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he said. ‘I’m not going home. I’m a soldier. I’ve got a job to do.’
    Hakeem grinned at him and held up his hand. Aamir cl asped it .
    Mohammed nodded his satisfaction. ‘If anything happens during the morning that means you are unable to carry out the operation, you must not go home. It will be too dangerous. You must come to me. There is a safe house in London. I will be there. You must come to me, and I will take care of you.’
    They said that they understood. Mohammed gave them an address and made them repeat it to him three times. It was a road in Bethnal Green. They satisfied him that they remembered it, and then he led them in prayer. Aamir closed his eyes and intoned the familiar words. The cadence was almost hypnotic, and he felt himself beginning to calm.
    When they were finished, Mohammed opened the door. ‘I have the bags,’ he said. ‘They are in the back of my car.’
    They went around to the rear of the Mazda, and Mohammed opened the boot. There were three rucksacks nestled inside. He reached down, lifted the first one out and set it on the ground. It looked heavy. He took the second and third rucksacks and put them on the ground, too. Aamir looked inside the boot and saw a large leather-bound case, the sort of case that a musician might use to carry his instrument. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t feel that he could ask. Mohammed shut and locked the boot, and then stooped to collect one of the rucksacks. He hefted it up and slung the strap over Aamir’s shoulder. The rucksack was heavy.
    ‘May Allah go with you,’ Mohammed said. ‘You will be rewarded in Paradise. Allahu akbar.’
    They repeated it. ‘Allahu akbar.’
    He hugged them, one at a time, and then got into the Mazda, backed it out of the parking space and drove it away.
    ‘This is it, boys,’ Hakeem said to them both. ‘No turning back.’
    ‘I ain’t going anywhere,’ Bashir replied.
    ‘Me, too.’ Aamir said it, and meant it, but his mouth was dry.
    ‘I’m proud of you both. I’ll see you in Heaven.’
    Hakeem nodded. ‘Let’s go.’

Chapter Five
    P ope went through his report once again.
    The shooting had been two weeks ago, but it was still fresh. It had dominated the front pages of the newspapers every day since then and had been the subject of a quickly assembled BBC documentary entitled Death of an Innocent . For a man like Pope, required to work in the shadows, the publicity was exquisitely uncomfortable. The establishment could not possibly allow the truth of his unit’s involvement to come to light – that was a rabbit hole down which no investigation could ever be allowed to stray – and an extensive cover-up had been put into play. That, too, was embarrassing.
    But it was none of his fault.
    The Metropolitan Police and MI5 were searching for the members of a terrorist cell suspected of being in the final stages of an attack on the London transport system. A member of the public had found a bag that had been discarded on a common in Wanstead, East London. The dog walker had opened the bag and discovered that it contained a pipe bomb and a detonator.
    A large police investigation and manhunt began immediately. An address in Homerton was written on a video rental shop membership card that was found inside the bag. The card was in the name of Ramzi Hassan Omar, and the address was a block of flats designated for those on low incomes. It housed a collection of worki ng-class families. Some were locals who had been driven out of the more affluent streets as property prices were pushed up by the influx of workers from the city. Others were first- and second-generation immigrants from all around the world, the kind of men and women who came to do the jobs that no native Londoners would do.
    Fèlix Rubió was a cleaner who lived in one of the flats with his sister, her husband and their children. He worked for a company with a contract to service the offices of a leading London law firm. He was due