The Angel

Chapter One

In the year before she died, Beatrix Rose taught her daughter many things. She taught her how to lie and how to tell when someone else was lying. The benefits of meditation and how it was a useful strategy for enduring long stretches of time without sleep or other comforts. How to detect when she was being followed and how to follow someone without being seen.

She taught her other things, too. For example, how important it was to always arrive first for a rendezvous. It was good manners, for one, but — and this was much more important — the person arriving first for an appointment could control how that appointment unfolded. She could choose the environment: a table where it would be difficult to be eavesdropped on, the seat offering the best view of the ways in and out. An agent did not want the seat that put her back to the door. She certainly did not want to be the person arriving last. It was rude, and most important, it decreased your chances of leaving.

Control had contacted her a week ago to propose that they meet. He had suggested that he come to Marrakech, but Isabella had declined. Far better for her to go to him.

She had arrived in London two days before the appointed time and had selected this location yesterday. She had scouted up and down the river until she found a spot she liked. She started at the huge wheel of the London Eye, continued past the twin pedestrian bridges that led across the water to Charing Cross station and headed north into the artistic quarter. There was the National Festival Hall, together with the chain restaurants that had been attracted to the area like parasites to a host. Farther along the promenade was the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the undercroft famed for the skaters and BMXers who gathered there, every spare square inch of wall covered in colourful graffiti. Isabella had walked on, past the painted mime who was entertaining a group of schoolchildren perched atop a box. She had eventually settled on the café that was connected to the National Film Theatre. It offered wide windows with good visibility up and down the river path. There was a double flight of stairs leading up to Waterloo Bridge at the side of the building. If she needed to get away quickly, that would be the route she would choose.

Isabella reached the coffee shop with thirty minutes to spare. It was quiet this morning, and she was able to take a seat at the back of the room. The only luggage that she had brought with her was the leather satchel that she had bought from a trader in the souk. He had looked at her with hungry eyes, no doubt seeing an easy sale at an inflated price. She had disabused him of that notion very quickly. In the end, they had agreed on a fair price. The bag was new, but she had deliberately scuffed it so that it looked older. She didn’t want anything at all to attract attention to her.

The doors were wide open, and sounds from the outside drifted in. The café was partially beneath the grey concrete vault of the bridge, and the second-hand booksellers who had gathered here for decades were loudly discussing last night’s football as they set up their tables. A busker dressed in a sequinned jacket was serenading the joggers and pedestrians who sauntered past.

It was just after eight-thirty when she saw Control. He stopped at the door, his eyes adjusting to the gloom after the brightness of the morning. He saw her, smiled and crossed the room.

‘Hello, Isabella.’

‘Captain Pope.’

‘It’s Michael,’ he said. ‘Please. No formalities. Would you like something to eat? Breakfast?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Coffee?’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

‘I’m just going to get myself one. You sure?’

She said that she would have an orange juice. He nodded his satisfaction and went to the bar.

The sight of him brought back memories of the American hospital and the man who had ripped her family apart when she was just a little girl. She had killed him when her mother could not, and Pope had driven her away as the police swarmed into the area. He had promised to get her out of the country, and he had been true to his word. He had driven them west to Charlotte and Douglas International Airport. They had taken a domestic flight to Atlanta and then flown from there, direct, to Paris.

She remembered how Pope had been uncomfortable when she had thanked him for his help and made it obvious that she didn’t need any more from him. She could tell that he was reluctant to let her go, but there was little that he could do about it. She had an excellent fake passport, and she had the money to buy a Royal Air Maroc ticket to Marrakech. She knew, too, that he had no idea what he would have done with her if he took her back to London. He had very few options, and eventually, she had persuaded him that the best one was to leave her to get on with her life.

He had compromised, writing his telephone number on the back of a magazine and telling her that if she ever needed him, then all she had to do was call. She had torn the page out, folded it and slipped it into her pocket. She still had it in a drawer in the kitchen at home, but it had never even been unfolded.

And then an email had found its way to her Gmail account. She had no idea how he had found the address. Isabella had treated that as a salutary lesson. She had considered herself well hidden, and the fact that he had discovered her online had pulled her up short. She had determined that she would do better.

Pope returned with a cappuccino and a glass of freshly squeezed juice. He lowered himself into the spare chair and passed the glass across the table to her.

‘Thank you for coming.’

She nodded.

‘I would have been happy to have gone to you.’

‘No, that’s all right.’

‘Still being careful?’

She gave a little shrug.

‘Sitting with your back to the wall, too.’

‘I like looking out at the river.’

He smiled. ‘Your mother taught you well.’

The mention of her mother made Isabella tense. She still missed her. She missed her every day. She still had nightmares of watching the news bulletin with footage of the burning car, the remains of the bomb that had obliterated her.

Pope could see that she was pensive; he was trying to ease her into the conversation. ‘How have you been?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘What have you been doing?’

She shrugged. She could have told him about her course of self-improvement, about her fluency in Arabic and French. She could have told him about how she was so fit that she had finished the International de Marrakech 10k in forty minutes with another five minutes still in the tank. She could have told him about the weekly mixed martial arts lessons she took in a dojo on the edge of town. She didn’t, though. She just shrugged, said, ‘This and that,’ and then, when he paused, ‘How can I help you, Mr Pope?’

‘I’m not here because I need your help. I have something for you.’

He reached into his pocket and took out a small envelope. It had been folded over on itself and sealed with a piece of tape. He slid it across the table and withdrew his hand.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s something from your mother.’

She felt a tremble of emotion, and her lip quivered a little before she mastered it. She reached down for the envelope, dabbing her fingertips against it, running her index finger along the edge to the sharp point. She peeled the tape back, unfolded the envelope and then tore it open at one end. She saw a glint of silver and knew, for certain, what it was.

She blinked away tears.

‘Isabella—’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, scowling the tears away.

She tipped the contents of the envelope onto the table. It was a sterling silver locket. The twenty-four-inch-long chain was comprised of alternating circular and rectangular silver links, and the locket itself was of an ornate design, shaped like a heart with a daisy design on the face. Her eyes were damp and her throat felt constricted as she reached down for it. She opened it. There was a picture of her as a baby. She was small and chubby, with ringlets of blonde hair.

She closed the locket and hid it in her fist.

‘The Americans found it,’ Pope explained. ‘Your mother was wearing it when… well, when it happened. It was dirty. I had it cleaned.’

‘They kept it all this time?’

‘It’s evidence, Isabella. The police know that others were involved in what happened. They’ve been trying to put together as much information as they can about your mother. Of course, they don’t know that it’s you in the locket, but if they did, they would be very interested in talking to you. And it’s not just them. There are other people in America who would really like to know who you are. The people your mother went after, for example.’

She collected the chain and dropped it into her fist with the locket.

‘I only recently found out that they had it. I have a contact in Washington who was able to get it for me. I thought you’d want to have it.’

She waited a moment until her throat felt less constricted. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I do.’

She stood.

Pope looked as if she had taken him by surprise. He stood, too.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you for finding this for me. I’m very grateful.’

‘Are you staying in London for long?’

‘No.’

‘You’re still in Marrakech?’

‘That’s right.’

She suddenly realised that she had to leave. She barely managed to choke down a sob, and although she managed it, she knew that it was obvious that she was upset. She hated to show weakness. Her mother had drilled that into her, too. She was barely managing to maintain her composure, and she knew that she needed to get away from him and get outside.

He was standing in her way. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘Today.’

‘Would you like to have something to eat with me later?’

‘No,’ she said, adding a ‘thank you’ when she realised that she must have been coming across as a rude and ungrateful brat. ‘My flight’s already booked. I have to leave for the airport this morning or I’ll miss it. I’m sorry.’

He was still standing in her way. He put out a hand and she took it. His grip was firm and his palm was warm. She wondered, just for a moment, whether she could stay a little. There was no reason for her to rush; there was nothing waiting for her at home. And Pope had looked out for her. He had taken a huge risk to save her life in America, and now there was this… She wavered, just for a moment, until she remembered her mother’s stern words.

‘You don’t need anyone else. ‘The only person you can trust is yourself.’

Her resolution returned. She released his hand and waited for him to step aside.

‘It was good to see you, Isabella. Remember what I said before. If you ever need me, you know where I am.’

‘Thank you.’

She found a smile and managed to hold the tears back until she was out the door and into the brightness of the morning beyond. She could smell the musty pages of the second-hand books and the freshness of the wind as it whipped in from the water. Her eyes welled up, and then the tears overflowed and spilled across her cheeks. She felt the locket inside her fist, the silver warmed by her skin. She sobbed aloud, turned to the left and then again to the left, and ran up the steps to the bridge above.

Isabella might have been older than she looked, but she was still just fifteen years old. And she wanted to get home.

Chapter Two

The door to Aamir Malik’s bedroom had always opened with an annoying creak. It had landed him in trouble before, usually when he returned home after his curfew and tried to sneak into his bedroom, only to find that his parents had been awoken. He had tried to oil it after one particularly annoying grounding so that it wouldn’t happen again, but it had never made very much of a difference. The mechanism seemed to soak up the WD-40 that he sprayed onto it, but just kept creaking.

He couldn’t afford for it to be a problem today. He pulled it as carefully as he could, managing, for once, to keep the resultant noise to a minimum. He had set his alarm for five, three hours earlier than he would normally have arisen, and he didn’t want to disturb anyone else in the house. His parents were in the bedroom to the left, and his two brothers were in the room directly opposite, across the hall. He could hear his father’s snoring and the soft breathing of his twin, Aqil. His older brother, Yasin, sometimes got up early to play World of Warcraft, but he was asleep today. That was good. There was a loose floorboard on the landing, and he avoided it, stopping in the bathroom to quickly brush his teeth and splash a little cold water on his face.

His mother and father would not usually have awoken for another hour and a half themselves. His mother was an invalid, confined to a wheelchair after the local hospital had botched the birth of Aamir’s sister ten years earlier. His mother had suffered serious brain damage. The local boys called her a vegetable, and Aamir’s father had quit work so that he could care for her. There had been a large compensation payout, but that wasn’t really the point. The money had been exhausted with the modifications they had made to the house, and then there was the ongoing cost of care when his father needed assistance. No, he thought, the money was beside the point. Their lives had been ruined. Aamir had never really gotten over it. None of them had.

He smoothed back his hair, set it with gel and then went back into his room to dress. Hakeem had taken him to Gap and bought him the clothes that he wanted him to wear. He took off his pyjamas and dressed in the black jeans and black T-shirt, liking the smell and the feel of the fresh cotton as he pulled it over his head.

He opened the curtains and looked out of the window onto the street beyond. He lived in Moss Side, a rundown area of Manchester. Before his mother’s accident, his father had owned a fish and chip shop and had been a respected figure in the local community. Aamir could see the shop at the corner of the street and, beyond it, the recreation field where he and Aqil played cricket and football in the summer. Beyond that, just visible through the green foliage of the trees, was the dome of the mosque where he had been spending so much time lately. He gazed at these three personal landmarks — from the chip shop to the park, to the mosque — and then at the other terraced houses on the street, all so familiar to him, and he wondered, for the first time today, whether what he was doing was the right thing.

And then he thought of his mother and what the imam had said about that, and he knew that it was.

He was still gazing out of the window when he saw the black BMW roll down the street and pull over next to the front gate. The glass was tinted, but the driver’s side window was rolled down, and he saw Hakeem looking out. His friend looked up at him in the window, smiled, then raised his arm and tapped a finger against his watch. Aamir nodded in return, pulled the curtains and looked around his bedroom for the last time. He saw the Playstation 4 he had saved so long to buy, the games scattered across the floor, the posters that he had stuck to the wall with Blu Tack. He felt another moment of reluctance before he remembered that Hakeem was waiting for him, and dismissed it. He had made a promise to him, and he couldn’t let him down.

He crept through the door, stepped over the creaking floorboard and made his way down the stairs. Hakeem had said they would get some breakfast on the way. He took his coat from where he had slung it over the banister, unlocked the door and stepped outside. It was a clear day with an icy-blue sky.

The engine of the BMW was still running. ‘All right, bruv?’ Hakeem said quietly through the open window as Aamir closed the gate and crossed the pavement.

Aamir nodded.

‘In you get, then. We’re running a little late.’

Aamir opened the rear door and slid inside the car. Bashir was in the passenger seat. He had a black beanie on his head. He turned and smiled as Aamir settled himself in the back. ‘All right?’ he asked.

Aamir nodded.

It was a cold morning, and Hakeem had the heater running on full blast. He put the car into first gear and pulled away. Aamir couldn’t help turning around in his seat and looking through the back window as the house slid out of view. He had never lived anywhere else. Nineteen years. It held a lot of memories for him. Some of them bad, but plenty of them were good. He thought of his mum and dad asleep in their bed. Would they be proud of him? Would they understand?

He hoped so.

Thinking about them made him wistful and sad, so he thought about something else.

‘Going to be a nice day,’ Hakeem said, looking through the front window at the sky. ‘Be warm later, that’s what they’ve been saying.’

‘Perfect. Lots of people out.’

Aamir felt a shiver of nerves. ‘Have you heard from Mohammed?’

Hakeem made an affirmative noise. ‘Going to meet us at the station, like he said. Everything is happening like he said it would. Today’s the day, bruv. Big day. Everything we’ve been working for is going to come to pass, if it pleases Allah.’

Chapter Three

The car was second-hand and had a musty smell to it. They had spent a lot of time inside it over the course of the last few months, just driving around the city. Hakeem had explained that it was the safest place to talk. Phones could be bugged, he’d said. The Internet, too — that wasn’t safe. Better to do it all face to face, where they could be sure they wouldn’t be overheard. Aamir didn’t mind. He liked being with Hakeem and Bashir.

The one time he had met Mohammed had been in the back of the car, too. They had told him it would be like an interview. Mohammed was in charge of the operation, and he wanted to make sure that Aamir’s faith was strong enough for him to do what he needed to do. The other man, Asif, had been beaten up by a racist gang in Didsbury two weeks ago. His leg had been broken, and Mohammed had decided that there was no way he would be able to take part. They needed a replacement. Hakeem had suggested that Aamir would be perfect. He had been frightened, at first, but then he listened to what Mohammed said to him, and he realised that he had been given a gift. It was an honour to be chosen. He had said yes.

Hakeem navigated carefully through the suburbs of Manchester. Aamir sat quietly in the back, gazing out of the window at streets that became less and less familiar as they drove on. Had the city really been so bad? School had been all right. He had friends here. There was racism, of course, but that was to be expected. There was racism everywhere, and all the young Muslim boys he hung around with had experienced it.

It came in many different forms. The local white boys with their snarling dogs who chased them out of the park. A taxi driver who, it was said, was a member of the EDF and refused to take ‘ethnics’ in the back of his car. The police, more likely to stop and search brothers like Hakeem because how was a boy like him driving a car like this if he wasn’t involved in drugs? They had all experienced it, and Mohammed had used it as another example of why what they were doing was just. But Aamir couldn’t forget the white boys in school who had stuck up for him against racist bullies, the owner of the corner shop who had always put a little extra in his bag of sweets, the lollypop lady who had always given him a cheeky wink as he crossed the road under her watch. Mohammed said it was black and white, no room for ambivalence, but Aamir had never really accepted that.

And then Mohammed had brought up what had happened to his mother, and Aamir had allowed himself to be persuaded.

They followed the M56 to the M6, and then drove south to Rugby. They changed to the M1 at Junction 19. It was 49 miles south to Luton.

