The man moved his attention to the area south-west of the band of forest. ‘You’re aiming to HALO into this area here,’ he said. ‘The trees should give you some cover from which to make your assault. We expect most of the targets to be in the southernmost building, but we can’t guarantee that. All the buildings need to be cleared before you call in air to pick you up. We don’t expect there to be any resistance and there’s no intelligence of anything in the way of an armed guard. Once the targets have been taken out, we’ll need photographs for identification purposes.’

‘Aye, well,’ Craven piped up. ‘ Tyler can do that. Fucking takes enough pictures of the showers, don’t he?’ He accompanied his joke with a wanking motion to make sure everyone got the message.

‘All right, all right,’ the spook interrupted. ‘Estimated time of insertion: 03.00 hrs. Daylight at 04.27. You need to be well out of there by then. No more than an hour on the ground. Have you got any questions?’

Silence.

‘Good.’ The spook looked solemnly at them. ‘For gentleman of your abilities, it should be a walk in the park.’

Cullen snorted. ‘If it’s going to be so damn easy,’ he muttered in his thick Scottish brogue, ‘maybe you’d like to come along?’

The spook made some reply, but Sam didn’t hear it. He was too busy staring at the maps for a final time, recording the lie of the land, committing it to memory as he knew his patrol mates would be doing. It was a simple set-up, on the face of it. Their unit would be inside the buildings before anyone even knew they were there. The fact that there were only four buildings to clear made it even more straightforward.

Unless, of course, your objective wasn’t what it appeared to be.

As Sam examined the plans, he tried to work out where his brother might be; but it was impossible to tell. Any of these buildings could house him, and when they hit the compound he would be as much at a disadvantage as any of them. If Jacob was going to get away, he needed to be warned of their approach; but Sam couldn’t think of any way to do that without making it clear to his unit that he had compromised the mission.

Nor did he have time to give it much more thought. ‘You’ve got half an hour,’ the spook told them. ‘The aircraft are waiting. Flight time to your insertion point, about two hours.’ He looked them all individually in the eye. ‘Good luck, gentlemen,’ he said briskly. ‘I’ll be here when you get back.’

Three and a half thousand miles away, night was falling over London. The windows of the MI6 building on the Albert Embankment started to twinkle in the half-light and workers started to spill from its main entrance and hurry towards the Tube station.

Inside the building, though, plenty of people remained. Their jobs involved parts of the world in very different time zones to London, after all, so the usual boundaries of the average working day meant nothing to them. Among those offices that were still inhabited was one, high up, that overlooked the river. It was a spectacular view, with the bridges all lit up, and the occupant of that office knew he would never tire of it. He stood at the window in a well-cut suit, his tie an immaculate Windsor knot and his hands behind his back, gazing out. He was an elderly man – older, at least, than most of the people who worked for the Firm and were happy to take their retirement at sixty-five and forget all about the complexities of their working lives. Not so Gabriel Bland. Some of the younger members of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service joked that the only way he’d leave was in a box. Bland had heard the jibes and didn’t mind them. They were probably true. Others joked that he had the kind of icy demeanour that indicated he was – that he absolutely had to be – some kind of sexual pervert. These rumours were not true, but again Bland ignored them, remaining perfectly polite even to those members of the service that he knew to be the most enthusiastic champions of such gossip.

On the desk behind him there was a computer – something Bland really could not get used to – and a small pile of files. There was work to be done on them, but really he knew he would be unable to concentrate on such things. Not tonight. He looked at his watch. Nearly seven o’clock. That would make it almost midnight in Afghanistan where a covert unit were preparing to undergo a mission on his orders. Godwilling they would be successful. If not, things could become exceedingly uncomfortable…

A knock on the door. ‘Come!’ Bland called without turning.

He watched the door open in the reflection of the window. A much younger man walked in. He too wore a suit and had hair that was neatly parted to one side and flattened down with some shiny product. It was a curiously old-fashioned look for someone only in their mid-thirties. ‘Yes, Toby?’ Bland intoned.

Toby Brookes. Of late, MI6 had taken to encouraging all manner of people into the service. Brookes, however, reminded Bland of himself as a younger man. A little too eager to please, perhaps. But a good worker. Conscientious. Able to see the bigger picture. Heaven knows, Bland thought to himself, in these troubled times that was an important attribute.

‘Something’s been flagged up, sir,’ Brookes said efficiently. ‘Clare Corbett. I thought you’d want to see it.’

Bland sniffed. He allowed himself one final glance at the river, then turned to face his young assistant. ‘Be so good,’ he asked mildly, ‘as to shut the door, would you Toby?’

Brookes did as he was asked before speaking again. ‘It might be nothing,’ he said in his slightly nasal tone of voice. ‘But I thought I’d bring it to your attention.’

‘That’s most kind of you, Toby,’ Bland murmured.

‘The Met carried out a search,’ Brookes continued. ‘A billing address for a mobile phone number registered in her name.’

Bland remained silent.

‘Like I say,’ Brookes continued, suddenly sounding a little less sure of himself. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘When was this request processed, Toby?’

The younger man examined a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Tuesday night,’ he said. ‘Forty-eight hours ago. I guess it took a while to come through the system.’

Bland turned once more to look out of the window. ‘Do you know who the police officer in question is who requested this information?’ He watched Brookes’s reflection as he once more looked at his sheet.

‘A DI Nicola Ledbury.’

‘I see.’ Bland furrowed his hairy, eagle-like eyebrows. ‘I wonder, Toby, if I might ask you to invite Miss Ledbury to come and have a brief word with us.’

‘Of course.’

He turned again and allowed a friendly smile to spread across his lips. ‘Tonight, Toby. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’

Brookes nodded and gave his superior a look that showed he understood.

‘Thank you, Toby,’ he said quietly. And as the young man slipped out of the room, he returned to his place at the window, surveying the splendour of that scene as he calmly slotted this new piece of information into the jigsaw of his mind. It worried him that he could not yet see the whole picture.

Bagram airbase. Midnight.

Before the off, the unit spent every spare moment checking and rechecking their rigs. There was no banter; there was hardly any conversation at all as they went about the business of getting kitted out. Sam approached the runway knowing that his freefall rig was firmly strapped to his body. He had checked the chute several times and strapped his weapon to his side. As he carried his rucksack and helmet away from the aircraft hangar in the company of the rest of the unit, he couldn’t help but feel the familiar sense of tension that always preceded a HALO jump.