The Angel

Chapter Twenty-Three

Isabella Rose idled the engine of her Kawasaki Ninja. The bike had belonged to her mother, and she had taught her how to ride it. It was big and powerful, and riding it was one of Isabella’s favourite pleasures.

She waited at the end of the road with the row of industrial units. The little industrial quarter was next to the Route de Safi, four kilometres south of Marrakech. It accommodated dozens of studios that produced made-for-export goods for tourists to take home with them.

She had noticed the workshops as she was riding out to the south. There was a sign staked into the baked ground, advertising cheap space. She had been looking for somewhere more secure than the garage that her mother had left her in the city. That place was in a bad part of town and she was concerned that it wasn’t secure. She had visited it one afternoon to find scrapes and gouges around the lock. Someone had tried to get inside. Squatters, maybe, or junkies looking for an easy score. It didn’t matter who. They must have been interrupted — she had been fortunate. She had no intention of losing the equipment that she stored there.

A car arrived, passing Isabella and slowing outside the vacant unit. The engine stopped and a man got out. She guessed that it was the samsar. Property in Morocco was let in various ways. Some leases were arranged with traditional realtors, whereas others were more ad hoc, employing the services of a samsar. They worked in every neighbourhood and knew where all the available property could be found. The landlord and tenant paid a small commission to the samsar for his services if the property was rented. Samsars tended not to have dedicated offices and advertised their business in tea cafés and convenience stores.

The man was in his late middle age, wearing a cheap suit that was dusty at the ankles, and cheap shoes. It was obvious that his profession did not offer him a particularly lucrative return.

She revved the engine and rolled down the road to him. He checked her out, a quick glance, and then looked right through her.

‘Monsieur?’

He looked at her with surprise. He replied, in French, ‘Hello?’

Isabella’s French was excellent. ‘You have an appointment.’

The surprise became mild annoyance. ‘Yes, but not with you. With Melody Atika.’

‘My mother.’

‘And where is she?’

‘I’m here on her behalf.’

‘And what is your name?’

‘Sabrina.’

‘I really need to speak to your mother, Sabrina.’

‘She would have come, but she has been detained. She sends her apologies, but she thought it was sensible that we keep the appointment.’

‘But you…’ He paused, trying to find the right words to convey his disappointment. He managed a smile. ‘But you are just a girl, mademoiselle.’

Isabella ignored the man’s patronising tone. ‘She trusts me to make a decision on her behalf.’

He sucked his teeth. ‘I think it would be better to wait, though, don’t you?’

‘No, I don’t. Neither does she. I’ve come all the way out here. So have you. If the premises are unsuitable, I can tell my mother and save you a second trip. But if they are suitable, perhaps you make your commission.’ The man still looked uncomfortable, although she could see that she was gradually persuading him. She pointed to the door. ‘Open it up. I’ll take a look.’

The samsar sighed but gave up. ‘Fine,’ he said, reaching into his pocket for a key that was fastened to a bright red fob. He unlocked the door, bent down to the handle and heaved the door up and over.

Isabella ducked down and passed beneath the half-open door and into the unit. There were no windows, and the only illumination was the daylight that seeped in through the door. The samsar pulled a drawstring, and a bulb flickered and caught. She looked around. It was a small space. She could walk from the front to the back with just five paces, and it was the same from left to right.

‘It’s tiny,’ she said.

‘The details are all on the website. The dimensions, the—’

‘The dimensions are listed as ten by ten. This is — what? Half that?’

‘The dimensions—’

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘How long can it be leased for?’

‘As long as your mother would like.’

‘How much is it?’

‘It is ten thousand dirhams a month.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s extortionate.’

‘I’m afraid that is the price.’

‘My mother will pay five.’

‘You can negotiate on her behalf?’

‘Five.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Seven.’

‘Five and a half. And she’ll pay the first year up front.’

‘She will agree to that?’

The man was a bumptious oaf, and Isabella had to fight to keep the irritation from her voice. ‘Yes, she will. In cash.’

He couldn’t disguise the greed that passed across his face.

‘Tell her if she can bring the money to the café tomorrow, I’ll personally make sure that it is all arranged.’

Isabella said that she would. She took one final look around the space to confirm that it was suitable for her purposes and, satisfied that it was, went back outside to her bike. The samsar pulled the drawstring, lowered the door and locked it.

She gunned the engine and rode back to the city.

Isabella followed the main road into the suburbs of the city, then followed a well-worn route to the Rue Kaa El Machraa. It was on the other side of town from the place that she had shared with her mother and was approached through a similar warren of alleyways and passages, each narrower and darker than the last, ancient and mysterious. She turned right and then left, and when it became too narrow to ride safely, she got off and pushed the bike. She skirted two local boys playing games on their phones in the light of a kerosene lamp, and finally reached the thick oak door. The small sign fixed on the wall next to it announced the Riad Farnatchi.

She unlocked it, pushed it all the way back and negotiated the bike inside. The first room was a generous vestibule, and she pushed the bike through it into the open courtyard beyond. Moroccan riads were built around open shafts that typically featured a freezing-cold plunge pool at the bottom. The warm air was drawn down into the shaft, cooled at the bottom and then recirculated so that the rooms arranged around the opening were cooled.

This riad was smaller than the one she had shared with Beatrix, and much less opulent. It had been a wreck when she had purchased it, using some of the bequest that her mother had left to her, but a year of hard work had seen it brought back to life again.

There was still a little work to do, but most of the big jobs had now been completed.

The crumbling bricks had been renewed with fresh courses. The rotting window frames had been taken out and replaced. The décor, which had been so dated, had been brought up to date. The walls had been painted a slate grey, with colourful pieces of local art hung to provide splashes of colour. She had bought second-hand furniture from the souks and then refurbished each piece herself. She had bought carpets from the Berber markets in the mountains. The plunge pool had been retiled in emerald green, and her favourite pastime was to sit beside it in one of her lime-green easy chairs and stare up at the square of sky above.

She climbed the stairs to her bedroom on the second floor, found the false floorboards underneath the Berber rug and lifted them aside. There was a small cavity beneath, with a leather satchel inside. She took it out, opened it and withdrew two bundles of banknotes. She still had a lot of money in a bank in the Caymans, but she always ensured she had enough to manage without needing recourse to it. She had $20,000 in the bag. A rent of 5,500 dirhams a month meant that it would cost 66,000 for the year. That was a touch over $6,500. She counted out $7,000, put the rest back into the satchel and replaced it in its hiding place. She laid the floorboards over it and covered those with the rug.

She returned to the ground floor and made herself a glass of mint tea.

It had been a relief to escape London and return home. The aftermath of the bombing had been chaotic. A triage centre had been established in a nearby branch of Marks & Spencer and the police were insistent that everyone pass through it. The reason, they said, was that they wanted to check that those people who had been in the station had not been injured by the first blast. Isabella had checked herself immediately and was happy that she was unscathed. The police also required that everyone leave their name and contact details. Beatrix had been very clear that she should never leave a record of her presence and so, using the routine that had been taught to her, Isabella provided a fake name and address and then pretended to cry. The policeman who had been talking to her went in search of a box of tissues, and Isabella took the opportunity to make her exit.

It had been difficult to get to the airport. The entire Tube network had been suspended, and there had been no cell phone reception until the early evening. She had walked for two hours before she was able to find an empty taxi. Heathrow had been operating, albeit under the watch of armed soldiers. Anyone who had looked remotely suspicious was stopped. The terminal had been loud with the sound of raised voices and accusations of racism. She had found a space on the floor where she could lean against a wall and watched the looped footage of the atrocities on the twenty-four-hour news channel.

Her plan had been to return to Morocco that day, but she had concluded that it would not have been prudent to fly directly to a Muslim country. Instead, she had taken a British Airways flight to Gibraltar and stayed overnight at the Ibis near to the airport. A ferry crossed the Strait of Gibraltar several times a day, and she had taken a place as a walk-on passenger on the following morning’s first crossing. She had caught a coach from Tangier to Marrakech and arrived in the early evening. The diversion had cost her a day’s travel, but it was what her mother would have done, and it pleased Isabella to know that she was following her mother’s example.

The tranquillity of the riad had been a balm when she finally arrived home. She had stocked up on the things that she thought she might need and intended to stay out of sight for the rest of the week.

She rarely used her television, but she found that she was unable to resist watching the news. That it was a terrorist attack was beyond question, but the authorities were unable to suggest who might have been responsible. Pundits filled the spaces with incessant speculation. Isabella was not interested in international affairs, and she would not have pretended to have the knowledge to qualify her for making her own determination, but even to her eye, it was obvious that the authorities were floundering.

It didn’t look as if they had any idea what had happened.

The first footage of the aftermath of the blast was vivid to her. She watched the camera jerk and shudder as the operator struggled to negotiate the debris. She saw the brief suggestions of atrocity caught in the camera’s light. The report triggered her own recollection and replayed the things that she had seen. She had nightmares that night. She knew that she was buttressed against shock by the things that she had already seen and done, but that did not mean that the nightmares were any less frightening. She woke up in the middle of the night, wide-eyed with fear and with sweat-drenched sheets wound around her legs.

She went to the roof of the riad and looked out over the sleeping city. There was a breeze blowing in from the desert, and it cooled her. She took a drink, swallowed a sleeping tablet and returned to her bed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Captain Michael Pope spent the first week of his enforced sabbatical working on his fitness. He had been sitting behind a desk for too long as it was, and he had started to feel lazy and fat. But that wasn’t the only reason. He had never felt as frustrated as he did now, and working up a sweat had always been his best way to alleviate stress. He had made it his annual tradition to run a marathon, but he had allowed his resolution to slip since he had been promoted from Number One to Control. He decided that the best way to get back into fighting shape was to run one once again.

Pope was a tall man with close, dark hair. He had the physique of an athlete and the kind of constitution that adapted quickly to an increase in physical activity. He was slender, but muscular. He was also very strong.

