‘Your Caliphate is finished, moron,’ Roth said. ‘You had a good run, but this man’s army stopped it.’ He prodded a finger to his own chest. ‘It’s over. You’re done, get it? And your lunatic comrades need to rethink their plans for world domination because they’re all gonna end up just like you.’ He brandished the hammer.

Fred was watching from the sidelines, not understanding a word but anticipating a good show. Ben had no doubt that Roth would carry out every bit of his threat if he were left to his own devices. He had no intention of letting the American start laying into an unarmed captive. Though Jafari didn’t know that.

The only problem was that Jafari didn’t seem the least bit afraid of whatever the crazy American might be about to do to him. He looked Roth straight in the eye and screamed, ‘I’m only a servant of Allah. You can beat me, you can break my bones, you can kill me, but you can’t defeat me, because to die in the way of Allah is our highest hope!’

And Ben believed him completely. It was the reason why none of the aggressive foreign policies of the West in fighting jihad had had, or could ever have, any serious effect. Because how could you deter an enemy who wasn’t afraid of death, one who actually embraced its prospect, who had been this deeply conditioned to believe that martyrdom in the name of their holy cause was their most glorious possible calling? Allied naval commanders had faced the same frightening truth when they’d first encountered the Japanese kamikaze suicide pilots in the Pacific campaign of World War Two. It was a whole new kind of warfare, and it changed the rules entirely.

Which called for a more subtle strategy than Roth’s heavy-handed approach if they were to have any chance of success here tonight. Ben was quite certain that Hasan Jafari would have a big contented smile on his face while Roth gave him his ticket to Paradise by smashing his brains out.

However, Jafari was still a man. And men, no matter how resolute in their beliefs, were generally subject to universal, primal, archetypal terrors that penetrated far deeper than any book-taught ideology ever could. Fundamentalist religion was a powerful force, to be sure, but it couldn’t undo millions of years of evolution stretching back to mankind’s earliest ancestors. Lizard brain theory, it was called, and it was a concept that Ben happened to subscribe to. You just needed to know how to reach that profound psychological core.

Ben turned to Fred, and switching to French he said, ‘Fred, go and fetch Milou, would you, please?’

Jafari frowned, caught off balance by this turn of events. ‘Who the fuck is Milou?’

Ben replied, ‘Your worst fear, Hasan. Literally.’