ONE

THE WOMAN SAT perfectly still, examining her face in the mirror, and her expression revealed disappointment with the person looking back. Her hand moved slowly across the dressing table. She took a brush and applied a thin dusting of make-up to her face, carefully painting away the traces of a tear on her cheek. Behind her, a black robe and veil lay draped across the bed.

Nasir bin Sallum closed his mouth and clenched his stomach muscles tight so that not even the sound of his breath would escape. He let his eyes rest upon her for a moment, admiring the delicate upwards slope of her neck and the polished smoothness of her skin.

It is important for an assassin to appreciate his victim before he kills her.

With her right hand she started running a brush through her long black hair. Sallum remained silent, gripping the length of thin, taut climbing cord between his hands. Outside the apartment block – situated in the Al Mansorah district of Riyadh – he had already removed his shoes, replacing them with a pair of socks thick enough to make almost no sound as he moved swiftly across the carpet.

Suddenly, he sprang forwards and ran towards her chair. He could see her ears twitch as she heard the first stride. He could see her eyes move up as she caught sight of movement in the mirror. And he could see her fist tighten the grip on her hairbrush as she felt the floor vibrate under the weight of her assailant. But her reactions were slow. She knew something was happening but in the few seconds available to her she was unable to react.

It’s like strangling chickens on the farm. Sallum slipped the rope around her neck in one swift movement. He pulled sharply, tugging her neck backwards, and could hear the breath escaping from her lips, the stretching of the muscles running through her neck. He leant forward, bending towards the mirror, and their eyes met in the glass. He could read the thoughts written in her expression. Who is this man? Why is he killing me?

Sallum pulled harder, twisting the rope into her skin. It’s not her fault I am here this afternoon. There is no need to hurt her unnecessarily.

Her eyes were bulging from her head now, the pupils enlarged. The pressure from the rope prevented any air travelling through her throat and her breathing had stopped, diminishing the flow of oxygen into her heart. Her grip on the hairbrush tightened and her arm tried to lift itself to strike her assailant, but the strength was already fading from her. Then her grip suddenly collapsed and the brush tumbled on to the dressing table before bouncing on to the floor.

Sallum worked the muscles in his forearms, steadily increasing the pressure of the rope on her neck. In the mirror he could see her eyelids blink and then slowly close. She was dead.

Sallum released the rope and let her body curl gently forwards until her head was resting amid the make-up on the dressing table, next to a picture of herself with her family, all of them having a picnic somewhere among green fields and tall trees. He reached down to check her pulse. It was as he expected.

Sallum relaxed, stretching his muscles. It was important to exercise after an execution. You had to stop the tension building up in your back. He glanced through the tiny flat. It consisted of just this small bedroom, a shower room, a kitchen you could hardly stand up in, and a sitting room furnished with a single sofa, a television and a DVD player. The place was shabby, poor and impersonal: the furniture all looked as if it had been picked up second-hand.

Well, what could an English woman who divorced her Saudi husband expect?

Her handbag was lying at the foot of the bed. Sallum took it in his hands and examined the contents. The usual junk women carry around with them – lipsticks, mirror, address book and some old photographs – but it also held her passport, her driving licence, her Saudi identity card and a letter detailing her appointment with the minister.

She had changed since the passport photograph had been taken four years previously. She was older, but also sadder – at a glance Sallum could tell that those four years had not been kind to her. Asiya al-Kazim, according to her passport, was 26, born in Wolverhampton of Muslim parents, but married to a Saudi man for three years, and subsequently divorced. Nobody would miss her for days.

Sallum moved to the dressing table, picked up a jar of nail varnish, and began to coat his fingernails with the pink liquid. Five manicures over the past two weeks had worked – his nails looked just like a woman’s. Taking the mascara next, he dabbed make-up carefully on to his eyelashes. Then he picked up a stick of red lipstick, and peering close to the mirror, applied a thin layer to his lips. Get it right, he reminded himself: enough to make him look like a woman, but not so much that it made him look tarty.

Lips, eyes, and nails. That should be enough to fool anyone.

Sallum picked up the black robe from the bed and fitted it over his shoulders. Then he lifted the black veil over his face, adjusting the cloth so it draped over his shoulders, completely obscuring his face. He looked across at the mirror: only his dark eyes and red lips were discernible through the veil. The rest of his face was completely masked.