He was unfussy and straightforward, and chose his clothes from a simple wardrobe that allowed him to fade into the background without attracting attention. He favoured simple suits in charcoal and black, and when he was out of the office, conservative jeans or chinos and poplin shirts. His only extravagance was his shoes. The years he had spent on his feet as a soldier had incubated a preference for quality, and that was displayed by the two pairs of boots that he owned from Red Wing of San Francisco, each of which had cost him £300.

He was a good-looking man, ageing well. He tended towards the severe in the office, most appropriate for a man with his responsibilities, but when he was on his own time, he had a ready smile and a quick wit that made him popular with his many friends. He looked like a man who could handle himself, a man who would be a better friend than an enemy and a man who could be trusted to do what he said he would do.

He had been born in a village on the outskirts of Salisbury in the south-west of England. It was close to Salisbury Plain, an important army training facility, and the town and its surrounding villages were full of soldiers. He had flunked his way through school, and with no trade to follow, he had enrolled as a boy soldier at sixteen, joining the Royal Green Jackets. There had been time in the sandpit for the First Iraq War, a transfer to the First Battalion when he got back and then the first of several tours of South Armagh. A friend of his brother served in the 23rd SAS Reserves, and he had invited Pope to join him for a weekend’s training. Pope excelled and repeated the trip several times after that, attempted Selection and passed it. He joined B Squadron as a medic and spent the next five years carrying out both covert and overt operations around the world. That was until his predecessor as Control picked him out as a man with promise and offered him a transfer to the Firm and, more specifically, to be the new Number Twelve in Group Fifteen.

He had served his country as a Group Fifteen headhunter until his predecessor’s treachery had been revealed, and he had been asked to take over. He had accepted reluctantly. He did not consider himself to be a desk man, and he felt that he was young enough and better suited to continue as a field agent. Stone, who had asked him to consider the promotion, had insisted. Pope realised that the choice he was being given was illusory. He was being ordered to take over.

His promotion had come with more generous remuneration, and Pope had moved his family to a thatched cottage in the heart of the Cotswolds. It was a pretty part of the country, known for honey-coloured limestone buildings and the miles of dry stone walls that divided the lush landscape into parcels.

One of the benefits of living here was the number of pleasant roads that he could use in his daily runs. He had gradually increased his distance as he got his legs back beneath him, and this morning, the start of a cold and frosty early autumnal day, he had planned to run the full length of the local amateur marathon. He started in Broadway, climbed Broadway Tower for the views out over the Vale of Evesham, and then crossed to Snowshill and Stanway. He reached the halfway mark in Winchcombe, the walking capital of the Cotswolds, passing Sudeley Castle before attacking the final big hill of the route. Once he had surmounted it, he ran along the escarpment for a few miles before descending again for an easy return on the gently undulating fields, from Stanway back to Broadway again.

Running also enabled him to think. The steady cadence of his steps, the sound of his breathing and the beating of his heart all contributed to an almost meditative state that often allowed him to solve problems that he had not otherwise been able to fix. Today, though, his thoughts were of Paddy McNair.

There had been a low-key funeral the day before yesterday. Scouse had always been a womaniser, and he had no family. His parents had died years ago. The mourners were old friends from the Regiment. There wasn’t much left of him to bury, but they had all stood around the grave in the Regimental plot in Hereford and watched as the casket was lowered into the ground. Pope had looked around at all the other graves and seen that the plot was almost full. He had overheard two of the men making the same observation, one of them suggesting that the Regiment would have to buy a new plot or stop going to war.

The former was the most likely solution to that problem, Pope had thought, especially now.

He picked up the pace a little. He could see the village in the distance as a black BMW passed him slowly on his right-hand side. He wondered, for a moment, whether it was just a considerate driver giving him plenty of room, but when the car continued slowly ahead and then indicated to pull over, he started to be concerned. He didn’t have a weapon with him, and if he was attacked out here, there would be very little he would be able to do. He scanned left and right, identified a gap in the hawthorn hedge at a spot just ahead of the car and tried to find the energy to sprint, should that be necessary.

It wasn’t.

The rear passenger-side window slid down, and as he drew alongside, he saw Vivian Bloom.

He stopped.

‘Sorry to surprise you out here, Control.’

He took a moment to fill his lungs and bring his heart rate back under control. ‘You couldn’t have called to make an appointment?’

‘You know better than that, old boy. Do you have fifteen minutes? There’s something we need to talk about.’

Pope looked down at Bloom through the open window of the car, scrubbed the sweat from his face and looked away to the road leading back to his home. He didn’t know much about The Reverend; almost nothing, in fact, he realised with discomfort. The man was well connected, but difficult to assess. Pope remembered how Bloom had behaved at the meeting when Group Fifteen had been shut down. He had said very little, sitting and observing, an enigmatic expression on his face.

Pope didn’t trust very many people, and he didn’t trust Bloom.

He exhaled. He couldn’t very easily tell the man he didn’t want to talk to him and run back home. His country had just been attacked, and Pope was a soldier. He had responsibilities.

He opened the door and slid inside.

‘Thank you, Captain,’ Bloom said, shaking Pope’s hand.

Pope took it gently, like a doctor probing brittle bones, but Bloom surprised him with the firmness of his grip.

‘You can probably guess what this is about,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. I expect I can.’

‘A mess. A bloody mess. But it’s been coming, you know. We knew they would have a go eventually. An RPG into Buckingham Palace, Kalashnikovs in Trafalgar Square, a suicide bomber blowing himself up in the Tate. I think it’s fair to say that they surprised us with the scale of their ambition and the level of preparation. It was a very well put together operation.’

‘The bombs were diversionary?’

He nodded. ‘I think that’s obvious now. There were supposed to be three of them. The early assessment is that they were going to detonate one on the train, and then the other two as survivors made their way to the surface. It’s more sophisticated than we’ve seen before.’

‘It’s standard for the sandbox, sir. They draw you in with the first one and then hit you properly.’

‘They obviously wanted to do as much damage as they could, but those bombs were designed to concentrate our attention on the station and put the Commons on lockdown. And both of those things happened. It’s thanks to you, McNair and Snow that they didn’t get into the chamber. Especially McNair. God knows what would have happened if they had managed to get in.’

‘It was just good luck we were there.’

‘That’s as may be. Doesn’t change the facts. I want to show you something.’

Bloom opened his briefcase and withdrew an iPad. He tapped an application, and a video player appeared. With a cautious check to ensure that they were still unobserved, he tapped ‘Play’ and handed the tablet to Pope.

The shot showed a man in a traditional Arabic dishdasha and a chequered scarf around his neck. He was sitting in a blank, anonymous room that would be almost impossible to identify. The black and white flag of ISIS was fixed to the wall behind him. Pope recognised the format immediately: this was a martyrdom video.

The man cleared his throat and spoke in a calm, confident voice.

‘What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a series of attacks that will continue until you pull your forces out of Syria and Iraq and until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel. I, and thousands like me, am forsaking everything for what I believe. Our driving motivation doesn’t come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam — obedience to the one true God, Allah, and following the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger, Muhammad… Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we have security, you will be our targets. And until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war, and I am a soldier.’

‘This was uploaded to YouTube thirty minutes ago. His name is Ibrahim Yusof.’

‘One of the shooters.’

‘We have reason to believe that the other men who attacked inside Parliament were Faik Khan, Nazir Begun, Abdul Rashid and Mo Rafiq. The two men you shot before they could get inside were Bilal Ismail and Aneel Mirza. Until yesterday, we thought they were all in Syria.’

‘They certainly knew how to use their weapons.’

‘Yes, indeed. Been out there awhile, we think. Training camps, then sent out to the front lines. It appears that they managed to get back into the country without our knowledge. We’re obviously looking into that as a matter of the utmost urgency.’

‘The bombers?’

He swiped across the screen, and a CCTV picture of three young men appeared. They were on a platform. The sign in the background said Luton. All three were wearing rucksacks on their backs.

‘More troubling. Home-grown. The two who triggered their bombs were a little more difficult to identify, for obvious reasons.’ He pointed at the two older men of the three. ‘This one is Bashir Anwar and this one is Hakeem Mustafa. The bomber who lost his nerve is this man, here. His name is Aamir Malik. These last three are from Manchester.’

‘Are you close to finding Aamir?’

‘Found him today. His body was found in the Thames. Two bullet wounds: one to the gut, one to the head. We’re working on the assumption that he lost his nerve and was killed for it.’

Bloom took the iPad and slid it into his case.

Pope felt a little awkward, sitting in the back of the car dressed as he was, still hot and sweating from his exertions. ‘Why are you here, sir?’

‘We can’t sit back and let this play out the usual way. It’s already a bloody mess. The police are all over the place. The forensic people thought it was organic peroxide, home-grown explosives; then they changed their mind to military-grade plastique, and now they’re saying the stuff was scraped out of artillery shells. Immigration doesn’t know how the shooters got into the country, let alone how they brought artillery shells with them. MI5 is passing off the blame to the local police on the radicalisation of the bombers. No one is standing up to the mark. The investigation is a shambles, Captain. A fucking shambles. And we are taking everything our friend Ibrahim said in his little video very seriously. GCHQ says that chatter suggests there’s going to be another attack. They are most definitely not done. Remember 7/7?’

‘Of course.’

‘There would have been 21/7, too, if those bombs had gone off, rather than just the detonators. I see nothing to suggest that this isn’t the jihadists doing their level best to make sure they do it right this time.’

‘So?’

‘We need to move in the grey areas to make sure that doesn’t happen, and that means you and your headhunters. I need you back in the game.’

‘What does the home secretary think about that?’

Bloom’s laugh was a dry rasp. ‘She doesn’t know, Captain.’

‘Really?’

‘What do you think she would say? The die is cast as far as Group Fifteen is concerned. There will be an enquiry that will reach the conclusion she wants, and then there will be a reorganisation. The Firm itself, probably. Lots of talk about how it’s an anachronism, out of place in today’s world.’

‘That’s—’

‘I know,’ Bloom interrupted. ‘It’s naïve and dangerous, but she can’t very well reverse course now.’

Pope squeezed his hands together in a gesture of discomfort. ‘I’ll be honest, sir. That makes me rather nervous.’

