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Kilo-Whiskey Seven. Fifty metres from the tube station.’
    Khan let Target One drift slightly ahead. As a Muslim operative for MI5, he was one of only a small handful of intelligence officers whose sole task was to infiltrate British Islamic society and investigate potential links to terrorism. Historically, western intelligence agencies had difficulty infiltrating such closed communities, but Khan, a British Pakistani and former practising Muslim, had little difficulty blending in. His well-rehearsed cover story was always watertight, his natural discretion and unobtrusive manner lending itself perfectly to the painstaking task of intelligence gathering. But there was little real success.
    During an eight-year career, his undercover work had led to many arrests, but those had been mostly for immigration or counterfeiting offences, a fair amount of drug seizures and benefit fraud. Peanuts, as far as Khan was concerned. What he wanted was a major terror bust to improve his case figures; but this wasn’t like the old days, when young radicals wore their loyalties on their sleeves and the targets were easy to identify. No, things had changed in the last decade. As the years passed, the firebrands had ceased their recruitment drives, the foreign Imams no longer spreading their messages of hate in the mosques and madrassas of Britain. The Jihad had gone dark.
    There used to be plenty of Muslims who spoke quietly about taking up arms and fighting for the Islamic cause, even the so-called moderates, who quietly supported the fighters and performed their own brand of Jihad. In the early days, Khan had heard their whispered conversations, watching, listening, until all he was left with were words. No plans ever materialised, no operations were ever given the green light. It was as if the word had come down from on high: ‘No more talk of Holy War, of struggle and sacrifice. Let the Infidels be deafened by our silence.’
    Khan didn’t believe it. The conflict had lasted for over fourteen hundred years, an enduring state of mind, the raison d’être of an ideology that just couldn’t be switched off overnight. Along with other operatives, Khan had warned his superiors, understanding only too well the practice of Taqiyya, the cloak of deceit that the Qur’an permitted in order to fool unbelievers. But politics prevailed, the mind-set of appeasement that permeated the corridors of power in Whitehall stalling fresh lines of investigation, of surveillance and tracking. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab world, culminating in the formation of the state of Arabia, was directly linked to the scaling down of Islamic-related terror investigations. Khan had viewed the move as foolish.
    Target One was a case in point. Khan was under increasing pressure to justify the man hours and expenditure for continued surveillance on a subject that had yet to yield anything of any significance. Target One had come to the attention of the security services some time ago, a raid on his house producing a computer filled with Jihadist video files, large amounts of cash that couldn’t be accounted for, blank passports and credit cards found hidden under floorboards in an upstairs bedroom. Target One’s lawyer had argued successfully that the property was a halfway house for overseas travellers, that Target One couldn’t be linked to the cash or passports, that his computer had been used by others, now long gone. He’d walked, as Khan knew he would. But the trips to Arabia continued, final destination unknown, MI6 being virtually redundant in the Holy State.
    Target One was in his thirties, like Khan, with a slim build and a short-cropped beard. There was something wrong about the man, Khan’s gut instinct told him, but his superiors were tiring of Khan’s hunches, had given him a month to produce evidence – hard, concrete evidence – or else the plug would be pulled. So Khan had worked for the past eight days straight, desperately