The Walking Dead

Chapter 8

Through the window, Ibrahim saw her in the garden. She hung washing on the line. He was not yet dressed and he kept himself half hidden behind the curtains but there was a sufficient gap between them for him to watch her. He ignored the voices and the sounds of the day starting and watched her, waiting for the repetition of her movements. She was bent over the basket and the jeans were tight against her buttocks and hips. She lifted out a shirt, a pair of underpants, or something flimsy that was her own, then stretched up to reach the plastic line that was suspended between two trees. When she reached up her T-shirt rode higher, leaving him a clear view of the skin at the small of her back, and sometimes the flatness of her stomach, the little indentation of her navel. At the moment that she fastened whichever garment it was to the line with pegs, she would arch her back, when the swell of her breasts was most pronounced, and then she would start again.

He felt breathless. He could not comprehend that she was one of his own Faith. She contradicted everything he had been brought up to value in a woman, above all modesty. It was when she turned and lifted the basket, had her back to the line of clothing that swayed in the wind and the sun caught the intricacies of the items that were hers, that she looked — and he thought there was almost sadness on her face — at the windows, but she would not have seen him because he had ducked away. Those who had been his friends in Jizan would have sniggered at the long scar on her face, as if it made her worthless, but Ibrahim did not think it a blemish on her prettiness. When he was back, his nose and mouth close to the glass, she was gone, but he lingered to see the movement on the line of what was hers, what was worn under the jeans and beneath the T-shirt, and there was a tremor in his breathing, and…more movement, on the far edge of the grass behind the cottage.

The man had no name that Ibrahim knew. He was the heavily built man, the sole member of the group to whom the Leader paid attention. Ibrahim understood what the man did, and the proof of it was in the hours the man spent shut away in his room. There had been the smell from under that door, and then under Ibrahim's, of the heated soldering iron. The man had not spoken to him, not a word, but when they were in the main room together the man seemed to watch him…and Ibrahim thought it was with the care that a customer in his father's shop behind the Corniche gave when he evaluated the most expensive, most prized wide-screen television.

The man crossed the grass and went to the gap in the hedge that divided the garden from the field. In his hand he carried a plastic bag and a short-handled spade. There were no beasts in the field, but the man lifted his leg over the barbed wire and went into it, then started a slow, methodical search of the ground. Every few yards he stopped and set down the plastic bag, then used his spade to scrape up old cattle dung from the grass, which he tipped into the bag. When the bag was more than half filled he returned the way he had come. Ibrahim understood why the man who made the bomb went into the field and collected the waste of the beasts. It had been on the television and radio at home, on the Al Jazeera satellite channel, that the shit from animals was mixed with screws, nails or ball-bearings, and the shit would be against his washed body when he walked.

He had begun to dress when he heard the light rap at the door. He wore his trousers and socks, but had not yet pulled on his undervest and T-shirt and the cold shimmered on his chest. He called out.

She filled the doorway and he flinched back towards the window. His sisters would never have come into his room at home, before he was dressed, and the maidservant would not have entered while he was there. He saw the scar on her face and its anger, as if the sides of the wound would never knit sufficiently close for it to be anything but obvious. If he had gone on with his training as a medical student at the university, if he had graduated, qualified, it would have been his responsibility to suture such an injury, but that was behind him and gone. He stared at it, the livid line, and her hand went up to it — he had seen the day before how frequently she touched it — and he thought that running a finger down the indentation was like a tic in her, as if she could not leave it alone. Because he stared, ice covered her eyes.

'I should have asked you earlier. Have you any washing?'

He had not thought whether he would put on the T-shirt with the swan printed on it again, but it was grimy with perspiration. There were three pairs of underpants in the bottom of his bag — he had put on the last clean pair he had brought — and four pairs of socks.

'Don't know. I'm sorry.'

'It's not anything to apologize for. If you have clothing that needs washing, I'll run it through the machine,' she said brusquely.

'Well, I do…'

'OK, so give it to me.'

He would wear laundered clothing when he went on the walk. He must be clean in his soul, his mind, his body and his clothing when he made the journey to God's table…but he did not know, because he had not been told, when that day would be. So, Ibrahim did not know how many washed T-shirts, pairs of underpants or socks he must wear before his walk. The clothing in his bag, on the carpet of the room had been against his skin, his private places. In his presence, should she handle them? He felt the same breathlessness as he had when he had watched her through the window.

He hesitated. 'I think I have some things.'

'Of course you do. Just give them to me,' she said curtly. 'But I don't know what I will need.'

She was remote from him, as if nothing should bond them. 'You'll be told. I don't know. I'll take everything that needs washing.'

'I am not told anything,' Ibrahim blurted.

'Nor me, nor any of us. Please, your washing.' She shrugged, dismissive.

