‘You can send anyone. A bloody intern could handle it. Check out the intel. If it’s good, put him and his family on a plane.’

‘Our local guy has met with Yusuf but I need someone more experienced to sit down with him.’

‘So he’s a people-trafficker, this Yusuf?’

‘It sounds like it. As I said, at the moment we have little in the way of hard information. But if he has what he says he has, we could have a major Islamic State cell, or cells, already in place in the UK.’

Shepherd sighed. ‘Okay. When do I leave?’

‘I’m having your John Whitehill legend refreshed for you as we speak. The documents should be ready within the hour. The Hampstead flat still works as Whitehill’s address and we’ve been placing various bylined stories in magazines and on websites so it’s the perfect cover. Have you heard of Suruç?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘The Turks have one of their largest refugee camps there. Forty thousand Syrians, last I heard.’

‘It’s a massive set-up,’ said Willoughby-Brown, ‘basically a huge tent city with two hospitals, seven clinics, and enough schools for ten thousand kids. It’s just over the border from Syria, close to where Kurdish forces have been battling it out with Islamic State.’

‘How many refugees are there in Turkey now?’

‘Around three million,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘Even if just one in a thousand of those are Islamic State bad guys then we’re looking at three thousand potential Islamic militants in Europe. Suruç itself is relatively safe though there was a bombing there in July 2015 that killed thirty-two people.’

‘At the camp?’

Willoughby-Brown shook his head. ‘Outside a cultural centre.’

‘Nice,’ said Shepherd.

Willoughby-Brown slid a photograph across the desk. ‘This is our agent, Craig Parker. He’s been on Six’s payroll for the past ten years but he’s gainfully employed by Refugee Rescue, an NGO that’s funded mainly out of the US and the EU. Parker was in the former Yugoslavia when Six first spotted him but latterly he’s been all over the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, then Syria and Turkey as of last year. He’s reliable, a bit of a lefty, but he helps us if he thinks it’s the right thing to do.’

‘Be nice if we could all be as choosy as that.’

Willoughby-Brown chuckled drily. ‘It’s just a question of phrasing our requests in the right way,’ he said. ‘But in this case he was on the phone to us as soon as Yusuf made the approach.’

‘So Yusuf knows Parker’s with Six?’

‘Oh, God, no. Yusuf was just mouthing off and Parker said he might know someone who could help. He put him in touch with one of our people from the embassy in Ankara. That guy did the preliminary interview but Yusuf is insisting on talking to someone from London. That plays into our hands because it means you can take a look at whatever he’s got.’

‘What do we know about him?’