‘Then why don’t you get down to brass tacks and tell me?’

The colonel stood up from the desk and paced across to the window. He stood with his back to Ben, gazing through the dusty glass with the thousand-yard stare of a deeply worried man. For a player like Carstairs to be this anxious, Ben knew whatever was troubling him was even more serious than he was letting on.

Carstairs said, ‘I’ve been asked to put together a special task force for a mission of particular importance. One that, by its nature, requires extreme delicacy in its execution and just the right kind of top-level operatives to see it through. Its codename is Operation Hydra.’

‘Catchy,’ Ben said.

Carstairs went on, ‘After much discussion your name came high on our list of potential candidates, based on your fairly unique set of credentials and your extensive experience in that particular theatre of operations.’

Now Ben was beginning to sense that his instinct had been right: that this unexpected twist might have a role to play in serving his own purposes. Fate sometimes had a strange way of intervening to tie the loose ends together. He felt a rush of blood through his veins, though his calm expression did nothing to show it.

‘I see. And what theatre of operations are we talking about?’

The colonel turned away from the window to face him. ‘We want to send you back to your old hunting grounds in Afghanistan.’

Chapter 8

Carstairs looked piercingly at Ben. ‘How do you feel about that, Major Hope? Are you ready to take a trip?’

The wheels were turning fast in Ben’s head. Under normal circumstances he would have told Carstairs to take a hike. He wasn’t an army reservist who could be recalled for service in times of war or unusual emergency. Which meant that for all the colonel’s big talk about their having a hold on him for life, they technically couldn’t force him to do anything he didn’t want to. But in this case he was willing to make an exception, because what Carstairs was dangling in front of him was the perfect opportunity for what would otherwise have been impossible for a lone civilian, to penetrate the borders of a completely closed country. Once inside, he might have some chance of finding out what had happened to Madison Cahill.

It was a pretty tenuous proposition. Even assuming she was still alive, finding her would be needles and haystacks. But it was better to be there on the ground than helplessly pacing up and down thousands of miles away.

It didn’t take long for Ben to reply. He’d already made his decision.

‘I’ve dreamed of nothing else but to go back there,’ he said.