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been made.
    McNair and Snow had followed protocol and left the scene at once. A cover story was concocted at short notice and then calibrated overnight. The surveillance officers were anonymised and described as members of the police’s elite CO19 firearms division. It was suggested that they had fired the fatal shots. There were witnesses on the train, but pressure was put on them so that they either agreed with the official account or stated that they were (conveniently) looking the other way.
    The oak-panelled door to the conference room opened, and a smartly dressed woman stepped out. Pope glanced beyond her and saw a large circular table with a lot of severe-looking men and women sitting around it.
    ‘The committee will see you now,’ the woman said curtly.
    Snow exhaled.
    ‘Ready?’ Pope said.
    McNair stood and straightened out his suit. ‘Come on. Let’s get this over with.’
    Snow followed them both inside.

    The train was full, with smartly suited commuters heading into London for another day at work. Aamir was in the first carriage. They had split up on the platform. There was nothing to suggest that they would be compromised, but Mohammed had told them th at they needed to be careful. Three brown-skinned boys heading into London together with three heavy rucksacks might attract attention.
    All the seats were taken, so Aamir stood in the aisle, balancing himself on the headrests of the seats on either side of him. He had the rucksack on the floor between his legs. Several of the other passengers were reading from newspapers, and Aamir was able to look at them over their shoulders. The front page of the popular free sheet was dominated by a messy celebrity divorce, but in a column on the right, there was the beginning of a story that reported that an allied bomb had destroyed a school in Aleppo. Aamir could only read the first three paragraphs, but he didn’t need to read the rest to know what the story would say. Children massacred. He could almost hear Mohammed’s voice angrily denouncing the ‘imperialists’ and ‘crusaders’. He remembered the words of the clerics who distributed their sermons on CDs so that believers did not have to use the Internet to hear them. It was wrong, Aamir thought. People needed to know that it was wrong. Mohammed had explained it all to him. The only way their message would be heard was to respond in kind. They needed to use the same languag e.
    The train took fifty minutes to reach Kings Cross. Aamir was jostled by other passengers as they surged for the exit, and he wondered whether they would be so brusque and rude if they knew who he was and what he was carrying. What he was here to do. They don’t know yet, he thought, but they will. They all will.
    He disembarked and saw the back of Bashir’s head as he disappeared down into the tunnel that led to the Underground.
    He followed.

Chapter Six
    P ope, McNair and Snow took the three empty chairs at the head of the table. The conference room had not been decorated for decades. It was panelled in oak that was warped and cracked. The table was new, but so modern and cheap that it looked out of place here. It was also too big; it was four metres long and one metre wide and would have been able to accommodate fourteen men and women around it. The chairs at each end could barely be pulled out without bumping against the wall.
    The passing traffic on Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue was far enough removed to be reduced to a gentle hushing. Pope he ard a footfall in the corridor outside, the rustle of pigeons on the para pet outside the window, the whipping of a radio mast in the wind overhead, the gurgle of water in the antiquated central heating system.
    It was oppressively stuffy. Pope unbuttoned his jacket and settled in his uncomfortable chair. Snow and McNair sat on e ither side of him.
    This was a meeting of the Intelligence Steering Committee, the body that was putatively responsible for overseeing the secretive