"I am totally smitten with Jamilla Hughes," I said. "That's all I know for now. We enjoy each other. Why is that a bad thing?"

Sandy smiled. "I heard you the first time, Alex. You like her a lot. But you haven't told me that you're madly in love, and you're not the kind of person who settles for smitten. Right? Of course I'm right. I'm always right."

"I love you," I said.

Sandy laughed. "Well, then, it's settled. You're staying at my place tonight."

"All right. Fine," I agreed.

We both laughed, but half an hour later Sandy dropped me at my hotel off Victoria Street.

"You think of anything?" I said as I climbed out of the taxi.

"I'm on it," said Sandy, and I knew she was as good as her word, and I needed all the help I could possibly get in Europe.

Chapter 62

Henry Seymour lived not too far from the Weasel's hideout on Edgware Road in the area between Marble Arch and Paddington that is sometimes known as Little Lebanon. Colonel Shafer walked to the former SAS member's flat that morning, and as he trudged along, he wondered what had happened to the city, his city, and to his bloody country as well. What a dismal scene.

The streets were filled with Middle Eastern coffee shops and restaurants and grocers. The aromas of ethnic cuisines were thick in the air that morning by eight—tabbouleh, lentil soup, b'steeya. In front of a paper store two elderly men smoked tobacco through a water-filtered hookah. Bloody hell! What the fuck has happened to my country?

Henry Seymour's apartment was located above a men's clothing shop, and the Weasel went straightaway to the third floor. He knocked once and Seymour opened up for him.

As soon as he saw Henry, though, Shafer was concerned. The man had lost thirty or forty pounds since he'd seen him last, and that was only a few months ago. His full head of curly black hair was almost gone, replaced by a few scraggly tufts of gray and white frizz.

Indeed, it was a struggle for Shafer to connect this man with his former army mate, one of the best demolition experts he'd ever seen. The two had fought side by side in Desert Storm and then again as mercenaries in Sierra Leone. In Desert Storm, Shafer and Seymour had been part of the Twenty-second SAS Regiment mobility troop. Mobility's primary mission was to go behind enemy lines and cause havoc. Nobody was better at it than Shafer and Henry.

Poor Henry didn't look capable of causing too much havoc now, but looks could be deceiving. Hopefully, anyway.

"So, are you ready for a job, an important mission?" Shafer asked.

Henry Seymour smiled, and he was missing a couple of front teeth. "Suicide, I hope," he said.

"As a matter of fact," said the Weasel, "that's rather a nice idea."