Her heart began to race. She whirled around and looked at the pitcher’s mound. The Prime Minister was preparing to throw the ball, the catcher squatting down and holding out a gloved hand.

She looked over her shoulder. The two men were moving down the stairs towards her, their hands moving inside their jackets.

“Sniper One, fire now,” she said into the microphone. “Shoot the bastard now, damn you!”

There was no reply and she realised that the microphone wasn’t working. She must have pulled it out of the socket of the transceiver when she turned. She reached behind her for the loose wire.

Kelly saw Mary Hennessy fumble for something at her waist. Something had alarmed her, and then Kelly realised what it was. Two men in suits and dark glasses were moving down the aisle parallel to her. Secret Service agents.

Kelly frowned, not sure what to do. “There she is,” said a voice behind her, and she whirled around. There were two more agents behind her, one young and one middle-aged, so similar that they could have been father and son.

“Excuse me, miss,” said the older agent, moving to get by her.

Kelly pulled out her FBI credentials and identified herself.

“Please let us by, miss, we’ll handle this,” said the younger agent. He put a hand on her arm and tried to move her. Kelly resisted.

“What’s happening?” she said, wanting to give Mary every second she could.

“She’s reaching for something, possibly a weapon,” the spotter spoke into his walkie-talkie. Through the binoculars he saw the female usher groping behind her back. Up above her, moving down the aisle past a blonde woman, were two Secret Service agents. One of them had a pistol in his hand.

“You have a green light,” replied the SWAT commander, “so long as there is no possibility of collateral damage.”

The spotter could see that there was no one directly behind the woman. There were spectators on her left and right, but not close enough to be in the way. “Green light confirmed,” he said. The spotter took the walkie-talkie away from his mouth. “Shoot the bitch,” he said.

“It’ll be a pleasure,” said the sniper, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Todd Otterman stood in the corridor while the two agents from the FBI Academy ran the fibre optic lens under the office door. Many of the businesses in the tower block had agreed to hand over keys to the Secret Service for the duration of the presidential visit, but some of the smaller offices hadn’t been contacted.

One of the FBI rookies was kneeling down and threading the cable through the gap, while his colleague looked at a small black and white monitor. The camera was one the FBI used for surveillance and it was perfect for checking those offices which were locked. Otterman and the rookies had been on the seventh floor in a travel agency whose manager had agreed to open his office late so that the agents could have a comfortable base while the game was on. They’d just been about to start drinking coffee when the call had come in to recheck the offices on the lower floors. Otterman and his two rookies had taken the fifth floor, another agent had gone to the sixth floor.