Team Bravo, Clevinger’s team, tasked with securing first floor. Suspected nineteen hostages – twelve Britons, two German, five Italian. Five terrorists, all Serbian. Clevinger, you have come across these men before, on the killing fields of Bosnia. They are motivated, skilled in what they do best – torching villages, raping women, killing old men with single shots to the back of the head after forcing them to dig their own graves. Today they meet professional soldiers. The best of the best. The Anti-terrorist, Counter-Revolutionary Warfare Wing, of the 22^nd Special Air Service Regiment.

Situation deteriorates. Hostages disperse in panic, counter to accepted doctrine, making the rescuers’ job that much harder. With fogged-up respirators they try to deduce friend from foe. Many hostages left unattended try to escape – gung ho pick up weapons on the way and are shot by snipers as they exit into the courtyard of the castle. Shit! Shit! Shit! These are events outside of the control of the Regiment team, snipers are Italian interior ministry personnel who do not speak English and were not present at the briefings.

Milo’s second-in-command, Slobo, is holed up in a tower on the third floor with two hostages and ten kilograms of C4 strapped to him, adapted Claymore mine-clicker taped to his right wrist. Slowly does it, Clevinger. Same tactics as Gib 1988 – enormous firepower concentrated on the motor function areas of the brain, destroy the ability to send impulse commands to limbs to operate switches or plungers. In this way, Slobo is take down, but there are at least three of his men still unaccounted for. Radio net becomes frantic as Regiment team takes casualties, someone’s mike goes to permanent send and all Clevinger can hear is the grunting and swearing of someone mortally injured.

Joe Clevinger awoke to find cold wet nylon tight against his face. He grunted and kicked out, but his legs and arms were bound tight to his body. He could barely breath, the nylon was smothering him. In desperation he rolled on to his left side, clearing the obstruction from his face. He looked up into a blazing light and gasped a breath.

"Get that fucking light out of my face, Corporal Newton, and help me out of here. My fucking arms have gone to sleep."

Corporal David Newton knelt by Clevinger’s side and unzipped the goretex bivvy bag that had wrapped around the major. Clevinger shook life into his arms and pulled the rest of the bag away angrily. Newton suppressed a chuckle. He had known Major ‘Iron’ Joe Clevinger for a long time, they had been in the same troop together in the Regiment many years before. Taking the piss was a high form of endearment. He sat back on his haunches, drowned in an oversized duvet jacket, and pulled his woolly cap down over his ears. His powerful torch illuminated Clevinger struggling with the bag and his unruly limbs.

"I hope you’ve got the kettle on, Corporal, after all that gloating."

Newton rolled a steel flask across the tent floor as if it were a grenade.

"Fire in the hole."

Clevinger poured himself a steaming brew. The coffee had an edge to it, brandy or whiskey, he couldn’t tell, but it was most welcome. Clevinger stretched his neck and flexed his arms. At times like this, midnight in a wet bivvy on the side of a Welsh mountain, he felt every one of his forty five years acutely. Every parachute jump he had ever made, every trench he had ever jumped into, every man he had ever fought with were recalled in his creaking joints. He was, he often reminded himself, getting too old for this. Then he would marvel at people like David Newton, fifty one years old with hardened, lean bodies like racing whippets. They would pick David Newton’s body off the mountain someday, and in his pocket would be a pension book.

"First team due in about half an hour, boss," Newton said, sharing the coffee as Clevinger dragged on his boots and a goretex suit. The rain pattered on the tent outer. "All going well, apparently. Not bad for a bunch of civvies."

"We are all ‘civvies’ now, Mister Newton," Clevinger reminded him. "Even if we do slip back into old habits now and again."

Newton laughed at the absurd notion of calling the major ‘Joe’. He handed the mug back. As Clevinger reached for it, his right hand shook so violently that Newton withdrew the mug for a second, until the tremor had passed. Clevinger met his eyes and took the mug with a firm, steady grip. They said nothing. Newton just shrugged and backed out of the bivvy on his hands and knees. It was not an occurrence worth mentioning. A lifetime of stress produced a man with rare and specific problems. Newton knew Iron Joe Clevinger’s history intimately, had been involved in some of those same parachute jumps and fights, enough of them to understand that a shaky hand was nothing to be concerned with. But even he had been chilled by the anguished scream that had prompted him to come and wake Clevinger in the first place. Nightmares were something else entirely.

