Ben had encountered some interesting and colourful characters in his life, and Madison Cahill was one of those. While other people sat in offices and attended conferences and boardroom meetings, Madison’s job was travelling to the far corners of the world in search of lost treasures. Her father, the late, great Rigby Ignatius Boddington Cahill, had made a long and highly profitable career out of that slightly nebulous grey zone between being a regular archaeologist and an out-and-out fortune hunter. Whatever multi-million-dollar riches he might have raked in for himself over the years, there was no denying that he’d been responsible for the recovery of many lost wonders of history. Who could blame him if they just so happened to be extraordinarily valuable, or for charging an exorbitant finder’s fee to the governments and private museums to whom he delivered the goods?

By the time Rigby died, a saddened old man in retirement in Hawaii, his business had fallen into neglect and his once-thriving New York offices had closed up. That was when Madison had decided to take up the reins and restore the family firm to its former glory. Before she’d started hunting treasures for a living, she’d hunted other things: namely, people. After a successful career as a fugitive recovery agent for the United States federal government, she’d gone independent and become what some people might have called (though she hated the term) a bounty hunter.

That was how Ben had first got to meet her, while on a job in Serbia. Their very first encounter had involved her pointing a loaded 9mm Beretta pistol at him. Which normally wouldn’t have boded too well for their future relationship, not to mention Madison’s own future survival – but they’d swiftly got over that initial hiccup to become friends and allies. Facing death together at the hands of a sadistic Serbian gangland kingpin called Zarko Kožul had probably done something to cement that bond.

While their association had never blossomed into anything more romantic, it had come fairly close at times and there had always been a certain chemistry between them, in one of those slow-burn relationships that never quite seemed to come off. They’d remained in contact nonetheless, and Ben liked her a lot.

And now, this had to happen.

‘All right,’ Ben said. ‘From the beginning. Tell me everything you know.’

Chapter 4

Linus Twigg’s explanation began with what Ben had already more or less inferred, which was that Madison had been on a business trip to Afghanistan, searching for an archaeological site of special historical importance, when the current crisis exploded.