I sipped a beer and tried to unwind and form a plan at the same time, letting the stress hormones settle, enjoying globalisation at its transient best. A Congolese family in green and purple robes filtered through a charcoal-grey swarm of Chinese businessmen. Two dazzling white sheikhs led faceless wives in gold-trimmed burkas. Eastern European sex workers pulled Samsonite cases, heading to the Gulf, South East Asian ones in denim cut-offs on their way to Europe. The skinny, bright-eyed Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan labourers clutched mobile phones and gazed at the departure boards. Staff of NGOs and media organisations sipped water, restless or exhausted depending on the direction of travel. I watched them move as flights were called: Erbil, Jeddah, Khartoum. There were other solitary individuals like me, meeting each other’s eyes but not for long. You found a lot of snapped sim cards in the bins. Private security contractors favoured duffel bags. They looked well-fed, and walked with the stiff swagger of men who’d been heavily armed until yesterday.

Six hours earlier I’d been in an abandoned mansion on the edge of Asir province in Saudi Arabia, close to the border with Yemen. The mansion had been trashed. At some point the previous night a local group of unknown affiliation had stormed the place, looting what they could. The occupant – a notorious playboy, discreet funder of terrorism and precious agent of mine – had fled. I had about ten minutes to clear the place of anything sensitive before a more purposeful crew arrived.

I walked through with an empty rucksack, my footsteps echoing as I searched. I’d never been inside before. It was a fifteen-bedroom, thirty-million-dollar palace: fun to trash, difficult to search. Crystal teardrops from the chandeliers littered the floor among balls from an antique snooker table. There were scattered books, broken glass, trails of blood where the intruders had cut themselves climbing through windows. They’d shot his pets, ransacked his wardrobe, slashed some dubious abstract art and one haunting Fantin-Latour still life. A single word of spray-painted Arabic livened the wallpaper: Irhal. Leave.

Which was good advice.

‘Are you seeing this?’ a voice in my earpiece asked.

The satellite image on my phone showed a convoy of five Toyota pickups heading straight towards me. Unclear who they were, but I wasn’t putting my money on Saudi forces. The barrels of the semi-automatics sticking out of the windows were clear enough.

‘I see it.’

‘Probably time to get a move on.’