Clevinger emerged from the bivvy and stretched. He was a big man, both broad and tall, with a grizzly crewcut of greying hair that he swiftly and automatically covered with a black woolly hat that had seen better days. In a suit he looked like a nightclub bouncer, in sports gear a retired rugby player, and in a dress uniform, which he had not worn since his premature retirement from the Regiment, he looked like an actor in a war movie. Joe Clevinger had once been the pride of the Regiment, a distinguished career soldier with a chance of following the paths of Rose and de Billiere. But Milo and his Serbian thugs had put an end to that one sunny afternoon in Dubrovnik.

"Here they come, boss," said Newton, training a pocket thermal sight down the valley from their bivvy site. Clevinger could see nothing through the mist but Newton could see the red thermal signature of five men walking in single file toward them. As they emerged into clear view, Newton switched off the device and put it back into the pocket of his duvet jacket.

They had been out on the mountain for six hours, weighed down with bergen rucksacks weighing over 30kg, navigating through appalling weather with map and compass, doglegging their way between way markers manned by training staff. They were cold, wet, hungry and very very tired. These were not the trained soldiers pushing themselves toward special forces selection, the kind of men Clevinger and Newton were used to dealing with – the kind of men they used to be themselves. No, they were police officers, intelligence personnel, computer experts, and they had volunteered for selection for a security organisation that had not even been named, nor its role properly defined, or even an official seal of approval given to its existence. Even Clevinger, used to the minimalist ‘need to know’ briefings of the Regiment, had been intrigued by the levels of secrecy that had surrounded this project, from the moment the first carefully worded invite had dropped on to his mat, to the timings and administration of this, the initial selection exercise that he been instructed to organise for Phase One. He had been tempted to tell them to shove it, that he didn’t need it any more, but deep down he knew that he did. He needed it more than he needed anything else in his life. To be the best, or be a part of the best. The same addiction drove Dave Newton. They would soon see if the five candidates here felt the same way too. That was what the exercise was all about.

"You know, boss," whispered Newton confidentially into Clevinger’s ear, as the team dumped their bergens and slumped down on top of them. "If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that last one in line is a bird."

"She is. Detective Sergeant Clare Faulkner, Met Police."

"Why didn’t anyone tell me?"

"So you could chat her up? Your despicable methods are well known, Corporal Newton. Now, get these people a hot drink."

Clevinger watched as Newton passed among the team, filling their mugs with hot coffee. The policewoman had been struggling at the back of the team, and reached the stop only as the others were halfway through their coffee. She sank on the spot and shrugged weakly out of her bergen. Newton made a beeline for her and placed his hand on her shoulder as he filled her mug. Clevinger suppressed a smile. Incorrigible Newton. Clare Faulkner shot him a look that would have silenced a noisy fridge. It appeared she did not like being touched.

Clevinger silently analysed the team. There were two other police officers, both marksmen from different police forces, one of whom was an ex-paratrooper. Not surprisingly, he appeared to be taking this in his stride. Of the two remaining men, one was a MI6 agent, the other a young computer analyst from GCHQ. As the latter pulled off his hat to wipe sweat and rain from his face, a thick ponytail of dreadlocks fell on to his shoulder.

Clevinger’s brief had been simple – not to push these people to the brink of endurance as one would with special forces candidates, but simply to provide an exercise where conditions would test their teamwork, their sense of humour, their tenacity and above all their will to succeed and survive. These were not people, he was told, who would be expected to carry out sabotage missions – at least, not in the conventional military sense – but who could find themselves, by virtue of their specialist skills, in hostile environments, and who might be expected to extricate themselves from such an environment with little outside assistance. Such was the basis for Clevinger’s exercise – to see how these people would perform in the atrocious conditions that Wales would reliably throw at them. Looking over the team as they rested and revitalised themselves with coffee and banter from Newton, Clevinger was impressed. Their sense of humour, at least, was holding.

A mobile phone chirped in Clevinger’s pocket. He took it out and turned his back on the group, listening to the voice on the other end.

"Yes, this is Clevinger. Good morning, sir. Yes, everything is going well. I think so. If you require my presence sir, of course. I can be there in three hours. Goodbye, sir." Clevinger closed down the phone, a sophisticated satellite model that he had been issued with by the organisers of this venture. Newton looked at him quizzically.

