He waited. And waited. Patiently at first, though every so often he would try the guards’ number again, to no avail. Almost half an hour went by, and Nazim was becoming quite agitated. Then the phone finally rang. Nazim snatched it up and barked, ‘Talk to me! Where are you?’

The phone signal was crackly and weak, barely there at all. Mohammed’s faint voice said, ‘We’re down there now, boss. All that’s here is a bunch of dead bodies and an empty chair where the kafir bitch was.’ Which, as a concise description of what he and his companions had discovered down in the ghost tunnel, was perfectly accurate. But then it got worse, because before Nazim could start yelling at him down the phone, Mohammed added, ‘We went in by the ventilation shaft, boss. Someone else has been down there before us. It’s been disturbed, and the door to the storeroom has been broken open too. What do you want us to do?’

Nazim was actually unable to come up with any instructions at this moment, other than, ‘Try and fix things up and get out of there as soon as you can.’

‘What about the bodies?’

‘Leave them,’ Nazim said. Which technically was a sin, as under Islamic law every dead body must be buried according to the proper protocol, although the fact that these men had died martyrs’ deaths in the service of Allah circumvented that necessity.

Nazim ended the call realising that the tunnel hideouts were now compromised and would not be used again. That was irksome enough, but worse was the knowledge that only one man could be thwarting him like this. The foreigner. The man with no name. Why, why, could they not be rid of him? Who was this shaitan, this demon in human form, who seemed to be able to evade and outsmart them at each turn while ever whittling down their forces?

That thought led to more, and worse, conclusions. Because logic dictated that if the nameless white shaitan could get to the Segal female, it meant that he could get to the bitch’s husband.

Within seconds of that realisation Nazim was dialling Segal’s mobile number. By rights the dhimmi should at this moment be asleep in bed in his hotel near the port. Nazim let it ring and ring until it went to voicemail, then he redialled twice more and did the same again, but there was still no answer. Nazim finally gave up, his suspicions now fully alerted and his mind whirling as he considered the potential chain reaction of events. Segal knew far too much. If Nazim no longer had a hold over him, the infidel could cause their whole scheme to founder. Not only by spilling their secret to the foreigner, but by leading him right here to the warehouse.