‘It should. What I am proposing is completely illegal, off the books and has severe consequences if it goes wrong.’

‘I’m going to speak frankly, sir.’

‘Please do,’ Bloom said with a chuckle. ‘It was quite something the last time.’

‘The meeting was clear. No one was in our corner. I’m a little confused.’

‘You don’t need to be. I’m on your side. I always have been. I don’t trust the police. I know it was their mistake that got Rubió killed. I agreed with everything you said at the meeting. It’s outrageous that you’ve been blamed.’

‘It might have been nice to hear that on the day, sir.’

‘Don’t be naïve,’ Bloom said with irritation. ‘This is a long game. Things have to be done delicately. Changing opinions can be difficult.’

‘I can see how someone trying to shoot up PMQs might have that effect.’

He smiled at that. ‘Between you and me, Control, the irony isn’t lost on us that the reason the home secretary wasn’t in the chamber for PMQs was because she was having her fun bollocking you.’

‘It wasn’t all bad, then.’

Bloom collected the iPad again and opened another file.

Pope recognised the man in the picture that he called up.

Alam Hussain.

Most people would have known who he was. He was burly, with a bald head and a long beard that reached down to his sternum. He wore a traditional dishdasha and an eyepatch over his right eye. The man had been a hate figure for the right-wing press for months. He was known as the Preacher of Hate and was said to rain down fire and brimstone on the West from the minbar of the Stockdale mosque that he controlled. Much of the media’s indignation stemmed from the fact that Hussain had been given asylum when he had fled from Qatar, yet now he railed against the very state that had taken him in. They fulminated that he was happy to take social security handouts and live in a house provided by the local council, yet still he called for the imposition of sharia law. Pope had always made a point of maintaining a strictly apolitical stance when it came to matters such as this. He and the Group had been sent against targets of all political persuasions, and keeping a neutral opinion made things easier.

Saying all that, Alam Hussain was a difficult man to like.

‘Seriously, sir? He’d do this?’

‘We have very strong intelligence that Hussain was responsible for radicalising the three bombers. We know, for example, that they all attended his mosque. We’ve had people inside it for weeks. He’s been calling for jihad, issuing fatwas against members of the government and military, and distributing propaganda for Da’eash. We need you to go and get him.’

‘Dead or alive?’

‘Alive. Most definitely alive. I realise that’s more difficult.’

‘A little. But not a problem.’

‘We don’t want a big team on this. We were thinking of three or four agents, but I do want you to be one of them. I know I needn’t tell you how delicate this is. I need your experience on the ground, not behind a desk. Everything else is completely up to you.’

‘Where do you want him delivered?’

‘Bit of a drive, I’m afraid. Need you to take him up to Wick. Our American friends have agreed to help us with the interrogation, and they’ve taken a bit of a liking to Scottish air. Nice and out of the way, minimal chance of anyone seeing them come in and out. They’re going to fly him out of the country. Somewhere with more relaxed rules on what can and can’t be done during interrogation — you know what I mean, Pope.’

‘I do,’ he said, not saying what he was thinking.

‘I knew you would.’

‘Equipment?’

‘It’ll be minimal, but enough.’

‘What else do we know about him?’

‘Everything you need. You’ll be provided with his address, antecedents and suchlike. Use the usual dead drop. He does have some rudimentary security that you’ll have to consider. There have been incidents with the right-wing headbangers up there. Threats and abuse. But it’s nothing too sophisticated, just the local police keeping an eye on him. Certainly nothing that will hold you up.’

Pope found he was tapping his fingers against the leather upholstery.

‘Well? What do you say?’ Bloom said.

‘Is this an order, sir? Are you ordering me to arrange this?’

‘No. Technically, you and the Group are still suspended.’

‘Will there be any backup?’

‘None, I’m afraid.’

‘And if it goes wrong?’

‘I’m sure it won’t.’

‘But if it did?’

‘Then you know how it has to be, Pope. I won’t be able to protect you. The story we’ll leak to the press writes itself. Your recent experience with the shooters will explain why you have reacted this way. You saw the explosion at first hand. It’s PTSD. A dreadful shame, but completely understandable in the circumstances. You’ll be looking at a good stretch of jail time, a little less if you can get a good brief who can make an argument about diminished responsibility.’

‘You make a very appealing offer, sir.’

‘Yes, well, there you are. Sorry about that. What do you say, Control? I need an answer this afternoon.’

Pope remembered the aftermath of the bombs with absolute clarity. He could still smell the burning flesh in his nostrils.

‘Of course, sir. I’ll start at once.’

Pope ran the rest of the way home, showered, shaved and dressed in a loose-fitting pair of trousers and a sweatshirt.

His wife, Rachel, had come home while he was showering. She was sitting on the sofa in the lounge with her legs curled up beneath her as she read a book.

‘How did it go?’

‘Good.’

‘How long?’

‘Four hours.’

‘Not bad.’

‘Not bad, but I can do better.’

‘First time, Michael. Baby steps. You’re old and fat now, remember.’

He was unable to keep the anxious smile from his face. She had known him long enough to know what it meant.

‘Work?’

‘Yes. I’m going to be away for a while.’

‘London?’

He nodded.

Rachel knew better than to press him any further than that. He wouldn’t have told her, and their married life had always been bracketed by the reality that there would be things that he couldn’t share. It had been the same when he had been in the Regiment, and she had learned to accept that he would frequently be out of the country. When he returned, he would often be unable to tell her where he had been. His transfer to Group Fifteen had simply exacerbated that. She didn’t ask any more.

‘When are you leaving?’

‘In an hour.’

‘What do you want me to tell the kids?’

Pope’s daughter had a football tournament at the weekend. He had promised that he would take her. That wouldn’t be possible any more. The children were out with their friends this afternoon. He realised that he wouldn’t even be able to say goodbye.

He sighed unhappily. He was committed to his work, but it put a heavy burden on his family life. He was lucky that Rachel was so understanding. ‘Can you apologise for me?’

‘Of course. How long will you be?’

‘I don’t know. A few days. I’ll call when I can.’

She came over and kissed him. ‘Be careful,’ she said. She said it every time he went away.

‘This isn’t anything special. I’ll be back soon. Nothing to worry about.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

Isabella arrived at the little workshop at just after seven in the morning. The temperature was cool, and she had enjoyed the sensation of the wind whipping around her body and through the visor of her open helmet as she made the ride south.

She put down the kickstand and got off the bike. She took the key, pulled up the door and looked inside. It was small — smaller than she remembered — and she had a moment of doubt that it might be a little too small for what she had in mind. But as she gauged the space again, she thought that it would just about suffice.

Isabella had visited the samsar two days previously and completed the formalities. She had taken the lease home with her the day before that, signing it in the name of Melody Atika and providing a photocopy of her fake passport. The lease had been notarised, and then had come the matter of the rent. Isabella had counted out the money into two piles and put enough for the year’s rent inside a manila envelope. She had put the remainder into a second envelope and taken it to the café where the samsar was waiting for her. She had given both envelopes to him. He had licked his thumb and made a show of counting it all out. She knew that the fee had been much more than he would normally have expected. She didn’t know whether he had bought the story about her mother or not. She was buying his discretion, and the fact that he had accepted it without comment suggested that he had received the message loud and clear.

The sun climbed into the sky and started to warm the chill from the air.

Isabella moved her bike out of the way and got ready. It was going to be a busy day.

The delivery lorry arrived at eight. The driver and his mate opened up the back and muscled the goods down to the ground. Isabella had purchased a series of lockers and safes on the Internet. She had paid extra for installation, and the two workmen hauled the heavy units into place. The units were prepared for wall fixing with pre-drilled holes in the base and fixing bolts that the men implanted into the concrete.

One of the benefits of the workshop was that it was angled so that it was not possible to see into it from the neighbouring units, even when the door was raised. Isabella had noticed this quality at once and, knowing that she was going to be undertaking a considerable amount of fitting out, was pleased that the work would not be immediately visible to prying eyes.

In order to be doubly cautious, she took up a position fifty yards along the road in order to head off anyone who might otherwise wander down to the unit. She had arranged for a locksmith to visit, and she had intercepted him, confirming the work that he would do and directing him to the unit. The man removed the up-and-over door and replaced it with a sturdy new one that was fitted with a chunky lock.

It was midday by the time the work was complete. Isabella thanked the three men, tipped them well enough so that they would not gripe, but not so well that they would remember her, and then waited until they had driven away before she inspected her new premises.

She was pleased.

The lockers were constructed from 5 mm — thick fully welded steel and were secured by two high-security seven-lever key locks with full-length anti-jemmy returns. They would be very difficult to open without the key. There was plenty of space inside them for the equipment she needed to store. The new door was robust and didn’t rattle as its predecessor had done. She shut the door, locked it and then tried to force it. It was impossible. If someone wanted to get inside, they would need to fix a tow rope to the handle and use a vehicle to yank it off. The most likely threat to the unit was an opportunistic thief, and the door should be more than enough of a problem to act as a deterrent.

But still she was not done. The last visit of the day was an engineer from an alarm company. Isabella had purchased a system to protect the building. She told him what she had in mind, and he took a ladder from his van so that he could climb up and fix the cameras and the alarm. The equipment was top of the line. Apart from internal and external motion detectors, the alarm came with high-resolution day/night cameras that recorded the feed onto a 250 GB hard drive and broadcast it, in real time, to Isabella’s cell phone and tablet.

The man demonstrated what the system could do, showed her how to set a new code and left her alone.

By this time it was six in the evening, and the temperature was dropping again.

She set the alarm, locked the door and climbed back onto her bike. Then, pulling the helmet onto her head, she gunned the engine and headed for the road back into the city.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Group Fifteen was housed in an anonymous office on the banks of the Thames. The building was the putative headquarters of Global Logistics, an import/export company that did enough business to give the Group’s agents the scope to travel the world under the cover of their ‘employment’ with the Firm. Pope knew he couldn’t go there. He was, after all, supposed to be suspended. He couldn’t very well just waltz inside and plan everything from his desk. Bloom knew that, too, and he had planned alternative accommodation for him. Bloom had told him that all the information he would need would be left in the Epping Forest dead drop that Group Fifteen had often used before.

