Six years ago the Foreign Office had identified an urgent need to bolster our connections with rebels in Libya and Syria. They wanted to know about activists, but also more battle-ready opposition. I was already tuned in to some of the movements from my time in Tunis and Cairo. The plan was to monitor and control the flow of arms, men and communications equipment as much as possible. Prevent massacres, respond to cries for help, without the need for the kind of military intervention that makes news bulletins. Overseeing this was a small, ex-directory unit of MI6 set up in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, incorporating those familiar with the movement of Islamist fighters, as well as the intricacies of the diplomatic relationships that concerned them: Pakistan, Turkey, the Gulf states. CIA were on board, keen to make it a liaison operation with Six, because liaison operations didn’t need to be reported to Congress. MI6 and those Cabinet members in the know wanted it categorised as an Information Operation as these didn’t require ministerial sanction. I was needed because you can’t do everything with drones.

They wanted me to enter that world, as someone who could befriend funding sources for rebels of all stripes, to map out the web of shifting alliances between Riyadh, Ankara and Tripoli. I thought it sounded like an opportunity to immerse myself rather than run around another desert sticking targets on backs. I would have to win trust, which took time, which was what I’d trained for. I convinced them that art dealing involved as much mysterious movement of funds as any other pursuit, and we created Bohren. I met Rashid Bin Talal six months later at Basel art fair, established that he was setting up a museum of modern art in Riyadh, that he nursed a crippling hard-on for young white men, and that he was shipping over five hundred grand a week to militant Islam. I recruited him five months later. That was quick, but still felt luxuriously gradual by the standards of the modern intelligence service. I codenamed him Courtesan and insisted no more than six individuals knew his real identity. We kept him in play for the sake of his intel, his cash, the cover he gave our own schemes, and diplomatic relations with the Saudis. It was win–win all the way around.

‘Courtesan was arrested, six a.m. our time, Saudi side of the border,’ Undercroft said. ‘Believed to have been taken to Ulaysha prison. Obviously we’re monitoring the situation. I know you’ll want him out. Intervening now risks drawing attention.’

‘So will him talking.’

‘It may be too late.’

‘Where was E-Squadron?’