From his bag he slipped out a pair of plain black women’s shoes with a half-inch raised heel. He pulled on a pair of nylon pop socks then slipped on the shoes and took a few unsteady paces across the floor. He had practised several times, but walking precisely like a woman seemed like one of the hardest skills for a man to acquire.

So long as I don’t speak or lift my veil I will pass for her.

He walked back through the door and shut it carefully behind him. The corridor was empty as he made his way back down to street level.

Sallum stepped out into the baking heat of the Riyadh afternoon, the veil and the robes already causing him to sweat.

I must not dawdle. The day’s killing is not yet complete.

Matt Browning let his finger rest on the second button of Gill’s blouse. He slipped his right hand inside the soft white cotton, gripping the taut, lively breast hidden behind her bra. He could feel it stiffen beneath his palm. His left hand gripped her side then worked its way along her back, rubbing the skin and stimulating the nerve endings beneath. They had been together nearly two years now, and Matt knew the spots, and how to work them.

He could hear her breath quickening. Outside, a hundred feet below her twelfth-storey apartment, waves were crashing against the rocks of the Marbella shoreline. An early evening wind was starting to whip in from the Mediterranean, rustling through the curtains. Matt could feel Gill’s sharp, red fingernails clawing through the hairs on his chest.

His hands moved faster across her skin, unclasping her bra, plunging inside her jeans, and their lips collided. Matt could feel her hands unbuckling the belt of his trousers. He tore the jeans from her, flung them on to the cold, limestone floor, and suddenly he was on top of her, his face nuzzling into the soft skin of her neck, his body thrusting into her. ‘Do it to me,’ she muttered. ‘Do it to me now.’

Half an hour later, Matt lay back on the sofa, spent. A ripple of quiet sensory satisfaction ran through every muscle of his body. He was tired yet invigorated. Christ, he thought. Gill has the shortest fuse of any woman I have met. She could kill a man who turns up ten minutes late for a date.

How do I possibly tell her?

He looked into mellow, green eyes and flicked a lock of long auburn hair away from her face. Gill looked good just about anyway you could imagine: in jeans and a T-shirt, dressed up for a formal party, in her swimsuit down on the beach, or covered with kids’ paint after working down at the nursery. But she looked best of all naked. She was completely comfortable in her own skin, treating it the way some women treated an expensive new outfit: as something she was proud of, and wanted to show off to the man she was with. The demure, quietly spoken girl was unpeeled whenever he undressed her, revealing the powerful, passionate woman hidden underneath.

Christ, thought Matt, the thought running through his brain like a tape stuck in a loop. How do I possibly tell her?

‘I think we’ll have a live band rather than a disco,’ said Gill. ‘That would be nicer, don’t you think?’

Matt nuzzled his face into her back, aware of the thin layer of post-coital sweat coating her body. He flicked his tongue against her earlobe distractedly.

Gill pushed him away. ‘And we need to decide what the readings are going to be. I don’t suppose you have some special poem.’ She looked at him and smiled indulgently. ‘No, I didn’t think so.’

Standing up, Matt reached for his boxer shorts and pulled them up around his waist.

‘There are just so many choices to make.’

Matt took a deep breath. That temper – that was what worried him. ‘There isn’t going to be any wedding,’ he said at last.

‘What do you mean there isn’t going to be a wedding?’

‘There isn’t going to be a wedding because I’m a loser and a fuck-up,’ said Matt. ‘I don’t deserve a princess like you.’

Geoff Burton looked down at the passport, then up into the eyes of the woman standing in front of him. Light brown, with a trace of make-up around them.

Sallum could read what he was thinking: they all look the same under those bloody veils.

I might as well be a camel for all he cares.

Burton was a rugged man, six feet tall. He looked hot in his uniform, even though the Riyadh Hilton was air-conditioned. Asiya al-Kazim was due to see the minister at three. She had half an hour. ‘You’re Asiya al-Kazim?’ Burton said.

Behind his veil, Sallum nodded. He handed across the letter of appointment. It was written on Ministry of Defence headed notepaper, an invitation sent three weeks ago. This soldier will have heard of her, Sallum decided. Her name had been splashed across the British papers a few months ago. A Wolverhampton girl, a Muslim, Asiya had married a Saudi who charmed her off her feet, then moved out to Riyadh. She’d soon realised she wasn’t allowed to drive, couldn’t shop, couldn’t work, and her husband beat her senseless every night. So she’d decided she’d rather be back in Wolverhampton. She divorced the Saudi, then discovered the catch. Under Saudi law, she couldn’t leave the country without her ex-husband’s permission, so she was trapped here. A couple of backbench MPs had been making a fuss about why British soldiers were helping defend a country in which a British woman was effectively held prisoner. Sallum had researched her story, and chosen her because she had an appointment with the minister. And because he knew a British soldier would not try to search a Saudi woman. She was the perfect cover.

