‘I’m just filling in the background, so that you understand what this is really all about. Eventually, things reached the stage where enough was enough. After a 2017 UN report estimated that opium production had increased by eighty-seven per cent in just that year alone, the American military combined forces with the Afghan authorities in what was basically a CIA-guided mission to obliterate the opium trade. The ensuing air strikes were highly effective in destroying nearly all the country’s refinement facilities. While they stopped short of reducing the poor poppy farmers to total destitution, they nonetheless absolutely hammered the supply of heroin available to the traffickers.’

‘You know your shit,’ Roth said. ‘Not all of this is declassified information.’

Segal shrugged. ‘Yes, well, you might say I have the inside track.’

‘Go on,’ Ben said.

‘So, refusing to be deterred by such minor setbacks as the near-blanket destruction of the Afghan narcotics trade, the Islamists just switched gears,’ Segal continued. ‘Remember, they don’t spend their ill-gotten gains on mansions and gold-plated Rolls Royces. Every penny goes into well-protected bank accounts, hidden behind layers of fronts, where it just grows and grows. They possess huge financial resources for developing new alliances and fresh ways of developing drugs that could replace the traditional heroin, allowing them to continue to accrue wealth while stepping up the attack on the moral and social integrity of the West. What might those new drugs be? They considered many options. Cocaine has always been the poor relation, and its value has bottomed out in recent years. Other forms of recreational drug, like methamphetamine or marijuana, just don’t have the same kind of market traction or profitability. Nor did the Islamists wish to truck with the organised cartels of Central and South America. So the question was, “Where do we go?”’

‘China,’ Roth said. Ben looked at him and wondered, not for the first time, whether the American knew more about all this than he was letting on.

Segal replied, ‘China, exactly.’

‘Why China?’ Ben asked.

‘Because,’ Segal explained, ‘China is the world’s largest producer of a totally synthetic, lab-created opioid drug that is not only quicker, easier and cheaper to manufacture than its traditional competitors, but also infinitely more powerful. Rendering the likes of heroin and cocaine virtually obsolete in the modern age.’

‘He’s right, man, the times they are a changin’,’ Roth said. ‘There’s a new kid on the block, and its name is fentanyl. You don’t have to cultivate it, you don’t have to harvest it, and you don’t have to refine the raw material into a finished product. All you need is a basic lab, some beakers and whatnot, and some geek with a chemistry degree. Think of it as Heroin 2.0.’

‘Fentanyl?’