Isabelle was trying to hold back tears. ‘That is what your superior said. What do you think? Do you think these people’ - she gestured at the Biafrans on the floor - ‘are a threat? They are starving to death!’

And then it happened. Scarface, perhaps about to launch into a more elaborate answer and wishing to make himself more comfortable, lowered his gun arm. And I saw the look in Isabelle’s eye. It was sheer madness - you never attack a man holding a gun unless you really know what you are doing - but I saw what she had in mind. Too late, though, because she let out a terrifying scream and leapt at him and, Christ, it very nearly worked, because he stumbled backwards and she began scratching at his eyes and it looked, for the briefest of moments, as though she had managed to overpower him. But then the gun came up. My legs had barely started moving before the shot went off, and the two bodies crumpled to the floor, and there was stillness.

All told, it must have taken about five seconds.

I looked down at the floor. Scarface was clutching his eyes with one hand and using the other to try to prise Isabelle’s body off him, but he was still holding the gun, so it was awkward. His first push managed to shift her a little, though, and as she turned I saw in one horrid moment the massive wound to her chest, the widening pool of blood, and the frozen eyes.

I placed my boot on Scarface’s arm and took the gun from him. I knocked him unconscious with one blow of the butt, then looked around at the dazed faces and the walls spinning around me.

There was no time to waste - even in a rabbit warren like this, the sound of the shot would travel, and more men would be on their way. I had to find a way out of here, now.

XVII

XVII

I rubbed the butt of the gun against my trousers. When I looked again, the blood had gone. It was a Stechkin APS machine pistol - Alebayo’s arrangement with Moscow clearly wasn’t new.

Gunner was standing by the far wall. Like everyone else in the room, he was rooted to the spot. When I had ‘interviewed’ him on the plane, he had revealed that he was an Easterner who had specifically joined the Federal side because he didn’t believe in secession. But he was clearly susceptible to their plight, because he had agreed to take the Biafrans from Aba and had fed them. However, I had no way of knowing what he might have done if Alebayo hadn’t turned up - it seemed unlikely he would have let them go.

‘Where are your ropes?’ I asked him, and he looked up at me. His eyes were glazed, and he was having trouble focusing.