'But I have faith that will sustain me, and I know I am going to God. I am dedicated to what I shall do. 'He lifted the underpants and socks from his bag, the T-shirt off the floor, and gave them to her. 'I hope to be worthy of the trust placed in me. Yes, I think I am dedicated enough to carry out my duty…Will you be close to me when I walk?'

'I don't know.'

'I think I have been chosen because I am dedicated.'

She said quickly, seemed to spit it, 'We are all dedicated, not only you.'

The door closed on her. Ibrahim sat on his unmade bed and held his head in his hands. He would have liked to know that she would be close to him, to feel the comfort not of a brother but of a sister.

That Sunday morning, at the bottom of the steps to the town's Arndale Shopping Centre, the posters were stuck up in the windows of the closed Burger King restaurant. More were fastened in the doorway at the top of the steps. Workmen with paste and brushes plastered them on to the glass.

Wherever there was available space, the posters went up.

The next Saturday morning, it was advertised, a 'Super Sale' would start in Luton, with special offers discounted down to fifty per cent of the usual amount. There would be 'Give-away Prices', every thing 'slashed' in the chain stores that filled the retail outlets inside the cavern of the shopping centre. And on that morning a celebrity from the local radio station would open the Super Sale.

The manager of a chemist's in the centre spoke to a councillor who sat on the Trade and Commerce Committee in the town hail as they watched the slapping on of the posters from a vantage-point among the trees of St George's Square.

'I hope this bloody works,' the manager said. 'Rents are up, takings are through the floor. If this doesn't pull the punters in, we're well and truly shafted.'

'They'll be fighting to get in, just you wait and see, when the doors open.' The councillor slapped the manager's back. 'Could be a special day for the Arndale next Saturday. They'll be shoulder to shoulder and lined up right round the corner. Its the sort of initiative this town needs and that shoppers respond to. They'll come with filled purses and wallets. It'll be like the Saturday before Christmas.'

It was Jools's routine on a Sunday morning. Out of bed, Hannah's, out of her flat and down the alleyway into Inkerman Road. Up Manchester Street and past the town hail where that damn great clock was striking, along the pavement past St George's Square, the wine bar, Travelcare, the Oxfam shop and Tasty Fried Chicken. Then the closed doors of three building societies and the Age Concern unlit windows on his right, and the dive into the newsagent that sold fags. Every Sunday morning was the same: Hannah would be making breakfast and he would be on the quarter-mile tramp for a carton of cigarettes and a scandal sheet.

And, as it always did, his mobile rang.

His father: 'Just to tell you, son, that Babs rang and I said you were out, and would you call her?'

His father and mother, fifteen miles north of the town, were an active ingredient in the deception fools practised. The familiar bleat from him to Babs was that they were elderly, getting frail, and that it was important he visited as often as possible, both to show them his support and to do jobs round their house because they could no longer afford, as pensioners, to have a man in. They hated telling the lies for their son's adulterous relationship but, as he told them when it was fraught and he was challenged, the alternative was a split with Babs and their granddaughter without a father at home. Babs would ring on a Sunday morning, and Jools's father would swallow his truth culture and say that fools had just popped out, then telephone his son. fools would call home on his mobile and would concoct anecdotes of what he'd done at his parents' house for them. Did he care? Not much…He bought his cigarettes and the paper, and as he walked back he spoke to his wife, and forgot her as soon as the mobile was back in his pocket.

That Sunday morning fools Wright had much to reflect on.

And he was not sure — in a welter of confusion — where his priorities lay.

Could have been his performance in bed with Hannah, bloody abject and useless. Could have been the package in the bottom of the wardrobe at home with his shoes and spare sandals covering it.

What to do? If the Inkerman Arms had been open, he might have headed into the public bar and ordered up a double Johnnie Walker, no ice, but it was not.

He had seen the posters going up outside the shopping centre. When Babs and he went out to buy things, it usually ended up in a whispered bickering about what they could afford, what they couldn't, and which credit card or cheque book might still be functioning. Different times. There was twelve and a half thousand pounds, presumably in fifties, in his wardrobe and he could go down to the shopping centre next week and buy half of any of the damned outlets bloody near empty.

He passed the Inkerman Arms and heard a vacuum-cleaner inside. He was within sight of Hannah's door. The trouble with Hannah was that she had an appetite, and women with an appetite needed regular feeding, and if she didn't get satisfaction at one outlet, she'd go looking for another. It was the way she was: if Jools wasn't the flavour she'd be heading off elsewhere, and he'd be getting the phone call to say he needn't bother to come again. If he had that call, it would push him down into the gutter.

