As she said it, there was a metallic click, and the woman instantly knew that it was out of place, was terribly wrong; because there are good clicks and bad clicks, and this was definitely one of the worst.

She swung round to look at Hugo.

‘Lady,’ he said, his eyes shining, ‘you had your chance.’

So here we are.

Sitting pretty, feeling good.

We have had control of the building for thirty-five minutes now and, all in all, it could have been a lot worse.

The Moroccan staff have gone from the ground floor, and Hugo and Cyrus have cleared the second and third floors from end to end, herding men and women down the main staircase and out into the street with a lot of unnecessary shouts of ‘let’s go’ and ‘move it’.

Benjamin and Latifa are installed in the lobby, where they can move quickly from the front of the building to the back if they need to. Although we all know they won’t need to. Not for a while, anyway.

The police have turned up. First in cars, then in jeeps, now by the truckload. They are scattered around outside in tight shirts, yelling and moving vehicles, and they haven’t yet decided whether to walk nonchalantly across the street, or scuttle across with their heads dipped low to avoid sniper fire. They can probably see Bernhard on the roof, but they don’t yet know who he is, or what he’s doing there.

Francisco and I are in the consul’s office.

We have a total of eight prisoners here - five men and three women, bound together with Bernhard’s job-lot of police handcuffs - and we have asked them if they wouldn’t mind sitting on the very impressive Kelim rug. If any of them moves off the rug, we have explained, they do it at the risk of being shot dead by Francisco or myself, with the help of a pair of Steyr AUG sub-machine guns that we cleverly remembered to bring with us.

The only exception we have made is for the consul himself, because we are not animals - we have an awareness of rank and protocol, and we don’t want to make an important man sit cross-legged on the floor - and anyway, he needs to be able to speak on the phone.

Benjamin has been playing with the telephone exchange, and has promised us that any call, to any number in the building, will come through to this office.

So Mr James Beamon, being the duly appointed representative of the United States government in Casablanca, second in command on Moroccan soil only to the ambassador in Rabat, is sitting at his desk now, staring at Francisco with a look of cool appraisal.

Beamon, as we know well from our researches, is a career diplomat. He is not the retired shoe-salesman you might expect to find in such a post - a man who has given fifty million dollars to the President’s election campaign fund, and been rewarded with a big desk and three hundred free lunches a year. Beamon is in his late-fifties, tall and heavily built, and he has a very quick brain. He will handle this situation well and wisely.

Which is exactly what we want.

‘What about the rest-room?’ Beamon says.

‘One person, every half an hour,’ says Francisco. ‘You decide the order among yourselves, you go with one of us, you do not lock the door.’ Francisco moves to the window and looks out into the street. He raises a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

I look at my watch.Ten forty-one.

They will come at dawn, I think to myself. The way attackers have done since attacking was first invented. Dawn. When we’re tired, hungry, bored, scared.

They will come at dawn, and they will come in from the east, with a low sun behind them.

Ateleven twenty, the consul had his first call.

WafiqHassan, Inspector of Police, introduced himself to Francisco, then said hello to Beamon. He had nothing specific to relate, except that he hoped everybody would act with good sense, and that this whole thing could be sorted out without any trouble. Francisco said afterwards that he spoke good English, and Beamon said he’d been to Hassan’s house for dinner two nights ago. The two of them had talked about how quietCasablanca was.

Ateleven forty, it was the press. Sorry to bother us, obviously, but did we have a statement to make? Francisco spelt his name, twice, and said we would be delivering a written statement to a representative of CNN, just as soon as they got here.

At five to twelve, the phone rang again. Beamon answered it and said he couldn’t talk just at the moment, would it be possible to call back tomorrow, or maybe the day after? Francisco took the receiver from him and listened for a moment, and then burst out laughing at the tourist fromNorth Carolina, who wanted to know whether the consulate could guarantee the drinking water in the Regency Hotel.

Even Beamon smiled at that.

Attwo fifteen, they sent us lunch. A stew of mutton and vegetables, with a vast pot of couscous. Benjamin collected it from the front steps, while Latifa nervously waved her Uzi back and forth in the doorway.

Cyrus found some paper plates somewhere, but no cutlery, so we sat and let the food cool, before scooping it up with our fingers.

It was very nice, considering.

Atten past three, we heard the trucks starting to move, and Francisco ran to the window.

The two of us watched as police drivers revved and ground gears, shunting backwards and forwards in ten-point turns. ‘Why are they moving?’ said Francisco, squinting through the binoculars.

I shrugged. ‘Traffic warden?’ He looked at me angrily.

‘Fuck, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s something to do. Maybe they want to make some noise while they dig a tunnel. Nothing we can do about it.’

Francisco chewed his lip for a second, and then moved to the desk. He picked up the phone and dialled the lobby. Latifa must have answered.

‘Lat, stay ready,’ said Francisco. ‘You hear anything, see anything, call me.’

He slammed the phone down, a little too hard.

You were never as cool as you pretended, I thought.

Byfour o’clock the phone had started to get very busy, with Moroccans and Americans ringing at five minute intervals, and always demanding to speak to someone other than the person who’d answered.

Francisco decided it was time to switch us round, so he called Cyrus and Benjamin up to the first floor, and I went down to join Latifa.

She was standing in the middle of the hall, peering through the windows and hopping from foot to foot, throwing the baby Uzi from hand to hand.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘You want to take a piss?’