‘You want some music?’ Hakeem said as he settled back and accelerated gently up to seventy.

‘Sure,’ Aamir said.

Bashir took out his phone and plugged it into the car stereo. He scrolled through the memory and found the track he wanted. Aamir recognised the song immediately. It was ‘Dawlat al-Islam Qamat.’ He had listened to it a hundred times on YouTube before Hakeem had told him that he needed to be careful with the sites he was visiting. It was a beautiful song. It started out as an Arabic chant, and the singer’s voice was so relaxing that it almost sounded like a lullaby. Aamir had studied history at school, and he thought that the song was something that could have been from a thousand years ago. The melody had a gentle swing, nice and easy, and then the voice was copied and layered, one atop the other, almost sounding like a choir. The song became more strident and impactful.

Hakeem started to sing.

Sound effects dropped in. A sword was unsheathed, then there came the stomp of soldiers’ feet and, finally, stuttering gunfire. The name of the song, translated, meant ‘My Ummah, Dawn Has Appeared.’ It was the most popular song in the Islamic State.

It was, Hakeem argued when he played it for the first time, the world’s newest national anthem.

Bashir started to sing, too.

Aamir had written the Arabic down and translated the words himself. ‘The Islamic State has arisen by the blood of the righteous,’ the song said. ‘The Islamic State has arisen by the jihad of the pious.’

Hakeem turned and looked into the back. His face was alight with an infectious smile. ‘Come on, bruv! Let’s have it!’

Aamir smiled, too, and started to sing. Quietly at first and then, as the song built up to its crescendo, louder and louder until the three of them were singing at the top of their lungs. They raced south at seventy miles an hour, passing signs for Stoke-on-Trent and Leicester and Rugby.

They would be in Luton by eight.

Chapter Four

The Firm had buildings across London. Its headquarters in Whitehall was in the Old War Office building. It had been denied the largesse that had been lavished on those buildings nearby that accommodated other governmental departments. It was in an alleyway off Horse Guards Avenue, a backwater that was easily missed and where the men and women who went to work there could be easily forgotten. Each of the ten floors was low ceilinged and dusty, crammed with steel filing cabinets and ancient furniture. The Firm had taken up residence after the war and had never moved. It was a collection of narrow alleyways and corridors, each as anonymous as the next. Its denizens had dubbed it ‘the Warren’, and the name had stuck.

The waiting room was on the seventh floor. It had a single small window that looked onto a parapet. Beyond the parapet was a narrow street that accommodated government functionaries insufficiently grand to warrant an office on Whitehall itself. There were faded prints on a wall that was painted the same municipal green found in hospitals and town halls. Another wall was shelved, each shelf bearing a row of leather-bound volumes that filled the room with their dusty scent. There were two doors. One led to the lobby, where an old-fashioned lift wheezed and groaned as it carried people up and down between the floors. The other led to the conference room.

Michael Pope looked around. The waiting room was small, and the three men waiting inside it were large. It felt cramped. The atmosphere was tense. It could have been in a doctor’s surgery, or the room where the parents of a misbehaving child are summoned to see the headmaster of an exclusive school. Pope tried to maintain his sense of equilibrium. He got up and went to the window. He looked outside, into a bright blue sky, a warm summer’s day. The view was restricted, showing just the cold stone flanks of the building opposite.

He returned to his seat.

He was sitting next to Sergeant Thomas Snow and Sergeant Paddy McNair.

Snow was from the 22nd SAS, but he had served in B Squadron before he was moved to the Revolutionary Warfare Ring, an elite cadre of hand-picked SAS operators tasked with supporting Secret Intelligence Service operations. The RWR carried out special operations as directed by the Foreign Office, including bodyguarding and backup for SIS operatives, extraction of SIS personnel and ‘black ops’, including fomenting unrest and causing uprisings in foreign countries.

Snow was not doing such a good job of hiding his nerves. That was a reasonable reaction to the prospect of the meeting that they were here to attend. Pope didn’t know the precise make-up of the panel that had convened to discuss the events at Liverpool Street station last month, but he knew it would include luminaries from the security services, the police and the politicians to whom they answered.

‘You all right?’ he asked quietly.

‘Bit nervous, Control,’ Snow replied.

‘Nerves are good. Keep you sharp.’

‘So I heard.’

Snow was wearing a suit that looked new, and the caps of his shoes had been polished to a high sheen. Force of habit, Pope thought. Ten years in the military did that to a man. The soldier had been in the Group for three months. Pope had selected him personally. He selected all the new recruits to the Group himself. The events in Russia, the conclusion of a series of incidents that had been set in motion by the treachery of his predecessor, had led to the deaths of the agents who had needed to be replaced. Snow had been the latest replacement. He was Number Twelve.

‘I’m not going to hang you out to dry. I’m on your side.’

‘Appreciate that, sir.’

Paddy McNair, on the other hand, was more relaxed. He was in his early forties and had been in the army for most of his adult life. He had been in Group Fifteen for five years. He looked like a soldier, with a solid build and big, weather-beaten hands. His face, too, had been scoured by the elements until the lines had been etched deeply. He was originally from Liverpool, and his broad accent confirmed his nickname, ‘Scouse’. Not much flustered McNair, but as he had confided to Pope as they had shared a drink last night, he wasn’t looking forward to the carpeting he knew that they were about to receive.

The operation that had led to them being summoned to this office had been Snow’s first in the field. He couldn’t have wished for a more inauspicious beginning to his new career. One of the watchwords — the watchword — of Group Fifteen was secrecy. Operations were supposed to proceed in such a fashion that the agent carried out his or her task without attracting attention. But this operation had led to Snow’s image being plastered over the front pages of all the national newspapers. The Ministry of Defence had issued a D Notice requiring all speculation as to his identity to be curtailed, and they had managed to insist that his face be pixelated. But those undoctored images were out there. They would surface, tomorrow or the next day or sometime in the future. That probably meant that Snow’s first mission would be his last. McNair and Pope knew that. Snow did, too. He also knew that it would mean a change of identity and a life spent watching his back.

They made up time on the drive south and pulled into the car park of Luton railway station at a little before eight. It was the height of rush hour, and it was almost full, with just a handful of spaces left. Hakeem drove all the way to the far end of the car park. He slid the BMW into the first of two spaces between a Range Rover and an Audi, and turned off the engine. The music died and the car suddenly felt very different. The atmosphere changed and Aamir felt a twist of apprehension in his stomach.

Hakeem turned. ‘Everything all right?’

Bashir nodded.

‘Aamir?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m cool.’

Bashir looked at his watch. ‘We made good time. He’ll be here soon.’

Aamir watched as a train left the station and rumbled along the side of the car park, slowly picking up speed. It was packed. He could see passengers standing in the aisles, some of them looking out of the windows with blank expressions on their faces.

‘He’s here.’

A Mazda slowed and pulled into the space next to them. Aamir looked over and saw Mohammed behind the wheel. He reached down to switch off the engine and got out. He was tall and slender, with a tanned complexion and a growth of clipped stubble on his chin.

He opened the back door and slid in next to Aamir.

‘Good morning, brothers. Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, Mohammed,’ Bashir said. ‘We did everything as you said.’

‘Very good. This is a wonderful day.’ He turned to Aamir. ‘Hello, brother. Are you feeling well?’

‘Yes,’ he said, unable to hide his nerves.

Mohammed had a cruel mouth with thin lips. He had heavy brows and dark eyes. Aamir remembered what it was like to be pinned in his lizard stare.

‘You remember what is next?’

‘I remember.’

‘And you remember why this is necessary?’

‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

Aamir knew that Mohammed could see he was nervous. ‘We have to do this. You understand that, I know. We can talk and talk and talk, but our words have no impact on them. They will keep ignoring us. We are going to talk to them in a language that they will understand. Remember what Muhammad said. “Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood.”’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I remember.’

Mohammed fixed him in his powerful gaze. ‘Thousands of people like us are forsaking everything for what they believe. We are not doing it for worldly things, are we? We do not care about that, about them, about the tangible things that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true God, Allah. We follow in the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad.’

‘Praise be to God,’ Bashir intoned.

‘I just… I just…’

‘I can see you are nervous. That is all right. I understand. It is normal. But you need to consider why we are doing what we are doing. This country is not our friend, Aamir. The government perpetuates atrocities against our people, and the people’s support of it makes them responsible, just as we are directly responsible for protecting and avenging our Muslim brothers and sisters.’

Aamir nodded his head, mumbling his agreement. Bashir and Hakeem nodded more vociferously.

‘We have to take the fight to them. Until we feel security, they must be our target. Until they stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of our people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war, Aamir, and we are soldiers. And today, Allah willing, the infidels will taste the reality of this situation. They will feel the edge of our blade. You understand me, Aamir? You must tell me you understand.’

Aamir found himself unable to speak.

‘He understands,’ Hakeem said for him.

‘I need to hear it from him.’

Aamir nodded.

‘I need you to say it.’

‘I understand.’

Mohammed clasped his shoulder and squeezed. ‘Good. When you get to London, there will be no time for second thoughts. You want to stop, you just say so now. You can get on a train and be back in Manchester in time for lunch. But I know you will not do that. I know you are a good soldier. I know, when you feel doubt, you think about your mother and what happened to her. You keep that close to your heart, Aamir. That is where your strength comes from. That is where you will find the certainty when you feel doubt.’

Aamir frowned. He hated it when others suggested that he was weak. He wasn’t weak. He was just as strong as Hakeem and Bashir. ‘I don’t feel doubt,’ he said. ‘I’m not going home. I’m a soldier. I’ve got a job to do.’

Hakeem grinned at him and held up his hand. Aamir clasped it.

Mohammed nodded his satisfaction. ‘If anything happens during the morning that means you are unable to carry out the operation, you must not go home. It will be too dangerous. You must come to me. There is a safe house in London. I will be there. You must come to me, and I will take care of you.’

They said that they understood. Mohammed gave them an address and made them repeat it to him three times. It was a road in Bethnal Green. They satisfied him that they remembered it, and then he led them in prayer. Aamir closed his eyes and intoned the familiar words. The cadence was almost hypnotic, and he felt himself beginning to calm.

When they were finished, Mohammed opened the door. ‘I have the bags,’ he said. ‘They are in the back of my car.’

They went around to the rear of the Mazda, and Mohammed opened the boot. There were three rucksacks nestled inside. He reached down, lifted the first one out and set it on the ground. It looked heavy. He took the second and third rucksacks and put them on the ground, too. Aamir looked inside the boot and saw a large leather-bound case, the sort of case that a musician might use to carry his instrument. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t feel that he could ask. Mohammed shut and locked the boot, and then stooped to collect one of the rucksacks. He hefted it up and slung the strap over Aamir’s shoulder. The rucksack was heavy.

‘May Allah go with you,’ Mohammed said. ‘You will be rewarded in Paradise. Allahu akbar.’

They repeated it. ‘Allahu akbar.’

He hugged them, one at a time, and then got into the Mazda, backed it out of the parking space and drove it away.

‘This is it, boys,’ Hakeem said to them both. ‘No turning back.’

‘I ain’t going anywhere,’ Bashir replied.

‘Me, too.’ Aamir said it, and meant it, but his mouth was dry.

‘I’m proud of you both. I’ll see you in Heaven.’

Hakeem nodded. ‘Let’s go.’

Chapter Five

Pope went through his report once again.

The shooting had been two weeks ago, but it was still fresh. It had dominated the front pages of the newspapers every day since then and had been the subject of a quickly assembled BBC documentary entitled Death of an Innocent. For a man like Pope, required to work in the shadows, the publicity was exquisitely uncomfortable. The establishment could not possibly allow the truth of his unit’s involvement to come to light — that was a rabbit hole down which no investigation could ever be allowed to stray — and an extensive cover-up had been put into play. That, too, was embarrassing.

But it was none of his fault.

The Metropolitan Police and MI5 were searching for the members of a terrorist cell suspected of being in the final stages of an attack on the London transport system. A member of the public had found a bag that had been discarded on a common in Wanstead, East London. The dog walker had opened the bag and discovered that it contained a pipe bomb and a detonator.

A large police investigation and manhunt began immediately. An address in Homerton was written on a video rental shop membership card that was found inside the bag. The card was in the name of Ramzi Hassan Omar, and the address was a block of flats designated for those on low incomes. It housed a collection of working-class families. Some were locals who had been driven out of the more affluent streets as property prices were pushed up by the influx of workers from the city. Others were first- and second-generation immigrants from all around the world, the kind of men and women who came to do the jobs that no native Londoners would do.

Fèlix Rubió was a cleaner who lived in one of the flats with his sister, her husband and their children. He worked for a company with a contract to service the offices of a leading London law firm. He was due into the office at 8 p.m., once most of the staff had gone home. He would work for five hours and finish at 1 a.m., when he would then work as the night-shift caretaker in a local hospice. He was, by all accounts, one of the nicest men you could ever hope to meet. Hard-working, honest and good-natured. Not the sort one would expect to have any truck with hard-line jihadist Islam.

The police had the block under heavy surveillance, and at seven-thirty, they saw Rubió emerge from the communal entrance.

The officer on duty had been unable to photograph him as he came out of the building’s lobby. Pope had heard that the man had been urinating, but whatever the reason, it was unfortunate for Rubió. The officer was unable to provide an image to Gold Command, the Metropolitan Police operational headquarters that was in charge of the investigation, and it was impossible to compare him to the passport images of the suspects who had been identified.

The commander in charge of Gold Command panicked. He authorised officers to continue pursuit and surveillance, and ordered that Rubió was to be prevented from entering the Underground system.

The officers trailed Rubió as he followed Kingsland Road to a bus stop. He took the No. 242 and headed south. Plainclothes police officers boarded, too, and kept him under close observation. He used his telephone during the trip into the city, and one of the officers thought that she heard the word ‘bomb’.

The surveillance officers believed that Rubió’s behaviour suggested that he might be one of the suspects and — worse — that he might be on his way to carry out an attack. The pursuing officers contacted Gold Command and reported their suspicions. Based on this information, Gold Command authorised ‘code red’ tactics and again ordered the surveillance officers to prevent Rubió from entering the public transport system. The commander ordered the surveillance team that Rubió was to be ‘detained as soon as possible,’ before entering the station.

Gold Command then transferred control of the operation to Group Fifteen. Pope had positioned all ten of his available agents within the boundary of the City of London, and he tasked Numbers Three and Twelve, McNair and Snow, to interdict the suspect. Snow’s inexperience within the Group was not ideal, but it was hardly the case that he was green. He was an experienced soldier with five years in the SAS. This kind of interdiction was something he had done many times before.

McNair was held up in traffic and had to sprint the remaining mile. Snow was there before him. In the meantime, confusion over the handover from the police to the Group meant that Rubió was allowed to enter Liverpool Street railway station at about 7.45 p.m., stopping to pick up a free newspaper from a distributor who stood in the lobby. He used his Oyster card to pay the fare, walked through the barriers and descended the escalator to the Central Line. He then ran across the platform to board the newly arrived train.

McNair arrived at street level as Snow was hurrying down the escalator to the platform.

Three surveillance officers followed Rubió onto the train. He had taken a seat with a glass panel to his right, about two seats in. The carriage had a handful of commuters leaving the city to go home. One of the plainclothes officers took a seat on the left, with about two or three passengers between Rubió and himself. When Snow arrived on the platform, a second officer moved to the door, blocked it from closing with his foot and called ‘He’s here!’ to identify Rubió’s location.