He didn't blame himself. Never had done and wasn't about to start. Every man had a price. Damn certain, if enough noughts were racked up, Mr Justice Herbert who was God Almighty in court eighteen, had a price. He grinned at the thought of the big brown-paper parcel being slipped into the judge's grip. It didn't enter his mind that he should fight, kick and scratch against corruption. Christ, he needed the money. Pretty damn lucky that the offer had been to him, Jools Wright, who was deputy head of geography in a sink school filled to the gunwales with yobs and who had the original debt mountain, than to Rob, Baz or Vicky. It would be hard to keep a straight face when Mr Justice Herbert sent them out and Jools stated to the rest of them, 'I hear what you say, but on the basis of the evidence put before us, and disregarding the prejudice against the accused that the police evidence has tried to manufacture, I really cannot — in all honesty and sincerity — find the Curtis brothers guilty. No, I'm listening but I'm not about to change my viewpoint when the liberty of two citizens is involved. You can call me what you like but my vote is for an acquittal.' They'd be raging at him — but in his wardrobe there was a parcel of money…When he opened the door to Hannah's flat, he smelt the cooked breakfast.

She wore only the long sports shirt he'd given her and an apron. In the routine, they'd have breakfast in bed, then the trays would go on the floor and it was back to what Heaven sent.

He told her he thought he had a cold coming on, wasn't himself, but that he'd have thrown it off by next weekend. They had breakfast in the kitchen. An hour later he rang his father and told him, it was necessary to be consistent in his deceit, that he was on his way home to Babs. He didn't talk while he ate, as if his silence was a symptom of his cold, but he could see Hannah's annoyance, which seemed to say she thought she'd been short-changed. He was far away, thinking of the brothers and whether on Monday morning, tomorrow, he'd have the bravado to look them in the eyes because he'd taken their money.

They walked round the exercise yard.

'Nothing to do but wait,' Ollie Curtis said. 'I hate waiting.'

It was a banal remark, but true. It was the third time that the younger brother had made it, and they were only on the fourth circuit of the small area used by Category A remand prisoners, and they would get in another twelve circuits before the prison officers called them in and locked them up.

His voice spattered on: 'Can only wait for the morning. I suppose then we'll hear fast enough what Benny's done for us, get it from the brief. I'm with you, Ozzie, it's the only bloody chance. I reckon you're right. The witness won't stand up to another year of hanging about. The mistrial's all we've to look to, then going after that witness, but the waiting's a bastard.'.

Beside him, Ozzie had his hands deep in his pockets, his head down, and he trudged the circuit at pace.

'What you reckon, Ozzie, are you feeling good or what?'

The elder brother shrugged, his mind elsewhere. Young Ollie was always a dripping tap and talked when there was nothing to say. The 'only bloody chance' was with the Nobbler. Why? Because they were in Belmarsh where the security was tighter than it was at any other gaol in the country. There was a joke question among the 'ordinary'

remand men: 'Where is the biggest and most flourishing Al Qaeda cell in the country?' And a joke answer: 'In Belmarsh.' The hate guys, the bomb-plotters, had damn near half a landing to themselves. They had their own cook and their own religion man and the officers stayed off their backs. But them being there meant more wire on top of the outer walls, and more supervision, and guns outside in the locked-up boots of the armed-response vehicles. Where the brothers walked now, in the piss-poor little yard, there was a heavy tangle of reinforced wire above them. And it would be no better when they went to court because there were more guns in the escort vehicles, and guns at the Snaresbrook holding cells and round the courtroom. The Nobbler was the 'only bloody chance' because the option of a break-out did not exist. In a year and a month on remand, Ozzie Curtis had searched for a chink of light peeping through the security, and had yet to see it.

'By now Benny'll have done his approach,' Ollie Curtis said. 'You think this jerk would double-cross us, take the money and not do the business? It's a hell of an amount of money, and there's no guarantee. Would he dare?'

There was a grimace from Ozzie. He would have preferred to walk alone, but could not. If young Ollie told his mother, when the cousin brought her up on the first Saturday of every month, that Ozzie wouldn't walk with her darling baby, aged forty-four, there would be tears and bloody shrieks. He walked with his younger brother…Let the jerk try. He'd get the full treatment. Given the spade out in a wood and told to dig the pit, then get down in it, and he'd look up at the barrel facing him. When half his bloody head was shot to hell the hole would be filled in on him. The life of Ozzie Curtis was one of 'service industries': a service to supply the wheels, another to fence, a third to provide a slaughter-house where cash and diamonds were stashed and safe, a fourth to hire out firearms. There was also an industry, expensive but worth it, for a man who double-crossed on a deal. But it wouldn't come to that because the Nobbler would have spelled out the consequences of a double-cross, and only a bloody idiot would have ignored him.

'What's getting to me, Ozzie — while we're waiting, and it's going on like a clock ticking — is this. If we get put away big-time, how long's the respect we're getting now going to last? Does respect last if we're down for fifteen or more?'

God, why couldn't his kid brother shut his damn mouth? Respect mattered to Ozzie Curtis. He was a blagger, not a druggie importer. He did not fraternize with Crime Squad detectives, did not have any cosy little relationship that meant informing on rivals. The druggie importers were crap and he didn't mix with them on the landing but he reckoned that any of them, if they learned something confidential about him that they could squeal on to their advantage, would shop him. Inside Belmarsh, Ozzie Curtis had status, but he would lose it if the sentence was heavy. He would just be another shuffling wreck, getting old, a target for any arrogant kid on the block, and he'd have his bloody brother whimpering in his ear. He depended on the Nobbler.

