Her face hardened and a defensive glint came into her eye. ‘When I took over the business after his death, I always knew I’d want to come out to Zakara and finish what he started. My way of honouring his legacy. And it seemed like a good time to do it. Everyone knew the US was going to be pulling out eventually. Our leaders talked about it for years. But we all thought the Afghan government would be able to handle things on their own and the country would stay pretty stable for a long time to come. I was naive, but I wasn’t the only one. What happened, nobody saw coming.’

‘She’s right, Ben,’ Wolf said. ‘Give her a break.’

‘So that’s when I hooked up with Aziz and Ramin again. We spent months planning, everything was looking great. Then I’m hardly in Kabul a week before we heard the news that things were getting bad. Even then, a lot of people didn’t believe it until the last minute. Soon afterwards, the panic started. It got so insane, so fast.’

‘You could still have got out,’ Ben said.

‘Maybe I could,’ she replied hotly, ‘but I chose to stay because I know what those fanatical sons of bitches will do. They hadn’t been in power five minutes before they were already partnering up with the Chinese government. Who of course are ready to jump in to grab whatever they can, offering financial incentives in return for a free pass at exploiting Afghanistan’s massive, almost totally untapped mineral resources. It’s one of the world’s biggest reserves of copper, cobalt, lithium and more. A trillion-dollar goldmine that China now will have a monopoly on. You see the environmental damage they’ve already done in places like the Congo, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Ecuador. These mountains are full of copper, Ben. What with the Taliban intent on destroying every last remaining piece of this country’s non-Islamic past and their new buddies rolling in with the mining machinery, there won’t be anything left. Three thousand years of history, up in smoke.’

‘And you think you can stop it?’ Ben asked her. ‘You plan on being here with that rifle in your hands to bar the road to them, a year from now, or two, or three?’

‘Of course not.’ Madison’s tone was rising and her back was stiffening like a cobra ready to strike. ‘But I figure if I can save some of what’s buried under the ruins of Zakara, it’s got to be worth it.’