Snow boarded the train and shot him. The shell casings collected from the floor of the carriage indicated that he had fired eight rounds. Rubió was shot with a classic double tap — once in the chest and then once in the head — and died at the scene.

McNair arrived a minute later.

It took less than five minutes after that to understand that an awful mistake had been made.

McNair and Snow had followed protocol and left the scene at once. A cover story was concocted at short notice and then calibrated overnight. The surveillance officers were anonymised and described as members of the police’s elite CO19 firearms division. It was suggested that they had fired the fatal shots. There were witnesses on the train, but pressure was put on them so that they either agreed with the official account or stated that they were (conveniently) looking the other way.

The oak-panelled door to the conference room opened, and a smartly dressed woman stepped out. Pope glanced beyond her and saw a large circular table with a lot of severe-looking men and women sitting around it.

‘The committee will see you now,’ the woman said curtly.

Snow exhaled.

‘Ready?’ Pope said.

McNair stood and straightened out his suit. ‘Come on. Let’s get this over with.’

Snow followed them both inside.

The train was full, with smartly suited commuters heading into London for another day at work. Aamir was in the first carriage. They had split up on the platform. There was nothing to suggest that they would be compromised, but Mohammed had told them that they needed to be careful. Three brown-skinned boys heading into London together with three heavy rucksacks might attract attention.

All the seats were taken, so Aamir stood in the aisle, balancing himself on the headrests of the seats on either side of him. He had the rucksack on the floor between his legs. Several of the other passengers were reading from newspapers, and Aamir was able to look at them over their shoulders. The front page of the popular free sheet was dominated by a messy celebrity divorce, but in a column on the right, there was the beginning of a story that reported that an allied bomb had destroyed a school in Aleppo. Aamir could only read the first three paragraphs, but he didn’t need to read the rest to know what the story would say. Children massacred. He could almost hear Mohammed’s voice angrily denouncing the ‘imperialists’ and ‘crusaders’. He remembered the words of the clerics who distributed their sermons on CDs so that believers did not have to use the Internet to hear them. It was wrong, Aamir thought. People needed to know that it was wrong. Mohammed had explained it all to him. The only way their message would be heard was to respond in kind. They needed to use the same language.

The train took fifty minutes to reach Kings Cross. Aamir was jostled by other passengers as they surged for the exit, and he wondered whether they would be so brusque and rude if they knew who he was and what he was carrying. What he was here to do. They don’t know yet, he thought, but they will. They all will.

He disembarked and saw the back of Bashir’s head as he disappeared down into the tunnel that led to the Underground.

He followed.

Chapter Six

Pope, McNair and Snow took the three empty chairs at the head of the table. The conference room had not been decorated for decades. It was panelled in oak that was warped and cracked. The table was new, but so modern and cheap that it looked out of place here. It was also too big; it was four metres long and one metre wide and would have been able to accommodate fourteen men and women around it. The chairs at each end could barely be pulled out without bumping against the wall.

The passing traffic on Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue was far enough removed to be reduced to a gentle hushing. Pope heard a footfall in the corridor outside, the rustle of pigeons on the parapet outside the window, the whipping of a radio mast in the wind overhead, the gurgle of water in the antiquated central heating system.

It was oppressively stuffy. Pope unbuttoned his jacket and settled in his uncomfortable chair. Snow and McNair sat on either side of him.

This was a meeting of the Intelligence Steering Committee, the body that was putatively responsible for overseeing the secretive work of the MI5/MI6 intelligence operation known within its own walls as ‘the Firm’. The organisation was as labyrinthine as the building that accommodated it.

It was divided into fifteen separate Groups. Each was supposed to mesh seamlessly with the others, but in practice, there was as much interdepartmental conflict as one might expect to find in any office of the same size and complexity. Group Three, for example, was responsible for providing intelligence through watching and listening — what the Americans would crassly refer to as IMINT and SIGINT — together with liaising with the electronic dragnet that was GCHQ. Group Five maintained dead-drop ‘post boxes’ and safe houses for agents in the field, and was also the home Group for the postmen who were tasked with couriering intelligence and equipment around the world. Other Groups were dedicated to research and development, cryptography and cryptanalysis, interpreting and transcription, forgery, vetting, interrogation and research. Service Departments ensured the smooth running of the Old War Office. They occupied themselves with the daily functioning of the building, pay and pensions, the personal problems of agents, the storage of documents and the maintenance of security.

Each Group was led by a man or woman referred to as ‘Control’. Pope was responsible for Group Fifteen. His agents were regarded with a measure of fear by the other staff. In the fashion that the operatives of Group Five were known as ‘postmen’, and those who worked in cryptanalysis were ‘crackers’, the agents of Group Fifteen were referred to as ‘headhunters’. Assassinations and other wet work comprised a large part of their responsibilities, but not all of them. They carried out the Firm’s extrajudicial dirty work: burglaries, kidnapping, blackmail. They were responsible for bodyguarding other members of the intelligence community, emissaries of the government or businessmen and women who were important to British interests overseas. They were all well-regarded soldiers before they were selected, but after their year of training at the Manor House, the Group’s establishment in Antsy, Wiltshire, they emerged as something else entirely: ethically flexible operators who were adept at submerging themselves within foreign cultures. When so ordered, they became murderers who emerged from cover to eliminate their targets without regret or compunction before disappearing again like shrimps into sand.

The Committee had been imposed on the Firm following the scandals involving John Milton and Beatrix Rose, two Group Fifteen operatives who had gone rogue. The government had installed it as an extra layer of control that would also act as a suppressant to a potentially flammable political situation, should the full details of the organisation’s activities ever come to light. The Committee was a mixed inter-ministerial body composed of representatives from Westminster and Whitehall. It brought together senior members of the Cabinet and Whitehall mandarins, and was placed between the intelligence fraternity and the government as a guiding light or, as required, a brake. The staff of the Firm, sceptical to the last, had dubbed it the ‘Star Chamber’.

Sir Benjamin Stone, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, was on Pope’s right. He was in his late fifties, a moderately large man, a shade under six foot tall, with an accumulating gut. His hair was lank and grey, and his smile was as warm as a corpse.

The woman opposite him was Home Secretary Elizabeth Morley, a high-serving member of the cabinet ever since the election. Appointed home secretary three years ago, she was hawkish, aggressively right wing and possessed of an infamously short temper.

The woman to her left was Eliza Cheetham, the director general of the Secret Service. She was in her early sixties and more handsome now than the beauty that he knew she had been when she was younger. She was dressed in simple loose-fitting trousers and a shirt with a jacket over the top.

There was one other man. Pope knew him, too. His name was Vivian Bloom. He was the permanent liaison between the Firm and the Government. He had briefly been the sub-rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and his previous profession was the reason for the nickname by which he was most commonly referred to within the Firm: The Reverend. Bloom must have been in his late seventies and had held on to his position through dint of the knowledge he had acquired over the course of his long career and, Pope assumed, the secrets he held over those who might otherwise have ushered him into his dotage. He had cut his teeth during the Cold War, and his successful work in recruiting agents at Berlin Station was legendary. Pope wondered how he liked this new world, where the monolithic Soviet enemy had been replaced by a myriad of asymmetric threats.

Bloom was plain and average, very much the archetypal bachelor don, remarkable only for his dreadful dress sense. He dressed like a man with a modest budget but no taste whatsoever. His suit was a little too baggy for him around the shoulders and waist, cinched in with a leather belt. His shirt had been washed too many times, the collar turning inwards and fraying at the tips. His top button was undone, and his tie looked as if it had been knotted by a child. He managed his terrible eyesight with a pair of thickly-lensed spectacles that had the effect of magnifying his pupils. He was pudgy and red cheeked, and his thin hair was cut short to his scalp, as if he couldn’t be bothered with anything that would have required more than an occasional wash.

Cheetham cleared her throat. ‘Thank you for coming, Captain Pope. And these are Sergeants McNair and Snow?’

‘That’s right. Agents Three and Twelve.’

‘Thank you for coming, gentlemen.’

Snow nodded but didn’t speak. McNair grunted.

‘We’ve been briefed by Benjamin,’ she said. ‘But we wanted to speak to you before we reach a conclusion.’

The atmosphere in the room was tense, and Pope got the feeling that a decision had already been made. This, he worried, was just window dressing. An attempt to give the impression that a thorough enquiry had been undertaken. An exercise to provide the justification for the course of action that would follow.

‘Of course, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Bit of a mess, wasn’t it, Captain?’

Chapter Seven

Pope rehashed the events of that day with as much detail as he thought prudent. He was honest and forthcoming, and when he was finished, he answered their questions candidly. The tone in the room was aggressive and did nothing to dissuade Pope from his initial assessment that blame had already been assigned.

‘Sergeant Snow,’ the home secretary said, ‘what can you tell us?’

‘Captain Pope has set it all out, ma’am. I agree with everything he has said.’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ Stone said. ‘Of course, you would say that.’

Pope looked at the chief. He answered to the spook and did not hold him in high regard. His experience suggested that he was a self-serving career civil servant who would not hesitate to throw him under the bus if he thought it was to his advantage to do so. He was, Pope knew, an especially cunning man, and he did not like the way that Chief Stone was regarding Snow.

Stone gestured to include all of them in his next comment. ‘The police tell the story very differently. They say that they aborted the operation between the time that you entered the station at ground level and the time you reached the platform. The commander has testified to us that she told you that the target was not a suspect and that you should stand down.’

‘That’s not true,’ Snow said with sudden heat.

‘How can you say that, Sergeant?’

‘I—’

‘When was this communicated?’ Pope asked, intervening before Snow could lose his temper.

‘The radio log records it at 7.48 p.m. The message transmitted was as follows: “Target is not a suspect. Incorrect ID. Stand down. Repeat, stand down.”’

‘I didn’t receive that message,’ Snow protested.

McNair shook his head.

‘Neither did I,’ Pope said. ‘Could I hear the recording, please?’

‘I don’t know what purpose that would serve. The message is the message.’

‘Your radio, perhaps?’ Bloom suggested. ‘You were underground. Perhaps you didn’t receive it.’

‘No,’ Snow said. ‘They work underground.’

‘I didn’t hear a thing,’ McNair reiterated.

Morley took over. ‘You understand our problem, Captain Pope?’

‘Permission to speak frankly, ma’am?’

‘Always.’

‘I do not understand the problem. What happened is regrettable, but it has nothing to do with Sergeant Snow, Sergeant McNair or Group Fifteen.’

She smiled indulgently, but Pope could see that she was irritated by his candour. ‘Who do you think is responsible, Captain?’

‘The police. There should have been a firearms team outside the flat to stop and question everyone who left. Instead, they used surveillance officers with no experience in stopping and questioning suspects. They mistook Rubió for Omar, and then they let Rubió board the bus and go into Liverpool Street station. All of those mistakes were made before we were involved.’

‘That may be true, Control. But the police say they called your agents off.’

‘I don’t believe them, ma’am.’

‘They say that Sergeant Snow determined to kill the suspect the moment he entered the platform.’

‘That’s not true!’ Snow objected loudly.

The room was abruptly quiet, and the tension rose. Pope looked up at them, holding their gazes. He wanted them to see that he was confident.

It was the home secretary who spoke first. ‘What happened to Mr Rubió is bitterly unfortunate, and it has brought some misgivings that I have had for some time to the surface.’

Pope realised that the focus of the meeting had now shifted very squarely away from Snow and onto him.

‘Go on, Home Secretary.’

‘I am uncomfortable that we have had, for many years, a group of soldiers operating sub judice around the world. Those agents are granted wide leeway to act autonomously and have often gone beyond the terms of the operation as presented and approved by Oversight. Frankly, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of a state-sanctioned death squad in the first place. This isn’t Chile, Captain. I’m not Pinochet, making people disappear.’

Pope let her words settle and then spoke calmly. ‘The world is a more complicated place than it was ten years ago. We face a multitude of threats. Asymmetrical warfare can’t be defended with conventional methods. An army can’t stop one man with a suicide vest. I know I don’t need to go through the list of jihadists who have been removed as threats to the public in the last twelve months.’

‘Removed,’ Morley said. ‘A splendidly neutral euphemism, Captain.’

‘Use whatever word you prefer, Home Secretary. I try to be thoughtful. I find civilians often have weak stomachs.’

He regretted the slight almost as soon as it had left his lips.

‘Thank you, Captain, but I think we can call a spade a spade, don’t you?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And no, you do not need to remind us. We are aware of the work that your agents have undertaken. And we do not underestimate the need for similar action in the future.’

‘Then I don’t understand what this is all about.’

‘The fact is this, Captain. The Group, as it is presently constructed, is an anachronism. A dinosaur from another time. It’s something that Fleming would write about, or le Carré. The unfortunate death of Mr Rubió might be the reminder we need to bring it to an end.’

Chapter Eight

Monarch Catering was a large and well-respected company responsible for a series of contracts throughout London and the South East. Established ten years earlier, it had since that time enjoyed fast growth and numbered several blue chips among its impressive roster of clients. It had secured the main hospitality contract for the Palace of Westminster two years previously and had, by all accounts, performed well enough to suggest that the relationship would be long-lasting.

The warehouse that served the contract was at 19 Crown Road in Edmonton. Ibrahim Yusof parked his car on the street, as was his habit, and walked the short distance to the premises. Ibrahim was wearing a simple pair of jeans and a denim shirt. He wore glasses with wire rims, and his hair was clipped tight to his scalp. He had shaved off his beard months ago, but he still found his fingers darting up to his chin every now and again, as if surprised that his whiskers had been removed. He was of average height and average build. Nothing about him was out of the ordinary. He was the kind of anonymous man who could slip into a crowd and just disappear.

He opened the door and looked at the machine they used to clock in and out. It seemed pointless to go through with that particular rigmarole this morning, but Ibrahim knew that it was important to maintain the appearance of normality, so he took his card from the rack, slid it into the slot so that the time was stamped onto it, and then replaced it. He checked through the other cards. The only other employees present were the two men who stocked the firm’s lorries before they went out each morning.

It was as he expected.

The company rented both floors of the warehouse. The first floor was taken up by four small, dingy offices that were only rarely used. Ibrahim jogged up the stairs and moved quickly down the short corridor to make sure they were empty. It wasn’t impossible that one of the managers had popped in, and since the manager might not have clocked in, Ibrahim didn’t want to be negligent and allow himself to be surprised. The offices were empty. That was good. He went back down and locked the front door.

The open space where they parked the company vehicles dominated the ground floor. The company drove Mercedes Sprinter panel vans, and there was space for three of them in the warehouse. The drivers had backed them inside last night, and the doors stood open as the two warehousemen replenished the supplies carried within.

‘Morning,’ Ibrahim called out.

The warehousemen were Bill and Dave. They seemed like decent enough types. Ibrahim had worked for Monarch for two months, and the two had never been anything other than pleasant towards him. Bill was in his fifties and celebrated his support of Tottenham Hotspur with a tattoo of the club’s crest on his beefy forearm. Dave was younger. He had just become a father, and he regularly complained that he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since his son had been born.

‘Glad you’re here,’ Bill said. ‘Simon hasn’t turned up yet.’

‘Really?’ Ibrahim said, playing dumb.

‘Ten minutes late, he hasn’t called — nothing.’

Dave was in the back of one of the trucks. ‘Out on the piss again,’ he called. ‘Not the first time he’s bailed after a night out. He’ll call in sick when he wakes up — you’ll see.’