'If we go down, Ozzie, there'll be all of those Asset Recovery guys crawling all over us. They'll bloody strip us bare. You thought of that, Ozzie?'

Targets for Asset Recovery, and he didn't need to be told so, included his house down in Kent, which was worth, minimum, one point two five million, his Lexus four-wheel drive, the wife's top-of-the-range Audi, and the villa on the hills above Fuengirola — a place in Spain of that size was another three-quarters of a million — and there were the Cayman accounts, the Gibraltar money, the investments in the Black Sea apartments and…His status in Belmarsh would seep away once he was down and the Asset Recovery team were digging at him. He'd be a bloody pauper, and there was no respect on the landing for one of them.

'Nothing to do but wait,' Ollie said. 'I hate waiting.'

'He must have courage,' Faria whispered. Then the pitch of her voice was bolder: 'Which of us would do it?'

She had cooked chicken breasts and served them with rice and a curried sauce. It was what she would have given her parents if she had been at home, and her two brothers, if they had not been doing religious instruction in Pakistan. She had looked up before she put that question. The doors to the dining area were still closed. Before she had brought the food from the kitchen, she had called through the doors that their lunch was ready.

'Would you? Would you do what he is going to do?'

'I have not been asked,' Khalid answered, but looked away. 'It is immaterial what I say. It is not expected of me. You want honesty among ourselves and between ourselves? No.'

Her finger jabbed at Syed. 'Would you? Do you have that bravery?'

'If it were necessary, perhaps. But another has been chosen. I do not have to answer because the question is on a false premise. I do more for our struggle by staying alive, by continuing as the servant of the Organization. I was never a volunteer, and I am thankful I was not asked.'

Leaning across the table and her food, her eye and finger moved on to Ramzi. 'Is the Faith in you to do what he will?'

'I would have, if I had been selected.' His chest swelled. 'Already I told people that I was prepared for martyrdom. It is a disappointment to me that I was not chosen…Yes.'

Her gaze crossed three empty places and came to rest on Jamal. 'Would you walk with the vest against your body?'

'I don't know. I can't say. Many heroes have, in Chechnya, Palestine and Iraq, so many that we no longer know their names.' He giggled, childlike. 'Do I believe what many of those heroes were told? Do they go, in Paradise, to the virgins? Are the virgins waiting for them? There are imams who say the virgins are there…Perhaps I would do it if I believed in the virgins.'

There was a thorns of the same question. 'Would you, Faria? What about you?'

But doors opened. She seemed to see what she had read: heads spiralling into the air, severed at the neck, flying high, across the room and out through the open window. They fell to the grass and rolled there, like the footballs boys played with in the side-streets off the Dallow Road. She saw the heads of Khalid and Syed, Ramzi and Jamal…then her own. She did not have to answer. The places at the table were taken. She ducked her head and ate. She did not look up until her plate was dean. Then, nervously, she glanced around her. She was the first to finish. Her eyes met his.

Ibrahim smiled, then said with gentleness, 'That was wonderful and I compliment you. I am grateful.'

She gulped. None of the others had thanked her. Was he captured by the thought of virgins? She had never slept with a man, of course, and never would. Did he dream of the virgins in the gardens of 164.

Paradise, search and lust for them? She would not sleep with a man because she was scarred and would never find a husband, she knew it.

'It is not the same food as we eat at home but it was good, or better. It was excellent,' he said softly.

She flushed. A few days ago, before he had arrived, she would have thought that the final days of the countdown to the walk would have been spent in earnest collective prayer and political lecturing, with hectored statements of commitment. Her recruiter had told her, in the back room of a mosque tucked behind the main Dunstable road, that at the moment a Black Widow pressed the button as she stood on a bus filled with Russian paratroops and heading for Grozny she attained the height of bliss and would feel herself floating to another life. She would know for certain that she was not dead, but living and close to God. She stood up. Only he seemed prepared to stack plates to make it easier for her, but she shook her head briskly. She took the plates off the table, carried them through to the kitchen and brought back a bowl of fruit — oranges, apples and pears. She thought herself honoured to help him make his journey to Paradise. She put it on to the centre of the table.

There was a rasped question. 'Do we have bleach here?'

'I don't know,' she stammered. 'I have not looked.'

She saw the cold, glinting eyes of the one they all called their leader now as he reached for an apple. Again the voice whipped her: 'I have. I have looked under the kitchen's sink. There is disinfectant but not bleach. I want bleach and you should buy it tomorrow.'

She felt anger and hurt. 'Is the house dirty? I clean each day.'

'A big bottle of bleach. Buy it tomorrow.' The teeth crunched into the apple.

