‘You heard,’ said Benjamin.

For a moment I wasn’t sure whether he was going to hit me or cry.

I looked at Francisco, expecting him to tell Benjamin to sit down, or get out, or do something, but Francisco just looked back at me and kept on chewing.

‘The fuck I do to you?’ said Ricky, turning back to Benjamin.

But he just kept on standing there, staring, clenching his fists, until Hugo piped up, and said that the stew was great. Everyone fell on this gratefully, and said yes, wasn’t it fantastic, and no, it definitely wasn’t too salty. Everyone, that is, except me and Benjamin. He stared at me, and I stared back, and only he seemed to know what this was about.

Then he turned on his heel and marched out of the hall, and after a while we heard the scrape of the iron gate opening, and then the Land Rover’s motor grinding into life. Francisco kept on looking at me.

Five days have passed since then, Benjamin has managed to smile at me a couple of times, and now we’re all set to go. We have dismantled the model, packed our bags, burnt our bridges and said our prayers. It’s really quite exciting. Tomorrow morning, atnine thirty-five, Latifa will enquire about a visa application at the American consulate. Atnine forty, Bernhard and I will present ourselves for an appointment with Mr Roger Buchanan, the commercial attachй. Atnine forty-seven, Francisco and Hugo will arrive with a trolley bearing four plastic barrels of mineral water, and an invoice made out to Sylvie Horvath of the consular section.

Sylvie has actually ordered the water - but not the six cardboard boxes on which the barrels will be resting.

And atnine fifty-five, give or take a second, Cyrus and Benjamin will crash the Land Rover into the west wall of the consulate.

‘What’s that for?’ asked Solomon. ‘What’s what for?’ I said.

‘The Land Rover.’ He took the pencil out of his mouth and pointed at the drawings. ‘You’re not going to get through the wall like that. It’s two feet thick, reinforced concrete, and you’ve got those bollards along the side as well. Even if you get through them, it’ll take your speed right down.’

I shook my head.

‘It’s just a noise,’ I said. ‘They make a big noise, jam the horn down, Benjamin falls out of the driver’s door with blood all over his shirt, and Cyrus screams for some first aid. We get as many people as we can into the west side of the building, finding out what the noise is about.’

‘Do they have first aid?’ said Solomon.

‘Ground floor. Store-room next to the staircase.’

‘Anyone qualified to give it?’

‘All the American staff have taken a course, but Jack’s the most likely.’

‘Jack?’

‘Webber,’ I said. ‘Consular guard. Eighteen years in the US Marine Corps. Carries a standard 9mm Beretta at his right hip.’

I stopped. I knew what Solomon was thinking. ‘So?’ he said.

‘ Latifahas a Mace canister,’ I said.

He jotted something down - but slowly, as if he knew that what he was writing wasn’t going to make a lot of difference. I knew it too.

‘She’ll also be carrying a Micro Uzi in her shoulder bag,’ I said.

We were sitting in Solomon’s hired Peugeot, parked on some high ground near La Squala - a crumbling, eighteenth century edifice that once housed the main artillery position overlooking the port. It was as nice a view as you can find inCasablanca, but neither of us was enjoying it all that much.

‘So what happens now?’ I said, as I lit a cigarette with Solomon’s dashboard. I say the dashboard, because most of it came away with the cigarette lighter when I pulled, and it took a moment to put the whole thing back together. Then I inhaled,_ and tried, without much success, to blow the smoke out through the open window.

Solomon kept on staring at his notes.

‘Well, presumably,’ I prompted him, ‘there will be a brigade of Moroccan police and CIA men hidden in the ventilator shafts. And presumably, when we walk in, they will pop out and say you’re under arrest. And presumably, The Sword Of justice and anyone who’s ever had dealings with it will shortly be appearing in a court just two hundred yards from this cinema. And presumably, all of this will happen without anyone so much as grazing their elbow.’

Solomon took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then he started to rub his stomach, the way I hadn’t seen him do for ten years. Solomon’s duodenal ulcer was the only thing that could make him stop thinking about work.

He turned and looked at me. ‘I’m being sent home,’ he said.

We stared at each other for a while. And then I started to laugh. The situation wasn’t funny, exactly - laughing just happened to be what came out of my mouth.

‘Of course you are,’ I said, eventually. ‘Of course you’re being sent home. That makes perfect sense.’

‘Look, Thomas,’ he began, and I could see in his face how much he was hating this.

"‘Thank you for a very fine piece of work, Mr Solomon,"‘ I said, in my Russell Barnes voice. "‘We surely want to thank you for your professionalism, and your commitment, but we’ll take it from here, if you don’t mind." Oh, that is just perfect.’

‘Thomas, listen to me.’ He’d called me Thomas twice in thirty seconds. ‘Just get out. Run for it, will you?’

I smiled at him, which made him talk faster.

‘I can take you up to Tangier,’ he said. ‘You get yourself intoCeuta, and then a ferry toSpain. I’ll call the local police, get them to park a van outside the consulate, the whole thing blows over. None of it ever happened.’

I looked into Solomon’s eyes, and saw all the trouble that was in them. I saw his guilt, and his shame - I saw a duodenal ulcer in his eyes.

I tossed the cigarette out of the window.

‘Funny,’ I said. ‘That’s what Sarah Woolf wanted me to do. Take off, she said. Sun-kissed beaches, far from the madding CIA.’

He didn’t ask me when I’d seen her, or why I hadn’t listened to what she’d said. He was too busy with his own problem. Which was me.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Do it, Thomas, for God’s sake.’ He reached across and took hold of my arm. ‘This is crazy, this whole thing. If you walk into that building, you’re not coming out alive. You know that.’ I just sat there, which infuriated him. ‘Jesus Christ, you’re the one who’s been saying it all along. You’re the one who’s known it all along.’

‘Oh, come on, David. You knew it too.’

I watched his face as I spoke. He had about a hundredth of a second in which to frown, or open his mouth in amazement, or say what are you talking about, and he missed it. As soon as that hundredth of a second was gone, I knew, and he knew I knew.