But when Rashida and Amina arrived home, the young woman went up to her room without a word and locked the door behind her. She didn´t want to give her mother the satisfaction of seeing how much the evening had affected her. She had expected Zaf to be just another vapid player when her mother told her about the set-up. Yes, he was handsome, charming and funny. Rashida didn´t doubt that he had no shortage of dates. But beneath his easy charm there was an earnestness that had touched her. He had talked to her like he understood. Finally, somebody who did.

"You will have to talk to me at some point, you know." She heard her mother´s voice outside her room. Rashida didn´t answer. Instead, she pulled the prayer rug out of the cupboard. She was so immersed in the evening prayer that she didn´t hear the beeping of the incoming text message on her phone. Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim. In the name of God, most compassionate, most merciful. Rashida needed all the mercy she could get. Physically she was back home, but she couldn´t regain the sense of safety that had always been a part of home. Before she left for Saudi-Arabia. Now Rashida´s dreams were haunted by bearded faces, gunshots and the heat of the Arabian desert. Rashida couldn´t shake the feeling that her business there was still unresolved. She had been unable to tie up the loose ends. But did that mean that she would have to look constantly over her shoulder for the rest of her life? The prayer didn´t bring any answers, but a small measure of peace. She put the rug away, then noticed her blinking display. The message was from Zaf. Just wanted to say that I had a good time tonight (despite the crazy mums). How about a drink next week? Comedy night at the Ten Bells Pub on Monday. Rashida smiled. Suddenly the night seemed a little less scary and her room a little less cold. She hesitated a moment before texting back. Sounds fun. She would be in need of some cheering up. Monday was her first mandatory session with the in-house psychologist to work through any traumas she might have after her years abroad. Rashida didn´t exactly look forward to it. But it was a necessary evil in order to be cleared for another tenure abroad. Rashida had been thinking about her next destination for quite some time. After the hardship post in Saudi-Arabia, she was now eligible for more coveted places like the USA or France. Rashida had been toying with the idea of moving to Israel next. She hadn´t told her parents yet that she wanted to leave again. Her father was more often on his business trips than he was at home, and talking to her mother was… Rashida sighed and looked at her mobile again. She smiled, mentally picking an outfit for Monday night.

Ruth watched as Zaf turned off his computer and pushed his chair back. "Right, then. I´m off. See you tomorrow." He wore a blue dress shirt Ruth had never seen on him before. When he put on his leather jacket, she smiled to herself. He was dressed to impress. "Have fun on your date." Adam commented from his desk. Zaf shot him a cheeky grin. "Not a date. Just a friend of the family." And off he was. Jo came over to Ruth´s desk. "He is looking pretty sharp for a friend." "M-hm." Ruth only half-listened. Instead, she was looking at the photo on her desktop. It showed a brown-skinned, middle-aged man, dressed in dirty clothes, holding a rifle over his head. It looked like a still from a video. "Who is that?" Jo asked. "CIA knows him only by his nom-de-guerre, Saif al-Islam. Sword of Islam. He seems to be the head of an Al-Qaeda cell in the area around Mecca. They heard whispers that he is branching out to Europe now. Nothing concrete, though." She made a beeline to Adam´s desk. Jo kept looking at the photo. On either side of Saif al-Islam was a man. Both dressed in simple, dirty clothes. Jo noticed the knifes in their belts. The men seemed to be looking right at Jo. The intensity of their gaze sent a shiver down her spine. She had only been working properly for a couple of weeks and wasn´t accustomed to the horrors she had seen lately. Maybe Adam was right and she should have taken the room Zaf had offered her. She kept her eyes on the man on Sai al-Islam´s right side. Something about his gaunt face gave her the creeps. He looked… dead. There was no other way to describe it. Suddenly Jo remembered a particular moment in her training. A Special Forces team had been invited to talk about the psychological impact of violence. Not to the recipient, but to the perpetrator. One of them, a hook-nosed Irishman with surprisingly sad eyes, had waited until his colleagues had finished their tall tales about successful missions. "No way to sugarcoat it. Killing should never come too easy for you. When you lose the respect for life, you lose a part of yourself. There will be moments when you have to make impossible choices between the lives of your colleagues, the lives of civilians, and the lives of criminals. I am not saying Don´t kill. If you have to kill, do it as quick and painless as possible. Be sure that you are doing it to prevent a greater evil. If you enjoy it, you have the wrong job. But enjoyment or not – kill too often and it will poison you." As Jo looked at the picture, she began to understand what he had meant.

