‘No, I’m someone who wants to take these people down just as badly as you do,’ Ben said. ‘But I won’t let you get killed in the process.’

Jean-Luc considered that point and seemed to accept it. Then he said, ‘Okay, then what’s in those drums?’

Ben suddenly had a bad feeling. ‘Drums?’

‘Drums, barrels, kegs, whatever you want to call them. While they had us pinned down they grabbed all they could off the boat and loaded them into our trucks. First I thought the bastards were some kind of invasion force. Now I’m thinking it’s all about what’s inside those things. They’re drug dealers, right? Or gun runners. Shit, we’re losing them. Can’t this car go any faster?’

Now Ben’s bad feeling was growing worse. So the police didn’t have all the fentanyl after all. With a chill in his heart he asked, ‘How many drums did they take with them?’

‘I wasn’t exactly counting,’ Jean-Luc said impatiently. ‘I was too busy trying to keep low behind the rocks and not get shot. As many as they could fit in the back of our trucks along with their guys. Maybe a dozen, maybe more. Shit! We’re falling right back here. Now I can’t see them at all.’

Ben did the maths. Twelve drums, forty-five kilos apiece, was 540 kilos, nearly twelve hundred pounds. And if one pound of the stuff was poisonous enough to kill two hundred thousand people, Nazim still had the means to murder over two hundred and forty million of them. The entire population of France, three times over, with enough change to wipe out everyone in Luxembourg into the bargain.

Not good. His palms felt clammy and his mouth had gone dry.

Then Roth held up his phone for Ben to see as the GPS mobile tracker got its fix on the Citroën and flashed it up on a map with a little red inverted teardrop pinpointing its position. ‘Target acquired,’ he said with a fierce grin.

Roth was enjoying this far too much.

Ben was surprised by the tracking result. Now that he knew that Nazim had managed to salvage a quantity of his loot, he’d have expected the terrorists to waste no time at all in heading for Paris, so that they could press on with what remained of their plans. But Paris lay some two hundred kilometres to the south-east, heading past Rouen on the A13 motorway. Nazim was bearing almost due south and a little to the west. He was already nearly forty kilometres from Vaucottes, hustling fast as the crow flew. Sticking to the minor D-roads, but looking as though he was intending to pick up the A28 motorway further south.

In which case, he was going nowhere near Paris at all. So what the hell was his plan?

‘Still there, Jean-Luc?’