the part of his brain that would have sent the command to feet or legs. He couldn't find it in the chaos. The only movement he could make was a reflexive tightening of his arms around his ribs.
A voice was calling for his mother, but he didn't know if it was his.
Other voices contradicted him.
Eventually, there was a hand on his shoulder. It was Vanessa, though Finn was not sure that she was there.
'What on earth is the matter, darling?'
II
Hassan left his parents at the palace, his father stunned, his mother pink with fussy pride, and walked up over the grass to Green Park Tube station on the Piccadilly Line.
At last, he thought, I am back in real life, back with things that matter. In the train, he took off his tie and stuffed it in his pocket. He was due at 'the pub' at 12.40, having asked Salim if he could be the last to arrive. The timing would be tight, but such was his elation that he wasn't worried. It was God's work, God's will.
He'd read accounts of Islamist groups in the kafir press and he'd read fine writing about what went on in the heads of 'terrorists'; he'd seen a 'drama-documentary' in the cinema about the planes that crashed into the Towers. What no one talked about, no one seemed to understand, was the joy - the pure exhilaration of belief!
People like himself were portrayed as madmen, mumbling, but as the Tube train rattled up to Manor House, he had never felt more lucid. It was all, as Ali had pointed out to them in Bradford, so simple. Life did not need string theory, eleven dimensions and a battering of the head against the inherent contradictions of human consciousness. All it required was to follow a simple revealed truth. There it was, on the bookshelf for PS6.99. For all time. What was more amazing, the glorious purity of the truth or the boneheaded refusal of people to accept the gift that had been given them?
Hassan went down the lazy street with its outdoor life for what he thought would be the last time, and rang the bell marked 'Ashaf'. Salim let him in. Upstairs were Gary the Gold Tooth Hindu, Seth the Shy One and Bald Elton.
There were four rucksacks sitting in the middle of the bare wooden floor.
In the corner, with his back to them, looking over the scrap of garden was someone Hassan hadn't seen before. The man turned round.
'This is Steve from Husam Nar,' said Salim. 'Steve, this is Jock.'
Steve was a short, tubby man of African appearance, about thirty years old. 'In these bags,' he said, 'are bomb components. We've used hydrogen peroxide injected into drinks bottles. This is a development of what was due to be used on those aircraft, where you need only a fairly small explosion to bring the plane down. We needed more bang, so each of you is carrying twenty-five drinks bottles. The detonators are in disposable cameras. The battery contents have been replaced by HMTD, or to give it the proper name, hexamethylene triperoxide diamine. This works as the primary explosive, or primer. It's unstable enough to go off easily, but stable enough to transport. Next to it in the battery casing is a small light bulb. When the camera is turned on, the charge to the light bulb is enough to detonate the HMTD which in turn sets off the main explosive. All clear?'
They all nodded. Steve had a thick East African accent, but his words were easy enough to follow.
'Listen carefully. You each go separately to the target. There are no trial runs. At the target you reassemble. You choose exactly where in a minute. One of you will carry all the detonators because we can't risk travelling on the train with the detonators in the same bag as the explosive. They're in this fourth bag here. Once you're at your assembly point at the target, the detonators are given out and the man who brought them is given his share of explosive by the other three. You've chosen?'
'Yes,' said Salim. 'Jock will take the detonators.'
'OK,' said Steve. 'The timing is that you meet at 11 p.m. tomorrow. You travel alone. You make your own travel plan. If you're on the same train and happen to see one another, ignore it. The target is fifteen minutes' walk from a busy railway station so there's no problem about getting there. You need to leave plenty of