          'That's him alright. Now - get me eyes on the airfield. I want a visual on the plane.'

          Hush claimed the room as Valeron - Six's gleaming new spy satellite - tiptoed into position. 

          'Ma'am - that's a Russian passenger airliner: Aeroflot flight ALF867 bound for Moscow Sheremetyevo International.'

          Prime Minister Hanlon closed his eyes. 'If he boards that flight, we'll have lost him - forever - to a life of Russian mafia-funded glutony.' 

          'Worse than that,' replied Seymour. 'He'll join forces with an even deadlier organisation that, until yesterday, we knew nothing about.'     

          'And who are they?'

          'A name of an enemy I won't whisper, Prime Minister - for fear of them actually taking up arms.'

          From Cancun to Berlin, via the best restaurants and nightclubs in Moscow, join Bristo on his clock-ticking, gun-wielding mission to destroy the last remnant of the world's biggest narcotics smuggling organisation before he can regroup and return. And just when he thought it was safe to bake a strudel, an even more formidable foe rears and bares it teeth. A foe of frightening capacity and connection, and quarterbacked by the man who turned a gun on Bristo when he was only three. 

Communism, caviar and Kalashnikovs - it'll be the deadliest of reunions, with only one possible outcome.

Finish your boursch, neck your vodka then head east - for the angriest of bears awaits.

The question is: to live with yourself in the future, can you live with what you must do now?