Carr nodded. ‘I will speak to Guy, by the way,’ he said. ‘Count on it.’

‘Do,’ said Nicholls.

Carr stood and stuck out his hand.

‘That’s me, then,’ he said.

Nicholls shook his hand and Carr left.

As he took the stairs down, he pulled out his mobile and dialled a number.

It was answered by Oleg Kovalev, head of security for Konstantin Avilov, and therefore Carr’s boss.

‘Oleg,’ said Carr. ‘I need to take some leave.’

Chapter 65.

65.

TWELVE HUNDRED MILES south, Zeff Mahsoud stepped out of arrivals, underneath the blue lettering which read Aeroport de Tunis-Carthage, and into the stifling humidity of a North African night.

He crossed the road, and walked right, towards six flagpoles bearing the red Tunisian flag, where he stopped. There he made a big show of searching for something – a wallet, perhaps, or his passport – while checking to see if he’d been followed.

TU791 had landed at the fag end of the day, not long after the Madrid flight and half an hour before the scheduled arrival of the day’s final inbound aircraft, the Paris-Orly service, so the place was relatively quiet by default. Even so, Mahsoud had waited in the airport lavatory for twenty minutes, to allow his fellow passengers time to disperse, and to give himself a better chance of seeing a tail.

Apart from a few policemen and the odd straggler, he could see no-one – certainly no-one to raise suspicions. Still, he walked on for another fifty yards, before turning left and walking back parallel to the terminal building, towards an identical set of six flags. Near there he halted again, and now he stood for ten minutes, back against the hard-ridged trunk of a palm tree which kept much of the orange overhead light off him, as though waiting for someone.

Finally, as satisfied as he could be, he walked back to the terminal building and got straight into the first in a line of yellow taxis at the rank, hefting his bag in alongside himself.

The driver, who was leaning on the bonnet of the Toyota and chatting to another cabbie, hopped behind the wheel and turned to Zeff.

‘Where to, my friend?’ he said.

‘Café M’Rabet,’ said Mahsoud, in passable tounsi, a local variant of Arabic. ‘I’m meeting my friends there.’

‘Down by Ez-Zitouna mosque?’ said the driver, starting his engine and clicking on the meter. ‘In Souk el Trouk, yes?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Mahsoud.

The driver set off, and once he was clear of the airport, and out on the Boulevard Mohamed Bouazizi, he looked at Mahsoud in his mirror.

‘You don’t sound like you’re from round here, boss?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Mahsoud, watching the man’s worry beads swinging. ‘Waziristan. Originally, anyway, but now I live in England.’

As he said the word ‘England’, he allowed his lip to curl, and he saw the driver’s face crease into a smile.