Faria went into the kitchen, ran the hot tap and started to rinse the saucepans. The water scalded her hands and…The thought was a thunderclap in her mind. The boy, so gentle and genuine, so dedicated to killing, pressed the button but his head did not fly, climb, soar — pressed the button and heard silence. A plate fell from her hand and cracked as it hit the draining-board. She was not criticized: there was no rebuke from the dining room. She could not believe anything would be more humiliating than to fail.

He stood alone. The rifles covered him. The shouts battered in his ears. 'See there, the mother-fucker's got a wire showing. It's done a flicking malfunction! Don't let the fucker run! He's mine, the mother-fucker's mine, Sergeant.'

They came from behind the roadblock's sandbag walls. They stormed out from the cover where they had crouched as he came closer to them. Traffic had backed off on the airport road; out northwest from Baghdad's centre. He was overwhelmed and was crushed down on to the Tarmacadam. A big black fist tore the switch from his hand. Tape went over his eyes and darkness surrounded him. Boots kicked him. He was lifted. He was thrown heavily on to a metal surface and heard an engine roar. A boot was at his throat. He was driven away.

He did not know then that three hours after his inability to achieve martyrdom, bright lights would be shone piercingly into his face. If he closed his eyes he would be slapped, and questions would rain down on him.

'Did you get food, Mr Hegner?'

''Fraid not, was in the air. I'll tell you, I'm mighty pleased you called me, and it was pure luck there was a flight coming over.'

'I can get you anything you want,' the intelligence officer said. 'A burger, sandwiches, fries?'

Just a coffee. I want to say that those grunts did a real good job. To get one of them suckers alive is a rare bonus. I wasn't thinking about lunch, just getting here. Now, is he doing it the Irish way?'

'I don't follow you, Mr Hegner.'

'The Irish have got the line on counter-interrogation resistance: "The best thing to say is to say nothing." Would you put him in that category?'

'No, Mr Hegner, he's singing. That'll be the shock. We did what you suggested last time you were over when you drew this scenario, put a woman interrogator with a kind motherly voice alongside him. He's from the Saudi town of Dammam, a university-grade economics student, and he was brought across the border about — we reckon from what he says — half-way between Hafr Al-Bain and Arar. That was thirty-six hours ago. You want to go face to face with him?'

'Not for me to break the lady's stride. But there's some questions I'd like to get answered.'

'Not a problem, Mr Hegner.'

He was driven to the holding cages. Cindy had done well. Within fifteen minutes of the first flash reaching Hegner's territory — a suicide fouled up — she'd tracked down an air-force executive jet that was lifting two senators from Riyadh to Baghdad on the next leg of their inspection tour, and the limousine had taken him from the embassy with no qualms about speed and stop lights. He was led, a loose hand on his arm, from the jeep to the outer gate, then keys clanked and he could smell the stench of the interrogation cage — same as it was anywhere — body odour and urine and pungent disinfectant. But she wore scent.

The intelligence officer had been brought to him. 'It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Hegner. I feel privileged.'

'What I want to know, Captain, is whether he has met with two individuals. I hear whispers of them, murmurs on the wind. You see, the Saudi route he was brought through is one used by these two. The facilitator is known to me as The Scorpion, what the whisper calls him. The Engineer — more whispers and murmurs — makes the devices, and it's unlike his to fail. What I need to know, did he pass through their hands? If he did, where and when?'

'I'll do my best.'

Another coffee was brought him, and a chair into which he sank heavily. He heard the sounds of the cage around him. Men moaned, and there was the clatter of the guards' boots, the rattle of keys. His mind drifted. A young man, probably identical in background, dedication and motivation to the one now being interrogated, had walked into the garrison camp mess hall in Mosul. Joe Hegner, fresh from a speech to the division's officers on combating the newly flourishing weapon of suicide-bombing, had been queueing with intelligence analysts and had just asked for tuna hash, baked beans and grape juice, when the flash had come, the pain and the darkness…Everything afterwards had been — was — personal.

He heard the soft footfall of a woman.

'It was a good question, Mr Hegner. He met neither the facilitator nor the bomb-maker. He says he heard men talking last night. They were fearful, both about the target reconnaissance and the makeup of the device. What he heard, was not supposed to but did, the Scorpion and the Engineer would have returned next week or the week after. I suppose that means they're out of the country. Does that help you, Mr Hegner? Is it enough to justify your trip?'

'Thank you, Captain, you done good.'

On the drive out to the runway where the small jet was parked, he phoned Cindy in Riyadh and told her what he wanted. He apologized to the senators and their staffers, already strapped in their seats, for having caused the delay in their schedule, and nestled down to doze.

They chewed it, dogs with a dry, meatless bone.

In Riverside Villas, Dickie Naylor shuffled between meetings. The building's lights now blazed down on the Embankment and spread far enough to glimmer on the river. All day, he had stood his ground firmly enough to dictate that it was he who ran the section, not Mary Reakes, and would run it for one further week.

