Jimmy Coates: Sabotage. Joe Craig

loomed out at every angle. The place was bustling and made to seem even more packed because everybody else was wrapped up in hefty Puffa jackets. All the men seemed to have thick beards as well, which must have helped in the cold. Zafi thrust her hands into her jeans and headed for a stand piled high with woolly hats.

      Five minutes later she had some new woolly mittens and a bright red bobble hat. She was confident that the French Secret Service budget would cover the cost. Now she headed for the food section. All she had to do was follow the smell.

      At the back of the warehouse was a tiled extension. The stalls there were stacked with fish. Zafi was stunned by the selection on display. Some of the creatures looked like they should have died out with the dinosaurs. The floor was glazed with the muddy remnants of fish entrails. Her trainers slid about with each step, and every now and again she felt something squish.

      Straightaway, she recognised the man she was looking for and approached his stand. He was fat, with round features, a neatly trimmed chestnut beard and glasses that made his eyes look too small for his face. Zafi stood on tiptoe and leaned forwards over the fish so that she didn’t have to raise her voice too much above the noise of the market.

      “You have a special order put aside for me,” she said, looking her contact up and down.

      “What name please?” the man asked, with a perfect English accent. Zafi paused for a moment to maximise the impact of her response.

      “The Stovorskisson account.” She loved the effect her words had on any of the contacts she used. The fishmonger’s eyes stretched wide behind his glasses, like suns about to explode seen through a telescope. He wiped his hands on his overalls and stumbled back into a private room behind the counter. Every movement was stilted. Often these contacts were ordinary members of the public who had no idea of the extent of the operation they were involved with. Sometimes they didn’t even believe they would ever really be called into action.

      When the man returned he was clutching a small round container made of transparent plastic. In it were yellowish-white cubes that looked like some kind of cheese or fudge. They wobbled slightly as the fishmonger’s hand trembled. He quickly put the container down on the counter, as if he didn’t want to touch it any longer than he had to.

      “You know,” he said, almost too quietly to be heard, “the raw flesh of a Greenland shark is very poisonous.”

      Zafi tried hard to hide her smile.

      “Of course,” she replied. “It’s the high concentration of trimethylamine oxide. To make it edible you need to bury it for six months to ensure thorough decomposition of the flesh, then dry it in a special shed for six more. The putrefied meat becomes Hákarl, an Icelandic speciality. In fact,” she announced, a look of glee coming over her face, “I’ll take a tub of that as well, please.”

      She picked up the plastic container the man had brought from the back and chose an identical one from a chiller.

      “What are you going to do with it?” the man asked nervously, while Zafi counted out some money. “The raw meat, I mean?”

      “Kill the British Prime Minister, of course!”

      The man froze for a split-second, then his whole body relaxed. He reached over the counter and patted the bobble on Zafi’s hat. A huge smile took over his face.

      “Sweetheart, you’ve read too many science books,” he chortled, then quickly added, “and too many spy books!”

      Zafi flashed him her sweetest smile and waltzed away with her new weapon. The tubs of shark meat chilled her fingers. For a second, a thought flashed across her mind. Do I have to do this? She wondered what would happen if she dropped the tubs to the floor, letting the cubes scatter, and didn’t stop to pick them up again. Immediately, her fingers locked more tightly around the plastic. It’s not up to me