Mohammed and his wife, Fatima, were eating in the dining room. Mohammed got to his feet as he saw her crossing the courtyard.

“Is everything alright, Miss Beatrix?”

“It’s fine. Sit down. Finish your dinner.”

“I’ve finished,” he said, waving her concern away. “When are you leaving?”

“Tonight.”

He gestured up towards Isabella’s bedroom. “We will look after her.”

“I know you will.”

“My friend came this afternoon. He thinks the riad can be made much more secure. He suggests cameras and motion sensors on the roof and several cameras outside. He thinks it will be difficult for anyone to get in without giving us fair warning. Would you like me to go ahead?”

“Please. I trust you, Mohammed. Do what you think is best.”

“Very good, Miss Beatrix.” He paused and looked at her with concern. “Can I ask how you are feeling?”

“I’m fine,” she said, more abruptly than she intended. She spoke more gently. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Be careful,” he said. “She only just got you back again.”

Beatrix tried Isabella’s door. The handle turned, but only so much. It was catching on something. The room had a window that looked out onto the open corridor that ran around the riad and the courtyard below, and it was covered only with a thin gauze curtain. Beatrix looked through it and saw that a chair had been propped up against the door, jamming the handle. That was good.

She was about to leave when she noticed that the gauze curtain was pulled aside at the other end of the window. She moved over to it and looked inside. Isabella was lying on her side, her face turned to the window. She looked peaceful and innocent, and Beatrix wondered again whether it had been selfish of her to remove her from the foster parents.

But then she remembered the blank and emotionless mask that always fell over her daughter’s face whenever they had discussed her childhood. A peripatetic existence, moved from one unloving home to another, no structure, no purpose. She needed to be with her mother. And Beatrix would do everything that she could to make sure that she was safe.

She was about to turn away when she saw that Isabella had something clasped in her right hand. She stared hard into the gloom of the room until she had identified the strip of photographs that they had taken that morning.

And then she turned away.

If she didn’t leave now, she never would.

Chapter Nine

Pope had arranged for her to be flown under diplomatic cover from Marrakech to Kuwait City. They did not know how deeply Manage Risk was embedded into the security apparatus of southern Iraq, and so they decided to avoid having her name on the passenger manifest of a flight into the country. Instead, she would be driven across the border to Basra.

It had been agreed that she would be equipped when she arrived in Iraq, and so the only contraband items that she was bringing, her throwing knives, had been stowed with the rest of her gear in the hold. She passed through security with a minimum of fuss and boarded the waiting jet. They kept their take-off slot, and Beatrix watched with melancholy regret as the lights of the city disappeared into the uniform bleakness of the desert that surrounded it.