‘Khan Zada is indeed kind,’ Ben said, shaking his head. ‘But wherever my friends and I go, these children have to go as well. It’s my intention to carry them out of Afghanistan and help find them a safer home elsewhere.’

‘All of them?’

‘Yes. All of them.’

The commander scratched his beard. ‘I do not have that many horses. And many of these children, I think, are too small to ride even a pony. Also you must think about water, provisions. It will be a long and difficult journey through the mountains. On foot, impossible.’

‘Then we still have a teeny weeny bit of a problem, don’t we?’ said Wolf, when Ben went back to report the news. Madison walked over to join them as they talked. ‘You can spoil a good thing by over-thinking it,’ she said optimistically. ‘That’s what Dad always used to say, anyhow.’

‘Good advice,’ Ben said. Then a thought came to him. He walked back towards the barricade, stepping over bodies, peering down at the ground around him.

‘What are you doing?’ Madison asked, trotting after him.

‘Looking for something I dropped.’ He spotted the familiar blue cigarette pack lying squashed and flattened among the rocks where he’d tossed it earlier. Bending to pick it up, he took out the crumpled business card. No name, just an anonymous mobile number.

‘Whose number is that?’ she asked.

‘Someone you wouldn’t want to know,’ he replied. ‘But he might just come in useful.’

The tribesmen were finishing up the task of gathering their dead when Ben returned to speak again with their leader. ‘Khan, can you lend me a few of your men?’

‘Certainly. Of what purpose can they be to you?’

‘We need to dig our way back into that cave,’ Ben said, pointing.

‘Then you shall have the biggest and strongest.’ Khan Zada called them over. ‘Azim! Hamed! Kawkab! Maalik! Jaafar! My brother Benedict Hope has a task for you.’

They stepped forward. The one called Jaafar was one of the most enormous hulks of a human being Ben had ever seen, with hands like the buckets on a mechanical digger and eyes set so far apart in his head that it was impossible to look at both at once. He was also mute, but one of Khan’s most loyal warriors.

Ben and his helpers spent the next hour shifting rocks, until he was able to squeeze through the tight space into the cave. To his relief, once inside he found the tunnels were still intact. Hunting through the dark grotto he found where Liebowitz had left the repaired sat phone.

It worked.

‘Good man, Doug,’ Ben murmured, with a pang that the man was dead.

Back outside, Ben soon found a spot not too far off where he was able to get satellite hook-up, and dialled the number from the business card.