‘Gonna get himself fired if he keeps that up.’ Bill indicated one of the Mercedes. ‘Your truck’s done.’

‘Thanks,’ Ibrahim said.

‘I’m going for a dump,’ Bill said.

The bathroom was at the rear of the building. Bill took his copy of the Sun from his bag and headed to the back.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ Dave complained. ‘I was going to have a piss. No way I’m going in there after you.’

‘Up yours!’ Bill said as he disappeared from view.

Ibrahim walked around to the back of the van. ‘Have you called the office?’

‘What for?’

‘Simon?’

‘Not yet. Was just going to finish loading up, then I was gonna give him a ring. I’d rather give him the chance to get in.’

Very good.

Ibrahim reached into his bag and pulled out the Beretta 92 that he had fitted with a 9mm AAC Ti-Rant suppressor. The detachable box magazine had a fifteen-shot capacity. Ibrahim had thirteen rounds left in the mag after having shot Simon earlier that morning. He had broken in to the man’s disgusting flat and found him still sleeping in bed. He had held a pillow over the silencer for added suppression and put two rounds into his head. Ibrahim knew that Simon lived alone. The body wouldn’t be discovered for hours. Not until it was much too late.

Dave was stepping down from the back of the van, and there was nowhere for him to go when Ibrahim aimed the gun and fired. The gun barked twice, the suppressor muffling the reports a little but certainly not eliminating them. The man was only five feet away and Ibrahim couldn’t miss. The first shot blew a hole in his coveralls to the right of his sternum, and the second punctured his throat. He slumped back into the van, a look of the most exquisite confusion on his face.

Ibrahim turned and walked to the bathroom. It was small, with a handbasin, two urinals and a cubicle. The door was shut, and Ibrahim could hear Bill inside.

‘Wait up! I told you, I’m going to be a while.’

Ibrahim fired three shots through the flimsy door. He gave it a kick, shattering the lock, the door jamming up against Bill’s spasming body as it slumped forward on the toilet. He fired again, to be sure.

Ibrahim went back into the warehouse.

He made sure that Dave’s body was safely inside the back of the first van. He went to the button that opened the main doors and pressed it. The engine whirred and the metal door rolled up, sliding back on well-oiled casters.

Abdul was waiting outside in the beat-up Vauxhall Astra he had bought from an eBay seller two weeks ago. The man had asked for cash, and Abdul had been happy to oblige him. Cash would be much harder to trace. At Ibrahim’s signal, he reversed the van into the warehouse, sliding it tight up against the right-hand wall with the Mercedes to the left. Abdul switched off the engine and Ibrahim pressed the button to lower the door again. The door rolled down and gave out a metallic clang as it contacted the concrete floor.

Abdul stepped down. ‘Any problems?’

‘None,’ Ibrahim reported. ‘It was easy.’

‘Praise Allah.’

‘Praise Allah. We must move quickly.’

‘The others?’

Ibrahim nodded. ‘It is all in hand.’

‘You spoke to Mohammed?’

‘Yes. As I was walking here. He is confident.’

‘The three boys?’

‘He said that he met them and that they are on their way.’

‘And they will do what needs to be done?’

‘Allah willing. It is in his hands.’

The warehouse was brightly lit from the fluorescent lights overhead. Abdul opened the back of the Astra and brought down a selection of large plastic containers. They were branded with the logos of catering supply companies and advertised as holding various ingredients: carrots, broccoli, potatoes and other vegetables. The contents had been poured away and then sharp craft knives had been used to slice from the sides around to the backs. Now the tops of the containers could be pulled forward enough to allow access to the interiors.

‘Is everything there?’ Ibrahim asked.

‘It is. But you should check.’

He did. He carefully split one container so that he could reach inside. His fingers fastened around a metal cylinder. He brought it out: it was the barrel of a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm. The other containers held a small arsenal of weapons: MP-5 submachine guns that had been broken down so that they could fit into the containers, semi-automatic pistols, magazines, fragmentation grenades.

He clambered into the back of the Sprinter. Racking had been fitted on both sides, and each shelf held two rows of similar containers. He had taken pictures of the cans, and Abdul had matched them at the cash and carry. He cleared the shelf nearest to the front of the compartment, stacked Abdul’s containers against the side of the truck and then obscured them behind containers that had not been tampered with. They worked quickly, and when they were done, the weapons were well hidden. Not satisfied with just that cursory check, he jumped down and looked at the interior of the truck from the bumper, the view that the security guards would have if today was one of the days they chose to examine the vehicles passing through their checkpoint.

‘Well?’ Abdul said.

‘Very good,’ Ibrahim replied. ‘Very good.’

Chapter Nine

Isabella wandered aimlessly all morning. She crossed the river on Waterloo Bridge, walked down the Strand to Trafalgar Square, whiled away an hour in St James’s Park and then, finally, ambled along Birdcage Walk to Parliament Square.

She slowed her pace. There was a demonstration, anti-war protestors raging against the suggestion that the British military be put to fresh use against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. She stopped to do up a lace that did not need tying, and used the opportunity to surveil the armed police who were observing the spectacle with wary attention. She looked up to the rooftops: there were officers with video cameras recording the faces of the protestors.

Isabella felt vulnerable, and pulling up her hood, she skirted the crowd. She put on her sunglasses, barely hearing their angry chants in response to the exhortations of the orator, who was addressing them from a raised box with the assistance of a portable amplifier.

Her skin crawled as she walked within range of the cameras. She only regained her equilibrium as she proceeded south down Abingdon Street. She passed Westminster Abbey, and with no real destination in mind, turned into Victoria Park Gardens. The park was adjacent to the south-west corner of the Palace of Westminster and named for the tower that loomed above it. She walked by the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst and Rodin’s sculpture of The Burghers of Calais, until she was at the stone wall that looked down on the sluggish greeny-grey waters of the river below.

She rested her elbows on the wall and gazed out onto the Thames. A towboat was hauling six barges upstream, and one of the brightly-coloured commuter clippers passed it going in the opposite direction. The sky overhead was blue and clear, latticed with the fluffy contrails of passing jets.

She had been lying to Pope. She didn’t have a flight to catch. She hadn’t known why he wanted to see her, and so she had left her return open. She had nothing to do and no place to go. There was her continued training, the regimen that she had interrupted to make this visit, and she would pick it up again when she returned to her riad, but apart from that, there was little else to occupy her. She had no friends. No connections. No reason to be anywhere or do anything. Usually, that was something that did not concern her. She preferred a life with no tethers. Today, though, looking down onto the water, she wondered whether she had it all wrong.

She turned her head and looked at the Palace of Westminster. Her mother had dedicated her life to furthering the interests of the government whose decisions were debated within those imposing walls. She had hidden her occupation from her husband — Isabella’s father — and it had killed him. She thought about the things that her mother had told her during the short time that they had spent together. Beatrix had explained the betrayal that had inspired her vendetta. She had been unable to complete it before the cancer that had raged through her body had rendered her too weak to follow through with her original plan. She had sacrificed herself in an effort to complete her revenge; when that had failed, Isabella had finished the job. She looked down and found that her fingers had drifted unconsciously up to the sleeve of her shirt, up towards her shoulder. Her fingers traced over the spot where she wore the tattoo of the rose. It marked that final death, the final addition to the set that her mother had been unable to complete.

She opened her right fist and trailed the fingertips of her left hand across the silver locket.

She was disappointed. She realised that at a dim and distant level, she had been entertaining the prospect that Pope was going to offer her something to do. Something, perhaps, that her mother might have done before her.

She allowed herself a laugh.

That was foolishness. She was fifteen years old. What use could Control possibly have for her?

She unclipped the clasp of the chain, put it around her neck and fastened it again. She slid the locket between her T-shirt and skin and let the warmed silver drop down to her chest.

The blare of the tugboat’s horn brought her around again. There was no point in dawdling. She wasn’t interested in sightseeing. She reached into her pocket for her phone and called up the map of the Underground. She needed to get to Heathrow. She could take the Jubilee Line at Westminster, change onto the Bakerloo Line at Baker Street and then get the Heathrow Express from Paddington. It would take her an hour to get across the city.

No, she thought. There is nothing for me here. No reason to stay.

Time to leave. She would be back in Marrakech by evening.

Ibrahim drove the Mercedes Sprinter carefully. He had driven the route two times before in order to familiarise himself with it, and that familiarity bred confidence. It was twenty miles, and in the heavy morning traffic, he knew it would take between an hour and an hour and a half. That was fine. The itinerary had been designed with that in mind, and it would be flexible enough to be adapted, should that be necessary.

Everything was proceeding as he had planned. Allah was smiling upon them.

Relaxing was out of the question, but as he idled before a red light on the North Circular, he did allow himself a moment to think about the events that had led to this day.

Ibrahim had fought the peshmerga in the ultimately futile battle of Kobani, and Abdul had been involved with the foreign hostages in Aleppo and Raqqa. Ibrahim did not have to try very hard to remember what it was like to be pinned down in a defensive position as imperialist jets screamed overhead, dropping their laser-guided bombs and demolishing vehicles and emplacements. He had seen brothers whom he had fought alongside torn to pieces by the bombs. And he had met others, older than he was, who had done battle with the fascists in Afghanistan and Iraq, and others who had fought the Jews in Palestine. He had heard stories of what the enemy had done during the conflicts. He had seen videos of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, read about the torture at the CIA’s black sites and fulminated over the continued injustices at Guantánamo.

The caliph had decreed that retaliation was in order. Ibrahim was honoured to have been chosen to put the plan into effect.

He was a British citizen, born and bred. There were ten of them who had been selected from the ranks of the British fighters who had offered themselves into the service of the Islamic State. Some of them, like himself and Abdul, had seen plenty of fighting in the two or three years that they had been in the Middle East. Others were less experienced, but no less dedicated to the cause.

The government had made it clear that nationals who travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the caliphate would be treated as terrorists if they were to return.

Terrorists!

The hypocrisy turned his stomach.

Nevertheless, they could not risk the likelihood that they would be arrested if they returned by air. Mohammed had crafted a detailed and thorough plan that would make that unnecessary and mean that they could travel without fear of detection. They had travelled by sea on a series of cargo ships, trawlers and pleasure craft, transferring from one to the next in the middle of the ocean, far from prying eyes. Muammar Gaddafi had used similar methods to supply the IRA with weapons in the 1970s, and it was just as effective today as it had been then. The final transfer had been in the Atlantic off the coast of southern Ireland. The final trawler had deposited them in a deserted cove close to Kinmel Bay in North East Wales, and they had dispersed into safe houses around the country. They were well funded, with no need to work, and provided with false identities.

The preparation had been perfect. Nothing had gone wrong.

Now they needed to execute the plan.

Chapter Ten

Pope had had just about enough. ‘Home Secretary, I’m afraid I’m going to have to speak frankly again. I was reluctant to be Control, as you know. But I have seen things. We live in a world with people in it who are not prepared to observe the usual rules of engagement. They will fly planes into skyscrapers. They will blow up bags of high explosive on Underground trains and buses. They have no compunction in killing themselves if that is what is necessary to achieve their objectives.’

He couldn’t hide his anger, and as he spoke, he became angrier still. ‘We live by the rule of law. They do not. And because of that, the rule of law has to be a flexible concept. Those men and women are enemies of the state, and they can’t be reasoned with. Diplomacy is useless, and intelligence is useful only up until a point. The only way to deal with them is to speak the same language that they do: fight fire with fire. And who is going to do that, ma’am? Are you? Are people at the “highest echelons”?’

He slammed his palm against the table. His wedding ring struck the wood, and the noise was louder than he had intended. His anger had caused stupefaction in the room. They were stunned by his candour. He could see that and knew, clearly, that he was talking himself into a world of trouble, but he couldn’t stop.

‘I’ve heard the arguments against the work that I do. But when I hear them, it makes me think about the things I’ve seen. I know that the only way to prevent these people is to kill them before they kill us. Sometimes it has to be without trial. Sub judice.’

‘Captain Pope—’

He looked around the table. The home secretary was agape at the strength of his denunciation, Stone was shocked and Bloom watched with a mixture of surprise and, Pope thought, amused admiration.

He was talking himself into obsolescence. He knew he should stop. But he couldn’t.

‘We can agree that Rubió’s death was a tragedy. I know Sergeant Snow will never be able to forget what he did. It was a dreadful, horrific error, but if blame is being attributed, it should be attributed correctly. The intelligence was flawed. That is an MI5 issue. The police response was badly flawed. That is an issue for them, and for you, Home Secretary. My agency is a tool. We were given a target; we eliminated the target. You don’t blame the tool when it is put to the wrong use.’

‘Captain Pope!’

‘I’m nearly finished, ma’am. The fact is, you will be put in a position again, very soon, where a similar call will need to be made. Another threat will be identified, at an early stage, and we will have a choice. We either strike pre-emptively and run the risk that the intelligence is incorrect, or gamble and hope that it isn’t right. But if you get that wrong, it won’t be one jihadi we are mourning. And it won’t be a single innocent man who was wrongfully killed. It will be tens or hundreds or thousands of civilians. Yes, Rubió’s death was a tragedy. But we have to be strong enough to keep making those decisions because they will save more innocent lives than they cost. And that means that the existence of an agency like Group Fifteen is necessary. You can talk about moderation and proportionate responses and due process all you like, but when it comes down to it, you need the cutting edge we provide. And I think if you are honest with yourselves, you’ll admit that’s true.’

Pope stood. Snow was pale. McNair was shaking his head, his mouth open and an expression of good-humoured surprise on his face. He was wise enough to have read the same signs as Pope.

Morley was red in the face. ‘Is that all?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘You are suspended, Captain.’

‘Yes, ma’am. What shall I tell my agents?’

‘That the Group is suspended. Everyone is to stand down. Everyone. Anyone in the field is to return home. Everything stops. Effective immediately.’

‘Very good, ma’am.’

Snow and McNair stood, and Pope took a quarter turn before he stopped. In for a penny, he thought. The writing was on the wall. They were going down. Might as well go out swinging.

‘One more thing. With respect, I’m not interested in defending my position to a civilian. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. But what I would say is this: if you’re serious about suspending the Group, then you should be prepared to explain to the country that your morality is worth more than the blood of the men and women who will die to pay for it. I suspect that will be a difficult speech to write. You should probably ask your aides to start thinking about it now.’ He straightened out his suit with two brisk downward brushing movements. ‘Good day to you all.’

Chapter Eleven

The van pulled up at the goods in/out entrance on Abingdon Street at five minutes before twelve. A service road led off to the left, passing through a gate and then a checkpoint beyond that. Ibrahim waited patiently as the van was photographed. Software compared the registration with the list of permitted vehicles, and when a match had been found, the gate slid aside. Ibrahim edged ahead, stopping before the metal bar of the checkpoint. Beyond that, a ramp was raised. There was a small office built into the archway through which the road descended, and inside sat two armed policemen. The security was impressive.

Ibrahim had passed through the checkpoint many times before, and he knew the procedure. The detail changed regularly, and he didn’t recognise the policeman who came out and approached the van.

‘Is this usual?’ Abdul asked nervously.

‘It is fine,’ Ibrahim murmured. ‘Just act normal. Relax.’

The policeman came up to Ibrahim’s window and indicated that he should wind it down.

‘Name, sir?’

‘Ibrahim Yusof.’

‘Purpose?’

‘Food delivery.’

‘Your friend?’

‘Abdul Mansoor.’

‘Wait there, please, gents.’

