“This is all you have? Some snapshots of Ahmed’s holiday in London? No train tickets? No rental car receipts? No e-mail intercepts? No visual or audio surveillance?”

“They were here on a surveillance mission four months ago. And his name isn’t Ahmed. It’s Samir.”

“Samir what?”

“Samir al-Masri, Hudsonstraat 37, Oud West, Amsterdam.”

Seymour looked at the photo of Samir standing in front of the Houses of Parliament. “Is he Dutch?”

“Egyptian, as far we know.”

“As far as you know? What about the other members of this phantom cell? You have any names?”

Gabriel handed him a slip of paper with the other names Ibrahim Fawaz had given him in Amsterdam. “Based on what we know, the cell was operating out of the al-Hijrah Mosque on the Jan Hazenstraat in west Amsterdam.”

“And you’re sure he’s Egyptian?”

“That’s the flag he was flying in Amsterdam. Why?”

“Because we’ve been picking up some chatter recently among some of our more radical Egyptian countrymen.”

“What sort of chatter?”

“Blowing up buildings, bringing down bridges and airplanes, killing a few thousand people on the Underground—you know, the usual things people discuss over tea and biscuits.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

Seymour hesitated, then said, “Finsbury Park.”

“But of course.”

There was perhaps no more appropriate symbol of Britain’s current predicament than the North London Central Mosque, known commonly as the Finsbury Park mosque. Built in 1990 with money donated by the king of Saudi Arabia, it was among the most radical in Europe. Richard Reid, the infamous shoe-bomber, had passed through its doors; so had Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called twentieth hijacker, and Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian terrorist who was arrested shortly before the millennium for plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. British police raided the mosque in January 2003—inside they discovered such sacred items as forged passports, chemical-protective suits, and a stun gun—and eventually it was turned over to new leadership. It was later revealed that one member of the new board of trustees was a former Hamas terror mastermind from the West Bank. When the former terrorist gave the British government assurances that he was now a man of peace, he was permitted to remain in his post.

“So you think Samir is the cell leader?”

“That’s what my source tells me.”

“Has your source ever been right in the past?”

“Do you remember that plot to shoot down an El Al jetliner at Schiphol last year?”

“The one that the Dutch broke up?”

“The Dutch didn’t break it up, Graham. We broke it up, with the help of this same source.”

Seymour looked down at the photographs. “It’s not much to go on,” he said, “but I’m afraid it does fit the profile of a major attack scenario we’ve developed.”

“What sort of scenario?”