Mackay raised his hands in modest demurral. Tanned and grey-eyed, his flannel suit murmuring unmistakably of Savile Row, he cut a glamorous figure in this generally nondescript gathering. As he leaned forward to reply to Wetherby, Geoffrey Fane watched with chilly approval. He had obviously gone to some effort to manoeuvre the younger man on to the team.

To Liz, imbued as she was with the restrained, self-deprecatory culture of Thames House, Mackay appeared slightly preposterous. For a man of his age, and he couldn’t have been more than thirty-two or -three, he was much too expensively got up. His good looks-the deep tan, the level grey gaze, the sculpted nose and mouth-were far too emphatic. This was an individual, and every ounce of her professional being rebelled against the idea, whom people would remember. For a moment, and without expression, her eyes met Wetherby’s.

With the courtesies done, the group began to work their way through the overseas reports. Geoffrey Fane started the ball rolling. A tall, aquiline figure-like a heron in chalk-stripes, Liz had always thought-Fane had built his career on MI6’s Middle Eastern desk, where he had acquired a reputation for unswerving ruthlessness. His subject was the ITS-the Islamic Terror Syndicate-the generic title for groups like Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the myriad others like them.

When Fane had finished speaking he darted his patrician gaze leftwards at his younger colleague. Leaning forward, Bruno Mackay shot his cuffs and addressed his notes. “If I might return briefly to my old stomping ground,” he began, “Pakistan liaison has reported a sighting of Dawood al Safa. Their report suggests that al Safa has visited a training camp near Takht-i-Suleiman in the tribal north-west of the country, and may have made contact with a group known as the Children of Heaven, who are suspected of involvement in the murder of a US embassy guard in Islamabad six months ago.”