‘Got your ID card?’

Sallum fished in the handbag, pulling out the card and handed it across. Behind the veil he lowered his eyes demurely. He could see the solider glancing at his nails, noticing how neatly trimmed and varnished they were. Just like a woman.

‘And a driving licence?’ said Burton.

Sallum handed it across. Burton scanned the documents then looked back up into Sallum’s eyes. Sallum could tell the man wanted to frisk him, but the latest briefings from the embassy said the Saudis objected to their women being searched by non-Muslim soldiers. Anyway, he would have been told she had already been searched by the Saudi officials outside the hotel. The British had insisted on that condition when they’d agreed to stop searching Saudi women. It was so rare for a woman to have any official business in a country where they weren’t allowed to work, the restriction hardly seemed worth arguing about.

‘The minister is in that room down there,’ said Burton, pointing.

Beneath his veil, Sallum permitted himself a thin smile.

The salty smell of the sea kicked through the evening air. Matt took a deep breath, filling his lungs, and looked out across the wide expanse of the Mediterranean. The insults and abuse Gill had flung at him in the last few hours were still stinging his ears.

He started to run, his feet hitting a steady rhythm against the sand. Running had always been his way of relaxing. The pounding of his muscles, the straining of his calves and the thump of his feet against the ground combined to send the blood rushing through his veins, sharpening his reactions and clearing his mind. It was running that had first taken him into the Army, and then the SAS. And it was quickness and agility that had qualified him for the special forces: he wasn’t the toughest soldier they had ever seen, but he was one of the fastest.

Whatever my troubles might be, at least the sun is on my back and the sand beneath my feet.

He looked up towards the Last Trumpet. It was a perfect location for a restaurant. Perched on a scenic hilltop, a kilometre west of Puerto Banus, it was a short drive from Marbella and within easy striking distance of the smart hotels and plush villas that lined this part of the coast. The balcony overlooked the jagged hills tumbling into the ocean, and into the sand-lined coves below. On a clear day you could see the north-African coastline twenty miles away. On a bad day you could watch the thunderclouds looming over the sea. It was the kind of view that made people want to linger and order another cocktail.

But selling a few cocktails and a few hamburgers are never going to make enough money to get me out of this jam.

It hurts now, he told himself, but I have done the right thing. Maybe it’s old-fashioned, but a man shouldn’t marry unless he is able to offer his wife a decent and secure life. Instead of debts and death-threats. Gill deserves better than that. It might hurt her now. But if we married she’d be hurt much worse. If I love her – and I do – then it’s better this way. It will hurt me more and her less – and that’s the way it should be.

Matt started to consider what life without Gill might be like. He had known her most of his life. Her older brother Damien had been his best friend when they were all growing up together in south London. For years she had just been Damien’s funny little sister, but when she’d moved to Marbella after her family started the bar, he had realised that she’d blossomed into a poised and graceful young woman.

Our lives have been woven together. Hard to unravel them now.

Matt pushed himself faster, picking up speed.

Whatever else I might lose, I won’t lose my strength or my fitness. It might be the only thing I can rely on.

The bar was already starting to come to life as Matt stepped on to the balcony, still gasping for breath after sprinting the last few hundred yards. The maid was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floors, and at the back Pablo was making the evening delivery from the village: a couple of sackloads of potatoes for the chips, some steaks, hamburgers and chicken breasts, and plenty of peas and carrots. The diners at the Last Trumpet were not great gourmets, but they knew what they liked, and the servings were always huge.

Matt picked up some of the post that was lying on the bar: brown envelopes, with names and addresses printed by computer. Bills and bank statements – he didn’t need to open them to know that the news would be bad.

If I’d realised that life outside was quite as difficult as this, I might have stuck it out in the Regiment.

Sallum stepped away from the soldier and walked swiftly down the length of the hotel’s corridor. Fools, he reflected. They should have known better than to trust the Saudi guards to search me. Surely they know the Saudi army is riddled with supporters of the Holy Cause.

