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being told, and appeared unsurprised by their involvement.
    Since then there had been three more meetings at the evening institute. Sohail kept a record of the comings and goings at the bookshop in an encrypted online file on his laptop, and as a Special Branch officer kept unobtrusive watch in the corridor outside, he read off his reports to Liz. None of the information he had provided had been as momentous as the report of al Masri’s presence, but it was clear that the bookshop was a key staging-post for, in Special Branch parlance, “the Bin-Men.” If there was a big operation going down in the UK involving any of the ITS groups, the chances were that Sohail—Marzipan—would be aware of the advance ripples. Potentially, he was intelligence gold.
    The last meeting had been a difficult one—for Liz at least. She had asked Sohail if he would consider putting off university for a further year in order to remain in place at the bookshop, and for the first time she saw the twenty-year-old flinch. He had been counting, Liz knew, on being free of the intense pressure of his double life by the following autumn. The sense of an end-date had probably made the whole business supportable. And now she was asking him to remain there for a further twelve months—twelve months in which, for all she knew, anything could happen. Pressure might be put on him to undergo training as an undercover fighter—several of the young men who had drunk mint tea and talked of jihad in the bookshop’s upstairs room had made the journey to Pakistan and the camps. At the very least the delay would seriously threaten his dream of becoming a lawyer.
    His distress had been almost invisible—a momentary shudder behind his eyes. And then, with a quiet smile, as if to reassure Liz that all would be well, he had agreed to continue.
    His bravery had wrung Liz’s heart. She prayed that she would never have to meet Sarfraz and Rukhsana Din, never have to tell them that their son had died for his faith and his country.
    “Bad one?” asked Dave Armstrong from the next desk.
    “You know how it is,” said Liz, exiting the Marzipan file and kicking her chair back from the desk. “Sometimes this job can be really shitty.”
    “I know. And that supposed goulash I saw you tackling in the canteen can’t have improved your mood either.”
    Liz laughed. “It was kind of a wild choice. What did you have?”
    “A sort of chicken thing, glazed with Ronseal.”
    “And?”
    “It did exactly what it said on the tin.” His hands flickered briefly over his keyboard. “How was the meeting this morning? Legoland team fashionably late again, I hear.”
    “I think they were making a point,” said Liz. “There was a new guy there. Ex-Harrovian. Rather pleased with himself.”
    “Don’t tell me MI6 have started recruiting smug ex–public schoolboys,” murmured Dave. “That I can’t believe.”
    “He stared at me,” continued Liz.
    “With or without shame?”
    “Without.”
    “You’ll have to kill him. Kick him in the ankle with your pointy shoes, Rosa Klebb–style.”
    “OK . . . hang on a sec.” Liz leaned forward towards her screen, where an icon had appeared. She clicked her mouse.
    “Trouble?”
    “Flash from German liaison. UK driving licence ordered from one of the fake documents guys in Bremerhaven. Four hundred marks paid. Name requested, Faraj Mansoor. Ring any bells?”
    “No,” said Armstrong. “Probably just some illegal migrant who wants to rent a car. Or some poor sod who’s been banned from driving. You can’t shout terrorist every time.”
    “Six reckons there could be an ITS invisible on the move.”
    “Where from?”
    “One of the North West Frontier Province camps.”
    “Definitely?”
    “No. Just smoke.” She saved the message and scrabbled the mouse to check her messages.
    The office door swung open and a hard-faced young man in an Aryan Resistance T-shirt strolled in.
    “Yo, Barney!” said Dave. “How’s the