Pope drove north, left his own car in the long-term parking at Heathrow and picked up a hire car from Avis. He followed the clockwise M25, came off at exit 26 and took the A121 the rest of the way. The increased security was evident as he approached the capital. The news reported that nearly twenty thousand troops had been deployed around the country to ward against the follow-up attacks that the intelligence was suggesting were likely. Pope saw a troop transport rumble by, the olive-green lorry melting into the gloomy undergrowth that fringed the road. Five minutes later he heard and then saw a pair of Tornado GR5s curving through the air, much lower than would normally be allowed in civilian airspace, the unmistakeable sight of missiles loaded onto the underwing hard points.

It felt as if the country was under siege.

The sky was darkening as he parked at the visitor centre near Chingford. He locked the car and followed the path into the trees. It was unusual to fall back on old-fashioned tradecraft. These days, information tended to be buried on little-known forums or as draft emails on shared Gmail or Hotmail accounts. The recipient gathered the information and then deleted the relevant message. Pope felt like an anachronism as he stalked through the thickening wood, remembering the wooden seat with the chalk mark on the slats that had indicated that there was something for him to collect. The dead drop itself was an oak tree, particularly old, with a useful natural niche six feet above the mulch of the forest floor. He checked to ensure that he was not being watched and, satisfied that he was alone, reached up to the niche and jammed his fingers inside. It contained an envelope.

He took it back to the car and, under the illumination of the courtesy light, slit it open. A key for a Yale lock dropped into his hand, together with an address in Hackney, an eight-digit code and a USB stick.

Pope pressed the ignition, reversed out of the car park and followed the A104 south towards East London.

The safe house was on Valentine Road, between Homerton and Hackney. It was a terraced street with a pub to the west and a row of shops to the east. Pope drove past the address and then parked five minutes up the road. He walked back, taking a different route, and allowed himself to adjust to the location. He tuned in to the cadences and rhythms of the place. Valentine Road was busy with traffic, the houses a little more flyblown than those on the quieter streets that fed into it. It was close to a social housing block, and the shiftless youths who gathered around the off-licences and convenience stores regarded him with sour hostility as he made his way along the road past them.

He approached the house, climbed the steps from the street and put the key into the lock. He turned it, the door opened and he went inside. He closed the door and slid the anchor of the security chain into the receiver. He drew his pistol and stood in the dark for a minute, concentrating on acclimatising himself to his new surroundings. He heard the ticking of a pipe somewhere towards the rear of the property, a distant car alarm and a police siren. Nothing else. The place had the dusty smell of somewhere that had lain empty for a while. It felt like he was alone, but he wasn’t in the business of making assumptions. Assumptions got you killed. He had to be sure.

The house was set on three storeys. He moved to the stairs and descended, careful to put his weight on the outside of the treads so as to reduce the risk of noise from a squeaking board. The basement accommodated the kitchen, bathroom and one bedroom. He checked each room, opening the door and then going inside with his gun up and ready. The kitchen looked as if it had been recently installed, with stickers and labels fastened to the units and appliances. The fridge was stocked with milk and a supply of ready meals for the microwave. The bathroom was long and narrow, with a bath that had a shower attachment over the taps and a toilet that still had the label from the builders’ merchant affixed to the inside of the lid. The sash windows were all secured by sturdy locks, and the rear door that opened onto the back garden was locked and bolted.

Clear.

The ground floor had two reception rooms. He walked from one to the other through a set of open double doors, his weapon primed. The rooms were furnished with IKEA sofas, a low table and nothing else.

Clear.

The first floor had a further two bedrooms, one with an en suite, and another tiny bathroom had been crammed at the top of a steep staircase that led up into the roof space. The bedrooms had flat-pack beds and wardrobes.

Clear.

He opened the hatch to the loft and hauled himself up. There was a badly fitted hatch to the roof, and a breeze pushed through the gaps. He activated the torch on his phone, found a light switch and switched it on. He saw the large metal crate laid out across the unboarded joists. There was a digital lock on the crate, and when he tapped in the code that had been written on the envelope, he was rewarded with a glowing green light and the sound of a metallic click as the lock stems were withdrawn. He opened the crate. Inside was a small cache of arms: three Sig Sauer P226 pistols, together with silencers for each of them, and a dozen boxes of 9mm ammunition. A combat shotgun that had been fitted with an EOTech sight for day or night use, a fixed iron sight and a telescopic buttstock. Cartridges of solid shot and buckshot for the shotgun. Four H4855 Personal Role Radios and the UHF transmitter-receiver issued to the British Armed Forces, together with small notebooks that contained call signs and frequencies. There was also a pick gun. It was a breaching tool that could be used to force mechanical pin tumbler locks.

Not bad, Pope thought.

He closed the crate, the lock automatically clicking back into place, and descended to the ground floor. The rear reception room was spacious enough for four or five people, and when the double doors that separated the large room into two halves were closed, it would be impossible to see in from the street. He opened his bag and took out the printouts he had made before he left the Cotswolds and the large-scale Ordnance Survey maps of Manchester that he had purchased. He had also bought a pack of Blu Tack and a container of drawing pins, and working quickly and efficiently, he stuck all of the material onto the walls, adjusting the order until it made sense to him. He spent an hour looking at it and making notes in a spiral-bound notebook that he would burn when he was finished. When he finally checked his watch, it was nine, and he was happy that he had the basis of a workable plan.

He slipped on his coat, locked the front door behind him, jogged down the steps and set off for the car. The others were due to arrive at Kings Cross, Euston and Liverpool Street, over the course of the next two hours. He needed to pick them up.

There was a lot to do.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Bloom had given Pope a free hand as to the composition of the team. Each of the twelve men and women who made up the operational strength of Group Fifteen would have been more than capable of carrying out the mission objectives. The infiltration of the mosque was little more than a simple Breaking & Entering job, and the kidnapping of Hussain, though more challenging, was nothing when compared to the tasks that they would more normally have been given to do. Group Fifteen’s current complement was a team of ten men and two women. The men were typically drawn from the ranks of British Special Forces: the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Service and 18 (UKSF) Signals Regiment. The women were both from the Special Forces Reconnaissance Regiment.

He had chosen four agents, plus himself. Group Fifteen operations were usually solo, but teams of two were deployed for more sensitive or difficult operations. These were not difficult jobs, but there was absolutely no room for error. Bloom had made that very clear. Pope was not prepared to take the risk that they would deploy below strength, but the five of them should be plenty to achieve their aims.

He had collected them earlier that evening. Hamish Munro, Number Four, had travelled down from Edinburgh. He had served in 22 SAS, A Squadron, for six years before Pope’s predecessor had selected him. He was a proud Scot, cantankerous to a fault, and one of the toughest soldiers that Pope had ever served alongside.

Number Twelve was Thomas Snow. Pope felt obligated to include him. He was already involved.

Next to Snow was Victor Stokes, Number Seven. He was in his early thirties and had been selected from the Z Squadron, SBS. He had been a Royal Marine commando before his special forces posting and had made his name during the evacuation of Western oil workers from remote Libyan desert facilities.

The final member of Pope’s team was Hannah Kelleher. She was Number Nine and the youngest of the four, having recently celebrated her thirty-second birthday. She had served with the Special Reconnaissance Unit in Iraq in the recent hunt for the British jihadis responsible for the murder of Western hostages. She was implacable and focused, rarely smiled and was a dead shot. Pope would not have wanted to be on her bad side.

There was a brew kit in the kitchen, and Pope had made tea for all of them. They were sitting in the rear reception room now. Munro and Snow were on the sofa, their feet on the low coffee table that stood between it and the fireplace. Kelleher was on the floor, her back propped up against the wall. Stokes, who was constitutionally cautious, was at the rear window, gazing into the dark garden below.

Pope took a sip of his tea and rested the cup on the mantelpiece. ‘Thanks for coming on short notice.’

‘This is unexpected,’ Stokes said. ‘I thought we were stood down.’

‘Officially, we are.’

‘Unofficially?’

‘Not so much.’

Pope went through the details of his conversation with Bloom yesterday. They had all seen Ibrahim Yusof’s martyrdom video and the subsequent ones that had been posted on behalf of Bilal Ismail and Aneel Mirza. Backlash was beginning to hit the security services, anger that they had been allowed to plot without challenge.

Pope explained that the imam of the Stockdale Mosque, Alam Hussain, was strongly suspected by MI5 of involvement in the operation.

‘How good is the intel this time?’ Munro asked. ‘I only ask, because, you know, it wasn’t great the last time we were in the field. Twelve got it in the neck.’

Snow sighed at the reference to Fèlix Rubió and looked away.

‘I’m just saying —’

‘We have orders. We have to assume it’s accurate.’

‘What do they want us to do?’

‘Two tasks. First, we get Hussain off the street for questioning. Second, we break in to the mosque and conduct a search for useful evidence or intel.’

‘Security on the target?’ Hannah Kelleher asked.

‘Some. More since Westminster. You’ve read the news the same as I have — there have already been retaliatory attacks. Everyone knows that those boys went to his mosque. Hussain has a reputation, and there are plenty of knuckle draggers out there who won’t believe he didn’t know anything about it.’

‘They might be knuckle draggers,’ she said, ‘but it sounds like they might be right.’

‘Whether he’s involved or not isn’t our problem. We need to get him and anything useful we can find.’

‘What’s the plan?’

‘Two teams.’ He pointed to Munro and Stokes. ‘Four and Seven — you get the mosque.’

‘Delightful,’ Munro said.

Pope directed their attention to the walls. He had arranged the intelligence that Vivian Bloom had provided. There were photographs and diagrams. There was a map of Central Manchester that he had ringed in red ink with the location of the mosque. It was standing on substantial grounds between Anson Road and Conyngham Road.

‘Here it is,’ he said. He pointed to the photographs around the map. ‘It’s a new building, purpose built, and they put it up at a time when they knew that making it as secure as they could was probably a decent idea. It’s surrounded on each side by a six-foot-tall brick wall, and there are railings on top of the walls. The main gates are the same height and covered by at least three CCTV cameras. Going in the front way isn’t going to work.’

