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salivating over the prospect of discovering what secrets lay within.
    And one of those secrets was his.
    If it were to be discovered, everything he had accomplished would be destroyed and the Church would be lost.
    A sudden surge of anger welled up inside him and he cursed himself for his human weakness. He had delayed too long over the messy situation surrounding the Citadel. Wrenching open the door, he entered the blank corridor beyond, windowless and unexceptional save for its curved walls that followed the shape of the tower. He would demonstrate to the Group the true strength of his resolve by effectively signing four death warrants in front of them. Then they would see how committed he was; and they would be bound by blood, each to the other.
    He burst through the door into the main lobby and stalked across the marble floor, past the ATMs that gave instructions in Latin, towards the steel-framed lift that descended to the vaults in the bedrock of the building.
    The lift doors opened as he approached and Schneider jumped when he saw his master bearing down on him with fury in his eyes.
    ‘Well,’ Clementi said, stepping in and punching the button to take them straight back to the vaults. ‘Which one of our esteemed associates am I about to face?’
    ‘All of them,’ Schneider said, just as the doors closed and they started to descend. ‘The whole Group is here.’

6
    Baghdad, Central Iraq
    Dry dust clung to the evening air of Sadr City market, mixing with the smell of raw meat, ripe fruit and decay. Hyde sat across from the main market in the shade of a covered café, an imported American newspaper lying open on the table in front of him next to the sludgy remains of a small glass of coffee. Two flies were chasing each other round the saucer. In his head he placed a bet on which would take off first. He got it wrong. Story of his life.
    He picked up the glass and sipped at the muddy contents, scanning the market from behind his scratched marine-issue Oakleys. He hated the coffee in Iraq. It was boiled and cooled nine times to remove all impurities and rendered almost undrinkable in the process. At least all the boiling meant there’d be no germs in it. Most Iraqis drank it with cream and a ton of sugar to mask the taste. Hyde drank it black to remind him of home, the bitter taste fuelling his hatred of the country he didn’t seem able to escape. Black was also his favourite colour. Whenever life got too complicated and things started getting him down he would find a casino with a roulette table and bet everything he had on black, reducing his troubles to the single spin of a wheel. If he won, he would walk away with enough money to buy some peace of mind, never risking his doubled pot on another spin. If he lost, he literally had nothing left to lose. Either way, he would leave the table changed somehow. He liked the simplicity of that.
    He checked his watch. His contact was late so he waved the waiter over and watched him fill a fresh glass with the hated black liquid. He couldn’t just sit with nothing to drink, he felt exposed enough as it was. His six-foot frame and white skin made him stand out, as did the redness of his beard, so he assumed he was being watched, though he couldn’t see anyone. He picked up his paper and pretended to read, all the while surveying the crowd from behind his shades.
    Sadr City was in the eastern suburbs. Before the invasion it had been called Saddam City and before that, Revolution. But none of that changed its inherent nature: Sadr City was a slum, quickly and cheaply built at the end of the 1950s to house the urban poor. These days there were even more people here, packed into houses and apartment blocks that had already been crowded when the concrete was still wet on the walls. And the market was where they all came to do their shopping. Right now was the busiest time, with everyone stopping by on the way home from work to buy fresh food, refrigerated through the heat of