He knocked lightly on the door. Richard Brent, the minister’s assistant, opened the door and guided Sallum to the sofa in the centre of the room. ‘Some tea, Mrs al-Kazim?’ he said politely. ‘Or maybe some water?’

Sallum shook his head. Only delay is dangerous, he reminded himself. His eyes quickly scanned the room. Two men, both middle-aged and weak. No cameras, no security guards. The window was open, but they were on the seventh floor of the hotel and there was no building overlooking them. Everything was exactly as he had been told it would be.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs al-Kazim,’ said David Landau, standing up and offering his hand. Beneath his black robe Sallum eased his hand to the front of his jeans and pulled out the Heckler & Koch P7 pistol, equipped with a silencer. He chose the P7 because its unique firing system made it the perfect concealed weapon. It could be carried safely while fully loaded – Sallum knew of assassins who’d shot their own genitals off – but as soon as you gripped the handle it was unlocked and ready to fire. It weighed less than two pounds, and yet its four-inch barrel made it an effective deadly weapon at close range. It was the fastest gun he knew of.

Sallum steadied himself, switching from the posture of a woman to a man. Leaning slightly forward on his left foot, he thrust the pistol upwards, his hands and the gun breaking through the robes.

Very few men are perfect shots with both their left and right hands. Sallum was not one of them: he reckoned he was a ten per cent better shot with the right hand than with the left. At this range it didn’t matter. He could hit both men – and the P7 was designed to be fired with either hand. He levelled the pistol on Landau, loosening off three rounds in close succession. Then he turned the pistol towards Brent, who was starting to flee towards the door. He had covered only two steps before Sallum stabbed the trigger three times in quick succession. Each of the six shots was effectively muzzled by the silencer, the noise no louder than a cork being pulled from a wine bottle.

Landau fell backwards, hitting the sofa with the side of his head. The first shot had blown through his skull, the second ripped into his heart, and the third cut open his neck. Blood flowed swiftly on to the fabric, staining the surface of the seat.

Brent crumpled into a heap on the floor. The first bullet had shattered his forehead, the second took out his left eye. The third bullet had hit him in the centre of the chest. Oxygenated blood started to gurgle from his mouth and a deathly moan escaped from his sagging lips.

One more bullet for each man, just to make sure.

Sallum knelt down next to Brent, clipped a fresh magazine into the P7, wedged the barrel of the pistol into the man’s ear and squeezed the trigger. The bullet tore open the opposite side of Brent’s head. Sallum walked three paces to where Landau lay sprawled across the sofa. He rammed the pistol into his open mouth, fired, and stood back. Brain tissue was now spattered across the cream fabric. Sallum dipped a finger into the gooey mess and lifted it to his nose.

The smell of infidel decadence.

His work completed, Sallum sat, placing himself opposite the door, the gun in his hand, ready to react if anyone came in. The meeting was scheduled to last half an hour, and he had another seven minutes to wait. To leave early would be suspicious. He would take the time to adjust the robes and the veil, to get his breath and his pulse-rate back under control.

He started to stretch. Always exercise after an execution, he reminded himself.

He checked the pistol, then placed it back inside the belt of the jeans he was wearing beneath his robes.

I still have four bullets in the gun. Enough if I have to fight my way out of here.

He stood up and walked calmly towards the door. If I die, what of it? he reflected, glancing down the length of the corridor. I have killed three infidels today. The sacrifice of my own blood would be an honour.

The chatter and buzz of the early-evening cocktail hour had started, and Matt glanced through the restaurant. Janey, the manageress, was holding court at the bar, regaling an elderly couple with some of the more salacious local gossip. Out on the balcony a group of muscled men were sitting at a table covered with open beer bottles and empty crisp packets. Three of them Matt recognised. Local gangsters, they worked the informal, underworld trade routes between Essex and Marbella, shipping stolen cars, guns, drugs, anything that turned a quick and easy profit. The other three he hadn’t seen before, but judging by the whiteness of their complexions they were fresh off the plane. Looking for work, probably. Or making a delivery. As long as they kept to themselves, and paid for the beer and the food, nobody at the Last Trumpet would bother them. Along the Marbella coastline, that was the only way you stayed in business.

‘You OK, Matt?’ said David, a former paratrooper now doing security work for some of the Arab bankers who kept houses along the coast.

They can see it in my eyes, Matt thought, and in the way my shoulders are sagging. ‘Keeping my chin up,’ he answered. ‘You?’