‘And the back?’ Munro prompted.

Pope pointed to another of the photographs. It showed a five-foot gap in the wall that had been blocked with temporary fencing. ‘Turns out a car smashed into the wall last week, and they haven’t had it rebuilt yet. This is how you get into the grounds. There’s at least one camera with coverage, but take that out and you should be in and out without being seen.’

‘Easy enough.’

‘I think so too.’ He had enlarged the architect’s plans of the mosque, and it was to these that he turned next. ‘Two floors once you’re inside. The ground floor is the worship space. Ignore that. Take these stairs to the first floor. There are offices and classrooms up there. You’re looking for hard drives, documents — anything you think might be worth a second look.’

‘Alarms?’

‘Yes, and probably good ones. If you can’t find them and they get tripped, Bloom thinks you’ll have five minutes before the police arrive. I wouldn’t plan on staying any longer than that in any event, but the detail of how you structure things is down to you once you’ve had a look at the target.’

Munro and Stokes shared a glance and then turned back to Pope, nodding their agreement. ‘Piece of cake.’

Pope agreed with that. A simple breaking and entering, even against a well-secured building, offered no particular problems to operatives as well trained as Four and Seven. The second part of their orders was more challenging. He pointed to Hannah Kelleher and Thomas Snow. ‘Nine, Twelve and I will go and get Hussain.’

He took a quarter turn and nodded across to the other maps and photographs. Alam Hussain lived in Moss Side, a neighbourhood of Manchester that had earned the unfortunate sobriquet of ‘Gunchester’ over the course of thirty years of gang violence. Hussain’s address was a mid-terrace house on Roseberry Street, a road that ran horizontally from east to west among a tight grid of similar streets. The houses were dilapidated, plenty of them sealed with metal sheeting to keep squatters out. The doors opened straight onto the street. Each house had a ground-floor window next to the door, and there were two narrow windows on the first floor. Every house was disfigured by a satellite dish, a few of them of the larger variety that were powerful enough to pick up transmissions from Eastern Europe. There was a park opposite, including a children’s fenced-in play area, with a slide, swings and a roundabout. There were no trees, it was enclosed and there were no obvious spots for surveillance.

‘Lovely spot,’ Kelleher said with a wry smile.

An alleyway ran north to south, splitting the terrace in the middle, and Hussain’s house backed onto it. The narrow space was obstructed by bin bags that had been torn open by scavenging dogs and the remains of wheelie bins that had been set on fire. The alleys were known as ginnels by the locals, and, Pope thought, this one could be very useful.

‘Our man lives here,’ he said. ‘There’s what you could charitably call a park to the south. You’ve got vehicular access to the east and west, but the locals park on both sides of the road, so there’s only likely to be enough space for one car. We’ll need to plan for that. Once we have him, we’ll head for Princess Road, then the A57, M603, M61 and M6 up to Wick.’

Snow leaned back in his picnic chair and shook his head. ‘Wick? As in Wick in Scotland?’

‘We’re going to be handing him over to the CIA. They’ve been itching to speak to him. Now’s their chance. I’m allowing eight hours to get up there.’

‘Why can’t they do things like normal people?’ Munro grumbled. ‘Find me a lock-up. Give me a day alone with him, and I’ll have him saying whatever they want him to say.’

‘I’m happy to leave that to the CIA,’ Pope said. ‘We’re in it deep enough as it is.’

‘When do we go?’

‘We need to get up there and get eyes on. We don’t know anywhere near enough about him yet. I’ve got a hire car, and we’ll get another. We’ll go up tonight and get a better idea of the lay of the land. If we think we can get him tonight, we go tonight. If not, we’ll wait. We hit the mosque simultaneously.’

The five of them stood.

‘Let’s get to work,’ Munro said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They stopped to hire a second car. Munro and Stokes were in the first, a Renault Megane, and Snow, Kelleher and Pope were in Pope’s Volkswagen Passat. Snow was driving, and Kelleher and Pope were in the back. He spent the four hours it took to drive north to Manchester reviewing the information on Alam Hussain that had been provided on the USB stick.

Hussain had been born in Bethlehem in the West Bank in 1960, which at that time was under Jordan’s control. That gave him Jordanian nationality. In 1989, it was reported that he travelled to Peshawar in Pakistan, where he served as a professor of sharia sciences. There were unconfirmed reports that he had met Osama Bin Laden while in Peshawar. After the first Gulf War in 1991, Hussain was expelled from Kuwait, along with many other Palestinians. He returned to Jordan, but in September 1993 he fled with his wife and five children to the United Kingdom, using a forged UAE passport. He requested asylum on grounds of religious persecution, claiming he had been tortured in Jordan, and asylum was granted in June 1994. He had been in the country ever since.

Although Hussain publicly distanced himself from al-Qaeda, his MI5 file remarked that he was known to have extensive contacts with al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. The analyst noted that Hussain had ‘impeccable traditional and modern Salafist credentials and has acted as the in-house alim to radical groups, particularly in Algeria, from his base in Manchester since 1994.’

According to the indictment of the Madrid al-Qaeda cell responsible for the bombing of a train in 2004, Hussain was ‘considered the spiritual leader’ of al-Qaeda in Europe and other groups, including the Armed Islamic Group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, and the Tunisian Combat Group. He was considered to be a preacher or advisor to al-Qaeda terrorists Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid. Videos of his sermons were found in the Hamburg apartment of Mohamed Atta when it was searched after the 11 September 2001 attacks. When questioned in the UK in February 2001, Hussain was in possession of £170,000 cash and £805 in an envelope labelled ‘for the Mujahedin in Chechnya.’

‘What’s the bottom line?’ Kelleher asked him.

Pope put the papers down. ‘He’s a bad man.’

It didn’t really matter what Pope thought, since he would have carried out his orders whatever conclusion he had formed, but he was quite clear about that. Hussain was a bad man.

And he was about to have a very bad night.

He read on. Hussain had been attacked by members of the English Defence League after one of his sermons had been posted on YouTube. His nose had been broken, and his wife’s burqa had been torn away. The police had provided him with protection, and the report noted that his detail had been strengthened in the light of threats to his life in the aftermath of the Westminster bombing.

That was going to make things a little more difficult.

Moss side was just as bad as advertised. The houses were typically in poor condition, many of them empty. The group drove along one street where all but one had been deserted, the remainder boarded up or secured behind bright orange anti-squatter panels and painted with red crosses to signify that they were to be demolished. A group of boys, their hoodies pulled up over their heads, walked by a house that had been allowed to collapse in on itself. Another pair of boys endlessly kicked a football against the wall of another blighted property. Rubbish blew on the gentle nocturnal breeze.

Pope was driving. Snow and Kelleher were in the back.

‘What a dump,’ Snow said.

Pope followed the satnav to the junction of Greame Street and Rosebery Street and then peeled it off the windscreen and dropped it into the footwell. This area was hardly a destination that anyone would want to find, and he did not want the glow of the unit to draw attention. He turned onto Rosebery Street and maintained a steady twenty miles per hour. He would allow a single pass of the address. He rolled west to east and passed ten feet from the red front door of number thirty. The others were quiet, both of them absorbing as much of the surrounding detail as they could.

The park to their right was small and unlit, and the pinpricks of red light before the faces of the three kids on the swings gave away the cigarettes that they were smoking. Cars were parked on both sides of the road, and there was only space for a single car at any one time. Pope was unhappy about that. It would make exfiltration more difficult.

Pope reached Claremont Road and parked in the empty courtyard in front of Mr McFresh Bakery. He turned and nodded at Kelleher. ‘We’ll go and take a look at it on foot. Snow — take the car, meet us at the junction of Rosebery Street and Great Western Street.’

They got out of the car, Snow going forward and sliding into the driver’s seat. He pulled away, leaving Pope and Kelleher behind.

‘Take the alley at the back of the house,’ he said to Kelleher.

She nodded, waited for a pair of cars to pass, crossed Claremont Street and then set off along Cowesby Street, the road that ran adjacent to Rosebery Street.

Pope waited for her to reach the corner. ‘Comms check,’ he said into the tiny microphone that was attached to his lapel.

‘All fine,’ Kelleher responded, her voice audible in his earpiece.

She turned the corner and passed out of view.

‘Loud and clear,’ Snow reported.

Pope crossed the road and walked north along Rosebery Street.

He paid much closer attention to the house this time. It had a plain red door, the paint peeling away at the bottom. The single ground-floor window and the two windows on the first floor were obscured with patterned net curtains. There was a burglar alarm fixed to the wall above the door and two satellite dishes — one bigger than the other — fixed above that. A batten that would at one time have supported an estate agency sign was still screwed into the bricks. The house was unremarkable and similar to all the others on the terrace. He stopped when he was almost upon it, ducking down behind a parked car to pretend to tie his shoelace.

‘There’s an alarm,’ he said into the mic. ‘We’ll need to disable it. There’s a junction box on the other side of the street. Shouldn’t be too hard to cut the power. Might not be a bad idea to put the lights out, too.’

‘Are they in?’

Pope waited as long as he dared, but he saw no sign of life inside the house. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’ He kept on. ‘Surveillance is going to be bloody difficult if we need to do it. There’s nowhere to park, and I can’t see any buildings that would work.’

Pope finished with the lace, got up and walked on another ten feet. The alleyway that bisected Rosebery Street had an exit here, and as he strolled slowly by the opening, he saw Kelleher walking down it from the other end.

‘There’s a paved back garden, maybe thirty feet by ten feet. The one next door has a dog, so there might be noise. There’s a gate at the back to get into the alley. It’s unlocked. You’ve got two wheelie bins, then a stretch of concrete, then maybe ten feet with a couple of bikes and an old washing machine before you reach some kind of lean-to attached to the back of the house. There’s a door and a window. There’s a light above the door.’

‘What do you think?’

‘That’s the way to get in.’

‘Can you get a look at the lock?’

‘I think so.’

