They trekked onwards and upwards, dislodging rocks that tumbled down the slope. Now and then the crackle of distant gunfire still reached their ears, and the atmosphere was tense among the men. With the Soviets gone, the war was technically over; but the Afghan Mujahideen warriors were still everywhere, armed to the teeth and ready for action, while the political situation in general remained extremely unstable. Trouble was liable to erupt again at any time, and Rigby was painfully aware that time, itself, was a commodity he might not have much of.

It took them another half-hour or so of climbing before they finally reached the spot. Rigby checked his map once more and looked around him, orientating himself from his memory of last time he’d visited this place. That was ten years ago, back in 1979 just before the Russian tanks and troops had flooded into Afghanistan and made a mess of his plans, forcing him to abandon his search after such a tantalisingly promising start. All this time he’d been jumping with impatience to come back here and find out whether his instincts had been right, that the tentative discovery of the gold coins pointed to the existence of something far greater. If so, he could only hope and pray that nobody else had beaten him to it the intervening years.

This was it now. The moment of truth.

The men stood in a silent circle around him as Rigby crouched down and examined the ground. There were no particular landmarks anywhere, barely a wind-torn bush, nothing but rock; but he’d pictured this spot so many times in his mind during the past ten years that it was burned deep into his memory. Yes, here was the big stone under which he’d found the hollow containing the small but sensational cache of gold Alexandrine coins. His heart had been fluttering like a butterfly on that day ten years ago, just like it was doing now.

A decade of anxiety was at an end. In all these years, his discovery had remained safe. If he was right about what might lie buried here, then it was all his for the finding!

He nodded, barely able to contain his excitement. ‘This is the place,’ he said to Abdul, the only one of the digger team who spoke English. ‘Let’s get started.’

‘Right here?’ Abdul said, pointing straight down at his feet.

Rigby hesitated, casting his expert eye over the ground as though it were an X-ray machine that could discern the shapes of ancient city walls buried deep under all those tons of rock and dirt. Trusting his intuition he motioned to a slight mound a few yards away. ‘Let’s try over there instead.’ He directed them to spread out a little and dig in different parts of it, to scatter their risk of missing the right spot.