This left Valera, an old white-walled villaggio near Punta Parise, at the western end of the island, beneath the shadow of Monte Alberto Sole. A press release from the White House revealed that the village variously had been Byzantine, Arab, Norman and Spanish. For much of the Renaissance, while condottieri set themselves up as princes in the north and southern Italy continued its war of attrition against the Barbary pirates, Villaggio Valera lay derelict, a home to goats and the occasional fugitive.

All of this changed in 1881 when what remained of the derelict village was bought by Baron del Smith, a cotton trader from Liverpool who'd fought alongside Garibaldi at the battles of Volturno and Aspromonte, been created baron by Victor Emmanuel II and then, five years later, been sent into exile by the same King for trying to introduce communal farming to Sicily.

The village was rebuilt to a plan drawn up by Baron del Smith's wife and the slopes around it divided into workable farms. Olive trees and lemon groves were planted, as were almonds and oranges. The experiment was a brave one but lack of adequate irrigation, the heat of a few bad summers and the mistrust of other landowners saw the village fall back into near ruin. By 1910 the almonds were being picked, sorted and husked by old women who spoke sadly and often of their sons making new lives for themselves in America.

President Gene Newman's great-grandmother was born in Villaggio Valera. In retrospect, it was an obvious choice.

"There'll be a gun on you at all times. You understand that?" Colonel Borgenicht's voice was tight. "We've got snipers in the bell tower and on the roof of the town hall."

Prisoner Zero smiled.

Part of Colonel Borgenicht wanted to beat the man's head against the nearest wall, the other bit wanted to get on his knees and beg the bastard not to fuck this thing up. Instead, he just nodded, as if Prisoner Zero had given him the answer he wanted.

"Yeah," said Petra Mayer. "You've told him that already."

They were standing beside the church. And at the opposite end of the square, behind waist-high metal barriers, waited the press, plus selected members of the public and Katie Petrov, Miles Alsdorf and all those who didn't rate being included in the Presidential entourage.

Colonel Borgenicht would have preferred the barriers to be higher, but then he'd have preferred the bit parts and media not to be there at all, which was obviously impossible since the entire meeting had been turned into one big press call.

He had snipers stationed at both ends of the square, a precaution helped by the fact that the town hall's roof was flat and the bell tower of the church was easily reachable by stairs from the inside.

A sniper in the ornate bell tower was responsible for the laser dot on the back of Prisoner Zero's head. It would have been simple to give laser sights to the man on the roof of the town hall opposite, but then Prisoner Zero would have had a rag dot visible in the middle of his forehead. And that would send out all the wrong signals, apparently.

The plan was simple.

President Newman would arrive by helicopter at a field outside the village. He would walk up the hill, rather than take a jeep. This was his choice and against the express advice of his Secret Service men. A side effect of this was that extra snipers had to be found to cover the lower slopes of Monte Alberto Sole, stretching the Colonel's resources even thinner.

He would walk along a short section of Via Smith, from which cars and pedestrians had been banned, and enter Piazza Solforino from the north, crossing the cobbles with the press and token public behind their barricades to his right. In the middle of the square he would stop and take a salute from Colonel Borgenicht, before pausing to examine the seventeenth-century bell tower silhouetted against the twilight.

Professor Mayer would then bring out Prisoner Zero, who was to be clean-shaven, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and unmanacled. To bring the prisoner to the President was, in Colonel Borgenicht's opinion, a very basic breach of protocol, since all those President Newman intended to meet should be ready and waiting.

The President had insisted, however. He didn't want any shots of an exhausted-looking Prisoner Zero standing beside an ill, elderly looking Petra Mayer.

"All you do is shake hands." If anything, the Colonel's voice was even tighter. "You step forward, shake hands, step away. Nothing else. And you don't speak until you're spoken to."

"It's going to be fine," Petra Mayer said. "We've been through all this." She turned to the prisoner, who looked almost normal in Levi's, Nike trainers, a Gap sweatshirt and two weeks' growth of hair. "You know what to do, right?"

Prisoner Zero smiled at the small woman with the three gold bangles and a beak-like nose. A crow, Malika would have called her, and in all probability would have been right.

"Well?" Colonel Borgenicht said.

The prisoner shrugged. Whether or not he knew what to do was irrelevant. All that mattered was that the darkness did.

President Newman's helicopter was small, single-bladed and pale blue with the President's seal fixed either side, on both doors. Since that model went into service only in black, camouflage or jungle green, Colonel Borgenicht imagined the craft had been given a rapid paint job. It also flew low over Villaggio Valera on its way to the field, which the Colonel was sure had not been in the flight plan.

"Shouldn't you be with your men?" Petra Mayer nodded to an honour guard who stood at attention in the twilight.

The Colonel knew Professor Mayer was trying to get rid of him. Most probably so she could talk to the prisoner in private.

"I'm going," he said, adding "ma'am" as an afterthought.

Prisoner Zero and the Professor watched the thick-set black officer march out to a prearranged spot, halt with what looked like a complicated stamp of his boots and come to attention.

"The President is entering the square." The voice in Petra Mayer's ear bead was clipped and military, and she watched Colonel Borgenicht nod to himself from his position in the middle of the square as he heard the same message. A ripple of tension ran through the crowd, heads turning and photographers surging forward as they realized what those wired for sound had already been told.

Gene Newman, looking relaxed in light fawn slacks, tan shoes and a summer-weight jacket, strode under an arch and into view, the First Lady half a pace behind him.

He was a Hollywood star who happened to be President. A brilliant mind, a sharp politician, an adequate husband. Most of all, he was a man of the people. Hands stretched out to him, voices called.

Stepping off the path that had been marked discreetly in chalk, Gene Newman reached the barriers and grasped the hand of an old woman, shaking it warmly. From first seeing the crowds until that moment, his eyes had been on a young Sicilian woman in her twenties, a small boy glued to her hips, his thin arms tight around her neck. She had a face straight from La Dolce Vita and breasts full enough to die for.

But the second the old woman behind the girl thrust out her own hand, all Gene Newman's attention locked on to her. "You have a beautiful village," he said, in Italian bad enough to disgrace a child, and around the grandmother, daughter and child, members of the European press practically cooed in delight.

He was brilliant, Petra Mayer had to give her old pupil that. Ruthless, intellectually arrogant in private and occasionally promiscuous but a good president all the same. He didn't talk to the girl next either, instead he pulled a stupid face at her child, then reached out and gripped the toddler's nose lightly between thumb and first finger.