Pope saw the glare of headlights jerking up and down as a car negotiated the speed bumps in the road in the direction from which he had just arrived. He took a quarter turn so that he could look back and made to fumble with his lace again. The car was a Volvo Estate. Stone’s intelligence suggested that Hussain drove a green Volvo Estate. It was too dark to make out the colour, and the car was too far away to read the plate, but as Pope watched, it slowed and drew up outside number 30.

‘Target might be coming home,’ he said.

‘I’m coming out.’

‘Stay on your side of the street. I’ll meet you.’

Kelleher tapped the pressel switch on her radio two times: universal code for ‘copy that.’

‘Control to Twelve. Bring the car back to the house.’

‘We’re doing it now?’

‘Maybe. Eyes open.’

‘Copy that.’

Pope stood and crossed, joining Kelleher as she emerged from the mouth of the alley. He took her hand and walked back to the house as if they were a couple.

The Volvo had reversed into a space outside the house.

They were twenty feet away when the car’s lights were extinguished. Pope reached his spare hand into the pocket of his jacket and felt the fibres of his woollen balaclava.

They were fifteen feet away when both front doors opened, and two people stepped out. He could feel the bulge of his Sig in its shoulder holster beneath his left shoulder.

The passenger was a woman, her identity hidden beneath her dark burqa. The man, though, was instantly recognisable. He was burly, with a bald head and a long beard that reached down to his sternum. He wore a traditional dishdasha, had an eyepatch over his right eye, and he walked with a pronounced limp. Hussain had given two conflicting explanations for the injuries. In one interview, he said that he had lost his eye and his leg while working on a humanitarian demining project in Jalalabad, Pakistan. In another, he said it happened while he was preparing explosives for the Pakistani military in Lahore.

They had a positive ID.

Ten feet. Kelleher squeezed his hand. He readied himself. They would both draw down on the targets, Pope would get in close and shove the barrel of the Sig against Hussain’s head and then he would hustle him off the street and into the back of the car. He would get in next to him, Kelleher would ride up front. Fifteen seconds, maximum.

It was going to be easier than he had expected.

Hussain limped across the pavement to the front door, the key in his hand. His wife waited behind him.

Pope felt the buzz of adrenaline, the expectation of sudden violent action.

Snow’s voice crackled in his ear. ‘There’s another car coming.’

Pope saw it, too. Lights bumped up and down as the car negotiated the speed bumps that had been laid to deter joyriders using the grid of streets as a racetrack. The street lamps were defective at that part of the street, but as the car drew nearer, moonlight fell across it, and he saw that it bore the markings of the local police.

He gripped Kelleher’s hand tighter, and the two of them stepped around Hussain and his wife and continued on.

He clicked the pressel three times: ‘Abort.’

The police car slowed right down. There were two officers inside it, and Pope glanced across as the driver looked back at them.

‘I’m going around,’ Snow said. ‘I’ll meet you where I dropped you off.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Aqil Malik stood at the open graveside as his brother’s body was taken out of the casket and lowered into the ground, arranged on his right-hand side in such a fashion that his head was facing Mecca. It was important that this be done correctly. They had already had the anguish of not being able to bury Aamir quickly, as ordained by the scripture. The authorities had not released the body, probing and prodding it, until they had all the evidence they needed. It was an abomination. They had no respect. No understanding. Aamir had had nothing to do with what had happened, but they had not listened.

The male members of the family stood around, grim faced. The women were waiting for them at home. It was a dank afternoon, and rain pattered against the umbrella that Aqil’s elder brother, Yasin, held over both of their heads.

The imam finished his short prayer. ‘Indeed to Allah we belong, and to Him we will return.’

He stood back, and Aqil’s father dropped the first three fistfuls of wet earth over his son’s body. He recited the Surah: ‘“We created you from it, and return you into it, and from it we will raise you a second time.”’

Aqil felt his throat tightening, and a tear began to roll down his cheek, mixing with the rain.

Yasin stepped forward, stooped down to collect the mud, and scattered it over the body while reciting the same verse.

The mosque had taken care of all the necessary requirements. Aamir’s body had been washed and bathed and draped in the plain white kafan sheets as a part of the takfeen. They had taken him home for an afternoon, laying his casket out in the living room so that family members could pay their respects.

Their mother had wanted to close the lid. The bullet that had killed him had been fired at close range, the muzzle of the gun pressed against his crown so that a little circle of hair had been charred away. The exit wound was just above his jawline, below his left cheek. It was a purple bruise with a blackened hole in the centre. Their father had insisted that the casket be left open. He wanted people to see what the security services had done to his boy.

Not many people had come.

Even fewer had come to the Janazah prayer at the mosque.

Aqil had overheard his father and mother talking about it. Their friends had apologised, saying that it was too dangerous to come to the house. They had been given a police guard after the windows had been put in for the second time, and now their mail was being checked after white powder — later found to be flour — had been posted to them. And then there was the dog shit through the letterbox, the vitriol and the threats.

Aqil had closed his Twitter and Facebook accounts after the trolls had found them. They had threatened to kill him and his brother and rape his sister and his mother. One had even set up a fake account in Aamir’s name, complete with a head and shoulders shot that had been copied from one of his social media accounts. The fake Aamir had posted that there was no Paradise, that he was in Hell, and that Aqil would be next.

The community didn’t want to bring any of that down on themselves.

It was his turn now. He stepped forward to the lip of the grave, sank his hands into the wet muck and brought out a small pile in his cupped hands.

‘“We created you from it, and return you into it, and from it we will raise you a second time.”’

His twin had been a simple boy. There was a suggestion that Aqil had taken more from their mother when they were in the womb together, more nutrition or something, and that Aamir had suffered because of it. Aqil didn’t know how much of that was true, but it had been something that he had hated to be told. As they grew older, the evidence mounted. He was the bigger of the two. He was brighter, did better at school, had more friends. Aamir was more vulnerable, easily led, impressionable. Aqil had been concerned when Yasin had started taking him to the mosque more and more often. Yasin had never tried to persuade him to come, which made him suspicious, but Aamir was eighteen and could do whatever he wanted. Neither Yasin nor Aamir had ever brought his increasing piety up in front of their parents, and if the latter had noticed, they had said nothing.

Aqil knew the mosque was rotten. He had stopped going. He knew, too, that Yasin had grown close to Alam Hussain. Their father would have objected if he had known. The imam was persuasive and full of poison. His view of Islam was radical and more aggressive than the peaceful teachings of the man he had replaced. Aqil wished that he had said something. Perhaps it would have been different. He could have stopped it.

He had been furious when Yasin had explained what had happened. Yasin swore that he didn’t know about the planned attack, but he had refused to condemn it. Aqil didn’t believe it. Yasin wasn’t telling him everything. Aqil’s first reaction had been fury. He had struck his brother and would have struck him again if their father had not pulled them apart. He had been very close to telling the police officers who interviewed them what his brother had told him, and what he suspected.

But then the abuse had started. The dog shit had been pushed through the letter box. The bricks had been thrown through the windows. His mother had been assaulted in the street. The threatening phone calls came all through the night. The abuse had flooded his inbox. It was a tide, an avalanche, and it was getting worse and worse and worse.

Yasin had begged him to be quiet, and he had. What would have happened if he had spoken out? Yasin would have been arrested. The opprobrium wouldn’t have stopped.

‘Come on, bruv,’ Yasin said.

Aqil turned and followed Yasin away from the graveside. The protestors had been gathered at the gates of the graveyard for an hour before they had arrived. There had been twenty of them then, but as they walked through the drizzle back to their cars, he could see that there were more now. The path led down a slope to the ornate iron gates. Beyond them, and behind a cordon of police in their fluorescent yellow hi-vis jackets, an angry scrum of perhaps a hundred men and women had gathered. There were skinheads there, right at the front, shouting out that they were terrorists and they should all be sent home. But, behind them, there were ordinary-looking men and women with angry red faces, joining in the chants and bellowing their indignation.

‘Bastards,’ Yasin swore under his breath.

‘Ignore them,’ their father commanded sternly. ‘They want us to react. Don’t give them the satisfaction.’

The funeral director had provided a black BMW for the immediate family. They got inside. The driver was pale faced, but as the cortege moved off, he put the car into gear and joined the slow-moving queue. The police opened the gates, and the cordon split into two halves, each holding back the protestors so that they could drive out onto the road beyond. The noise rose as they approached, a furious baying that was barely muffled inside the car. Aqil stared ahead, his jaw clenched tightly, his fists bunched up in his lap. He heard the abuse, the racism, saw the spit as it slid down the windows and then, as the cordon broke, saw the two skinheads surge forward and pound their fists against the glass.

The driver swore, his hands shaking as he pressed down on the accelerator and raced clear.

The mourning, or hidaad, would last for three days. The family had gathered in the hall of the only community centre that would take their booking. Several had turned them down when they realised what the booking was for, so their father had pretended that this was to be a birthday party. The caretaker would have realised that he had been lied to as soon as the cars with their police escort drew into the car park, but by then it was too late.

Aqil stood at the edge of the room and watched. There were very few mourners, and those who had attended looked lost in the space of the hall. His brother did not deserve this. He did not deserve to be shunned. He did not deserve to be dead.

Yasin saw him and came across. He took him to one side.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘What do you think?’

‘I know. Me too.’

‘Where is everyone? All the others?’

‘Scared,’ Yasin said.

‘It’s not fair.’

‘No,’ his brother said. His voice was as hard and as cold as iron. He took out his phone and opened the app for Twitter. ‘Seen this?’

‘No…’

‘Look at it.’

Yasin handed it over. Aqil had seen something similar on his own feed; he didn’t need to see it again. There had been hundreds of updates, each tagging his account so that he could see what had been said about him and his family. There were obscene photographs — a mocked-up picture of Aamir’s body seemed to have gone viral — together with dozens of death threats against him and the promise that his mother and sister would be raped.

‘I know you don’t agree with what Aamir did,’ Yasin said carefully, ‘but when you see this, it becomes easier to understand. You know what I mean?’

There was a short while of silence.

‘Have you thought about it?’

Aqil looked down. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘And?’

