I began to sort through, taking the cash, ensuring the hard drives were exposed. A sheet of the South China Morning Post caught my eye. It had been folded small, tucked into a box of necklaces. I unwrapped it and saw what looked like two uncut diamonds. Even in the murky room they sparkled: yellow-tinted and unmistakable against the newsprint.

I pocketed one diamond, wrapped the other back in the paper with half the money. When Samir returned with four jerrycans, I gave him the wrap of newspaper and told him it was a present for later; I needed him poor and wary for a few more minutes. We both splashed petrol over the hoard, then he ran down to the car. I took a final breath before dropping a match. Sometimes it’s left to you to perform the ceremony alone; to lower the flag. No call to prayer from Abha. There was a deep Sunday peace, which meant that peace was gone.

An hour to the airbase, a flight to Medina, then another Saudi military jet into Jordan. No one had offered me a change of clothes. And petrol smoke sticks to you. Messages kept coming in on the phone belonging to Christopher Bohren, my cover identity: bankers, brokers, a fellow art dealer, a company that specialised in installing infinity pools. All wondering why I’d disappeared.

I had no idea.

I washed the taste of blood out of my mouth with Heineken. The situation was a mess, I didn’t doubt that. My agent had vanished, Saudi Arabia looked like it might kick off, and someone somewhere in Vauxhall Cross was worried about my own potential capture. But I had also been expecting this: the intelligence service liked to keep you moving, stop you building empires and attachments. The longer you were in the field the more vulnerable you became, so the thinking went. As well as the dangers of overexposure, the theory involved some old-school notion of going native. Operations got pulled overnight and you rarely, if ever, got an adequate explanation. I sometimes wondered about HQ’s envy of field officers, whether they created their own secrecy just to keep you in your place. Sometimes it was as simple as a budget cut.

For now I wanted to enjoy a last moment of freedom, of being Christopher Bohren. For all the professional setback and geopolitical consequences of my departure, I was pleased to be here. The magic of returning to places never diminished – of finding them still there: the tables, the weary face behind the counter. It was a small victory, as if I’d kept a rendezvous with myself.

On the TV screen: Militants burn playboy’s palace. Is Saudi pact with extremism over?

That was the question posed by RT Arabic, the Kremlin’s new Arabic-language station. They had good footage: a reporter standing beside smouldering ruins, with the carbonised Ferrari visible over his shoulder. I finished my beer and got another.