The man from the Ministry requires my presence in London," Clevinger said. Newton rolled his eyes. "I’ll have to leave this in your capable hands, Corporal. There’s a Lynx waiting for me in the car park at Brecon."

Clevinger pulled his bergen from the tent and stuffed his bivvy bag and spare clothes back into it. It was at least an hour’s descent back to Brecon, if he was to keep his appointment he would have to leave straight away. He made his apologies to the team, and headed off down the hill.

Newton watched him until he vanished into the mist. He liked Clevinger, he had an enormous amount of respect for him, but the screams and the shaking hands….. he hoped that these were not the first signs of something bigger. He had seen too many good men go the same way. But he pushed it to the back of his mind and got on with his job. He clapped his hands together theatrically.

"Right," he said. "Uncle David’s in charge now. Who’s for another little walk?"

The team groaned collectively, and one by one clambered to their feet. The rain increased its tempo, as if the Welsh hillside was trying to drive them away.

"That’s him."

"Are you sure?"

"Does it matter if I’m not?"

"No, we’ll soon find out. Okay, take him."

Her Majesty’s Customs Officers James Jones and George Spears had spent five hours utilising a combination of naked eye and a computer face-matching terminal, scrutinising passengers disembarking from flights at Heathrow Terminal 2. The flights had originated in Tel Aviv, Damascus, Larnaca, Cairo and a dozen other Middle Eastern or Eastern Mediterranean cities. Their surveillance was the result of a tip-off from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, routed through MI5, that a convicted and time-served PLO terrorist called Omar Hussein was heading for the United Kingdom. The man had been legitimately discharged from an Israeli jail but was still under surveillance by Mossad. It appeared as if he was a minor figure, they wanted to keep an eye on his whereabouts but were content to let a British agency do the job. But first, Jones and Spears would have a quiet word with him.

He did not look like an international terrorist. But then, what was an international terrorist supposed to look like? Like Arafat, quasi-military dress from Army & Navy, sunglasses, desert shemagh? Omar Hussein wore a pale linen suit that was clean and pressed but baggy on his slight frame. He was clean-shaven and his dark hair was short and neat. His nondescript features were enlivened by a Roman nose, a betrayal of a northern Mediterranean ancestor somewhere in the distant past, perhaps an indiscreet legionnaire at Byzantium. There was nothing about Omar to indicate that he had killed in the service of his desperate country, and had rotted in an Israeli jail for ten years for his sins. Jones and Spears watched him as he handed his passport to the inspector behind the glass booth at passport control. Hughes read from the sheet he held in his hand.

"Not travelling under an assumed name. No apparent restriction imposed by Israeli authorities."

"If they trust him to swan about Europe, why should we be worried?"

"Someone at Mossad is not too happy about his release. Seems he got out a little too early under the terms of the peace accord, much like our Irish mates. Didn’t serve the full time."

"So maybe they should have kept him at home where they could have kept an eye on him themselves."

"Israel’s a democracy. Or at least, prefers to be seen that way. Right, we’re on."

Spears stepped forward as Omar joined the line of people heading for the automated walkway and baggage reclaim. He put his hand firmly on Omar’s shoulder. A tingle like a mild electric shock ran up his arm. Omar stopped and looked at him. His eyes were big and brown and deceptively innocent. His English was crystal perfect.

"Is there a problem, officer?"

Spears' mouth moved but he could not speak. He withdrew his hand and blinked. He had stopped and interviewed a thousand people, what was happening to him now? Jones frowned and stepped forward to rescue his colleague.

"Mr Hussein, there appears to be a small irregularity with your passport. Would you mind accompanying us to an interview room? It won’t take a moment."

Omar smiled. "Of course. I will be glad to be of assistance."

Jones took Omar's elbow in a firm hold, a soft arrest. He felt the same tingle that had stunned Spears, and withdrew his hand quickly. Omar walked ahead into the small dimly lit room off the arrivals lounge. There was a single desk with two chairs on one side and a single chair on the other. Omar sat down on the single chair, laid his leather briefcase on the table, and smoothed down the creases on his linen trousers. Spears and Jones entered the room, shooting each other ambiguous and confused glances. It appeared, by his confident demeanour and the subtle placing of the briefcase on the table, that Omar was going to interview them. Seating themselves on the opposite side of the table, Spears nudged Omar’s briefcase back toward him, and struggled to regain control of the situation. There was something about this man, not just the fact that he was a convicted terrorist, that Spears did not like. Something that was unsettling both of them.