Aqil tried to compose himself. He had been tortured by it all morning. Yasin had been on at him ever since the abuse had started.

They would be blamed.

It was their fault.

What had they done?

His efforts built to a head last night. They had no choice, he said.

They had to do it.

They had to go.

What Yasin was suggesting was frightening. The first time he had brought it up, Aqil had told him that he was crazy and that there was no way he would ever agree to it. He didn’t hate his country. He was born here. He had friends here. People he had grown up with. He had school, college, the prospect of a job, the chance to make money, something to look forward to. A stake in the future.

But then the abuse had increased, and he thought about what his brother was proposing some more. He thought about the Twitter messages, the threats and the hatred, and he started to think that maybe Yasin was right, after all.

How would he get a job with the stain on his family name?

Who would employ the twin brother of a terrorist?

He had no friends. They had deserted him. Where were they now, when he needed them most? They were gone.

He thought about the newspaper reporters who had slept in their cars outside the house. They had raked through his past, running pictures of both of them, accusing them of things that they hadn’t done, accusing them of thinking things that they didn’t think. They’d discovered their father’s affair from twenty years ago, suggested his business was a front, said their mother was a benefits cheat, that she hadn’t been as badly damaged by the hospital’s negligence as they had said.

They wrote in twenty-point type, on a million tabloid newspapers, that the Maliks were traitors who hated their country.

And so he allowed himself to be browbeaten. He’d finally said yes when they spoke last night, but he had woken up this morning to find himself unsure again. He had looked at the streets as the convoy had driven to the cemetery, all the familiar places, and he had been buffeted by doubt. This was his home. Even the insipid Mancunian rain was a trigger for his memories. He had decided to tell Yasin that he had changed his mind, but then there was the funeral and the protestors with their yells and their fists hammering on the roof and the loathing that burned in their eyes.

Aqil angled himself so that he was facing Yasin and spoke quietly. ‘When do we do it?’

Yasin looked at him, and when he spoke, Aqil thought he could hear a little fear in his voice. ‘Sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

He almost seemed angry. Aqil knew why: he was suggesting something that would take him away from the family, and although Yasin believed it to be the right thing to do, he hated himself for the pain he was going to cause. ‘Don’t just say yes because you’re upset. This isn’t a joke. This is serious. We won’t be able to come home.’

‘I know that!’

‘Easy,’ Yasin said, his palm upraised. ‘Keep your voice down.’

Akil hissed, ‘I’m not stupid. I’m sure.’ He meant it.

Yasin nodded his head. ‘I’ll need your passport. I’m going to get the tickets this afternoon.’

‘When will we leave?’

‘Soon. The next few days. I don’t see any point in waiting, do you?’

Chapter Thirty

They reconvened in the car, and Snow drove them to an arcade of shops half a mile away. They parked outside the Zuhayp Café.

‘We’re not going to be able to put in any surveillance,’ Pope said. ‘There’s nowhere obvious on the street, and if those police patrols are any good, they’ll see us if we try and watch from the car.’

‘So we go tonight?’

‘We’ll wait until one.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Thirty minutes.’

‘Breeching where?’

‘The back. Nine?’

Kelleher took out her phone. She had taken a close-up picture of the lock on the door at the back of the house. She rested the phone on her knee and unzipped the bag of kit that was on the back seat between her and Pope. She took out the pick gun, selected the correct bit and slotted it into place.

‘Getting in won’t be difficult,’ she said, hefting the gun. ‘What about the layout inside?’

‘My guess is that you’ll have a room off the hallway at the front of the house, and the kitchen behind it. Flight of stairs up to the first floor, two bedrooms. It’s most likely that Hussain will be upstairs, but he has a bad leg. I wouldn’t rule out the chance that he has a bedroom on the ground floor.’

‘Options?’

‘Twelve — you stay in the car. Park on Greame Street, and be ready to move on my signal. If you see the patrol car, I want to know about it.’

‘Roger that.’

‘Nine — you breach the door. I’ll go in first; you come in after me. Standard clearing after that. Ground floor, then up the stairs. We keep the lights off, and keep both of them quiet.’ He reached into the bag for a roll of gaffer tape. ‘We’ll tape their mouths shut before we get him out. Back through the garden, into the alley, Twelve meets us on Cowesby Street, we get away and head straight for Scotland. Any questions?’

There were none.

Snow switched on the radio and tuned it to the BBC’s news channel. There was a discussion going on between the presenter and a security analyst. The presenter was complaining that recent events had left the public with no confidence in the police or the intelligence community. First had been the catalogue of errors that had led to the unlawful killing of Fèlix Rubió. And then, trumping even that disaster, had been the bombing of Westminster Tube station and the assault on the Houses of Parliament. How could anyone feel confident that they were protected when things like that were allowed to happen? What was being done to make sure that there was no repeat?

Pope knew the analyst. He rode a desk for a trendy Whitehall think tank. The man had no operational experience and had bluffed his way into a lucrative career as a talking head on news shows thanks to a series of guesses and speculation that occasionally proved to be correct. Pope had no respect for him.

He started a monologue about how he understood the public’s frustration, that his ‘sources’ were frustrated, too, and that there would need to be progress soon.

‘What a twat,’ Snow growled.

‘Turn it off,’ Pope said.

Snow did as he asked. Pope reached into his jacket, withdrew his pistol and, keeping it below the line of the windows, checked the magazine and pushed it back into its housing with a click.

Ten minutes.

Two miles away, Munro and Stokes were readying themselves to break in to the mosque. They had skirted the perimeter of the building, confirming Pope’s intelligence. It was well covered by CCTV cameras and would not be easy to infiltrate without leaving evidence that they had been there.

The wall that had been damaged by the car had not been fixed, and it had been a simple thing to move aside the temporary wire fence and slip through the broken teeth of the opening. They pulled on their balaclavas and gloves and hurried into the grounds. They saw the CCTV camera and knew that they would be seen on the footage. But that wouldn’t matter. It would be impossible to identify them.

There was a secondary entrance on this side of the building. It was secured behind a wire cage, but Munro was able to pick the lock so that it could be pulled aside. The door itself was flimsy, and the lock had been shattered with a single firm kick. The two agents raised their torches and went into the dark interior beyond.

Snow dropped Pope on Hartington Street and Kelleher on Greame Street. They had been spotted together once, and it would risk suspicion if they were seen together again. This was hardly the street for a late-night romantic promenade. Hartington Street ran north — south, two streets to the west of Rosebery Street. He was carrying a small shoulder bag with the kit that he thought he might need. He turned onto Alison Street and walked east, crossing Beresford Street and then Rosebery Street. Street lamps flickered on and off, and the moon was obscured by a slow-moving stack of silvery cloud. Visibility was more limited than before. That was helpful.

He saw Kelleher at the mouth of the alley. She stepped around an overturned bin and pulled on her balaclava. Pope reached the alley and did the same. She pointed to the first gate and, on his signal, opened it and slipped inside. Pope saw the back garden just as she had described it: a concreted-over space, junk discarded across it, a short distance to the dilapidated lean-to. There were no lights visible on either the ground or first floors of the house. He heard a low growl from the next garden across and glimpsed a powerful-looking pit bull chained to a fence post. Pope reached for the silenced Sig. The dog growled again, but it didn’t bark. Lucky dog.

Kelleher hurried to the rear door. Pope came up behind her and glanced in through the single window. The pane was covered by a patterned net curtain, and nothing was visible.

Pope reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of latex gloves and overshoes, putting them on over his hands and feet. He made sure that the elasticated openings were snug over the cuffs of his shirt and his trousers so that the chances of anything being left behind were minimised. Kelleher did the same. It was imperative that they left nothing that could be traced to them. The medical and dental records belonging to agents of Group Fifteen were routinely scrubbed, but the last thing they wanted to do was leave a DNA trace that might be tied back to them at some point in the future.

Number Nine inserted the pick gun into the lock, squeezed the trigger three times and worked the tension rod until the pins of the lock were lined up correctly. The breaching was quiet, but it was not silent. The gun exhaled little bursts of compressed air, and the pins rattled as they were forced into the open position. The door opened, and Kelleher stepped aside.

Pope stepped up, held up his pistol in his right hand and counted down from three with the fingers of his left.

Three.

Two.

One.

He gently pushed the door and went inside.

Kelleher followed, closing the door behind her.

They were in the kitchen. A little moonlight filtered through the net curtain. He saw battered kitchen units on the wall, one missing its door, and a freestanding cooker and refrigerator. There was a linoleum floor, peeling back from the wall at the edges, sticky in parts where liquid had been spilt. There was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. He smelled the residual odour of curry. The room was empty.

Kelleher split off behind him and checked the door to what Pope guessed was a downstairs toilet. She nodded that the room was clear.

He circled his finger in the air to indicate they should proceed and then pointed at the open door that led to the hall, light filtering inside from the frosted glass panel in the front door.

There was a door to the right, halfway between the kitchen and the front door, and to the left, he saw the start of the stairs. He continued down the hallway and took up position at the foot of the stairs. Kelleher paused at the door, listened for a moment and then gently opened it with her foot. It swung back with a groan that sounded unnaturally loud, and she went inside.

Pope concentrated on inhaling and exhaling normally, fighting the urge to hold his breath. He glanced up the stairs and saw the deeper darkness of the landing above. Nothing was visible. A floorboard creaked from the front room. Pope gripped the butt of his cocked pistol tighter. Kelleher emerged again, shaking her head.

Pope pointed up the stairs. He took a thin Maglite from his bag and shone it down as he climbed the stairs, his feet on the outside of the treads. Kelleher followed behind him. He reached the landing and cast the light around him. There was a laundry basket directly ahead, stuffed full of dirty clothes. He reached the top and turned to the left. There was a chest pressed up against the wall and, atop it, another pile of dirty clothes.

Two doors up ahead of him. One was opposite his position, the other immediately to the left.

Pope paused, listening hard. He could hear the sound of low breathing, but he couldn’t discern from which direction it was coming.

Number Twelve’s voice crackled low in his earbud. ‘The police car is coming back.’

He clicked the pressel twice to acknowledge the message and turned back to Kelleher, who gave a nod. She had received it, too.