The man went back into the office and spoke with his colleague. Ibrahim rested his fingers on the wheel and drummed them lightly, presenting as normal a picture as he could. He was nervous, and he could see that Abdul was, too. He knew that he was as well prepared as he could be, but it would only take a moment of inattention on his part or intuition on the part of the guards for the scheme to be compromised. There was a plan B, of course, but that was not the point. Plan A was what he had worked so hard to bring to fruition, and to fail at the final hurdle would be the cruellest of ironies.

Ibrahim had studied the Palace of Westminster for six months. It was simple enough to glean information from online searches, but he had supplemented this with two field trips, posing as a tourist on the official tour and visiting his local MP. It was an impressive building even if he did not agree with its purpose or the decisions that were made there. The Gothic edifice was a vast temple of legislation that covered an area of nearly nine acres. It presented a river frontage of nearly one thousand feet to the east, and there was a centre portion sandwiched by towers, two wings, and wing towers at each end. Inside, there were fourteen halls, galleries, vestibules and other apartments that could accommodate large crowds. Thirty-two river-facing apartments served as committee rooms. There were libraries, waiting rooms, dining rooms and clerks’ offices. There were eleven internal courtyards and scores of minor openings that allowed light inside.

He was particularly interested in its security, especially when it had been breached. Everyone knew about the failed gunpowder plot, commemorated every November with the burning in effigy of Guy Fawkes. Spencer Perceval had been shot here in 1812, the only prime minister ever to have been assassinated, and the building had been the target of Fenian bombs in 1885. The Irish Republican Army had struck it twice in the 1970s. In 1974, a twenty-pound bomb exploded in Westminster Hall, rupturing a gas main and causing extensive damage. Five years later, a car bomb claimed the life of Airey Neave, a prominent Conservative politician, while he was driving out of the Commons car park in New Palace Yard. The subsequent threat of jihadist terrorism had upped the ante once again. Today, the palace was guarded by armed officers from the Metropolitan Police’s elite SC&O19 unit.

The policeman returned. Ibrahim couldn’t help but look at the Heckler & Koch MP5SFA3 semi-automatic carbine that was slung across his chest, his finger resting outside the trigger guard.

‘You’re on the list, sir, but not your friend.’

‘He should be.’

‘Says you normally have a Simon Williams?’

He smiled and nodded. ‘That’s right, we do. He didn’t come into work today. He called in sick.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have clearance for an Abdul Mansoor. I can’t let him in.’

Ibrahim sensed Abdul’s tension and spoke quickly before Abdul could say anything stupid. ‘Really? He’s been with us for as long as I have.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Call the office. I’m sure they’ll be able to clear it up.’ He reached forward and took a business card from a holder that had been glued to the dash. He handed the card to the policeman, who still looked dubious. ‘I’d really appreciate it if you could clear it up. It’s going to take me twice as long to do on my own, and we’re already running late.’

‘All right.’

The man went back to the gatehouse. Ibrahim saw him take a telephone and put it to his ear.

‘There’s no one in the warehouse,’ Abdul hissed.

‘I know.’

‘So?’

‘The number forwards to Mohammed’s phone. He’ll sort this out.’

But would he? They had taped the Smith & Wesson 9mm to the underside of his seat, and he allowed his arm to fall down next to the door so that he could feel the cold metal with his fingertips.

The policeman came back.

‘I spoke to your boss. Some kind of oversight. I’ll let it go for today, but you need to get it fixed. And I’ll need to take a look in the back. Could you come around and open up, please?’

‘Of course. Not a problem.’

The man drifted to the rear of the van.

‘We will be discovered,’ Abdul said, his voice tight with tension.

‘Relax. Whatever happens is His will. Be calm.’

Ibrahim reached for the keys to switch off the engine, but his hands were trembling and he fumbled them. Damn it. He needed to be calm, too. He managed to kill the engine, extracted the keys from the ignition and stepped out. He glimpsed the second policeman in the doorway of the little office, his carbine similarly held on a strap and angled down to the ground.

He unlocked the rear doors and opened them.

‘What have you got in here, sir?’

‘Ingredients for the kitchen. Meat, fish, vegetables. That sort of thing.’

The policeman took a half step forward, and for a horrible moment Ibrahim thought he was going to climb inside the van. Their doctored hiding places would not stand much scrutiny. But he did not. He stepped back and nodded his satisfaction.

‘Sorry to bother you, lads. We’re being careful.’

Ibrahim knew why that was. The assassination of Fèlix Rubió had caused all manner of consternation in the press and there had been protests and demonstrations afterwards. His funeral last week had ended with a riot that had been put down with brutal efficiency. There was talk of retaliation, of radicalisation, of increased terrorist ‘chatter’.

They had no idea.

Ibrahim knew that the man’s murder would be of benefit to their cause in the long run, but he wasn’t interested in that. His focus was on the short term. And the increase in security would make it more difficult to do what he had promised to do.

He got into the van.

‘Are we good?’

‘We are. Just smile and relax.’

He started the engine again. The policeman gave him a nod of recognition as his colleague raised the barrier and lowered the ramp. Ibrahim put the gearbox into first and pressed down gently on the accelerator. The van bumped over the exposed lip of the ramp and was swallowed by the narrow tunnel.

Chapter Twelve

Isabella bought a ticket to Heathrow from the machine, used it to pass through the gate and joined the queue that was shuffling toward the escalator. It hummed as it carried her down the long shaft to the vestibule below.

Aamir took the Victoria Line to Green Park station and then changed to the southbound Jubilee Line to Westminster. The carriage was full and he had to stand.

The Jubilee Line was newer, and the trains and the stations were all much sleeker and more modern than the others that they had used when they had scouted the capital last month. Westminster, in particular, was an impressive vaulted space, a cavern that had been carved in the earth at the side of the Thames. It was one of the main stations that served the offices of government around the Palace of Westminster and Whitehall. Many of these men and women waiting patiently for the train to carry them to their destinations were puppets of the state, putting into effect the pernicious policies that had led to decades of misery for their brothers and sisters in the Middle East.

Had they seen the effects of those policies, as Aamir had?

Mohammed had told him to watch the YouTube videos of the atrocities that had been carried out in the name of civilisation and democracy, the bombed schools and hospitals.

The dead children.

The families wiped out by drone strikes and five-hundred-pound bombs dropped by cowards from ten thousand feet.

He looked at the men and women around him as they read their newspapers and listened to their music. They were oblivious. They had no idea what he could do to them with just a simple click of the trigger in his pocket.

And yet, as the train rushed through the dark tunnel, the doubts returned. These people were not soldiers. They did not drop the bombs. They had families. They were mothers and fathers, not so different to the brothers and sisters in Iraq and Palestine and Afghanistan and the other Muslim lands.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember what the imam had said to him. The words of the sacred Qur’an.

He could almost hear the cadence of Alam Hussain’s deep, sonorous voice. He closed his eyes and let the rhythm of the verse play through his head.

The weight of the rucksack brought him back around. The strap was cutting into his right shoulder, so he carefully transferred it so that it was slung across his left. The bag itself was against his chest. He wrapped his arms around it so that he could cradle it and reduce the downward pressure from the strap. He thought about what was inside the bag and what it would do when he detonated it.

What it would do to him, and all these people.

The train eased into Westminster station. The screen doors on the platform opened first, and then the doors to the train.

This was where he had agreed to detonate the bomb. Right here, in the carriage, catching some as they stepped out and others as they stepped in. His would be the first blow to be struck. The second and third blows would be triggered by his actions, a series of attacks that would amount to a grievous blow against the infidels, deep in the heart of their country, right next to the seat of their democracy.

The scrum of passengers shifted and eddied as people elbowed their way to the carriage’s exit. A man told him to move out of the way, and a woman tutted at him, and as he took a pace to the left to allow them the space to squeeze by, he was pushed towards the exit himself. He disembarked, not really thinking, clutching the heavy rucksack to his chest. The tide of commuters carried him towards the opening that led to the main vestibule and the escalators that would take him to the surface.

He thought he saw Bashir.

The tide shifted, people bustling into his line of sight, and he couldn’t be sure.

He craned his neck.

‘Come on, buddy,’ a man said, nudging him.

‘Sorry.’

Aamir was bustled onto the escalator. He was breathing quickly, and his pulse was racing.

He looked for Bashir and couldn’t see him, even as they ascended. He gazed at the others: the long queue of people going down to the platforms on his left, the others heading up to the surface with him. Men and women and children. A woman staring at the screen of her cell phone. A man reading a book on a Kindle. A couple balancing a child’s stroller between them. A pretty blonde girl, not that much younger than him, a leather satchel hung over her shoulder.

No.

He couldn’t do it.

He turned back, closed his eyes and waited for the escalator to deliver him to the surface.

Hakeem’s train had rolled into the station five minutes before Aamir’s. That was what they had planned. He needed time to get into position. The rush hour was long since ended, but this was a busy station. He had seen Bashir get onto the train, but he had lost sight of Aamir in the scrum at Kings Cross. He was a little concerned about the young brother. It had been harder to persuade him that what they were going to do this morning was necessary. Mohammed had worked on Aamir; Hakeem thought that the young recruit could be relied upon, but he wasn’t as certain about Aamir as he was about Bashir.

Hakeem looked at the oblivious men and women around him. They were like cattle. They had no idea what was about to happen.

It gave him a wild thrill of excitement.

He walked from the platform into the vestibule that accommodated the escalators. He separated himself from the throng and found a place where he could wait without being too obvious about it. The plan called for him to stay here until Aamir had detonated his bomb. The boy would kill and maim dozens of the infidels in the confined space of the train carriage. His bomb would also cause panic and send hundreds of them dashing headlong to where he, Hakeem, would be waiting for them. He would press himself into the middle of the crush and close his eyes. He would pray to Allah that he would kill as many of them as he could.

He looked at his watch just as he heard the sound of the next train easing into the station.

This must be Aamir.

Not long.

Moments.

He knew this was a martyrdom operation and that he wouldn’t live beyond this day. He knew his span on this Earth could be measured in minutes now. Seconds. He was content with that. He was clear-headed and calm, prepared to sacrifice himself to the greater good. His blood would serve the caliphate, and the scripture was clear and unequivocal: he would earn a place in Paradise for his work.

He heard the sound of the train’s doors closing.

Now?

The train accelerated.

He looked at his watch.

He waited.

Nothing.

No explosion.

He didn’t understand what was happening.

Aamir should have been here by now.

He was trying to think what to do when he saw the boy on the escalator above him. His mouth fell open. Aamir still had his rucksack over his shoulder. He was clutching the bag to his chest as if it was something precious.

He wanted to call out — ‘Aamir!’ — but he knew that he couldn’t draw attention to himself.

Aamir was going to the surface. He had failed. He had lost his nerve and failed.

Once again he heard the scripture that Alam Hussain had made him memorise.

Aamir might fail.

But he would not.

He took a step away from the wall and then another, pushing his way into the crowd of people waiting to get onto the escalator. He remembered everything that the imam had said, and everything that Mohammed had said after that. He closed his eyes, ignoring the angry words as he bumped into men and women. He put his hand into his pocket and felt the trigger. He grasped the switch and felt its sharp edge press into the flesh of his thumb.

‘Allahu akbar,’ he yelled. ‘Allahu akbar. Allahu—’

Chapter Thirteen

Allahu akbar. Allahu—’

Isabella heard the chant as the doors of the carriage closed behind her. She was adjacent to the passageway that led through to the escalators, and she was looking out into it as the train slowly eased into motion. The angle changed and her attention was snagged by a poster for a new film she had been thinking of seeing.

Then came the explosion.

Isabella saw a bright white light that seemed to go on for seconds, and then she heard a dull crump. It was loud, but blunt. It was like a thud, a physical sensation that she could feel passing through her body. She saw a gout of smoke punch out of the passageway and onto the platform. At the same time, the glass screen doors shattered and the side of the carriage was peppered with tiny pieces of debris that rang out loudly. A jagged crack appeared in the window, and further down the carriage an entire pane shattered and fell onto the passengers.

The train jerked to a sudden stop.

There was silence for a moment, and then came the sound of screaming from the platform and the vestibule beyond. One of the women in the carriage had been lacerated by the falling glass, and as the other passengers saw the blood that was running down from her scalp, some of them started to scream, too.

The lights on the platform flickered and died.

Smoke drifted in through the smashed window.

The lights in the carriage winked out, too, and in an instant it became completely black.

The smoke was acrid; she heard people retching and coughing.

The carriage lights came on again. A man was stumbling along the platform. Isabella looked at him and saw that he had no face, just a mask of blood and skin that looked like masticated steak.

A male passenger yanked down the handle of the carriage’s intercom and tried to speak to the driver.

Other men and women appeared on the platform. Their faces were blackened with soot and dirt and blood, and their clothes were torn and shredded. The whites of their wide eyes stood out against the muck on their skin.

A man tried to wrestle the doors open. He managed to part them a crack and call for help. Two others pushed through the scrum and tried to force them all the way open. She was buffeted to the side, and as she put her weight on her right foot, she felt the crunching of broken glass beneath it.

The lights flickered and died for a second time. A shower of sparks drifted down from the ceiling to the floor of the platform. It was incongruously beautiful.

The screaming got louder.

‘Allahu Akbar. Allahu—’

Aamir was at the top of the escalator when he heard Hakeem’s strident chant. His call was enveloped by the crashing roar of the bomb as it exploded in the vestibule below him. It was a loud, sudden boom, closely followed by a pressure wave that pulsed up the shaft and flattened everyone in its wake. It lifted Aamir up and tossed him, dropping him on his front, the rucksack beneath him. The rumble was followed by the sound of shrapnel striking against the concrete walls of the shaft and the metal treads of the escalator. The sound was like a whoosh, the noise that a very strong wind might make. It almost felt electrical, and his hair stood up on end.

There came a sudden silence. Aamir heard the sound of his own breathing, in and out, ragged and on the edge of panic, and then came the shrieks and screams. The horror. Smoke coursed out of the mouth of the shaft, black and choking, and Aamir felt it sting his eyes.

Aamir shook the rucksack from his shoulders and left it on the floor as he scrambled to his feet.

He forgot about it and ran.

He crashed into a large man in a London Underground uniform. He was old, his kindly face absorbed with shock and horror. The man was trying to forge a path through the on-rushers so that he could get to the escalators.

Aamir looked up and saw the white of daylight from the station exits.

He had to get outside.

Aamir ran to the gate line, bumped and baulked by the others around him. The gates were all open, and he squeezed through, climbed the steps and emerged into the bright sunlight. He looked up. Big Ben stretched overhead, and behind it, the towers and crenellations of the Palace of Westminster. A single Union Jack flew from a flagpole atop one of the towers. The pennant hung down, rustling in the negligible wind.

Aamir looked across the road and saw Bashir opposite the exit to the station, crossing the road and heading right at him. Bashir looked back at him for a moment, confusion quickly replaced by anger.

‘Stop!’

Aamir saw the bulk of his rucksack and knew what was about to happen.

He ran.

Chapter Fourteen

Pope, McNair and Snow stepped out of the office. The street was shaded by the tall shoulders of the buildings on either side, but as they walked on, they passed into the sunshine that shimmered down onto Whitehall.

He had said too much. He had known that he would if they pressed the wrong buttons. He had promised himself that he would be diplomatic, hold his tongue and ignore all the provocation that he knew was coming his way, but he just couldn’t. He had no respect for any of those people. They pronounced and opined without any idea of what it was that the men and women under his command did for their country.