He hustled along a gloomy upper-floor corridor and she was in his wake.

He rapped on the door of the assistant director, Tristram, to whom he reported. It would be the last meeting of the day, and his age wearied him. He had been up since six, out of his front door by seven and in his office by eight. Tiredness seeped through him. He had met with the surveillance people, the immigration teams who watched over ferry and airports, the duty liaison man from Special Branch, the Anti-Terrorist unit and, last, the security official from the Dutch embassy. The assistant director had driven back from a family christening in the north-west.

Naylor was called inside. He gave a résumé of what he knew, precious little.

Maybe he'd stumbled over his words too many times.

Mary would have done it better, more crisply, but he had the determination. He finished and pushed across the table the three photographs of a boy from a distant land: one showed a shadowed figure, black and white, caught on a CCTV camera at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport; another, similarly grainy, revealed the same boy coming into Arrivals at Schiphol, Amsterdam's airport, same T-shirt, easily recognizable. The third was a colour portrait of the boy, Ibrahim Hussein, who wore on his head and shoulders a loosely wound khaffiyeh cloth. In none of the pictures was there an indication of threat, danger. He had a pleasant face with a wisp of shyness in his eyes and modesty at his mouth. Naylor was reflecting that it was impossible, from the boy's features and expression and from the calm of his gait at King Khalid and at Schiphol, to believe that the threat and the danger were real. A pencil tapped the table in front of him and his head started up. Beside him he glimpsed Mary Reakes's eyebrows roll upwards.

'You all right, Dickie?' Tristram asked.

'Yes, yes.'

'Don't mind me saying it, but you look knackered.'

'I'm fine, thank you.'

'Well, that's that…So, where do we go? Let's throw it around.'

He had his hand over his mouth as if that would hide his yawn but it engulfed him. 'Sorry about that. We go with the intelligence. If it's necessary for a lock-down in London, so be it. We jack up the threat status. I don't see the alternative.'

There was the hiss of Mary's breath. Then she chipped, 'It's hardly "intelligence", more like a bucket of supposition. What we have is a deception about a visit to family in Yemen and a flight to Holland. The rest is all theatrical. I suggest we wait until the Dutch have brought us more, picked him up or provided proof of his leaving their territory. Simply put, we don't have enough.'

Sensing the opportunity, Naylor hit out, 'It will not be me, I assure you, who will ever lay himself open to the accusation that I was the man who ignored the intelligence, or supposition, indicating the risk of an imminent atrocity.'

The assistant director kept his silence but twisted the pencil faster.

She said, 'That's a cheap shot, Dickie. I'm saying we don't have enough to ratchet the threat status. The intelligence isn't there. We cannot do lock-down — with all that it costs, and the manpower — until we know more. We should watch, listen and learn, then decide. In my experience, the American community are paranoid and hysterical. Bluntly, they cry, "Wolf."'

Her experience, Naylor knew, was substantial and growing. She had been fast-tracked after a degree in Islamic Studies, first-class honours, was fluent in Arabic, had worked in Northern Ireland with distinction, then run a desk in D Branch and had been integral in the team that had put seven young Muslims from the home counties into the cells at Belmarsh. If Mary Reakes hadn't been snapping at his heels, hadn't had the paint chart ready, he would have admired her. But he could feel her breath on his ankles and he loathed her. 'I doubt we have time to dither,' he said.

How many times had he sat in meetings since Nine-Eleven, more particularly since Seven-Seven1 where scraps of intelligence had been thrown into the ring? Endless hours spent digesting little morsels of information. Mornings, afternoons and evenings exhausted with staring at fuzzy or focused photographs of the supposed enemy, and all the little bastards smiled at whatever camera had caught them.

'Emotive language, Dickie,' she said. 'Only trouble is that you don't have enough for lock-down.'

There was a knock at the door.

Tristram called, 'Please, come in.'

It was Penny. She tiptoed across the carpet, dropped an envelope on to the table, and was gone.

Naylor opened it. A photograph spilled clear and a three-line note. He read, then passed the note to Mary. No satisfaction showed on his face. He stared down at the grey images. He saw her jolted, and she pushed the note across the polished surface.

In a flat voice, Tristram intoned, 'Well, Immigration's cameras at Waterloo's terminal would seem to me to suspend the argument. Rather fortunate that our friend is wearing that ludicrously recognizable T-shirt. What is it — a swan? Peculiar, bizarre, but it's him and he's here.'

Mary said, 'Actually, it's The Threatened Swan, by Jan Asselyn, early seventeenth century, housed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Last year, on a trip with my art-appreciation group, I saw it. It's impressive and—'

'I think, Mary, that it is not the moment for an assessment of Asselyn's work; I'll brief the director in the morning, but you can take it as read. It's lock-down and bugger the budget. Thank you, Mary. Dickie, would you, please, stay on for a moment?'

