Ben was about to reply when he heard an indistinct cry behind him in the distance, and turned around in surprise to see four figures running across the plateau from the direction of the ridge. In the dusky light he could see that three of them were men: one slim and dark-haired, the second portly and middle-aged and the third much older again, having trouble keeping up and stumbling along with a pronounced limp.

But it wasn’t the three men Ben was looking at. It was the figure in front, sprinting hard across the rocky ground, leaping over the rubble. The mountain wind blew off her cap and her black hair streamed out behind her as she ran. She called out to him again, and this time he made out her words.

‘Ben? Ben Hope? Is that you? Oh my God – is that really you?’

He surged to his feet. His heart had begun to pound and his hands were shaky.

‘Madison?’

Chapter 26

She didn’t stop running until she reached him, flying past Holt and the group of astonished men and straight into Ben’s arms with such force that she almost knocked him over. She buried her face into his shoulder and hugged him tightly. ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’ Then she pulled away from him, clasping his shoulders and staring into his eyes with a look of complete bewilderment. ‘I’m not dreaming. It actually is you.’

Ben couldn’t help but laugh out loud, those despairing emotions from moments earlier now completely washed away in a tide of bubbling happiness and relief. ‘I can’t quite believe it’s you either.’

‘When we saw you arrive we thought you were troops,’ she explained in a gush of words. ‘We ran and hid in our shelter back there. Then I was watching through the binoculars and I thought I must be seeing things. What on earth are you doing here?’

Keeping it as brief as possible, Ben told her about Linus Twigg’s phone call; how he’d been able to take advantage of a chance opportunity to fly out to Afghanistan; how he’d learned from old Karim at the Cultural Institute that she’d escaped Kabul to go off in search of her father’s Zakara site. ‘There have been a couple of twists and turns along the way, but now I’m here. And here you are. It’s good to see you, Madison.’