They had arrived in London the previous afternoon, as part of a four-man team sent up from ‘The Wing’, a covert unit within the SAS working alongside MI5 and MI6. According to the briefing they had been given, Six had uncovered intelligence of a plot by dissident rebels to assassinate Ken ‘The Viper’ Seguma, the president of the tiny but mineral-rich Central African state of Karatandu, and a close friend of the royal family. Bowman and his colleagues had been tasked with boosting the president’s security during the royal wedding.

While the other two guys on the team carried out security checks at the Abbey, Bowman and Kember had been ordered to rendezvous at the Broxbury with the president’s personal entourage. They had driven over from their hotel, stowed their armoured Land Rover Discovery in the underground car park and sent a message to the president’s flunkey to let her know they had arrived. Then they had settled down to wait.

Thirty minutes later, they were still waiting.

Kember checked his watch for the hundredth time since they’d arrived. ‘Bloody typical. Bodyguard duty. Always a pain in the arse, waiting for some fucker to show up.’

‘I thought you’d be well up for this job, Geordie,’ Bowman said. ‘Rubbing shoulders with royalty and all that.’

It was one of the worst-kept secrets at Hereford that Kember was planning to leave the Regiment in the next few months. At forty-one, he was four years older than Bowman, a veteran soldier with more than fifteen years of service under his belt. The contacts gleaned from close-protection duty for a foreign head of state could be priceless for an ex-SAS man looking for work on the private circuit.

Kember said, ‘Aye, it’ll look good on our CVs, I guess. But that’s the only good thing about this op.’

Bowman looked away, gritting his teeth. Jesus, he thought. This bloke really is a serial whinger. It’s only eight in the morning and he’s already getting on my nerves.

‘It’s not that bad, mate,’ he said, trying to lighten his mucker’s foul mood.

Kember snorted. ‘Ain’t it? We’re staying in a crap hotel, living on shite food and sitting around waiting to take orders from some jumped-up flunkey.’ He nodded at the TV. ‘And the bloke we’re safeguarding is a murderer.’

Bowman looked up. The cameras had cut away from the streets of Westminster to a grey-haired presenter in a news studio, rounding up the rest of the morning’s headlines. There was a report on the protests in Karatandu. Some sort of violent government crackdown against pro-democracy activists. People were fleeing through the streets, pursued by security forces decked out in black riot gear. Several officers opened up with tear gas canisters while their colleagues battered the helpless civilians with sticks and batons. The background was a tableau of burning cars and bloodied corpses and screaming children.