Spears cleared his throat. "Could you tell us what your business is in the United Kingdom, Mr Hussein?"

Omar smiled, revealing a row of perfect white teeth. "As my passport states, officer, I am a religious man. I have come to the United Kingdom to spread the Word."

"You’re a Muslim cleric, yes?" : this from Jones.

Omar shook his head. "I renounced Islam during my imprisonment. I am now a follower and disciple of the Word."

Spears leaned forward across the table, resting his hands on Omar’s briefcase. "What is the Word? Are you a born-again Christian?"

Omar gave a little laugh. "Oh no. Not a Christian. The Word goes far, far beyond Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism. Perhaps this will explain."

He pulled his briefcase out from under Spears hands and reached inside. Spears glanced at Jones and rolled his eyes. We’ve got a right one here. We get all the kooks.

Omar took out a thick manuscript sealed with red cord. Under the point where the red cord crossed and was tied off, there was a slim paperback book with a plain red cover. It bore no title or author. Omar pulled it out and handed it to Spears.

"I have come to the United Kingdom, the most democratic country on Earth, to have the Word published. Politics prevent me from publishing in Israel, but I have had the opportunity to have a small amount pressed in a discrete private printing house. Please, you are welcome to keep the copy, if it will go some way to expediting my entry to your country."

Spears flicked through the book. Jones picked up the interview.

"We’re not here to stop you entering the United Kingdom, Mr Hussein. We simply wanted to speak to you in light of your former activities in Israel. You understand our concerns, of course."

Omar inclined his head. "Of course. I realise that you see me as an enemy of your country, officer, a convicted terrorist. But I assure you that I have both paid my debt and renounced the road of violence, and on my journey I discovered something wonderful and fabulous that I now wish to share with the whole world. It is called the Word, and you hold it now in your hands."

Spears looked down at the book. He had read from several random pages. It appeared to him to be made up mainly of parables and stories and homilies, a typical self-written ‘religious’ tome. There was nothing he could see that was untoward, or even very interesting. He made to hand the book back. Omar held up his hand.

"Please, keep it."

Spears froze, the book outstretched. He wanted to drop it on top of Omar’s briefcase as a mild sign of contempt for his crackpot theologies, but for some reason he could not let it go.

Omar smiled. "I insist."

Spears slowly took the book back and placed it carefully on the table. Jones did not seem to notice his colleague’s discomfort.

"Unless my colleague has further questions, Mr Hussein, I’m happy enough that you come to the United Kingdom with honest intentions, and that you pose no threat to our security. Good luck with your preaching, Mr Hussein. You’ll need it. Britain is a bit preoccupied with problems of its own at the moment. You’ll find your ‘Word’ may fall on deaf ears."

Omar stood up. He extended his hand to each man in turn but neither accepted his handshake. He smiled.

"Then I have come to the right place."

Spears and Jones watched Omar leave, heading toward the deserted baggage reclaim on the moving walkway. Jones had a clipboard in his hand with a form attached to it.

"What did you make of that?" asked Jones, looking for a reaction in his partner. Spears averted his eyes nervously.

"Fucked if I know. Was he a hypnotist or something? I felt as if he was interviewing us."

Jones looked down at the form. At the foot was a box where the duty officer could write his assessment. He took his pen and wrote his decision in the box.

Merlyn stalked the shadows of the Killing House, the labyrinth of corridors and hidden rooms, the maglite clipped under the barrel of his Kurtz machinegun probing the way, its infrared beam visible only to the lenses of the night vision goggles he wore like some science fiction terminator. A throat mike was taped to his adam’s apple, to pick up his barely whispered reports.

"First floor. Heading toward the landing. No contacts."

"Roger. Keep moving, the clock is ticking. Best speed."

