Mesopotamia: literally, ‘the land between two rivers’, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Soil that Ben had set foot on personally, as the ancient country had once covered most of what was now Iraq and Kuwait, as well as parts of Saudi Arabia and Syria. Known as the cradle of civilisation, through its long history it had been home to the Babylonian, Assyrian and Akkadian empires among other ancient kingdoms, been the scene of countless epic battles and seen its territories change hands through conquest after conquest as entire civilisations rose and flourished, then were invaded and put to the sword.

Some of that history Ben had studied as a young theology scholar at Oxford, in another life, before any notion of a military career had ever formed in his mind. It had been during that period, many years ago, that he’d first come here to the Louvre to visit the exhibits along with some college pal whose name he’d long since forgotten. On that first ever trip to Paris as a kid of nineteen he could never have dreamed he would later return under such different circumstances. Then again, most things about the course his life had taken could not have been easily predicted.

He made his way through the Mesopotamia section, passing ancient and priceless relics to his left and right. There was the seven-foot-high Babylonian stone tablet called the Code of Hammurabi. A lion frieze from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. Everything but old King Neb’s fabled golden idol. All highly impressive, but not what he’d come here to see.

Soon afterwards, Ben found what he was looking for.

Flanking each side of a tall archway stood a pair of massive statues that looked very similar to the biggest of the artifacts Romy Juneau had caught on camera while spying on her boss’s conversation with Nazim al-Kassar. Ben had been sure he’d seen something like them before. His guess had been right: it had been right here in this very spot, all those years ago. They were giant winged bulls with the heads of men, over four metres in height and length. According to the exhibit label the huge sculptures, called ‘Lamassu’, had been carved from solid blocks of alabaster more than two and a half thousand years ago, during the reign of Sargon II. They had been excavated from the remains of the Assyrian king’s citadel at Dur Sharrukin, now Khorsabad in Nineveh Province, northern Iraq.