She swept up the photograph and the note and left them.

He was waved back to his seat and offered a drink. Didn't usually accept alcohol at work, but said he'd have a Scotch with ice and liberal water. It was given him and the assistant director perched on his desk, let his feet swing.

'She's a bright girl, has a brain on a computer's scale, just needs a bit of polishing round the edges — please, Dickie, don't huff and puff, because you're not good at it. You're right, of course. You saw it coming before that wretched photograph surfaced and that's because you're an old-school warrior. Suspicion, like malaria, gets into the veins and stays there. You've got it, a bad dose…Anyway, cheers and good health.'

Glasses were raised, clinked.

'I'm going to miss you, Dickie. Very sincerely, I will. Two reasons. First, my being something of a protégé of your father-in-law but, second, for your common sense and good reasoning. I'd, keep you on if I could. Human Resources wouldn't hear of it. I can't. On Friday night, Dickie, you finish. Now to the point. You wouldn't disagree with me if I suggested that we wriggled through by the skin of our teeth after the Underground and bus bombs — what the Iron Duke said after Waterloo is appropriate: "The nearest run thing that you ever saw." The knives were out for us but we were only nicked, and that won't be repeated. Another major catastrophe in London and there'll be a wholesale cull of the veterans, and those bloody little people in Anti-Terrorism will be crawling all over us and taking primacy. Lifetimes of endeavour, Dickie, yours, mine and many others', will be reduced to dust and ashes. You're following me?'

Naylor nodded. The decanter was eased closer to him and his glass was refilled.

'I called you an old-school warrior. You're from former times. Their benefit was that we concentrated on prevention, not the gathering of evidence to set before a court. Kept the Soviets at bay, the realm intact, and the dock at the Old Bailey hardly mattered. We won't have time on this one for evidence, only — if we're very lucky — for action and that's the "action', Dickie, of an old-school warrior. We may — and you have to believe that Fortune will look kindly on us — find, or have offered to us, a small window of opportunity in the hours before the inevitable detonation of the bomb that will, I have no doubt, be carried by this ghastly young man to a point of maximum impact. Only a small window — are you following me, Dickie?'

He lifted his glass as acknowledgement. He was.

'I take no pride in saying it, but the new broom — the Mary Reakeses of our Service — are so damned moral. They care for the fine print of legality. You don't, Dickie, and probably I'd follow in your lane. The attack will be this week, that's a certainty, and it will be on your watch, Dickie. If that window were to open I'd like to think you'd know how to scramble through it with vigour, and without the constraints of a more conventional morality. It's in your past, am I correct? It's a different war and we may have to dirty our hands. I'm sure you know what's necessary…Thanks for staying on, and my best regards to Anne.'

Naylor took the stairs down.

Mary looked up from her screen. She said briskly, 'Well, you were right and I was wrong. We're going into lock-down. Oh, the source of it all will be here in the morning, Mr Josiah Hegner.'

'By whose invitation?'

'Not mine; He invited himself.'

He felt a net tightening round him, like the noose on the neck of a prisoner when, long ago, they were taken to interrogation. He seemed to see mud and filth encrusted on his hands.

'Hello. Surprise, surprise. Is that meeting over already, Banksy?'

'No, still in full swing.'

The armoury used by the Delta and Golf and Kilo teams was in the police station's basement. It was the territory of Daff, a predictable Welshman in blue overalls, who clung with adhesive commitment to his Caerphilly accent. Behind the counter, stacked on racks, was weaponry sufficient to start a small war. It was where Banks came any time there were demons in his mind, and he found comfort there — never failed to. Late on that Sunday evening, he needed it bad.

'Beg pardon, I'm not understanding you, Banksy. Big flap, everybody in, pagers bleeping. Why aren't you sitting in?'

'Not wanted,' Banks said grimly. 'Had the door shut on me.'

'That's ridiculous, a man like you and with your experience, daft…I have to say, Banksy, I had heard there was friction in the Delta lot.'

'A bit of friction, but I didn't think it would come to this. I was told there was a query about me, about my commitment. I was put out of the briefing before it started.'

The shock was still with him. The inspector had said, 'Sorry and all that, Banksy, but your pager going was a mistake. You won't be involved in the security up-grade. You shouldn't have been called in. My regrets that we screwed your evening. Drop by tomorrow and I'll set the picture out for you, if I've time.' He had stood and walked up the aisle in the briefing room, had known that every eye was on him but he had looked straight ahead. Outside the room he had heard the door shut behind him and a key had turned. He'd leaned against a corridor wall, shaking, then headed for the only place he knew where he could find comfort: Daff's basement.

'I suppose it's the little woman,' the armourer said, confidential; dropping his voice. 'Three years, isn't it? The world moves on and you have to forget her. Have I told you that FBI recruiting story about women?'