At each intersection Merlyn halted and crabstepped along the wall, always leading with his weapon, checking left and right for targets. The Killing House was silent except for his own laboured breaths cycling through his respirator. At the next doorway a dummy thudded upright on a spring-loaded trap. Merlyn scanned the chest for a microsecond before firing a double-tap. No-shoots or civilians were marked with crosses of luminous tape. There was no tape on this target, so it was neutralised. Almost immediately a second dummy swung out on a boom arm from an doorway opposite. Merlyn took aim but this time the dummy was clearly marked as a hostage. In addition, there was an expensive-looking lacy bra and brief set stapled to the dummy. Someone’s wife would be missing her favourite underwear tonight. Merlyn smiled and relaxed the pressure on the Kurtz’s trigger.

"Zero, this is Tracker One. Contact, first floor, west wing. One target neutralised, one hostage released, white female heading for reception area. Permission to continue."

"Roger, Tracker One. Proceed with caution."

Clevinger has a dry sense of humour, Merlyn thought. Caution! As if you could proceed with anything other than caution inside a pitch black killing zone shooting dummies with live ammunition while wearing night vision goggles.

Merlyn continued along the first floor. Again a dummy presented itself in a doorway – another no-shoot, but just behind it, a second with no markings. Merlyn leaned into the room, over the dummy hostage’s shoulder, and neutralised the obscured target.

"Contact, first floor. Second target neutralised, one male hostage released down to reception. Request permission to proceed to second floor."

"Permission granted, Tracker One. Be aware there is a second operation in progress below you."

"Roger that."

Unusual, Merlyn thought. Multiple operations in the Killing House were rare, but not unheard of. Inherent dangers of blue-on-blue contact, but training for such eventualities made them more unlikely in combat. Far better to risk an accident here, in a controlled environment where an exercise could be halted by the simple words ‘No duff’ and any casualties dealt with swiftly and securely. In a combat situation, a blue-on-blue could result in a failed operation, and men who were not mortally injured bleeding to death in dark corridors because medics could not reach them under fire. Train hard, as the saying went, fight easy.

Merlyn tiptoed up the first flight of stairs, infrared probing the way. He paused on the first landing, placed his back against the wall, and cast a beam up the short second flight. A dummy flew at him along the handrail, a swift glance confirmed that nothing marked its chest. Two rounds delivered sharply on target. The dummy continued on its course and crashed into Merlyn, stunning him with its weight. He fell beneath it, winded. As he lifted his arm to lever it off, he felt warm skin under his hands. His heart thudding he trained the infrared on the dummy’s face.

"Zero, Zero, this is Tracker One. No duff, no duff. Casualty on first floor landing, wounds to chest. Wearing body armour but there’s penetration. Shit, I thought he was a target… what the fuck was he doing up here….?"

Merlyn ripped off his respirator and goggles and pulled the IR filter from the maglite, flooding the landing with harsh white light. At his feet lay a young man in the same black body armour and flame-retardant fatigues that he wore. He was unconscious and there was a great deal of blood on the dusty concrete floor. Merlyn recognised the man’s face but did not know his name, he was a trainee with a different team. There had obviously been a massive blunder, having these two men collide in the Killing House. Someone would pay dearly for this, Merlyn thought grimly, it wasn’t his fault. He tore open the wide velcro straps on the man’s body armour and began to apply first aid, The footsteps of the medics moving in to find them echoed through the cold dark corridors of the Killing House.

Clevinger sat with his head in his hands on the dusty steps of the Killing House. A Lynx helicopter thundered overhead, downdraft buffeting him as it wheeled over the landing field and flared in. As its skids settled the side door slid open and a big man in a trenchcoat jumped out on to the grass, ducking as he ran away from the helicopter. The aircraft cycled down its engines and waited in the field.

The man was in his early thirties. With his close-cropped hair, greying slightly at the temples, and shiny black brogues, he looked like a young army officer, at least ten years Clevinger's junior. He looked down with disgust at the mud contaminating his immaculate shoes and trouser cuffs, as he stepped from the field on to the tarmac road that ran between the Killing House and the rest of the training area. Clevinger stood up as the man approached him.

"Major Clevinger. Harrison, we've met before." He extended his hand - they exchanged firm handshakes.

"The man from the Ministry."

Harrison smiled. "Indeed. Can we walk and talk?"

"It's about all we can do. Your people have shut my range down."

Harrison frowned. "Ah, yes, the fatality. Bellamy, wasn't it? Intelligence Corps sergeant. Promising prospect."

They walked among the breezeblock buildings adorned with faux graffiti and smoke-smears, cartridge cases and empty pyrotechnic tubes crunching underfoot.