‘Touch of bother up at the big house,’ said David. ‘One of the lady sheiks went a bit crazy, slapped one of the cleaning girls around a bit. You know what those Arabs are like, they treat the servants like scum. Anyway, this girl’s brother goes crazy, starts coming up to the house looking to defend the honour of their family. Usual Spanish macho bullshit – a lot of lip and not much action.’

‘Let me know if you need some help,’ said Matt. ‘The way I’m feeling I could use a good scrap.’

‘Need extra money, Matt?’ David took a sip on his glass of beer. ‘I’d have thought you’d be doing OK with your share of this place. I spend enough money in here to pay off Victoria Beckham’s credit-card bills.’

Matt grinned. ‘I can always use a bit more.’

On the TV screen Sky Sports was playing, showing a Newcastle-Sunderland game, but apart from Keith, the local Geordie, nobody was very interested. It was mostly a Southern crowd along this stretch of the Marbella coast. Boys from Essex and Kent and London with their Barbie-doll girlfriends, at home among their own kind. The Northerners tended to settle further along towards Torremolinos. To Matt, they were even more foreign than the Spanish.

Matt swung open the door to the back office. He only owned a fifth of the bar, and Janey was the manageress, but he always looked after the back office – the main reason, he sometimes suspected, that Damien had wanted him to come in as an investor. Damien had been looking for a man he could rely on to add up the night’s takings and get the cash into the bank the following morning without getting robbed. Matt also made sure there was no trouble at the bar.

Maybe Damien wanted me to keep an eye on Gill as well, Matt considered as he sat down in front of the computer. The three of us were like one big family, always running in and out of each other’s houses. Gill just didn’t like her family much, not when she grew up and realised what it was her Dad and her brother actually did for a living. She came out here to get away from that – and then she was stupid enough to fall in love with me.

Matt rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on the numbers. The bar was a living. If only I had been a bit more sensible, he thought. I might still have Gill, and we might be going on our honeymoon in Marrakech in a couple of weeks’ time.

The light was flickering on the computer screen. Matt took another sip of the Coke he’d poured at the bar and switched on to the internet, waiting patiently while the modem searched for the connection. The software took an age to load, but Matt didn’t mind waiting. He suspected the news was not going to be good.

He had learnt about trading shares just after getting out of the SAS and picking up a job bodyguarding Harry Stroller, an American internet entrepreneur who had made five hundred million dollars from floating his company during the dotcom boom – and then seen the value of the business double in the next year. Despite their different paths through life, Matt and Harry were men chiselled from the same stone: they were the same age, 35, they were both physically fit and mentally alert, they both liked to drink beer and chase girls, and neither of them minded taking a risk. The only real difference, Matt sometimes reflected as he sat for hours outside board meetings, was that Harry could programme a computer and work a spreadsheet, and Matt could throw a knife and fire a gun. Harry’s skills paid millions, and Matt’s just a few thousand. And when you get that close to the big cake, you want a slice of it for yourself.

After three months the two men had become solid friends, disappearing to bars together after Harry was through with his work. He’d started giving Matt share tips, and at the height of the dotcom bubble that was a valuable commodity. Harry knew from the bankers and brokers he talked to each day exactly which stocks were about to fly and when, and he passed the information on to Matt. Whether it was exactly legal or not, Matt wasn’t sure. But he wasn’t about to shut down a goldmine by asking anyone.

Soon, the tips became a lot more valuable than the job. Harry was paying a thousand dollars a day to protect him, but Matt was making five or ten times that just by trading shares. At the end of the job he had made enough to buy him his share in the Last Trumpet, to invest in a flat in London, to get a new silver Porsche Boxster, and to leave over enough to keep trading. The restaurant gave him a stake in a real business, something he could work at, and be proud of.

But by the time Matt stopped working for Harry he was addicted to trading. And he made the biggest mistake of all. He thought he was clever. He carried on trading shares, but without Harry to tell him what to buy and sell, every share he bought went down instead of up. The money quickly evaporated, and then the debts started to mount up.

It wasn’t greed. I was just trying to make the money for you, Gill. To give us a decent life together.

Matt looked at the computer screen, where the shares in his portfolio were displayed in neat tables. Ten different stocks, all of them purchased in the last six months. All of them with borrowed money. And all of them trading heavily down.

At a rough calculation, Matt reckoned he owed a half-million. And the people he owed it to didn’t just charge interest. They didn’t just downgrade your credit rating. They killed you.