He had been an active member of the Group until his predecessor had gone rogue. He had more than his own share of kills, and the price he had paid for each one of them was high. He had always tried to take his own feelings out of the equation. He had been a weapon. Someone else chose the target and aimed the weapon. He simply carried out his orders and then went back to his family and tried to forget about them. That had been his policy, although, of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. He had probably handled it better than John Milton, but what did that say about him? Milton had wrestled with his demons for years, tried to drown them in drink, and eventually he had decided that the only way he could deal with them was to take himself as far away from London and his old life as he could. Milton was out, and good luck to him. Pope found that he wished he could join him.

They ambled down Whitehall. Snow was smoking a cigarette, his second, sucking down the tobacco with greedy gulps. He smoked compulsively, especially when he was irritated, and he certainly had grounds for irritation now.

‘Fuckers,’ McNair said.

‘I know,’ Pope said.

‘They have no idea. Not the first clue.’

‘It’s not over yet. Someone will see sense.’

He said it, but he didn’t really believe it. He knew that there would have to be a scapegoat for what had happened to Fèlix Rubió. A bloodletting was inevitable. It should have been the police and the spooks for the faulty intelligence, but Group Fifteen was an easier target. There would be an inquest to find out what had happened, and far better for the agency to be disbanded and dispersed, to forestall the possibility that a light might be shone on the murky, grubby world in which they operated. Similar steps were taken after Bloody Sunday. The men involved were scattered far and wide to prevent the truth from emerging. The playbook hadn’t changed in forty years. It was still the obvious response. It was as craven and short-sighted now as it had been then, but Pope was long enough in the tooth not to be surprised by such things.

He grimaced again and wished, for the second time, that he had held his tongue.

Snow noticed his expression. ‘Forget it, sir. You did what you could.’

‘At least they know how you feel about it now,’ McNair added.

Pope allowed himself a small smile in response.

They passed The Red Lion pub, Derby Gate and then St Stephen’s Tavern. Snow finished the cigarette and immediately lit a third. Pope found himself wondering what to do for the rest of the afternoon. He had never been suspended before, and he realised, with a rueful grin, he had no idea what that meant in practical terms. Should he go home? No, he thought. There were people with whom he needed to discuss the morning’s events. But where should he do that? What did suspension mean? Was he supposed to go back to their building on the river, make his calls and then wait for further orders? Was he supposed to go home?

They joined the scrum of pedestrians at the junction of Bridge Street and Whitehall. He looked up at Elizabeth Tower. It rose up with a stately rhythm, higher and higher, and then there came the iconic clock face, picked out as a giant rose, its petals fringed with gold. There were medieval windows above that and then the dark slate roof, its greyness relieved by delicate windows framed in gold leaf. Finally came a rush of gold to the higher roof that curved gracefully upwards to a fairy-tale spire topped with a crown, flowers and a cross.

It was a minute before midday. The traffic lights changed in their favour just as the minute hand ticked over to an upright position and the famous chimes pealed out. The tune was that of the Cambridge Chimes, based on violin phrases from Handel’s Messiah.

The Chimes finished, and Pope waited for the first strike of the hour bell.

The detonation came from Bridge Street, in the direction of the river. It was a deep, guttural boom, accompanied by a tremor that passed beneath his feet. Pope knew it was a bomb immediately. The blast had been very slightly muffled. It had come from the direction of the Underground station. He ran toward the entrance, Snow and McNair hard on his heels, just as a huge cloud of dust and smoke poured out and billowed up into the bright afternoon.

He saw the man on the other side of the street. Most people were standing around, confused and befuddled. They were slack-jawed, their eyes black and dazed. But this man was moving. He was dressed in black and carrying, with obvious effort, a rucksack that he wore on his back.

Pope knew how to spot a suicide bomber. He knew the playbook after an attack, too. He had served in theatres where suicide bombings were often a daily occurrence: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel. The first blast was often diversionary. Lethal, yes. Deadly. But it was designed to funnel as many targets as possible into a killing zone where they could be attacked by a bigger secondary explosion. The jihadis did it with IEDs, using one to herd soldiers and civilians into a position where the second bomb could do serious damage.

The man with the rucksack wasn’t standing still. He wasn’t confused. He was walking with a determined stride, right into the middle of the crowd.

‘No!’ Pope yelled.

The man reached into his pocket.

‘Bomb! Run!’

Chapter Fifteen

A bright yellow light, seemingly everywhere, and then Pope was lifted, twisted and flung to the ground. There was the deafening crack of a hideous explosion, and Pope was pummelled by a bolt of boiling air which dented his cheeks and stomach as if they had been made of cardboard. He felt the fierce lashing of debris, hot slugs that scored burning tracks across his cheeks and forehead and the back of his hands. He stayed there on his back, the breath sucked out of his lungs by the retreating pressure. He opened his eyes, blinking hard. The sun seemed to quiver overhead, and then it disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

There was a moment of unearthly silence, broken only by the music of broken glass, the creaking of metal, the patter of falling debris.

Then the screaming started.

He looked and tried to clear his head. The blast had thrown him fully fifteen feet and deposited him against the side of a black cab that had stopped in the middle of the road. The mass of people who had retreated from the first blast inside the station were not there any longer. He felt something fall on his face, and when he yanked it away, he found it was a piece of yellow fabric, a dress maybe, now soaked in blood. A gory shower of flesh and more bloody clothing fell on him and around him, mingled with fragments of glass and concrete. Last of all came pieces of paper sucked from the offices in the buildings above the station, falling gently to Earth like graceful autumn leaves. There came the unmistakeable smell of roast pork. Once you had experienced it, you could never forget it. It was the smell of burning flesh.

The road was ruined for fifty yards in both directions. There were hundreds of windows in the sand-coloured limestone walls of the Palace, and they had all been blown in. Glass rained down. A man bumped into him and fell to the ground. People were running all around him, screaming and crying. A bus that had been passing had swerved and crashed into the railings. A dump truck had slammed into the back of the bus. The trees that stood between the high railings and the flanks of the building had all been denuded of their leaves and now they stood naked and at crooked angles. The road itself was no more than a smoking crater. There were red smears on the tarmac and the pavements and the walls of the buildings. An inky black cloud mushroomed overhead, obscuring the clock tower and the buildings that faced it. The smell of cordite was everywhere. And it was cordite, Pope knew. This wasn’t a homemade bomb. This wasn’t hydrogen peroxide from boiled-down hair products. It wasn’t HMTD from hexamine tablets and citrus acid. This smelled like military-grade explosive.

‘Control?’

It was Snow.

‘I’m here.’

Number Twelve emerged from the smoke. He was covered in ash and soot. He had been a little closer to the seat of the explosion than Pope, and the blast had ripped his jacket from his back and torn his shirt. He wore his pistol in a shoulder holster, and Pope watched as his hand flicked up to it and yanked it free. It made him think of his own Sig Sauer, and he was grateful as his fingers found that it was still there, too.

‘Two explosions,’ Pope said, although he knew that Snow would be aware of that. ‘First one in the station, second one just outside it.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Snow said.

‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine. You?’

‘Cuts and bruises.’

‘Number Three?’

‘I’m here,’ McNair said. He was on the ground, ten feet away, carefully pushing to his feet.

‘Hurt?’

‘Scratches. Nothing. We were lucky.’

Pope looked around, trying to focus. There were dozens of bodies on the ground. Many of them had been torn apart. The bomb had been laced with shrapnel, and the metal debris would have lacerated the flesh of anyone who was within twenty yards. He took in the bloody devastation with as clinical an eye as he could: dismembered limbs, a torso impaled on the railings, the disembodied head of a man, his expression of open-mouthed surprise starting to set as the muscles stiffened.

There were moans and cries for help.

In the distance, there came the sound of sirens.

And then, closer to hand, a sound he recognised immediately.

Gunfire.

It was coming from his four o’clock. Pope spun.

The Palace.

Chapter Sixteen

The man they called Mohammed was waiting inside the empty warehouse. His name was not really Mohammed. He had been given many names, and it had been so long since he had been referred to by the one his mother had given him that he had almost forgotten it. His earliest years had been lived on the streets of the Gaza Strip. He had been wild and unruly then, and the Israeli soldiers had called him ‘Arabush’, or rat. When he arrived in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, aged just seventeen, the mujahideen had called him ‘Kid’. The jihadists in the Sudanese al-Qaeda cell had called him the ‘Engineer’, because his bombs and martyrdom vests were the most effective that they had ever seen. Now, his brothers in the caliphate called him ‘Iblis’. In Islam, Iblis is a jinn born from fire who refused to bow for Adam. The literal translation was ‘Devil’.

He had been given the name of Mohammed Shalmalak when he arrived in the United Kingdom. His false passport and driver’s licence bore that name, and it was the one he used as he set up a home for himself in the north of the country. It was the name he had used when speaking to the young suicide bombers that the imam, Alam Hussain, had provided. For a man who did not care for names, it was as good as any.

Weeks ago, Mohammed had been provided with the address of this warehouse and a key to open the padlocked front door. He had not questioned its provision, but he had been scrupulous in ensuring that it was vacant. The warehouse had seemed derelict and had obviously been empty for months. There were two offices and a bathroom on the first floor. All had borne the evidence of squatters. There was graffiti on the walls, the radiators had been removed for scrap and what little furniture had been left behind was broken and useless. It had been the same downstairs, too. The small kitchen had been filthy and the large warehouse space was a wreck, with clinker from an unswept chimney gathered in a dirty grate. The only piece of furniture had been a two-seater sofa, the fabric covering ripped so that the yellowed stuffing was poking out.

Mohammed had not concerned himself with the state of the property. It was empty, it could be secured and the windows had been covered by metal sheeting that meant that it was impossible to see inside. It had been the perfect spot to build his bombs.

He was wearing a pair of latex gloves and overshoes and a hairnet. He had dropped his bag on the sofa. He opened it, took out a silenced 9mm Berretta and placed it on the floor. He went back to the bag, took out an iPad, saw that he had a strong 4G signal and opened the BBC’s iPlayer app. He navigated to BBC Parliament.

Prime Minister’s Questions was held in the main chamber of the House of Commons every Wednesday at midday. It was an unruly bear pit, and tickets in the public gallery were sought after by foreign visitors, who found the occasion both fascinating and appalling. The baying, rude loutishness of it all was so different from proceedings in their own countries. Mohammed found it distasteful, although he admired the adroitness of the combatants. Not many political leaders could cope with quick-fire exchanges that required detailed knowledge of a Barnsley bypass one minute and the finer points of a UN resolution the next.

Attendance was strongly encouraged for MPs of all persuasions, and that usually meant that both the government and opposition benches were full. Most debates in the Commons were dry and dull affairs, with the green benches mostly empty, but Mohammed knew that this would be different. He had watched it on television, and of course he had secured one of those public gallery seats for himself when he conducted his reconnaissance. It was, to borrow a term that the Americans used, ‘target rich’. And security, although improved since the day when two protestors had lobbed condoms stuffed with purple flour at Tony Blair, was still unimpressive.

He was confident that they would be able to surmount it.

The ticker along the bottom of the screen announced an item of breaking news.

‘REPORTS OF EXPLOSION AT WESTMINSTER UNDERGROUND STATION’

A moment later, Mohammed saw a man in a traditional black suit with knee-length britches and a sword at his side approach the Speaker’s Chair and speak quietly into the occupant’s ear. The Speaker asked a question, received the answer and then gave a nod that he understood. He called for order.

‘Honourable Friends, I have just been informed that there has been an explosion at Westminster Underground station. I’m afraid I have no further details, but the police are requesting that we remain in the chamber until they can confirm that there is no threat to us.’

The camera jerked to the familiar view over the dispatch box, then to the prime minister and the front bench of the government. Another man in a dark suit was leaning over the seated prime minister. The politician rose and followed the man out of shot. Others followed: the leader of the opposition, the front bench.

Mohammed grimaced. They were being taken somewhere else. That was annoying, but it was not unexpected. He had assumed that standard procedure would be to remove the leaders to a panic room, and that appeared to be what was happening. No matter.

The camera pulled back to a wide shot. The parliamentarians were conferring anxiously, a hubbub of noise that provided a backdrop for the sombre tones of the presenter as she explained that sources were now confirming that the explosion had been caused by a bomb.

Mohammed was expecting what would come next, but when it happened, the payoff was better than he could possibly have imagined. The detonation of what he took to be the third bomb was only five hundred feet from the House of Commons. The blast, separated from the House only by the open space of New Palace Yard, was close enough to be audible as a loud detonation, easily picked up by the microphones in the chamber. There were six windows on the east and west sides of the House, each filled with rich stained glass. The pressure wave shattered the westward-facing windows, casting fragments of glass down onto the benches below. The presenter swore, and screams went up from the chamber.

The feed remained live for a moment, men and women standing and hurrying to the aisles, and then it cut to black. When the picture resumed, the feed had been switched to the BBC News Channel. The presenter looked flustered and panicked.

‘You join me now as we hear the breaking news that there has been a series of explosions near the Houses of Parliament. Police sources are reporting that an explosion at Westminster Underground station was most likely a bomb. We can only assume that what you are about to see, filmed from inside the House of Commons, is the moment a second bomb exploded…’

Chapter Seventeen

Ibrahim Yusof was in the back of the Sprinter. He knew the plan called for three separate blasts. The first was to detonate on the train, and he doubted that he would have heard it occurring one hundred feet below the surface. The muffled crack was the second, in the station. The third, just now, was outside. It was deafening.

It was also their signal to move.

He opened one of the bags of vegetables and took out the small Uzi submachine gun that was hidden inside. He took one of the magazines, pressed it into the pistol grip and switched the three-position selector behind the trigger group to automatic fire. The irony that this was a Jewish weapon was not lost on him. The open-bolt design meant that contamination was more likely than with other weapons he could have chosen, but he had packed the gun carefully, and its compact design meant that it was worth the risk. He took two additional fifty-round magazines and stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket. He wore the machine gun on a bungee cord around his neck and hid it beneath his jacket. Then, he tore back the hinged lid on the empty tin of peas and pulled out two Swiss HG M1985 fragmentation grenades. He put one in his pocket and held the other in his hand. Finally, he opened an empty can of carrots and took out a small bag that could be worn around the waist. He passed the belt around and snapped the clips together.

‘Wait here,’ he said to Abdul.

‘Yes.’

‘Get the vests ready. If anyone comes, shoot them.’

He jumped down and hurried out of the loading area. He jogged up the ramp and out into the sunshine. An inky mushroom cloud was unfolding into the blue, already cloaking the walls of the clock tower above him. The sound of sirens was audible, still distant but drawing nearer. He needed to be quick. He ran, knowing that that would not be out of the ordinary given the panic that was erupting around him, sprinting hard along the side of the building until he got to the security booth that served the main exit onto Bridge Street.

The two policemen were out of the booth, standing at the fence and looking east to the seat of the blast. He drew a little closer and saw Faik walking to the gate, fifty feet away. Behind him he saw Nazir, Mo, Bilal and Aneel. The men were in position, just as they were supposed to be.

He slowed to a fast walk.

One of the policemen turned to him. ‘Stay back, sir. There’s been a bomb.’

‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘Where?’

‘Underground station. Two, I think — one inside and one out. Best stay here. It’s not safe out there.’

The policeman turned back to the fence.

Ibrahim pulled the pin of the grenade and rolled it, underarm, into the space between the booth and the fence where the two men were standing.

