“From Norah Bell, the original bitch and worse than any man, and it took a decent woman like Hannah Bernstein to shoot her dead.”

“How is Hannah?”

“Wonderful, as usual. If she didn’t work for Ferguson, I think she’d have been Chief Superintendent by now or even Commander at Scotland Yard.”

“But she loves you all too much to move on?”

“Blake, she’s still trying to reform the lot of us. You know her grandfather is a rabbi. It’s that moral perception of hers. She’s been shot to bits, had her life shortened in any number of ways, and still hangs in there trying to keep Ferguson and me in check.”

“And fails in that respect.” It was a statement, not a question.

Dillon said, “Blake, the world’s gone to hell in a handbasket. Terrorism, Al Qa’eda, all that stuff since nine-eleven, has changed everything. It can’t be combated by the old-fashioned rules of war. It isn’t like that.”

“I agree.” Blake shrugged. “A few years ago, I’d never have said that, in spite of what I had to do during my time in Vietnam. I believed in the decencies, the rule of law, justice, all that stuff. But the people we have to deal with these days – there are no rules as far as they’re concerned, so there are no rules as far as I’m concerned. I’ll take them down any way I can.”

“Good man yourself, I couldn’t agree more.” Dillon lit another cigarette. “I speak Arabic, you know that, and I’ve spent my share of time in the Middle East. Even worked for the PLO in the old days when I was a naughty boy, and I think I know the Arab mind a bit. Most Muslims in the States or the UK are decent people, interested only in making a living and raising their families, but there’s a few of them who have a different political agenda, and it’s dealing with them that’s the problem.”

“Take Morgan. English father, Muslim mother, raised a Christian,” Blake said. “I know what happened to his parents, his mother returning to the Islamic faith and Morgan finding that same faith himself. But what turned him into the assassin who tried to take out the President?”