‘Like I said, once Madison’s got an idea in her head, wild horses couldn’t drag it out of there. Who knows what could have driven her? Maybe she had some last-minute change of heart, knowing that if she got on that plane, she might not get this chance again for years. Or ever.’

‘That would be insane,’ Ben said. ‘All the way overland through the mountains to the Bamiyan Valley, with Taliban fighters everywhere, rolling around in tanks and armoured cars, armed with billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware, hunting for renegade Americans to kill. She wouldn’t stand a chance.’

‘You obviously don’t know Madison as well as we do. She can be headstrong. To say the least. The more you push her, the harder she’ll push right back at you.’

Ben considered what Twigg was saying. He tried to picture Madison travelling alone in some rental car, a western woman on her own in an extremely hostile land, trying to reach some remote spot in the mountains to carry out what seemed to him like an impossible quest. The odds were gigantic, seemingly unsurvivable. Twigg was right when he said Madison had never backed down from a challenge in her life. Headstrong wasn’t the word. But there was another possibility.

‘If she did take that option,’ Ben said. ‘If she’s really that crazy, and assuming she’d have been able to get out of Kabul at all, would she have tried to make the trip alone?’

‘We had the same idea,’ Twigg replied. ‘It occurred to us that she might have gone off with Aziz and the team, or whichever of them was able to get out of the city in one piece. You’ve got to bear in mind that anyone involved in preserving ancient cultural artefacts from Afghan history isn’t exactly flavour of the month with the Taliban. These are the same fanatical nutjobs who went around blowing up and smashing any relic they could find, last time they seized power. They’re hellbent on erasing anything that predates their own religion, which only started, like, yesterday, in the seventh century. Anyhow, we tried calling the Cultural Institute, hoping someone there might be able to offer some kind of information, or maybe a cell phone number for Aziz. At least if we knew he was with her, that would be some kind of consolation. I’m told he knows the country like the back of his hand. But no joy. Nobody seemed to know where he was, or if they did, they were too afraid to say. Soon after that, the Institute’s phone line went dead too. That was eight days ago.’

‘And there’s nobody else you can try contacting?’