He could have said that the friction inside Delta had nothing to do with any of the scratchiness in his relationship with the others, the old tensions his divorce had created. Mandy did not figure, but if he had disabused Daff he wouldn't hear the story: the armourer's reputation for stories was gold-medal standard.

'You haven't,' Banks said drily, 'but I expect you will.'

The lilted tale began. 'It's like this…The FBI had an opening for an assassin, a dedicated killer. After all the security checks and interviews they were down to a short-list of three: two men and a woman. For the final test, the FBI's Human Resources took the first man to a big metal door and handed him a Smith & Wesson, and said, "We must know that you will obey orders to the letter, no matter what. Inside the room your wife is sitting in a chair. Kill her." The first man said he could never shoot his wife, and he was told, "You're not the right man for us. Take her and go home." The second man was given the same order and he took the pistol and went into the room. There were five minutes of quiet. Then he came out with tears on his face and said he had tried but finally realized he could not kill his wife. He was told, "You don't have what it takes, go on home with her." It was the woman's turn. Her husband was in the room, sitting in the chair, and she was to shoot him. She took the gun and went inside. Shots were heard, one after another, the whole magazine. Outside, they heard screams, crashes and bangs, then everything went quiet. Would have been at least three minutes more, then the door opened slowly and the woman stood there. She wiped sweat off her forehead and said, "This gun was loaded with blanks. I had to use the chair to kill him." Women for you, Banksy.'

He laughed. He laughed till it hurt. He realized it was the first time he had laughed, from deep in his belly, in the eleven days since the funeral — since he had been handed the diary kept by Cecil Darke. 'I like it.'

'Is it women? You got women aching in your gut?'

'No…Daff, it's a bit worse than women.'

The armourer's face contorted in mock horror. 'God, that bad? Then you have my sympathy, Banksy. Well, go on, chuck it up.'

He had come to the basement, to his friend — perhaps the only one he had — to get himself up against a shoulder that would take the burden of his problem. He spoke, haltingly at first, of words written seventy years before 'in a foreign land' and he quoted the verse of Psalm 137, and Daff knew it from chapel in childhood, and he said what had happened in the canteen, kids' play ending in spilt blood, and that he was damned if he would apologize when he had no guilt.

Blinking, Banks said, 'What it's come down to is that there is now a doubt as to my dedication to the job. Would I, because of what I said of my great-uncle, have the ruthlessness to shoot a suicide-bomber who might just be a "brave and principled" young man? Would I hesitate at that moment, going into double tap, and not think of him as a scumbag, a rabid animal, who should be killed — like it was in the Underground train? In their minds, the doubt exists.'

'No one knows, Banksy, how they'd be.'

'There's enough who talk up the macho stuff.' Banks's bitterness flowed. 'Plenty who say they're sure. I'm no longer trusted.'

The face across the counter brightened. 'Did you read that one about the suicide-bomber in Baghdad the other day? You didn't? It's real, it happened, went like this. A suicide-bomber drives his bomb-primed car right under an American M1A1 main battle tank and lodges beneath it and between the tracks and it weighs more than sixty tons. The crew hop out, think it's a road traffic accident and find this guy pinned in his crushed car. He tells them he's a martyr but the way the car's squashed he can't reach the switch to detonate himself. But he still dies, because they do a controlled explosion that kills him, but the tank isn't damaged. What do you think God told him when he got there? "Dear me, you look miserable, have a bad day at work?" You're not laughing now, Banksy.'

'No, I'm not. It's a new war and a new enemy, and maybe they are brave and principled. I don't have the answers — others do, but not me. Daff, I feel like I'm flawed.'

'What do you want me to say?'

'Don't know.'

'Well, I'll offer this. If you're in shit, get clear of it. If you're in a quagmire, crawl out of it. Hack on in there, Banksy, don't let the bastards destroy you. Always believe it, something'll turn up.'

'If only it were that easy. I'll see you, Daff.'

At the top of the stairs to the basement he met the crowd of Delta, Golf and Kilo guys and was ignored. Without him, with their briefing finished, they went to draw their weapons.

She sat on the bed and her silent sobbing shook her. From the next room, she could hear the beat of Kathy's music. Beside her, on the duvet, was the brown-paper package with one end torn open and the banknotes exposed.

She had found it an hour earlier when she had brought the ironing upstairs and two pairs of his socks had fallen as she had stacked his clothes on the wardrobe's shelves. The socks had dropped among the shoes at the bottom. It was so obviously hidden and not intended that she should discover it. She had, and she had ripped back the paper. It was more money than she had ever seen. She knew of no reason, other than a criminal one, for so many banknotes to be in her house.

The door clicked downstairs. His voice called, 'Hi, love, you up there? Everything fine? Mum and Dad send their love.'

She heard his footsteps on the stairs and pushed the package further away from her, so that he would see it better when he came into the room.

She wiped her eyes and twisted to face him, contempt coursing through her. She saw his face go ashen.