It was a quiet journey, because the jet’s passenger cabin was whisper-silent and his po-faced companions uttered not a single word all the way. And a short one, as they winged their way across the Channel at some 500 miles per hour. Ben sank into the plushness of the soft leather and closed his eyes. Outwardly he might have seemed asleep, but he was burning with anxiety for Madison Cahill. Every moment that went by could be the instant that a Taliban bullet went through her head – or worse, much worse, things. He should be helping her, instead of sitting on this plane surrounded by goons in suits. And yet some cloudy, undefined instinct told him that the Colonel’s surprise appearance in the picture might have some role to play in all of this. Only time would tell. Whatever was up, these boys seemed in a real hurry to move things along quickly. That suited Ben just fine.

An hour later, he was in another car being whisked into central London. Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee had stayed with him, but the rest of the escort had been changed at the airport. He resisted the urge to ask where they were going, as he knew they wouldn’t reply anyway.

He found out soon enough, as the cars shot down a web of backstreets and pulled through iron gates into the concrete compound at the rear of a drab, nondescript and very anonymous office building. Of course, such a meeting as he was about to have couldn’t take place anywhere too conspicuous. That was Colonel Carstairs all over. As they rolled up Tweedle-Dum radioed, and moments later three more heavyset, crew-cut men came out of the building to greet them. They were certainly laying on the manpower. Ben instantly spotted the concealed firearms bulging under their suit jackets.

He was shown inside and up three floors of stairs, along a dingy corridor past various empty, disused offices and finally to a door outside which his escorts stopped. Tweedle-Dee opened the door without knocking. Behind it was a large, bare office with an internal door, an empty desk, two utilitarian chairs and a picturesque view through a dusty window pane of a brick wall. The top brass really knew how to lay these secret meetings on in style. Tweedle-Dee motioned for Ben to go in. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he said with a smirk. ‘He’ll be with you in a moment.’

Ben stepped into the office and the door closed behind him. Alone, he paced up and down a few times, stepped over to the window, tried the internal door and found it locked, walked back to the desk and sat down. He’d have been unhappy about being kept waiting any longer than necessary, and he wasn’t. Moments later the internal door opened, and a tall man in a pinstriped suit walked into the room.

Chapter 7