‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Ben said with a dry smile. ‘And am I allowed to ask what our objective is?’

‘You are,’ Carstairs replied. ‘And I’m authorised to give you all the information you require at present.’ He paused, eyeing Ben thoughtfully. ‘Before we get into that, you’ve been out of the game for some time. How up to date is your knowledge of the current situation in Afghanistan?’

‘I like to stay reasonably abreast of things,’ Ben said.

‘Good. Then I needn’t dwell on just how messy the situation there has become of late. As you’re aware, the sudden withdrawal of US troops from the region and the ensuing Taliban takeover of the country have resulted in the most godawful chaos. Trust the Yanks to bugger it up so badly, of course. The present administration are bloody incompetents, run by a gang of wet blankets under a president who frankly ought to be in a—but I won’t go on about that. In short, as a consequence of this bungled evacuation a great many people have found themselves stranded and cut off in a significantly hostile environment, to put it mildly.’

‘I had heard something about it,’ Ben said. ‘Then Operation Hydra is a rescue mission?’

‘Yes, but forget all those other poor sods. There’s nothing anyone can do to help them, and they don’t concern us. Instead, the focus of this task force will be on one particular individual whom we believe to be trapped behind enemy lines.’

‘Believe to be?’

‘The individual’s exact whereabouts are uncertain at this point,’ Carstairs said, sounding strangely reminiscent of the account Linus Twigg had given Ben the day earlier. ‘Communications were lost some time ago. Your objective will be to penetrate deep into enemy territory, locate and extract them, making use of contacts on the ground, who will provide whatever intelligence and logistics are available. You’ll be concentrating your search within Kabul to begin with, then move to the outlying areas as required. Needless to say, the capital is heavily occupied by Taliban fighters and there are multiple checkpoints on every route in and out of the city. It’s not going to be a cakewalk.’

‘And just who is this individual we’re trying to locate?’ Ben asked.

‘An asset of prime importance to us. Whose safe extraction is absolutely essential, at all costs. At all costs,’ Carstairs repeated for emphasis, peering at Ben from under his snowy eyebrows.

‘Must be quite a VIP,’ Ben said. ‘A political asset? One of your agents who’s slipped through the net of the evacuation effort?’

‘For the purposes of the mission, the principal will be known by the codename “Spartan”,’ Carstairs replied.

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it. Spartan’s identity is on a need-to-know basis. And at this point, you don’t need to know.’