'Shouldn't I wait till you've received the Assistant Deputy Director's confirmation?' She seemed to tease.

'Take it as read. They're all callow youths and girls on AQ (Central Europe). He'll be glad to give it to someone who knows his butt from his arm. Oh, and say something nice to Wilco.'

He strode away, noisy on steel-heeled shoes.

Terrorists in bed with criminals made for formidable copulation.

He walked up the street with a plastic bag dangling heavy from his hand. It was the last time that Muhammad Iyad, the bodyguard, would need to collect food from the halal butcher in the market behind the Old Town Square, salad vegetables and bread. By the following evening they would have started on another stage of the journey.

Because this was his work and why he was respected, he tried to be as clear-headed and alert as his reputation demanded. Among the few who knew him, it was said that he was the most suspicious, most cunning of all the men given the task of minding the precious and highly valued operatives of the Organization. Coming back to the apartment on the top floor of the building in the narrow alley behind Kostecna, Muhammad Iyad used all the techniques that had long become second nature to him.

Three times between the Old Town Square and

Kostecna, he had broken the slow ambling pace of his walk, had darted round corners, then stood back flush to the doors at the entrance of old buildings and waited the necessary minute to see whether a tail would come after him. Twice he had stopped in front of women's clothes shops and positioned himself so that the reflection showed the street and both pavements behind him. Once, on Dlouha, at the entrance to the pizzeria, he had abruptly turned on his heel and gone back a hundred metres, a fast stride that would have confused men who followed him, and they would have ducked away, would have shown themselves to him, the expert. From the doorways and shop fronts and by the pizzeria, he had seen only a fog wall of tourists' bodies, local kids, striding office workers and meandering women. But that day, his mind was clouded.