‘We must hurry, Julien,’ said Salim Youssef to his younger associate. ‘They’ll be here any minute.’ He was trying to lift a magnificent Greco-Roman bust from its plinth to place it on a trolley and wheel it outside to the already overloaded truck. But the artifact was far too heavy for his seventy-four-year-old arms to handle. He gasped and wheezed, but he wouldn’t give up. For the last forty years the Syrian had been devotedly in charge of the preservation and cataloguing of the priceless antiquities in this place, which for him was as sacred and holy as a site of religious worship.

His companion was a Frenchman named Julien Segal, twenty-five years his junior, who had been closely involved in Salim’s work for over a decade. He was based equally in Paris and the Middle East, and spoke Arabic fluently. A man known for his elegant dress style and cosmopolitan chic, he wasn’t looking his stylish best at this moment, as he struggled and sweated to drag a six-foot Akkadian alabaster statue across the flagstone floor towards the archway near to which the truck was parked. Even inside the relative coolness of the temple, the August desert heat felt as though it could bake a man inside his skin.

‘It’s no use, Salim. We’ll never make it. Everyone else has run for it, and we should do the same while we still can.’

‘You go, Julien,’ Salim wheezed, clutching his chest. ‘I’m staying. I won’t abandon these treasures, no matter what. This place is all I know and care about.’

‘But they’ll kill you, Salim.’

‘Let those lunatic butchers do their worst,’ the old man said. ‘I’m not afraid of them. I have lived my life and don’t have many years left. But yours is still ahead of you. Go! Save yourself!’ He pulled the truck keys from his pocket and tossed them to Julien Segal.

The Frenchman was about to reply, ‘I won’t leave without you.’ But the words died in his mouth as he turned to see the sight that froze his blood.

They were here.

Nine men had come into the temple’s main entrance and now stood in a semicircle, watching them with detached curiosity. All were bearded and clad in dusty battledress, armed with automatic weapons. Their leader stood in the middle, with four of his soldiers each side of him. He wore black, in accordance with his rank as an ISIL commander. A holstered pistol and a long, sheathed knife hung from his belt.

That was when Julien Segal saw that three of the men were also clutching heavy iron sledgehammers in addition to their weaponry. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat had gone dry.