The Ten Bells was packed, but it didn´t take Zaf long to find Rashida. She sat on a stool at the bar, her hands clutched around a mug of tea, looking too serious for somebody who was about to watch stand-up comedy. The barkeeper kept shooting contemptuous glances at her – ordering tea at a pub was a mortal sin. Zaf noticed that Rashida had put quite a bit more effort into her appearance than for their dinner. She wore a short-sleeved, red shift dress and high heels. She had even put on make-up. Before Zaf had time to wonder what was causing her worried face, she lifted her head and looked at him. In an instant, her frown was replaced by a smile and her eyes lit up. Zaf had been at his job long enough to distinguish a real smile from a fake one. Rashida was genuinely glad to see him, but there was something else. She looked more troubled than during their dinner. Something happened Zaf deduced. "You might wanna take it easy. Chamomile is strong stuff" he joked, looking at the tag on her teabag. Rashida grinned. "Work hard, play hard, drink hard." Zaf ordered a beer for himself and more tea for Rashida, then they moved to a table with a good view on the stage. He had to find out what was troubling Rashida. Zaf had a feeling about her. He remembered what she had told him during their dinner. There was a lot more violence over there. I won´t go into specifics, but I saw quite a bit of violence. She was worried, and not just about the strained relationship with her mother. Whatever she had seen in Saudi-Arabia, it was haunting her. Zaf knew the feeling. Usually he was good at shaking off bad memories, but some of them would always stay with him. "Tough day in the office?" Rashida smiled ruefully. "Is it that obvious? Sorry. There´s just some stuff employees who have been abroad have to do after getting home. Never mind." She briefly shook her head. Now her smile looked more genuine. Obviously, Rashida was prone to overthinking and over-analyzing. Like Ruth, Zaf thought. Then it hit him. Rashida had been overseas for three years, her family had only a rough idea what she had been doing. Zaf remembered his own time at MI-6. After his first (and so far only) posting in Morocco for eighteen months, there had been a painfully thorough debriefing. If she truly was a spy, she must have been recruited and trained during his tenure abroad. He made a mental note to check the MI-6 personnel files first thing in the morning. Rashida watched him attentively. "You okay? Tough day in the office as well?" She flashed him a little grin. Zaf rolled his eyes. "Nah, just boring. So, entertain me." It was a cheeky thing to say, and once Zaf had gotten into a heated argument with a date because of it. ("Who do you think I am, your entertainer?!"). But he sensed that Rashida needed to be teased a bit. Rashida chuckled. She pulled a pack of cards out of her bag and began to shuffle them expertly. "Pick one, look at it, and put it back without showing me." Zaf raised his eyebrows when she spread out the cards with a flourish in-front of him. He picked one, then stuck it back in the pack. Rashida shuffled the pack again. Theatrically, she closed her eyes and mumbled something in Arabic. "My spider senses tell me that…" she pulled out one of the cards. "this is yours." Zaf whooped when she turned over the King of Hearts. "Nice. I salute your spider senses." Rashida put the cards back into her bag. "That´s nothing. You should see what I can do with a wooden box, a saw and a leggy, blonde assistant." Rashida leant back comfortably and crossed her legs. Zaf wondered if she knew how sexy her legs looked in those heels. Probably. Suddenly the room went dark, then the spotlights at the stage went on. Under the applause of the room, "Delicious Dave", a smartly dressed man in his thirties went up and took the microphone. "What up, London? Y´all ready for some fuuuuun?" Zaf fought the impulse to facepalm himself. The guy had an obnoxious, nasal voice and more product in his blond hair than Zaf had in his bathroom. "Guys, I gotta tell ya. Your public transport is a menace. We New Yorkers, we are used to some pretty rough stuff. But frankly, I thought I wasn´t gonna make it here today." Like on cue, a group of yuppies in the corner began to laugh. They looked pretty trashed already. The comedian smiled and carried on. "I was on the subway… sorry, the "Underground" with a bunch of men who looked like they were right out of a Jihadi training camp. And they wore those massive coats like they were hiding suicide-vests, speaking in some strange gibberish…" Rashida and Zaf stared at him. "Yeah." Rashida said a bit too loudly. "What kind of freak wears a coat in February?" Dave squinted to spot the perpetrator. "Well, hello there, young lady. Of course you´d talk trash at me. Those fellas were most likely some of your cousins. And who´s the… ahem… gentleman you´re with? Let me guess… arranged marriage? How much did he pay for you? Three camels and a laptop?" The group of yuppies in the corner shrieked like hyenas. Zaf crossed his arms. "Nah, that wasn´t necessary. I just spiked her drink, then date-raped her. And because I am on the swim team, I got away with no consequences whatsoever." Rashida fought hard to suppress a laugh. "You know, when you´re a star, we let you do it. Whatever you want. Grab us by the pussy, for example. And you could still become President." Dave´s face turned crimson. He had not expected the well-dressed, attractive couple to retort by referring to the Brock Turner-case and Donald Trump´s crude comment. He frowned and put the microphone down. "Geez, you Brits have no sense of humor. You now what? I don´t need this." He stormed off the stage, under the roaring applause of a hen party. "You go, girl!" one of the women yelled. Zaf raised his glass and clinked with Rashida´s. "To three camels and a laptop."

Nobody noticed the gaunt-faced, dark-skinned man in the corner.