Davoodi spoke again, slowly. ‘Are there any survivors? Have the bodies been retrieved and blessed?’

‘There are no survivors, but . . .’ Al Janaddi licked his lips as he gathered his thoughts. ‘We believe we have recovered the remains of Mahmud Shihab, the lead scientist of the facility. But at this point we’re not one hundred per cent sure if –’

The president unfolded his arms and narrowed his eyes at the scientist. ‘Tell us what you have, Professor. Everything – quickly.’ Though the tone was even, Al Janaddi could feel the underlying warning to be absolutely candid.

‘Yes, my President. Please appreciate there is much we still do not fully comprehend, and we need many more tests for final confirmation, but a body . . . er, a partial body, was shipped to us this morning. We believe it is Dr Shihab, but identification was possible only from the security tag found on a pocket and a partial thumbprint from the left hand.’

Al Janaddi sensed Parvid Davoodi watching him closely. ‘Severe burning?’ the vice-president asked.

Al Janaddi’s lips moved as if testing his words before he spoke them aloud. He shook his head and looked down at the ground before continuing. ‘Yes, there was gamma insult to the physiology, and some of the personnel recovering the body suffered quite severe secondary radiation poisoning, but that was not what confused us.’

The scientist drew in a deep shuddering breath and opened another file on the laptop – a single colour photograph that filled the screen. Though he had seen it before, he winced at the image. The top half of the body was almost unrecognisable as human. The head and face were the worst – they seemed to have stretched and widened. An eye a foot long stared out of the image, while the mouth – held open by the swollen, distended tongue – seemed to be screaming from the very pit of hell.

Even the veteran soldiers, who had seen all manner of mutilations on the battlefield, sat with mouths open in either disgust or shock. After a few moments, most of the group looked away, all except Mahmoud Moshaddam. The president’s gaze burned into the scientist; Al Janaddi felt as if it penetrated to his very core.

‘What else?’ Moshaddam said softly. ‘There is something more – I can feel it. I will not ask you a third time, Professor. Tell us everything.’

The scientist wrung his hands and nodded. ‘The Persepolis anomaly occurred just forty hours ago and over 400 miles from where we are now. However, when the body was recovered it was severely decomposed, as if Dr Shihab had been dead for many months. Somehow, between his disappearance under four days ago and reappearance, his body has undergone nearly half a year’s decomposition. We believe that when he disappeared, he didn’t just go somewhere else – he went some when else.’