Fred was gone for a moment. When he came back he was struggling with the crazed, wild-eyed dog on the end of a leash as taut as a bowstring. Froth dripped from its jaws as it yearned to sink its snapping fangs into the flesh of a stranger, and it didn’t really care whose. The human chained to the truck chassis would do fine. Ben stepped out of its reach. Even Roth looked afraid of the thing.

And so was Jafari, quite understandably. He backed away as far as he could, trying to cross his legs to protect his groin, which was at the perfect level for the dog’s gnashing jaws and most exposed to attack. He might have been ready to die a glorious hero’s death in the name of Allah, but nothing could quite prepare the most determined martyr for the reality of having one’s testicles clamped between the fangs of a savage beast, torn off by the roots and messily devoured in front of his eyes. Ben had been fairly sure that the prospect of such violent, bloody castration would be enough to make even the most devoted believer quickly forget all about the teachings of scripture. And he’d been right.

Primal terrors. Crude, but unquestionably effective. Men were so vulnerable, deep down.

Hasan Jafari soon began to talk.

Chapter 39

Once the floodgates opened, they couldn’t shut him up. All the while, Fred was hanging onto Milou’s leash, and probably hoping that Ben would give him the signal to let go.

More often than not, a man will tell the truth when he’s within moments of gory emasculation; and so when the prisoner desperately and repeatedly insisted that he had no idea where Nazim al-Kassar was, and that he, Hasan Jafari, was just a minion, a lowly footsoldier, and not privy to such top-level intelligence, Ben and Roth reluctantly had to accept that he was being sincere.

But that didn’t mean Hasan Jafari had nothing to offer his tormentors by way of information.

‘The woman,’ he gasped, breathless with terror as the dog went on eyeing him with bared fangs. ‘I know where she is. Please – please, don’t let it bite my balls off!’

‘Julien Segal’s wife? She’s alive?’

‘I don’t know her name. But yeah, yeah, she’s alive, I swear. They’re holding her because they don’t trust him. It’s all part of the big plan.’

Ben and Roth exchanged glances. ‘What big plan?’

‘I don’t know! I’m telling the truth!’

‘He knows,’ Roth said. ‘Let the dog go. Just one bite. A small nibble. Like a sampler.’

‘No! Arrgh! Don’t do that, please! I just know where they’re holding her. Inside one of the old ghost Métro stations, Saint-Martin. They use the disused tunnels as a base!’