Eight years after that, the name changed again. Henceforth the organisation would be called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. ISIL, for short. A name that became very well known indeed to folks in the West. And the rest was history: the bombings, the killings, the mass abductions, the media storms surrounding the filmed beheadings of hostages streamed across the internet.

All those years, Ben had always secretly wished that he might one day have the opportunity of running into his old friend Nazim al-Kassar again. Over time, he’d become resigned to the unlikelihood of that ever happening. Then the deal had been sealed in August 2016, when Ben had heard through the grapevine that Nazim al-Kassar was among a group of ISIL commanders blown to bits in a US air strike in Iraq.

To have seen him dead would have been preferable. But to hear him dead was good enough. Ben had been relieved that the world was now free of one more lunatic murdering scumbag.

And now here he was again. Walking about and looking very much alive after all.

Ben couldn’t believe it. Nazim al-Kassar, back from the dead and for some bizarre reason resurfacing in Paris, of all places. What could be the connection between him and a young woman like Romy Juneau?

That was a mystery Ben intended to solve. And if fate had chosen to cross his path with Nazim’s once again, it would be for the last time. Because only one of them was walking away from this alive.

Chapter 9

One thing was for damn well sure: the 2016 intelligence sources proclaiming Nazim al-Kassar’s demise were wrong. Badly wrong. It felt like history repeating itself once again. Ben needed to know how that could have happened, and why the hell a supposed dead man was walking around a European city leaving bodies in his wake.

Ben was deep in thought as he rode the subway train the long way back towards the safehouse. He could think of very few people with the right kinds of connections to help shed light on the questions in his mind. In fact, when he boiled the list right down, it came to just one man. Tyler Roth, the Delta Master Sergeant from Task Force Red.