Adrian leant closer, careful not to let his eyes jump to contact with the man now passing them. But even as he pretended to read, the giddiness of the clandestine overcame him. He’d heard that anecdote about Walters before and now he was right in the middle of making an anecdote to match it. Or almost match it. The first man into Port Stanley! The Beast really was fantastic. Even this nothing-seeming man traipsing behind him – what dazzling wheezes he must have pulled off in his time!

Jeremy, for his part, merely glanced at these two unknown men who’d so blatantly stopped talking when he appeared. He didn’t recognize them, which was unusual, but there were always people plotting and machinating in the corridors, and who was he to know every skulker and skulduggerer with a job here? He didn’t even want to listen to what they were saying; his day was already bad enough without getting mixed up in anyone else’s. And that morning’s developments in the story – the army moving in to guard train stations, airports and town centres; a Muslim crowd in Bradford turning on the police – had provoked the newsroom into nervous aggression. Worst of all, someone had burnt down another paper shop, albeit without killing anyone this time. He’d already heard Geraldine telling someone on the phone, ‘If the rotter so much as mumbles Allahu Akbar, you have my blessing to pre-emptively kick his head in.’

He carried on past them and, once his scuffing footsteps were out of earshot, Adrian spoke in a voice pressurized with excitement: ‘We have to have our wits very, very much about us, Gavin. Anything could happen now we’re in here.’

‘OK,’ said Gavin. ‘It’s not that great though, is it?’

Adrian couldn’t understand. ‘What are you— what do you mean?’

Gavin shrugged in a way that made Adrian glad he’d never had children. ‘I thought it’d be like a Bond villain’s base in here, all flashing lights and touchscreens and, you know, airlocks, and super-slick. But it’s basically a bit crap, isn’t it? It looks like Thatcham Community Centre.’

‘Gavin. We are inside what may today be the most powerful news organization in the world. Its staff are geniuses of news. They’ve just smashed a jihadi bombing ring that MI5 couldn’t find and broken a story that’s being talked about right now in every country that even has the news.’ He allowed some of his happiness to show itself. ‘And we, you and me, the quiet modest little Thatcham and Newbury Echo & Advertiser, are going to turn the tables and report on them.’

‘So far we can report that they’ve got torches in their store cupboard. And that sleeping on the floor with a boiler suit for a pillow is actually pretty shit.’