Ben stared at him. ‘I’ve been on a lot of hostage rescue missions, Colonel. I’ve never been asked to locate someone without knowing who they were.’

‘There are reasons why it has to be that way,’ Carstairs replied. ‘But you won’t be operating completely in the dark. The task force’s efforts will be assisted and guided by a consultant, who’s accompanying the mission. Until such time as Spartan is located, only he will know his identity.’

‘Do you know his identity?’ Ben asked.

Carstairs spread his hands in a gesture that said, ‘If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.’

‘All right. This consultant, he’s what, Army Intelligence?’

‘A non-military operative.’

‘A spook,’ Ben said.

‘Call it what you will. Part of your role will be to protect the consultant if things get rough. Without him, or more specifically without his knowledge, the mission fails.’

‘You don’t regard that as a weak spot?’ Ben asked. ‘He catches a bullet, gets taken by the enemy or run over by a bloody bus, and we’re cooked. Putting all the eggs in one basket doesn’t strike me as such a brilliant strategy.’

‘You know as well as I do that no plan was ever perfect or ever will be,’ Carstairs replied. ‘I repeat, there are reasons.’

‘How does he get in?’

‘He’s already there,’ Carstairs said. ‘He’ll RV with the team when you reach our safehouse in Kabul.’

‘Is he CIA? You know what I think about those guys.’

‘No, he’s one of ours.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘You’ll know him as Lewis Goffin.’

‘What’s his real name?’

‘That’s classified.’

‘What are his credentials? Training and field experience?’

‘You don’t need to know that either.’

‘I think I need to know if some non-combatant desk jockey ghoul from the dark corners of British Intelligence is going to get under our feet and become a liability to our team when things get hot out there,’ Ben said. ‘And they will, make no mistake. Anything can happen.’

‘He won’t get in your way.’

‘And if we succeed in locating Spartan? What then?’

‘Systems will be in place to extract him,’ Carstairs said simply.

‘Otherwise, there’s no back door for the team.’

‘Correct. As I said, you’ll be on your own.’

Ben said nothing.

‘You look unhappy, Benedict.’

‘That’s because I am. Your assignment stinks. Eight men deployed blind and totally unsupported on a one-way ticket into an enemy hellhole hunting for a target they can’t identify, while having to babysit a dodgy MI5 character who’s guarding the key information that’s been withheld from them. That’s not how we’ve ever worked before.’