"Fatalities are a way of life in this game, Major. You and I are well aware of that fact. We do everything in our power to protect ourselves against such eventualities, but they do happen."

Clevinger nodded, waiting for the stinger. This man had not flown by helicopter all the way from London to pat him on the back. They stopped by the river that bisected the village, crossed by an ancient rusting Bailey bridge.

"But you have been in charge of the training team for a little over three months, and so far we have suffered nine casualties. This is the third fatality. One of the paratroopers injured is still in a coma, the other has a severed spine and will be paralysed for life. The remaining four will never resume their previous duties because of their disabilities." His voice rose slightly, nervous that he was castigating a senior officer, but more than prepared to do so all the same.

"Your appointment was not without opposition, Major. I have seen your service record and the subsequent psychiatric notes. No one blames you for Dubrovnik, but I must confess that I feel that the incident has had a negative effect on your command and control ability. How would you justify your continued employment in this role?"

Clevinger leaned on the side of the bridge and watched the clear water burbling and frothing beneath. He thought of every day that he had the privilege to feel the wind on his face and see the sun rise, and realised that he had again been responsible for a man's death, either by a command or a wrong judgement call. He had had many days like this one. He thought about those days, and this day, and Harrison's question. Justify it. Go on, justify it. He took a deep breath. They could fucking stick their spook job.

Harrison took an envelope from his pocket.

"it is my duty to tell you that you have been suspended on full pay, pending a full investigation into the accidents. This unit is to be frozen, its training and activities mothballed. You'll be sumoned to London, in due course."

"It’s too late for that," said Clevinger, picking up the envelope and ripping it in half. He tossed both halves into the water. "I quit."

Clevinger stormed away, back across the Bailey bridge, into the village. Harrison watched him go, silently, then made his way back to the helicopter, and headed for London. Clevinger would come. Men like him always did. It was called following orders.

Omar took the train north from London Euston, buying a standard class ticket and sitting in an empty carriage that smelled of old cigarette smoke. He had spent three days since his arrival in London, and had found the capital overcrowded and noisy, the people insular and unreceptive to his Word. He had suspected that this would be the way, and the move north was not entirely unplanned or unexpected. Grey November rain descended as the train made is way through the drab Victorian tunnels and sidings of North London, with its tower blocks and elaborate graffiti, before breaking clear into the flat green countryside. Omar felt instantly better for seeing fields and cattle. They reminded him of the hills in the Lebanon. He had not seen those hills in many years.

Omar travelled light. He wore a pale overcoat and carried his leather briefcase. His one other piece of luggage was a battered cardboard suitcase that he had been given by the Israelis when he had been released from prison. Inside the suitcase was two million pounds sterling, drawn over a period of three days, from seven different bank accounts in different branches across London. Omar placed it in the shelf above his head and watched through the grimy window as the fields of Warwickshire and Buckinghamshire became suburbanised, then urbanised, into the industrial sprawl of the Midlands. The train filled at Rugby and a family of Liverpudlians sat opposite him, a young mother and father with two noisy children who ran up and down the empty train. Omar took a copy of The Herald from his briefcase, unfolded it, and hid behind it.

The newspaper was filled with reports and commentary on the inner city riots that had rocked Britain throughout the hot summer, the season they had started to call the Summer of Hate, and this civil unrest was showing no signs of abating as autumn melted into winter. The riots had encouraged an underclass to find a voice and a purpose, and there had been reports that a number of areas in Manchester, Leeds and North London had been designated 'No Go' by the metropolitan police forces, rumours that were of course met with official denials. The cause of the riots remained a mystery, although there was no shortage of speculation in the newspaper. Omar read half a dozen columnists who blamed rising unemployment, cheap designer drugs, the unusually hot summer and drought that had stretched from May to September, post-millennial fever or post-millennial anti-climax, new tax raising powers by autonomous local authorities, and a hundred other reasons, some plausible, some crackpot. Omar deduced only one clear fact from the reports and the opinions - that something was terribly wrong in Britain today. So, he had indeed come to the right place.

Omar's final destination was Manchester. It was after midnight when the train pulled into Manchester Piccadilly. Most of the other passengers had left at Stafford or Crewe. He walked through the brightly lit concourse with its steel shutters hiding the closed shops and kiosks. There was no one around.

"Hey, mate, got any spare change?"

