Sahim’s jacket wasn’t bulging at all. Whatever device he had attached to himself didn’t have to be that big. He was there to kill one man – maybe two, if he did it well. All he had to do was make contact with his targets and they would be history. A couple of thin slabs of PE, no more than a kilogram each, rolled out over him like pastry, a battery and a detonator: that was all it took to do the trick. All he had to do was bide his time, then run, barge, push, whatever it took, to get within a couple of metres, make a grab for his target and detonate.

As Tom followed the polished black shoes through the crowd, nothing else mattered. He barely noticed when, from above him somewhere, a band struck up the rousing chords of ‘Hail to the Chief’. The President had arrived.

The shoes stopped next to a woman’s. Tom looked up at the blue dress just in time to see Sahim hand her something half the size of a mobile phone. She didn’t look down, just palmed it. The initiation device. He almost smiled: it was such a simple plan. Sahim would do the running and grabbing; she would do the detonation. He might get only halfway to his target before he was shot; he might grab hold of the President but be unable to detonate because he was restrained at the last second. It was a simple plan and a perfect one. She was detached from the action, had a clear line of sight . . . She was using him as her own personal human drone.

Tom shifted his attention. All his focus now was on the woman and the small device she’d been given, which she held in her left hand. All he could hear was his pulse pounding in his temples.

The President and the prime minister were stepping up onto the podium at the far end of the room, doing a stilted double-act as they each encouraged the other to speak first.

There was an eruption of polite laughter as the music stopped and the prime minister said something amusing to the people in the front row, which they heard before all the mics went on.

Sahim looked at the woman and they stared into each other’s eyes. She finally broke the spell and kissed him on the lips, just as the prime minister began to welcome everybody to the event.

Sahim eased his way forward again and Tom let him go. The monkey didn’t matter, only the organ grinder. She was the one with the fate of the world in her hands.