He pressed himself behind a brick wall strut and held his breath.

Neither policeman saw the grenade. Their attention was distracted. It was equipped with a pre-segmented shell filled with 155 grams of high explosive. The blast turned the steel casing into a storm of razored shrapnel, and it blazed out in all directions. The men were peppered with shards, their backs absorbing most of the damage. They slumped against the fence and then slid down it to the ground, blood pooling on the concrete beneath them.

The door to the booth was ajar. There was a button on the wall that released the lock on the turnstiles, and he pressed it, hearing a satisfying click from outside. The men ran for the gate. Faik pushed through the gate first. He was grinning.

‘The weapons are in place,’ Ibrahim said as Nazir and Mo followed Faik through the turnstiles.

‘Where?’

‘Follow the road to the loading area. Abdul is waiting for you.’

He was still inside the booth when he saw the man with the gun.

He was covered in ash and soot, and his clothes were torn, but he did not appear to have been injured. He was walking to the gate, a pistol held out before him in a steady two-handed grip. Ibrahim shouted a warning, but it was too late. Bilal was negotiating the turnstile, his range of movement severely curtailed. The man with the gun adjusted his aim and fired two shots from twenty feet away. They both found their target. Bilal was struck in the leg and the back and fell forward, jamming the gate with his body. Aneel was behind him, and now the turnstile was blocked. Ibrahim watched, helplessly, as the man changed his aim and shot him, too.

Ibrahim tensed, expecting one or both of them to trigger their suicide vests, but they did not. They must have died before they could reach for the triggers. He shouldered his way out of the booth, raised the Uzi and fired a long burst through the railings. The man dropped to the ground and rolled behind the cover of a bus.

He ran. Faik, Nazir and Mo were ahead of him.

‘Bilal?’ Faik called back to him. He hadn’t seen what had happened.

‘Shot by the police. And Aneel. Put them out of your mind. There are five of us. That is enough.’

They ran down the ramp back into the building.

‘We must be quick. They will start to move the targets.’

Ibrahim took off his jacket and dropped it as he ran, freeing the Uzi. He led the way back to the loading dock, the other men following behind him. As he turned onto the ramp, he saw two members of the resident catering staff coming towards them. He raised the submachine gun and sprayed them with automatic fire. The man and the woman were close, and it would have been difficult to miss them. They were stitched with several rounds each, both of them stumbling, halting and falling to their knees.

Ibrahim ran by them to the van. Abdul was in the back. He opened the door and handed out the hidden weapons. Each man had a submachine gun, a handgun, multiple magazines and three grenades.

Ibrahim turned to the newcomers. ‘Do you have your vests?’

He could tell from the bulk that was evident beneath their jackets that they did. Faik unzipped his coat. He was wearing an armless gilet with stitched-on loops into which six pipe bombs had been fitted. Each explosive was surrounded by a fragmentation jacket that was stuffed with nails, screws, nuts, and ball bearings. It was the shrapnel that effectively turned each jacket into a crude, body-worn claymore mine. Mohammed had made them in his workshop and delivered them yesterday.

‘Take off your jackets. Let the infidels see them.’

They did.

They had smuggled their own vests into the building inside two paper sacks of potatoes. Abdul had put on one of the vests. He handed Ibrahim the remaining one.

Ibrahim put it on. It was heavy, around forty pounds. But it felt good. It made him feel potent.

He would have liked to pray, but there was no time.

‘You know what to do?’

Each man nodded that he did.

There was nothing else to say. Ibrahim took a breath to ready himself and then led the way into the heart of the building.

Pope, Snow and McNair approached the gate, weapons drawn. The first man had fallen onto his face. The second man had tried to force the gate, but it had been blocked by the first man’s body. He had taken a step back and had looked as if he was about to run when Pope shot him, too. Snow approached the second man.

‘Be careful,’ Pope called. ‘He could have a vest on.’

Snow fired a shot into his leg from twenty feet away. The limb jerked, but the man did not move. He was dead.

The man lying inside the turnstile was motionless, but Pope was not prepared to take chances with him either. He stayed out of range, aimed and fired a round into his thigh. No movement. He was dead, too. Pope hurried ahead, took the man by the ankles and hauled him out of the way.

‘What do we do?’ Snow said.

‘I’m going in. Paddy — you’re with me.’

‘And me?’ Snow asked.

‘Find a policeman, tell him what’s happened, then come after us.’

‘You see how he fired?’ McNair said. ‘Close bursts, targeted. He’s been trained.’

Pope nodded. He had noticed that, too.

‘This is bad.’

McNair dropped to his haunches next to the man beside the gate. He unzipped the man’s jacket and swore colourfully. Pope turned to look.

The man was wearing a gilet fitted with pipe bombs.

‘It’s worse than that,’ Pope said. ‘Hurry, Snow. Tell the police we’ve got multiple suicide bombers inside. We’re going to need backup.’

Snow sprinted away.

He turned to McNair. ‘Ready?’

McNair nodded.

‘Come on.’

Pope pushed through the turnstile and ran in the same direction as the attackers.

Chapter Eighteen

Ibrahim led the way. He knew the layout of this part of the building from visiting it every day for the last few weeks. They climbed a flight of stairs out of the basement and emerged in the kitchens. There was a series of dining rooms set out along the oak-panelled corridor that began at the entrance to the kitchen. The staff of the refreshments department were responsible for the food and drink that was served. There were four chefs in the kitchen this afternoon — three men and one woman. They had switched on a radio and were gathered around it as the presenter breathlessly relayed the developing news of the bombing at the Underground station.

Ibrahim raised his Uzi and sprayed them with bullets. Stray rounds sparked off the pots and pans on the metal shelving, but most of them found their marks. The chefs dropped to the floor, one of them sliding off the shining stainless steel counter and bringing a pot of peeled carrots down atop him.

‘Eyes open,’ Ibrahim called out.

His men advanced in stooped crouches, fanning out, each of them with his weapon drawn and ready to fire. They were well trained and experienced soldiers. Death was not a stranger to them; they had walked with Him for months. Ibrahim knew that they would be ready to kill when the moment presented itself.

He knew that they were ready to die, too.

Ibrahim led the way through the kitchen. There was a window in each of the double doors at the far end, and he glanced through into the corridor beyond. An alarm was sounding. Ibrahim didn’t know what it signified, but he guessed that it had been triggered following the blasts outside. He hoped, and suspected, that it would mean that the people inside the building would be held in place until the outside was secured.

Abdul, Faik, Nazir and Mo waited for his instructions.

‘You remember the plan?’ They nodded, but he repeated it anyway. ‘We take the steps to the level up from here. Then we split. Faik — you are with me. We go left and take the long route to the lobby. Abdul, Nazir, Mo — you go right. We meet there. Shoot anyone you see.’

Mohammed had laid out their tactics. They knew that they would, in all likelihood, come across stiff resistance as they headed to the chamber of the Commons. Splitting into two separate teams would increase the odds of at least one of them making it. After all, they only needed one man to get inside.

He checked through the window again. A policeman had entered the corridor. He was walking away from them.

‘Ready?’

They nodded.

‘Now!’

He eased the door open and stepped through. The policeman turned just as he raised the Uzi and squeezed off a quick fusillade. The man was struck several times, stumbling back until he tripped and fell onto his side. He had collapsed next to the stairs. Ibrahim rushed ahead, put a final round into the man’s head and led the way up the flight of stone steps.

Pope saw the Sprinter and the discarded jackets and coats that had been scattered on the ground next to it. There were five of them. He paused quickly and saw the mess of opened tins and packets of produce that had been strewn around. It was easy enough to put together what had happened. The van had brought one or two men inside. Most likely it was two. The weapons for the attack had been hidden inside the opened tins and packets. The bombs were a distraction. One of the men from the van had killed the police guarding the entrance so that he could let the other men inside. The five jackets left on the ground suggested that the plan called for seven men. He had counted four and killed two. The spare jacket must have belonged to the man who had been left to guard the van.

‘There’s five of them, not four. And they’re all armed. Our friend had an Uzi. We better assume they all do.’

They climbed the winding corkscrew stone staircase and emerged on the ground floor, close to the Commons Library, where they split into their separate teams. They split up. Abdul, Nazir and Mo went one way, and Ibrahim and Faik went another. Their paths would converge on the lobby that preceded the entrance to the Commons.

Ibrahim ran, the extra weight of the explosives slowing him down. They passed through the Peers’ Lobby and the corridor beyond and reached the Central Lobby. It was a grand octagonal hall that was one of the central hubs of the building. He glanced up at the vaulted tower above them, a full sixty feet in diameter. The stone roof was supported without a central pillar and contained a long series of elaborately carved bosses. It was austere and impressive, obviously designed to cow those who visited. It did not have that effect on Ibrahim.

There were twenty or thirty people there. He saw old men in suits, a few women, and a policeman with his back turned to them. The atmosphere was fraught with tension. They must have heard what was happening outside by now. Ibrahim had trained for precisely this situation and his reaction was instant and ruthless. He released his hold on the Uzi, letting it fall free on the bungee cord, his right hand stabbing down into one of the pouches on his vest and removing one of the grenades.

He pulled the pin, tossed it into the middle of the crowd and slipped behind the cover of a pillar.

The grenade burst apart with a sharp crack. Hundreds of pieces of sharp-edged shrapnel were propelled in all directions. Those near the seat of the explosion were torn to shreds. It exploded on the floor, so those who might otherwise have survived were struck below the waist. They fell to the floor, their hands reaching for the wounds to their buttocks and legs.

Ibrahim and Faik stepped out of cover and fired at the survivors. They both emptied their magazines, then ejected and loaded fresh ones. They fired for ten seconds and then stopped.

Ibrahim paused to get his breath.

He smelled cordite.

Gunpowder.

He heard soft moans.

Faik shouted out.

Ibrahim spun. Another two policemen ran up the steps from St Stephen’s Hall. Faik fired first. The policemen hadn’t seen them and stood no chance. Ibrahim fired. The policemen collapsed to their knees, clutching their stomachs. Faik approached cautiously and shot both of them again.

‘Well done, brother.’

‘Allah smiles on us.’

‘We’re nearly there. We must hurry.’

They left the carnage in the lobby and headed north. The walls of the corridor were covered with grand frescoes. The ostentatiousness was distasteful. He thought of the austerity of the caliph’s quarters in Raqqa. The comparison was instructive: the worldly against the spiritual. He knew which he preferred.

He was at the entrance to the Commons Lobby when he heard more gunfire from behind him. He spun around and saw a man crouched low, aiming a pistol. He realised dimly that it was the man who had shot Bilal and Aneel as they had tried to pass through the turnstile outside. There was a second man a few steps behind him. Ibrahim tripped over his feet, just managing to launch himself into a deep recess as the pistol barked again and bullets winged out toward him.

He crashed against the wall.

No hits. Lucky.

‘Faik?’

Nothing.

‘Faik?’

‘He’s dead,’ a man’s voice called out. ‘You’re next.’

He risked a quick glance back. Faik was laid out on the floor. He had been shot as he had left the Central Lobby. He was on his belly, unmoving, a pool of blood inching out from an open wound in his temple.

A gun fired again. He pressed himself deeper into the recess as a cloud of dust and stone fragments exploded just overhead.

The firing stopped.

‘Do not come any closer,’ Ibrahim yelled.

‘Throw out your weapon.’

‘No.’

‘You’re trapped. Throw it out.’

‘I have a suicide vest. My finger is on the trigger. If I see you, I will detonate it. We will both die.’

Ibrahim heard the sudden clatter of gunfire from the other direction. Screams. He turned his head. He was almost at the end of the corridor, ten feet from the entrance to the Commons Lobby. He could see into most of it from where he was. Abdul, Nazir and Mo had entered the lobby from the east. A policeman had been guarding the doors to the Commons, but now he was on his back.

‘Abdul!’ Ibrahim yelled. ‘Help!’

Besides Ibrahim, Abdul had the most battlefield experience of any of them. He knew what to do.

They could see each other, but the angle meant that the men who had shot Faik could not see them. Ibrahim pointed back to the south to Faik’s body.

Abdul crept ahead, lowered himself to a crouch and pressed himself against the doorway.

He fastened his eyes on Ibrahim’s and counted down on his fingers.

Three.

‘Throw out—’

Two.

‘—your weapons!’

One.

They both span out of cover, their submachine guns up and firing. He saw a flash of colour against the dun stone and focused his aim on it, fully automatic. Bullets crashed against the wall and a storm of chips was cast out, but the men who had shot Faik were in cover.

Mo and Nazir joined Abdul at the doorway and opened fire.

‘Keep firing!’ Ibrahim yelled over the sound of the fusillade.

He took one of his grenades, pulled the pin and rolled it underarm toward where he thought the men were sheltering. The fuse was set for five seconds. The grenade detonated with a crash that was amplified by the natural acoustics of the corridor. Shrapnel clanged against the walls, and a cloud of black smoke billowed out.

He took the chance to sprint out from cover, throwing himself into the lobby with the others.

Chapter Nineteen

Pope pressed himself behind the pillar. He had been fortunate. The grenade had gone off ahead of him, and his cover — in a recess, behind a statue of a parliamentarian he did not recognise — had been good enough to protect him from the shrapnel, save for the tracks of scratches that had been scored across his shoulder.

‘Con… Control.’

It was McNair. His voice was pained and weak. Pope looked across the corridor to where he was sheltering. His left hand was pressed to his gut in a hopeless attempt to staunch the flow of blood that was pouring from the shrapnel wound. His shirt was saturated, and gobbets of blood were soaking through and falling to the floor.

Shit.

McNair shook his head. He knew he was in trouble.

Pope knew there was nothing he could do to help him. There were four attackers left, unless others had breached the building without his knowledge. They all had automatic weapons. They probably all had grenades, too. He and McNair couldn’t retreat. If they did, there was no telling what the attackers would do. The terrorists had suicide vests. Pope didn’t know what procedure would be in the chamber when the building was under attack. Would they lock it all down? Or would they evacuate? If they did that, there was no telling how long it would take. And if they did, how would they know where the shooters were located? There would have been several hundred MPs, press and members of the public in there. They could be herded into a killing zone.

No. They would defend the doors and lock it down.

But if the attackers could get inside…

He shook his head. They couldn’t retreat. McNair had to wait. Pope knew he was going to have to deal with them.

McNair coughed. Pope looked over as he spat out a streamer of blood.

‘It’s a gut shot, Scouse,’ Pope said. ‘You’ve got a while to bleed yet. Stay with me.’

‘Nah.’ McNair shook his head. ‘I’m fucked. Feel dizzy. Losing too… too much blood. Must’ve nicked an artery.’

Pope grimaced. Where was Snow? They were badly outgunned.

The attackers had obviously targeted the chamber. Everything else was diversionary. He tried to think. He didn’t even know whether the doors could be locked.

He needed help.

‘Control,’ McNair wheezed.

He looked back.

McNair nodded his head at the body of the dead terrorist. The bomber had fallen between two recesses. McNair was in the first recess, then came the body, then the second.

Pope knew what McNair was suggesting.

‘Cover me,’ he wheezed.

‘Scouse—’

Before Pope could protest, McNair shuffled out of cover and lumbered to the body.

Pope swung out, saw movement in the lobby and laid down suppressing fire. He fired six shots before the gun clicked empty.

McNair grunted with effort. Pope turned and saw him hauling the dead man, face first, around the corner into the Central Lobby.

‘Scouse,’ he hissed, hoping that his words wouldn’t carry to the lobby.