A voice from nowhere. Omar stopped and turned around. He had his briefcase in one hand, the cardboard suitcase in the other. In front of him was a skinhead, all of nineteen or twenty. Green bomber jacket, sprayed on jeans, Union Jack T-shirt. Steaming drunk. Omar thought to himself that he had only ever seen specimens like this on postcards, never before in real life. Was it some form of national dress?

"No, my friend, I have no change. Perhaps you could try someone else."

The skinhead looked at the ground in the nervous way that drunks contemplating enormous violence do. He laughed to himself.

"Not from 'round here, are you mate? When someone asks you for change, you give 'em what you've got. Everything. No matter how small it is." He shifted one hand in the pocket of his jacket. A gun? No, this was Britain, Omar reminded himself, not Beirut or New York City. The British were civilised. It would be a knife.

Omar took a step forward. This took the skinhead completely by surprise and he took an involuntary step backwards himself, then made a series of odd lunges forward, as if trying to re-assert his control over the situation.

"What is your name, friend?"

"My name….? What the fuck has that got to do with you? Just give me the bags!"

Omar smiled. "I'm not going to give you the bags. They belong to me, and I need them. But I am going to give you something far, far more valuable."

The skinhead's eyes narrowed with sudden sober fury, and he lunged at Omar, a large lock-knife in his right fist. The blade buried right up to the hilt in Omar's shoulder. Omar gasped, but did not move. The skinhead froze, his knuckles pressed against Omar's collar bone, knife and assailant stuck fast. Electricity flowed between them. The skinhead's eyes glazed momentarily, then he shook himself from his stasis. He let go of the knife as if it had suddenly become white hot, and dropped to his knees. Omar stood over him. He calmly placed down his briefcase and removed the knife from his shoulder. There was blood on it. The beads of blood rolled along the pitted surface of the blade and vanished. There were no marks on Omar's jacket. He placed the knife down on the tiled floor.

"You will not be able to understand what I have given you," Omar said. "But in a few days, you will. And then you will come to me. And you will thank me."

Omar picked up his briefcase and backed away from the stunned skinhead, who remained on his knees. When Omar had left the concourse, the skinhead got to his feet and picked up his knife, staring at the clean blade in bewilderment. For the first time in many years, he started to cry.

"Gerry," he said, to no one in particular. "My name is Gerry."

Omar stood outside by the bus and taxi rank and listened to the skinhead wailing. He smiled. Would they all be that easy? Manchester greeted him with a peculiar cold rain that trickled down the back of his neck. He put down his luggage and sneezed. He rummaged in his pocket for an address he had for a nearby hotel, ignoring the pleas of taxi drivers to engage their services. Late night revellers rolled from bars and pubs, mobbing him in a friendly but intimidating manner that he was not used to. But he was not frightened as he walked, because although they did not know it yet, their Messiah walked amongst them, and in his hand he held The Word.

The hotel was a dingy affair. It amused Omar to stay here, considering the amount of cash he was carrying. The room was small and airless and half the curtain was missing. The window looked out over the city, and watery technicolour neon streamed in, flooding the room with an odd light. It was perfect.

Omar laid his suitcase and briefcase on the bed. He opened the suitcase and examined the banded wads of banknotes, took several hundred pounds out, closed the case and placed it under the bed. He opened his briefcase and took out his manuscript of The Word, laid it on his pillow. He sat on the end of the bed and unfolded a copy of the local evening paper that he had bought from a late night street vendor. He bypassed the riot stories on the front page, and located the real estate pages.

With the cash in his suitcase he could have purchased a mansion in any one of Manchester’s desirable satellite suburbs, populated by a fantasy world of footballers and TV stars. But his finger scanned the sections containing near-derelict repossessed properties in the heart of the areas worst affected by the summer of violence. There were houses here that he could buy with one or two of the banded wads. That would leave plenty left over in the war chest for the other things he would need. And, after all, there was plenty more where that came from.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would walk this city, breath its air, see it naked in its sunlight and rain, touch its people. And begin to tell them of The Word that he had brought to them, from the heart of the place that they called the Holy Land. He would buy a house, just like theirs, and live amongst them.

Tonight, he would sleep, and tomorrow, he would go to work.

Manchester, his chosen city, slept on, wreathed in optimistic neon like a cheap whore, blissfully unaware of the quiet maelstrom building in its midst.