Pope edged ahead. The door to the left would lead to the room at the front of the house. He pressed his fingers against it and gently exerted enough pressure to push it open.

He went inside, his silenced weapon up and ready to shoot.

It seemed to be an office of sorts. He took the three paces necessary to reach the window to the street below, and pressed up hard to the side of it, he risked a quick glance through the net curtain. The police car rolled slowly down the street, slowed to a stop outside the front door, and then rolled on again.

Snow: ‘It’s moving on.’

Two clicks.

There was a desk on the other side of the window with a PC and a monitor atop it. He noted that, so he wouldn’t forget it later, and crept back to the landing. He motioned that the room was empty and pointed to the remaining door. He had suspected that this was the room where they would find Hussain and his wife. The layout of the house suggested that it was the bigger of the two.

The door was halfway ajar, and he looked in. There was a wardrobe ahead and, to the right, a bed on which he could make out the shape of two recumbent bodies. He pushed the door open enough to step inside, his teeth set on edge by the low groan of badly lubricated hinges, raising his pistol and aiming it down at the bodies in the event that they awoke.

They did not.

There was a bedside table to each side of the bed. Each table held an identical lamp. Hussain was on the right. He was on his back, and Pope could see the fuzzy grey mess of his beard. There was a copy of the Qur’an on his table.

Pope took four steps until he was alongside him.

Kelleher moved around the bed to stand over the woman.

Pope counted down from three, and on one, they both moved with fluid, practised efficiency. They put their left hands over the mouths of the couple and pressed the guns hard against their heads.

Hussain bucked in sudden alarm, but Pope pushed down and anchored him to the mattress. He tried to scream, the noise muffled by Pope’s palm. He bucked again, trying to free his arms from beneath the duvet. Pope took the butt of the Sig and cracked it down hard against his forehead. It was a strong blow, and the sharp edge of the butt cut the skin and drew a little furrow of blood. Hussain moaned, the noise smothered once again.

Pope looked across the bed to Mrs Hussain. She was lying still, her eyes wide and eloquent with fear above Number Nine’s restraining hand.

Pope switched his grip on the pistol so that he could put his index finger to his lips. ‘I’m going to take my hand away,’ he said in a quiet, firm voice. ‘If you make any noise, my colleague will shoot your wife and then I’ll shoot you. Blink if you understand.’

Hussain’s wife might have been frightened, but he was angry. He stared unblinkingly up at Pope.

‘Last chance.’

He pressed down hard with the Sig.

Hussain blinked. His good eye was full of fury.

He drew back with the gun, the end of the silencer leaving a circular red tracing on the cleric’s forehead.

Pope pulled his left hand away, putting his finger to his lips again to remind the man to lie still and quiet. He reached into his bag and took out a roll of gaffer tape.

‘Lift your head.’

Hussain did as he was ordered, and Pope unrolled the tape, wrapping it all the way around his head two times. When he was done, the bottom half of the cleric’s head was covered with it. There was just enough space for him to breathe through his nose.

‘Now you do your wife.’

His eye shone hatred at him, but again he did as he was told. He did a thorough job, winding it twice around her head, tearing it off and handing the roll back to Pope.

Pope switched the pistol to his left hand, and using his right, he dragged him out of bed. He told him to put his arms behind his back, and he wrapped another length of tape around his wrists, fastening them together. Finally, he took the tape and wound another length around his eyes, fashioning a makeshift blindfold.

He tossed the roll of tape to Kelleher and spoke as she bound the woman’s wrists together. ‘We need to speak to your husband. We’re just going to take him downstairs. If you make a sound or try to come after us, we’ll shoot you both. Nod if you understand.’

She nodded vigorously.

‘Very good. If you do as we say, you won’t be hurt. Stay here. Don’t come out, and definitely do not come downstairs. Understand?’

She nodded again.

Pope stood, hooked his right hand between Hussain’s pinioned arms and dragged him to his feet. Kelleher backed away, her Sig held in a steady aim at the woman’s head.

‘Get the hard drive,’ he said to Kelleher, and then, when she had hurried into the other room, he spoke quietly into the mic on his lapel. ‘Twelve, Control. Move.’

‘Copy that.’

He moved the cleric to the head of the stairs and jabbed the pistol between his shoulder blades. The man took the stairs carefully, each foot probing for the next tread, Pope up close behind him. He reached the bottom, and Pope grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him into the corridor, bumping him off the walls as he shoved him into the kitchen. He heard Kelleher following them down the stairs.

Snow reported. ‘I’m here.’

Pope opened the back door and pushed Hussain into the back garden. After his earlier restraint, the pit bull next door started to bark. It didn’t matter so much now. They were nearly done. Pope pushed the cleric against the gate, opened it for him, then shoved him into the alleyway. The Passat was waiting at the mouth of the alley, the passenger-side front and rear doors open. Hussain stumbled over the overturned bin and fell flat on his face. Pope hauled him to his feet, put a hand on his head, pushed down and then propelled him into the back, immediately getting in next to him. Number Nine leapt into the front, the doors were slammed shut and Snow drove.

Pope and Kelleher took off their balaclavas, latex gloves and overshoes.

‘All okay?’ Number Twelve asked.

Pope looked at the cleric beside him, his head mummified in gaffer tape. ‘No problems.’

Chapter Thirty-One

It would take them nine hours to drive from Manchester to Wick. They had stopped as soon as it was safe, just outside Manchester, to transfer Hussain to the boot. Now, several hours later, they had left the motorway to stop a second time, giving their prisoner a chance to relieve himself.

As Pope raised the lid of the boot, the courtesy light casting a subtle amber glow over Hussain, he could see that the cleric had brought his knees up to his chest so that he fitted snugly.

‘We’re going to drive for another hour,’ Pope said to him. ‘If you’re a good boy, and there’s no noise or trouble, you can stretch your legs for five minutes. Understand?’

The cleric nodded. Pope hauled him up, dragged him out of the boot and stood him on the side of the road. Pope saw that the man wanted to speak. He tore the tape away from his mouth.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he said plaintively.

‘You know why, Mr Hussain.’

‘Those boys. Hakeem and Bashir and Aamir?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I do not approve of what they did.’

‘Save it for later. I’m just in charge of delivery.’

‘You’re not listening to me, sir. I had nothing to do with what happened.’

Pope took him by the shoulder. ‘You need to relieve yourself?’

Hussain ignored him. ‘They listened to my sermons, perhaps they shared my view of things, but I would never have approved of what they did.’

‘You’re wasting your breath. Go now if you need to; we’re not stopping again.’

He ignored him again. ‘None of this is necessary, sir. Please — let me go, I have nothing to do with any of it.’

‘I’ll take that as a no.’

Pope took the gaffer tape.

‘Please!’ Hussain said.

He wrapped the tape around his head again, pushed him back into the boot and shut the lid.

‘You believe any of that?’ Kelleher asked him as he got into the car.

‘Irrelevant what I think. Not up to us to decide, is it? Come on. Sooner we get back on the road, sooner we can drop him off and get back to civilisation.’

There was an unmarked Gulfstream V Turbo waiting on the edge of the taxiway. Pope guessed that the plane would be registered to a Delaware corporation that would front ownership for the CIA. They would pass it around different front companies every few months, change the tail number and otherwise make it more difficult to trace out the truth. An investigation by a liberal British newspaper had made things a little more difficult last year. They were able to chart the to-ing and fro-ing of a particular jet through the observations of plane spotters posted on the web. Its flight plans always began at an airstrip in Smithfield, North Carolina, and ended in some of the world’s hot spots. It was owned by Premier Executive Transport Services, incorporated in Delaware, a brass plaque company with nonexistent directors, and had been hired by American agents to revive an old CIA tactic from the 1970s. Agency men kidnapped South American criminals and flew them back to their own countries to face trial so that justice could be rendered. Pope had delivered a suspect for rendition before, to an aeroplane very much like this one. Paddy McNair had called it the Guantánamo Bay Express.

Pope was able to park right alongside the aircraft, which was being refuelled by a mobile bowser. A man and a woman in bland business dress were sheltering under the cover of a wide golfing umbrella next to the open door. Pope checked left and right before he got out of the car. They were in an isolated part of the airport, and there was no suggestion that they were overlooked. He opened the door, went around to the back and opened the trunk. Hussain was inside, curled into a foetal ball. Kelleher and Snow got out, their weapons drawn, and then, working together, they hauled the cleric out of the boot and dumped him on the tarmac.

Hussain was on his knees in the sheeting rain. His head hung down low between his shoulder blades and there was a low murmur of discomfort that was muffled by the tape around his mouth.

‘Alam Hussain,’ Pope said. ‘As requested.’

The woman nodded. She didn’t say anything. Pope would have been surprised if she knew who he was, and besides, there was very little to discuss. This was a simple transaction. A handover, an exchange that had been repeated many times previously. He knew that Hussain’s immediate future was bleak. It promised pain and discomfort. Then he would be buried deep in the CIA’s penal system, and Pope doubted if the cleric would see the light of day for years. He didn’t feel uncomfortable about it. Hussain might have information that could save the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. He might not, of course, but that was a risk that Pope was happy to countenance. Simple calculus. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few.

The male agent reached down and helped Hussain to his feet. He guided him to the fuselage and helped him place his feet on the stairs that led inside.

‘Thank you,’ the woman said as she turned on her heel and followed her colleague into the jet. The pilot came out to retract the steps and close the door. The bowser detached its hose and drove back in the direction of the terminal building.

They were left alone. They got into the car. Kelleher offered to drive. Pope was tired and didn’t demur. As she turned the Passat around and accelerated away to the gate, Pope heard the Gulfstream’s engine fire up and watched as the plane slowly began to roll towards the runway.

‘Back to London?’ Number Nine asked.

‘Yes.’

They had another long drive ahead of them. As they started south, he looked through the wire-mesh fence and out onto the runway. The jet streaked towards them, launched itself into the air and roared overhead at two hundred feet. It banked steeply to port and disappeared away to the south.

‘Poor bugger,’ Snow offered.