‘They’d kill me if they knew,’ Warner replied, ‘but yeah, thanks.’ He took the cigarette and Ben, wondering who ‘they’ were, clanged open his old Zippo and held it out. The familiar, comforting orange flame cast a soft flickering light over Warner’s face as he bent towards Ben to light up. It was the first time Ben had seen his features in anything more than semi-darkness; and that was when the full force of recognition hit him like a slap. He was so stunned that he forgot the burning lighter still in his hand, and his own unlit cigarette in the other.

Ben’s mind was suddenly whirling as all the unanswered questions and enigmas that had been eating at him since he’d landed in this hellhole country were made crystal clear.

He knew now. And he could sense, from the sly gleam in Warner’s eyes, that Warner knew he knew.

‘I know you,’ Ben said. ‘You’re—’

‘All right, all right. It had to come out sometime,’ Warner said irritably, sucking smoke. ‘Warner isn’t my actual name. It’s a cover, to hide my identity for the sake of the official records. Some bureaucrat came up with it. Their decision, not mine. I don’t even like it.’ He sighed. ‘You can’t possibly understand what it’s like to have to have everything done for you, everything decided for you. Half the time I feel like I’m living someone else’s life.’

‘What do I call you?’

‘You can call me Richard. That’s what people know me as. Most people, that is. The ordinary folks.’ He made quote marks with his fingers, the orange tip of his cigarette bobbing in the darkness. ‘Or call me Rick, Ricky, whatever you want. I really don’t give a damn. Except Dick. I don’t like to be called Dick.’

‘You’re Spartan,’ Ben said, shaking his head in amazement. ‘You’re Spartan.’

And in fact, the unhappy, troubled young man sitting with Ben in that shadowy, bullet-pocked ruin four thousand miles from home was a little more than that.

Chapter 36

Ben couldn’t have been more wrong if he’d tried. All this time he’d been wondering what the Taliban patrols swarming all over the mountains were so worked up about, the answer had been staring him right in the face but he couldn’t see it. They weren’t scouring the wilderness in search of Holt and Wolf’s motley band of freelance warriors. And they weren’t searching for the errant American woman who’d slipped out of Kabul with her companions, either.