Chapter 1
Present Day
North-West Frontier, on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan
sheikh gul scowled at his congregation. “These days every Muslim must fight jihad,” he said in Pashtun, his voice rising. “When the Mongols invaded Baghdad, it didn’t help the people of Baghdad that they were pious Muslims. They died at the swords of the infidels.”
The sheikh threw his hands over his head.
“Now Islam is under siege again. Under siege in the land of the two mosques, and the land of the two rivers”—Saudi Arabia and Iraq. “Under siege here in Pakistan, where our leader works for Americans and Jews. Everywhere we are under siege,” said the sheikh, Mohammed Gul. He was a short, bearded man with a chunky body hidden under a smooth brown robe. His voice seemed to belong to someone much larger. Inside the mosque, a simple brick building whose walls were covered in flaking white paint, the worshippers murmured agreement and drew together. Brothers in arms. But their assent enraged the sheikh further.
“You say, ‘Yes, yes.’ But what do you do when prayers are finished? Do you sacrifice yourselves? You go home and do nothing. Muslims today love this world and hate death. We have abandoned jihad!” the sheikh shouted. He stopped to look out over the crowd and wipe his brow. “And so Allah has subjugated us. Only when we sacrifice ourselves will we restore glory to Islam. On that day Allah will finally smile on us.”
Except it sounds like none of us will be around to see it, Wells thought. In the years that Wells had listened to Gul’s sermons, the sheikh had gotten angrier and angrier. The source of his fury was easy to understand. September 11 had faded, and Islam’s return to glory remained distant as ever. The Jews still ruled Israel. The Americans had installed a Shia government in Iraq, a country that had always been ruled by Sunnis. Yes, Shias were Muslim too. But Shia and Sunni Muslims had been at odds since the earliest days of Islam. To Osama and his fellow fundamentalist Sunnis—sometimes called Wahhabis—the Shia were little better than Jews.
Al Qaeda, “the Base” of the revolution, had never recovered from the loss of its own base in Afghanistan, Wells thought. When the Taliban fell, Qaeda’s troops fled east to the North-West Frontier, the mountainous border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Wells had narrowly escaped an American bomb at Tora Bora, the last big fight of the Afghan war. He liked to imagine that the bomb had been guided by Glen Holmes, who had swung it away from the hut where Wells hid.
But the United States hadn’t closed the noose at Tora Bora, for reasons Wells had never understood. Thousands of jihadis escaped. In 2002, they reached the mountains of the North-West Frontier, so named by the British, since the area was the northwest border of colonial India. The North-West Frontier was a wild land ruled by Pashtuns, devout Muslims who supported Qaeda’s brand of jihad, and was effectively closed to Pakistani and American soldiers. Even the Special Forces could operate there only for short stretches.
So Qaeda survived. But it did not thrive. Osama and his lieutenants scurried between holes, occasionally releasing tapes to rouse the faithful. Every few months the group launched an attack. It had blasted a train station in Madrid, blown up hotels in Egypt and subways in London, attacked oil workers in Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, it fought the American occupiers. But nothing that had shaken the world like September 11.
Meanwhile Wells and his fellow jihadis eked out a miserable existence. In theory, Qaeda’s paymasters had arranged for Pashtun villagers to house them. In reality, they were a burden on desperately poor families. They had to earn their keep like everyone else. Wells and the half dozen Arabs living in this village, just outside Akora Khatak, survived on stale bread and scraps of lamb. Wells did not want to guess how much weight he had los

Alan Blunt, expert-but-mourning MI6 operative, sat in a bar somewhere in North London, and drank. Heavily. He didn’t know what he was drinking, he barely knew where he was drinking, and occasionally he even forgot why he was drinking, but those blissful moments failed to last long, and he was left reaching for another of whatever it was, grimacing at the taste, hoping that this one would trigger another of the wonderful mind-blanks. All too often, it didn’t.

He had no money on him, or he didn’t think he did, but he was too drunk to remember or check… so, no way of paying his bill that he cared to think about, no friend with him, and no one he could ring to bail him out – not anymore – but, for the moment, so long as he was drinking and could stay drunk, his bill didn’t seem to matter.

Blunt sloshed another shot of his poison-of-the-moment – vodka? Whiskey? Gin? Something strong and alcoholic; it didn’t matter what – into his glass and knocked it back. It took a worryingly long time for him to realise that he hadn’t actually drunk anything, and he looked at the bottle in mild indignation. How dare it finish? How dare it abandon him as well?

He thought about it for a few seconds, then gazed around himself, rather dazedly, finally spotting the bartender, and gesturing expansively at him. When the man came over, he slurred, persuasively “Getsh anower…”

“Wha’?” the man glared at him.

He gestured with the bottle. “Getsh anower…”

“Pay first this time.” The man said, harshly, taking the empty bottle from him, and slamming it down on the bar. Blunt made an ineffectual grab at it, and nearly over-balanced, despite being sat down. Gripping the bar for balance – the world suddenly seemed worryingly unstable – he stared at the barkeep with pleading eyes, and said, unsteadily,

“Sh’mine.”

“You what?”

“Sh’mine. My… bo’’le.”

“You want the… oh fine, here, have it.” The bartender slammed the bottle down next to him, and Blunt grabbed it, peering at it suspiciously in case some dregs were hiding at the bottom. Finally convinced that it was, indeed, empty, he looked the man up and down consideringly.

“You… you su-ure you don’ wan give me nuvver?” he asked, slowly.

The man – he did have a nametag, but it appeared to say something like Aracataca, but that was a city in Colombia (or was it Argentina? Or Mexico? Or Venezuela? Or was Venezuela a city as well? Were they all cities?) so he was pretty certain that wasn’t really his name. And even if it was, he wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, so he was going to steer clear of mentioning names at the moment – looked at him. “Yeah.” He said, shortly, “I’m sure. Reckon you’ve had enough, anyway.”

Blunt tried to shrug, but the bartender never saw it anyway, since he’d turned away to deal with another customer.

A gentle tap on his shoulder sent him spinning round, and off his chair; a pair of decidedly-ungentle hands hauled him back onto it. When he was firmly on his chair, he came face to rather-blurry-face with his partner.

“No’ now.” He moaned. “Can’ you peo’le leaf me ’lone f’r even a few hoursh?”

“Alan.” Tulip Shaw said, firmly. “You need to go home.”

“Don’ wan’ to. Sh’empty.”

“Yes.” She nodded, and for a second or two he thought she might say that she was sorry for his loss. If she had, he knew that he would have hit her, for the first time in their five year long partnership. But she just said, quietly, “I know it is. But you’ve got to go home; home, or somewhere else. You can always sell the house, if you want to get rid of the memories.”

“I wan’ the mem’ries.” He drawled, drunkenly, fighting against the urge to cry, because, dammit, he’d let himself go this far, but he knew what blows his self-respect could take, and it might take crying on Tulip’s shoulder, but it wouldn’t stand u