As he approached the building, he saw a pair of American heavy troop transport trucks crammed with Taliban fighters halted outside, facing in opposite directions and partly blocking the road so that vehicles had to thread by in single file. At first he sensed trouble, before he realised it was just a couple of routine patrols that had stopped for a chat, happily holding up the traffic with total disdain for the city folks. He waited in line then drove slowly by, parked a hundred metres down the street and waited, watching the trucks and the fighters in his mirror. A woman was walking along the dusty roadside, clad from head to toe in her burka. As she passed by the soldiers she quickened her step, head bowed, trying to ignore their abusive tirades.

Hearts and minds. Ben had long ago learned – though he hadn’t needed much teaching – to honour the ordinary people whose lives were disrupted by his military presence. These guys didn’t have such scruples.

Soon afterwards, the trucks set off again and went their opposite ways; Ben flicked away his cigarette, got out of the van and started slowly walking towards the Institute building. Like the woman, he kept his head bowed towards the ground in a show of humility, averting his face from passers-by so that nobody would spot his European complexion and fake-looking beard.

Up close, the Institute offices had clearly seen much better times, looking dismal and rundown in comparison to the years-old images he’d seen. It had been a thriving place then, but now the steps and wall outside were pocked with bullet craters and the lower-floor windows were boarded up with plywood. Climbing the steps he saw that the front door was hanging open, and stepped inside the cool of a lobby entrance with what had once been a beautiful mosaic stone floor, badly cracked and chipped with tiles missing. The lobby was stripped bare of any furniture and there were empty patches on the walls where pictures had once hung. Images of relics and artefacts from Afghanistan’s ancient pre-Islamic past, Ben guessed. Not something that the new regime could tolerate, in their insistence on erasing any part of the country’s cultural history they considered idolatrous. Which equated to the large majority of it.

He paused, listening hard for any sign of life within the building. The place felt and sounded quite deserted, but all the same he slipped the Browning out of the folds of his kameez. To his right, a winding wooden staircase reflected the dull, dusty light streaming from a window. He made his way up to the first floor, where a row of offices lay open, chairs and desks overturned, bookcases and filing cabinets upset and their contents spilled everywhere. Had the ransackers just been smashing the place up out of spite, or were they searching for something in particular?