She looked at him, and he nodded, all he would offer in the way of praise but Sarah would take no offence. He was, to her, a good man to work for, and she was on board for what the operation sought to achieve. She had no qualms about its morality. She stood for a moment, hands on hips, legs slightly apart, enough to tighten the skirt across her buttocks – but it would have taken more than that to awaken any interest in him. They shared the scent of pursuit and the excitement. She went to make a cup of tea, leaving him to stare at the map.

She could remember the day when his screen had exploded into life, when a sparse file had started to thicken. No one forgot such rare, febrile days.

It was three hundred and nineteen days after Rashid, the Engineer, had sneezed over his workbench that a man walked into the lobby of the British Consulate in the Gulf Emirates city of Dubai and requested a meeting with a diplomat.

The Engineer had gone to work late because he had spent the morning with a doctor in the town of Ahvaz. His wife had been examined because of the persistent, but still relatively mild, headaches that sapped her concentration at work. The doctor had prescribed aspirin and rest, so Rashid had taken Naghmeh back to their new home, then set off for his bench at the small factory. He did not know that an Iranian had requested asylum from the British authorities and would therefore be challenged to explain his value. He did not know that a spook attached to the staff, operating under consular cover, would say, ‘You claim you are a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps – you said your unit was from the al-Quds Brigade – but I have to ask what sort of information you might bring with you that would justify from us your asylum and safety. Facts, my friend, are the currency needed.’