A few weeks before starting her new assignment, she travelled to the country
in question. Her first meeting was with the US ambassador (there was no UK
embassy in the country), who warned her that her forthcoming appointment
was already widely known about, and not just in a positive way. She was already
apparently on the radar of Al-Qaeda, which was ‘known to be operating within
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xii
Introduction
the country’. What’s more, her place of residence was right next to the TV station,
which had been taken over recently during a coup d’état.