The Jordanian patted him gently on the arm and picked up his bags for the short walk to the departure gate. Most of the passengers lining up there were civilians, their numbers split evenly between Arabs and Europeans, although, Melton reminded himself, they might well all be British citizens. Nobody looked happy to be travelling. Either because of what they were heading towards – parts of England were under martial law, and it was being strictly and harshly enforced – or perhaps because of a well-founded fear they might never get there. Thousands of people had died when their aircraft were knocked out of the sky by the same electromagnetic pulses the Israelis had set off to cripple their enemies.

Neither reporter spoke again until Melton had swiped his boarding pass. The BA hostess was as smooth and pleasant as ever, which only served to heighten the sense of brittle weirdness and impending doom.

‘Good luck. And thanks again,’ said Melton.

‘A safe journey to you, my friend, God willing,’ replied Mirsaad.

He was pathetically grateful for a business-class seat. It was like settling into an overstuffed hotel bed compared to the steel benches, hard plastic seats and stinking kitbags on which he’d mostly fetched up while in transit. It was possible, while sipping at the complimentary orange juice, as they waited to taxi, to imagine that things were entirely normal. The business-class section was full, but remained decadently spacious and agreeable. His fellow bizoids, with one exception, were all male. The one woman looked like a banker or lawyer and had no sooner strapped in than she began opening files to work on. She plugged herself into an iPod and radiated a fierce repeller field, lest anyone should attempt to approach or interrupt her. An old hand, then.

The man sitting next to him, in the window seat, nodded brusquely before returning to his BlackBerry. He kept stabbing at the keyboard without any observable result. ‘It was working this morning,’ he kept muttering to himself. Melton ignored him all too easily.

A hostess, noticing his injuries as he’d levered himself into his seat, offered extra pillows and a blanket to lie on. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, he’d have derided such indulgences as ‘snivel gear’; it took him a long time, after getting out, to throw off some of the dumber attitudes of his time in service. He took the pillows and thanked her, settling into them after washing down a couple of painkillers with the last of the orange juice. As the engines spooled up, the captain came on to announce that they would be taking a very circuitous route to avoid any hazards from hostilities to the north. Melton didn’t bother to pay attention to the announcements. He didn’t care how they got out of this mess, only that they did so.

He was going to miss Sayad, and felt yet again that he was simply allowing events to sweep him along and away from another friend, one whose own future looked very bleak. Melton didn’t see anything good happening in this part of the world any time soon. There was no way the US could sustain a presence here, but it remained an area of vital importance to the surviving great powers. How long could it be before Chinese, Indian and Russian warships replaced the US Navy on permanent station in the Gulf? As his eyelids drooped and he tried to suppress the snoring he knew was going to piss off his fellow passengers, he sought to get his head around the strategic and economic wreckage of the Israeli strike, but he was too tired and the seat too comfortable, and before long he was asleep.

He woke briefly, thousands of miles later in Gibraltar, but popped another couple of pills, drank some water and went back to sleep. After that he didn’t stir again until the plane began to descend. A flight attendant appeared at his elbow to gently rouse him and the BlackBerry addict, and to ask that they put their seats into the upright position for landing.

‘We’re in London?’ he croaked.

The young woman, a rare beauty of Caribbean heritage by the look of her, seemed distracted and anxious. ‘No,’ she replied with a shake of her head. ‘No. We’re stopping in Paris. It’s… unscheduled… but nothing to worry about. We’ll refuel and be on our way.’

That brought him awake.

‘We won’t be going to London,’ said his travelling companion, whom he’d avoided talking to so far.

‘I’ve been out of it, sorry,’ said Melton, still feeling groggy. ‘I snore. Has something happened?’

The man, a young, nondescript-looking character with one of those weird Amish-style beards, shrugged and held up a pair of earphones. ‘Sennheiser sound-cancelling technology,’ he explained. ‘Blocks out jet engines and loud snoring. Not a problem.’

Okay, so he wasn’t Amish then.

‘Britain’s closed its borders,’ he went on. ‘They haven’t told us yet.’ He waved a hand towards the front of the plane to indicate he meant the flight crew. ‘But I snuck a look at a news feed in the toilet. Everything’s locked down. Air and sea ports, ferries, the Chunnel – all of it.’

Melton’s head was clearing slowly because of the painkillers in his bloodstream. ‘Why?’ he asked.

BlackBerry guy folded his arms in obvious disgust. ‘Blair’s saying something about unrest spilling over the Channel. It’s rubbish. I need to get home. Do you see any jihadi whackjobs on this plane? We’re business people. This is just bullshit.’

‘What unrest?’ asked Bret. ‘I didn’t think those riots in Paris were so bad, considering.’

The man looked at him like he was dealing with a retarded child. ‘You’re kidding me, right? You’ve been out in the boonies, have you? Paris is on fire, man. All of France is. It’s a civil war. And they’re sending us into the middle of it.’

ONE MONTH

35

NOISY-LE-SEC, PARIS

‘So, you missing Uncle Sugar yet? Nostalgia sucks the big one, don’t it?’

Caitlin’s voiced cracked and she smiled through split, swollen lips, with teeth stained cherry red by her own blood. But the look on Reynard’s face was totally worth it.

The Frenchman did his best to hold his feelings in check, but she’d struck a nerve point and his anguish spilled out in a slight downturn at the corners of his mouth, the merest pout of his lips and a hollowing of the cheeks, as he tilted his head back in an effort to disengage emotionally from his prisoner. He would not beat Caitlin for her insolence. The Algerian would be back later on to do that. Reynard – not his name, but to Caitlin he looked like a Reynard, like a hungry fox licking shit from a wire brush, as her old man would have said – he was too important to get her blood on his hands.