Jonas Merrick â mockingly nicknamed âEternal Flame' by his colleagues at MI6 because he was desk bound, and considered a long redundant encyclopedia of names and faces â was on the edge of retirement. Having escaped his own insincere retirement party and taken refuge on a bench within the grounds of Thames House he finds himself sitting next to Winston Gunn, a young man drawn into the Jihadi activist net while serving 18 months imprisonment. A young man packed tightly with explosives ready for detonationâŚ.