‘We need to take you into protective custody. Can you walk?’

‘I’ll try. I’m a little weak. Where’s my husband? Where’s Julien? Is he all right?’

‘We need to discuss that,’ Ben said. ‘But let’s get you out of here first.’ He took her arm and supported her as she stood shakily up out of the chair. ‘I’ve got you. You’ll soon be fine.’

Roth stepped over Jafari’s corpse as though it were a garbage sack and headed out of the cell door, checking left and right. ‘We’re clear.’

‘It’s time to go, Madame Segal.’ Ben helped her thread a path through the dead bodies and out through the doorway after Roth.

‘It’s a long way back, bud,’ Roth said. ‘She gonna be okay?’

‘I’ll carry her if I have to. Let’s get moving.’

Chapter 42

It was indeed a long way back, and Ben did have to carry her. Exhausted after her ordeal, Margot Segal was soon asleep in his arms. Roth held onto both MP5s and walked ahead as they slowly retraced their steps. But with their guide now dead, tracing their way in reverse through the maze of tunnels and passages and doorways was a confusing business. After more than twenty minutes of progress, Roth halted in a dark passage that suddenly looked unfamiliar and said, ‘Shit. I think I led us through the wrong door back a ways. This whole place all looks the same. Damn that asshole Jafari for getting in the way of a bullet.’

‘That’s a nice way of saying you’ve got us lost,’ Ben said.

‘Hey, put it on me, why don’t you?’

‘You’re the point man, Captain. I have my arms full.’ Which Ben did, literally. Margot Segal might have been slightly built, but she was becoming a dead weight. His wounds were hurting him again.

They doubled back and tried what Roth initially thought was the correct doorway. Except it wasn’t. But the wrong turning had led to an important chance discovery.

‘Well, well,’ Roth muttered.

Back in the day, the large brick-built space in which they now found themselves might have been a power substation room, judging by the assortment of clunky old obsolete electrical equipment that had been mostly ripped out and piled to one side as junk.

Much more recently, it had served as something very different. Modern neon striplights had been crudely rigged up to the prehistoric wiring system, brightly illuminating the row of ten heavy-duty metal work benches that were arranged along its entire length. Six of the benches were bare, while the remaining four were covered with crisp new parcel-sized cardboard boxes printed with a company name, ETZ INTERNATIONAL, some of them sealed with packaging tape and others cut open.

‘No prizes for guessing who put this little lot here,’ Roth said. ‘It ain’t the public transport authority, and that’s for sure.’