‘By then, Dad felt he was getting a little too old for all that crap. His health wasn’t so great anymore, he’d slowed down a little and scaled back his operations, thinking about retirement. He never came back to Afghanistan. And until his dying day, he always regretted his unfinished business here.’ Madison paused, looking sad. ‘But the irony is, even if Dad had succeeded in excavating Alexandria Zakara and filled the state museum in Kabul with all kinds of amazing treasures, it would all most likely have been lost again soon afterwards. Before the civil war, the museum had managed to hang onto a huge collection of ancient artefacts dating back to the Bronze Age. The fighting in the city got so bad that most of the museum staff had to get out, while a few brave curators who stayed behind risked their lives transferring the bulk of the artefacts to a bank vault in the city to protect them from what was coming. They were right, because in 1993 and then again in 1997 the museum was hit by rocket attacks and nearly all the exhibits it still had left, sculptures, vases, glassware, frescoes, and important collections of Bactrian coins, vanished at the hands of Taliban looters.’

Ben was pretty familiar with the propensity of groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda for trading in stolen antiquities – the same stolen antiquities they pretended to despise as being against the tenets of their faith – in order to raise large amounts of easy cash for buying weapons. And just occasionally, for their own personal gain. He asked, ‘What about the stuff hidden in the vault?’

Madison shook her head. ‘That’s the tragedy. When the Americans threw out the Taliban and things were looking like they were stabilising again, those rescued pieces were all returned to the museum. Now the tables have turned and the Taliban are stronger than ever, it’s almost certain they’ll be destroyed or sold off too.’

‘This damn country,’ Wolf said. ‘It’s like a jinx.’

Ben said, ‘Madison, I understand why this place is like a magnet for people in your line of work. I get what drives them to be so passionate about it. Your father was a tough and determined man. But even he had the sense to bail out when things became too difficult. If anything they’re even worse now, and they’re not going to improve any time soon. So what in God’s name possessed you to take such a stupid risk and put yourself in harm’s way like that?’