‘I’m here.’

‘Does he have grenades?’

‘No.’

‘His Uzi? I’m dry.’

McNair appeared around the edge of the wall and slid the dead man’s machine pistol down the corridor. It came to a stop adjacent to Pope’s recess. He reached out with his toe, snagged the bungee cord and dragged it to him. He collected it, checked that the magazine was properly engaged and leaned with his back against the recess. They couldn’t have very long. Either the attackers would get into the chamber and do what they had come to do, or if they had more grenades, they would roll a couple more toward him, and maybe he wouldn’t be so lucky the next time.

‘Control?’ McNair’s voice was weaker.

‘I’m here.’

‘Ready?’

He tried to compose himself for what he knew McNair was about to do.

‘Good luck, Scouse. Been an honour.’

Ibrahim aimed his Uzi at the entrance to the corridor. If anyone was foolish enough to follow him out of it, he would pepper him.

The Commons Lobby was about forty-five feet square, with a door at each side and all four sides formed alike. Each was divided into three equal parts, the central of which contained a deeply recessed doorway, while the remaining parts, which included the corners, were divided into two storeys. Mo was at the double doors that offered access to the main chamber.

‘Come on!’ Ibrahim shouted.

‘The doors—’

Mo took aim at the doors and fired a blast from the Uzi. Chips of wood were thrown into the air, each impact marked by a little explosion of sawdust, but the door was too solid to be disturbed by the small-calibre rounds.

‘They’ve locked themselves inside.’

Ibrahim glanced at the door. He set his Uzi on the ground and unhooked the bag that he wore around his waist. He unzipped the bag and took out two fist-sized portions of military-grade plastique explosive, the fused detonator and the battery.

‘Cover me.’

Nazir grinned. He turned on a diagonal so that he could cover the door to his right and the door from which Ibrahim had entered. Mo and Abdul faced in the opposite direction so that they could cover the door to the left and the main door. They couldn’t see down into the corridor where Faik had been killed without presenting a target, but if anyone tried to storm the lobby, they would be able to shoot them before they got very far.

Ibrahim took the plastique and tore off the strip of adhesive backing. He had taken two steps towards the door when he heard a loud shout from behind him.

‘Hey!’

He turned.

A large white man had staggered out of the corridor.

He was wearing a pair of suit trousers, a bloodstained white shirt and a suicide vest.

Faik’s vest.

The trigger was in his hand.

Nazir raised his gun.

‘Don’t shoot!’ Ibrahim screamed. If a bullet struck the vest, it would set off the explosives.

Nazir fired and missed, but it didn’t matter.

The man pressed the trigger, closing the circuit and sending an electrical charge to the detonator.

The vest exploded. Ibrahim was picked up by the blast and tossed across the lobby. As he slammed against the wall, he was just vaguely aware of another huge, tearing explosion. The last thought that passed through his mind, obliterating even the promise of heaven and seventy-two virgins, was that it was his own vest.

Chapter Twenty

It had been easy enough for Aamir to get away from the area. The streets around the Houses of Parliament had been chaotic. He had turned onto Whitehall and run all the way to Trafalgar Square. He had made it to the Cenotaph when the first unmarked police car screamed by, its lights flashing and siren wailing. He stopped for breath when he was at the entrance to the square as another three police cars raced south. By the time he had crossed the stalled jam of traffic around the monument, he had counted ten, and overhead the first helicopter was clattering to the scene.

He ran to the entrance of Charing Cross station, but the metal gate had been pulled across. A harassed member of staff was telling people that there had been an incident on the Underground and that the whole network was suspended. He climbed the stairs again, the muscles in his legs burning from the exertion, and looked around. He saw a bus. He didn’t notice the number or the destination, but it had its doors open, and it looked as if it was still running. He climbed aboard, stuffed a hand into his pocket and fumbled around until he found a pound coin. He dropped it in the driver’s tray and clambered up to the top deck. There was a spare seat a third of the way down, and he slumped down in it.

The woman next to him had her phone out. She was reading a page from the BBC News website. He saw the word ‘bomb’ before a gout of vomit pulsed up from the roil of his stomach. He fought it back, the harsh acidity burning the back of his throat.

The bus lumbered away into the crush of traffic.

Whitehall was jammed now, too.

He watched through the windows as four armed policemen sprinted south, their weapons cradled before them.

Chapter Twenty-One

Aamir had called the number Mohammed had given him thirty minutes after the bombs had been reported on the news, just as the story was switching to the drama inside the Houses of Parliament. The boy had called on a public phone, as he had been instructed. That was good. He had been frantic. That was not good. Mohammed had spent the first five minutes just calming him down. He had given him the address of the warehouse and then made preparations for his arrival.

Now that he was done, he put on his coat, collected his cell phone and the silenced Beretta M9 and went outside to his van. The warehouse was on Seabright Street. It was a half mile to the west of Bethnal Green Tube station. The entire Tube network was suspended, so he had instructed Aamir to catch a bus that would deposit him on the Old Bethnal Green Road at the stop opposite the Tesco Metro. When he arrived, he was to call him from the public phone box outside the Coral betting shop.

His van was parked fifty yards to the south, nestled between a moped and a dirty white panel van. It was a plain Ford Transit, dented and dirty, and bought for cash. It disappeared into the background, completely unobtrusive. The driving position was raised and offered him an excellent view of the warehouse and the street. The main road was several turnings away, and there were no cameras between it and here.

He had cleared his property from the warehouse that morning, transferring it into the back of the van. He had planned to move on once the operation had concluded. It was unwise to stay in one place for too long. He had a list of safe houses that would accommodate him for as long as he decided to stay in London. The next one was in Leytonstone, to the east.

He sat in the van and waited for the boy to call again, watching the news on his iPad. His mood soured as it became clear that the full, expansive goals of the operation had not been met. He already knew that the first bomb, the one on the train, had not been detonated. Worse, the bulletins eventually confirmed that the six attackers had not been able to get into the chamber of the House of Commons. On that level, it had been a failure.

But it had been encouraging in other ways.

The reporters had switched their attention from the carnage outside the station to the Palace of Westminster as soon as it became clear that the drama unfolding within was pressing and happening in real time. Several reporters covering PMQs had been stranded inside the building, and they provided furtive and fearful updates, whispering into their cell phones. There were dispatches from inside the chamber, where gunfire was audible, and then the broadcasters found their money shot. The cameras inside the chamber had been left running, and they had caught the moment when the suicide vests had been detonated in the lobby. The explosion had been enormous. He knew it was more than one vest.

The footage was played back again and again, and the studio experts suggested that three separate blasts could be discerned, each following almost immediately after the other. Mohammed agreed. The doors had been blown into the chamber, and all of the remaining windows had been smashed. There had been a minor stampede as MPs of all persuasions tried to put as much distance as possible between them and the smoke that was pouring into the chamber from the lobby. The police had quickly restored order, and an evacuation had begun. Even now, willing volunteers, no doubt keen to demonstrate their bravery to their constituents, were lining up on Parliament Green to tell their side of the story to the phalanx of reporters.

Yes, he thought, it had not gone quite as well as he had hoped. But it had been a success in the main, most fundamental way. A blow had been struck right to the heart of the country. The caliph had reached out and scratched his fingers down the door that barred the way to the heart of their democracy. They had demonstrated that nowhere was safe. They had proven that they didn’t need airliners to cause terror. They could do it with ten men, a handful of weapons and a few pounds of explosives.

His phone rang. It was the boy. Mohammed gave him directions to the warehouse and ended the call.

He navigated to the folder with the martyrdom videos that each man had recorded in the days leading up to today. He would release them at the appropriate time, when the news cycle needed to be given another nudge. That wouldn’t be for a few days yet. He doubted that anything else would be talked about.

He saw a slightly built young man cross the junction, pause on the other side and then carry on.

Mohammed leaned forward and concentrated.

The man returned, paused again and then walked toward the warehouse.

Mohammed collected the 9mm Beretta M9 from the glovebox. The gun had been fitted with a suppressor. He put it into his jacket pocket.

The man was closer now. Dusk had fallen and visibility was lessened, but he could see it was Aamir.

He took a pair of latex overshoes and pulled them over his trainers, then pulled on a pair of gloves and a plastic hairnet. He got out of the van, closed the door quietly and crossed over the road.

Aamir was facing the door, half-heartedly pulling the cage.

Mohammed reached into his pocket for the key with his right hand and clasped Aamir around the shoulder with his left. ‘Aamir,’ he said, ‘do not worry. It is me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the boy said. He turned and Mohammed saw the tears streaming down his face.

He would have to be quick. He did not want to have a scene on the street; passers-by might remember.

He unlocked the cage, yanked it back, opened the door and pulled Aamir inside.

There was a large space inside. The metal sheets over the windows stopped all the light. The only illumination came through the gaps that edged the door, weak and ineffectual and quickly absorbed by the darkness. The room was damp, and Mohammed could hear the trickling of water from somewhere in the gloom. He had purchased a builder’s lamp from a branch of Wickes, and he crouched down to switch it on. The sudden glare created a vivid pool of light, picking out rows of racking that would once have been used for storage. The shelves cast a lattice of deep black shadows against the walls. Aamir looked around uncertainly.

‘What is this place?’

‘Somewhere we won’t be seen. You are safe here, Aamir.’

‘I’m sorry…’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘What happened?’

The boy’s tears came in hungry sobs.

‘Tell me.’

‘I… I… couldn’t do it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was there, in the train, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t… there were people there, tourists, I would have killed all of them.’

‘It is fine, Aamir. You don’t need to worry. I understand.’

The boy looked at him, confusion evident on his face. Mohammed knew why. Aamir must have expected that he would be angry with him for failing to carry out his orders. He knew the effect that he could have on people. He knew that he had a powerful, forceful personality, and a man with his fearsome reputation was not a man that you would want to disappoint. He had relied upon both to fashion his mules as he wished, to inspire them to do his bidding.

But this one had not done as he had been told.

‘Did anyone see you come here?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Aamir said.

‘You don’t think?’

‘I was careful,’ he whined, ‘but I’m confused. This whole thing…’

Mohammed spoke with the most reassuring tone that he could manage. ‘I’m sure you were careful, brother. You need to be calm. Everything is going to be all right. Where is your rucksack?’

‘I left it there.’

‘At Westminster?’

‘Yes. Inside. I left it there and ran.’

He started to sob again.

Mohammed tried to placate him. ‘It doesn’t matter. The operation is a success.’

‘Bashir and Hakeem?’

He nodded. ‘They are with the prophet now.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes. The details are a little confused, but they are reporting that there were two explosions.’

‘There were,’ Aamir said quickly, trying to please him. ‘Definitely. I heard them.’

‘Many infidels were killed. It doesn’t matter that you did not detonate your bomb. Everything will be fine, Aamir. You need to relax.’

Aamir looked at Mohammed, and a fresh look of confusion came over his face. He pointed. ‘Why are you wearing those?’

He meant the overshoes, the gloves and the hairnet. ‘I’m very careful,’ Mohammed explained. ‘I don’t leave evidence that I have been in a place.’

‘What about me?’

‘It’s fine. They won’t be able to follow you here very easily.’

‘So why are you wearing them?’

‘We will be leaving soon,’ he said, reassuring him. ‘You are safe, Aamir.’

He knew that the security forces would identify Aamir soon enough. They would scour the footage from the barrage of CCTV cameras in the station, and it would be a simple enough thing to find the boy with the heavy-looking rucksack that was just the same as the rucksacks carried by the two bombers. They would be able to follow his Underground journey all the way back to Euston, and then they would find him disembarking from the train. They would follow that back to Luton. Mohammed had anticipated that they would, of course. That was why he had proposed the meeting in the car park rather than in the station itself. He had checked very carefully, and he was sure that there were no cameras at the end of the station property. The police would find Bashir’s car and be able to trace their journey back to its origin in Manchester. There would be no sign of Mohammed.

And, of course, the police would be able to follow Aamir’s footsteps away from Westminster. They would be able to follow him onto the bus. They would know when he disembarked, too. But Mohammed was confident that there would be limited coverage once he left the bus, and none once he turned onto the warren of roads and alleys that eventually led to the warehouse. They would follow him as far as they could and then swamp the area with officers. They would find this place eventually, but it would be much too late by then. He had plenty of time, but he had to deal with the boy.

‘They’ll follow me here?’

‘Some of the way. Not once you left the main road.’

‘So why do you need that stuff?’

‘I like to be very careful. This is dangerous work, Aamir. I have been doing it for many years. Do you know why I have never been caught?’

‘Because you are careful.’

‘And because I don’t leave loose ends.’

He took the gun from his pocket and shot the boy in the gut. The Beretta coughed, the report muffled by the suppressor. Aamir fell to the floor, his hands clasped around his stomach, with the blood already discolouring his shirt. He looked up at Mohammed in shock. He stepped up to him, pressed the end of the silencer against his crown and fired a second time. The force of the round knocked Aamir down onto his side.

Mohammed collected both casings and put them into his pocket.

He took his iPad and opened the BBC’s iPlayer app. The usual evening schedule had been cancelled for wall-to-wall coverage of the bombing. There was a helicopter overhead offering an excellent view of the damage that the second bomb had caused. The news anchor was reporting dozens of fatalities and hundreds maimed or wounded. Survivors, many glazed over with shock, were relaying their experiences to the cameras. Senior police officers struggled to answer premature questions about who might be responsible. Politicians, only recently allowed to leave the questionable safety of the Commons chamber, fulminated angrily and promised that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. But the overwhelming impression was one of hopelessness that a powerful blow had been struck in the heart of the capital.

And that was all very, very good.

It would metastasise into fury and the desire for bloody revenge, and that was good, too.

Mohammed took a bottle of water and drank from it. He put his iPad away and made his preparations to leave.

Chapter Twenty-Two

It took an hour before the doors to the carriage were finally opened. The train had moved down the platform a little, and the smashed screen doors did not match up evenly with the doorways. People went through in single file. The emergency lights on the platform were lit. It meant that they could see where they were going. It also meant that they could see the devastation that had been wrought around them.

They went forward as a long snake, each person holding on to the hand of the person ahead of them. A man was in front of Isabella. He was wearing a suit and a polished pair of brown brogues and looked completely out of place. They walked through the passageway and into the vestibule. She heard the man mutter a curse. Up ahead, there was a pile of people. None of them were moving. Some of them were in pieces. They had to climb over and through them.

The woman who was holding Isabella’s hand broke out of the line, jostling her, and as she caught her balance, she put her foot down on the leg of one of the bodies. It felt soft, with give to it, and was not what she would have expected at all. The woman stumbled and fell. Isabella kept walking.

A fireman was at the head of their little line. He led them to the escalator and ushered them up. ‘Keep going up,’ he said as Isabella passed by him. ‘The way out is just up ahead. Don’t stop.’

The shaft was blackened with soot, and chunks of the plaster had been gouged out by debris. They reached the top, and Isabella saw a woman who was hobbling. She had been in the line ahead of her, and now she was struggling to keep up. She was wearing a trouser suit, and because people were walking in single file, she was holding back the queue. Isabella released the hand of the man in front and went over to her.

‘Are you all right?’

‘No,’ she said, gesturing to her leg.

Isabella looked down. It was horribly bent. She didn’t know how she could walk on it at all.

‘Can I help?’

‘Thank you.’

The woman rested her weight on Isabella’s shoulder, and straining with the effort, she helped her walk towards the gate and the daylight beyond.