‘I’ve got Scotland Yard down my throat. I’ve got Special Branch down my throat. I’ve got the Home Secretary down my throat. I’ve got the Foreign Office down my throat. I’ve got MI6 down my throat. I’ve got the Minister of Defence down my throat, and now I’ve got the bloody Libyans down my throat as well. It’s bloody lucky I had my tonsils out, or I’d be choking to death. The Prime Minister wants a special report, the press are crawling in every orifice in the wall. Did you have to kill them all? Did you really have to shunt them under that lorry?’

‘I was just trying to stop them.’

‘Well, you succeeded, Flynn, didn’t you? You certainly stopped them. The Cultural Attaché to the Libyan Embassy, his private secretary, the Deputy Minister for Arts, and Libya’s leading expert on icons.’

‘They shouldn’t go around cutting people’s heads off and shooting at people.’

‘There were no knives and no guns found in the wreckage of that car.’

‘Then, with no disrespect, sir, they must have eaten them.’

Fifeshire had been very upset by the news Ahmed had given about Donald Frome. Reports had stopped coming through, which indicated Frome was in trouble. He was one of Fifeshire’s key moles, and had successfully infiltrated the international terrorist circuit and gained a position of considerable trust. If he was blown or dead, it would take years to replace him, and if what Ahmed had said was true, by now he was almost certainly both. Further, the news Ahmed had relayed, about the threat to nuclear power stations, did nothing to alter his mood. It fitted in with a lot of feedback Fifeshire had been getting lately from some of his other sources.

It was this not entirely amicable meeting with Fifeshire which had led to my study of the British nuclear energy industry, its power stations and its organizations; which in tum had led to the twenty-four-hour surveillance of Whalley; which led to the tape frozen on the screen to the right of Fifeshire’s desk. Nothing suspicious whatsoever had checked out about the four Arabs who had been crushed to death in their car, and it was on my persuasion alone that Fifeshire had, with not a little reluctance, sanctioned the whole study. I was going to have a lot to answer for if I didn’t come up with the goods. Today, however, was the first bright day. I could tell by the expression on Fifeshire’s face that, although we hadn’t yet found the pot of gold, we had at least stumbled across what might turn out to be a rainbow.

‘What makes you so sure Sir Isaac is still in Britain, sir? He might not be in Russia, but he could be anywhere.’