‘Other than hypothermia?’

‘Other than that,’ Dempsey confirmed, feeling himself smile at the answer.

‘Other than that I’m good,’ Grace replied. ‘Just want to get this done now, you know?’

‘We will. In and out. We collect Aryo and we’re gone.’

‘You seem certain.’

‘Trust me, Eden. One way or the other, we’re leaving Tootkai with the evidence we need.’

‘I’ve trusted you so far, haven’t I?’

‘You have.’

‘Then just don’t let me down at the final jump, OK, and we can end this thing happy.’

Dempsey smiled again, before turning back to face the windscreen and what was left of their hard, featureless journey.

SEVENTY-FIVE

Grace had never been to Afghanistan before, or anywhere like it. So she had no idea what to expect from Tootkai. As they entered the village, she looked around her with interest.

Tootkai was basically a collection of small, irregularly placed living spaces. Mostly just single storey, barely wide enough for two rooms at best. A very few only slightly bigger than that.

Covered in snow, the buildings’ usual uniform brown colour was still visible here and there. Evidence of the mud and mortar bricks with which each was roughly constructed. The location of the buildings, too, followed no set pattern that Grace could see. They seemed to have been built where best suited their first owner, which left them dotted around the village as if they’d been randomly dropped into place.

However many had been here at first, the number of buildings must have grown over the years, gradually building up around the single dirt road that ran through the centre of Tootkai. Eventually, there were enough, Grace guessed, to justify the construction of the low, impractical wall that now provided the village boundary.

The only openings in the wall were at the village’s two ‘gates’; there to allow for the central dirt road to pass. Even so, these were hardly a barrier to entry. As well-maintained as the wall was around the outlying parts of the village, it was far too low to provide any real obstacle. Grace estimated that she and her companions could have climbed over it in seconds, with little to no difficulty.

Not that they had needed to. The road that ran through its only opening was deserted. And so, it seemed, was the village itself.

At least so far.

Shah led the way. His bespoke tweed suit was gone, replaced by a thick, white bodysuit made entirely of man-made fibres. A Western answer to the extremes of temperatures within Afghanistan, the bodysuit was joined by a white utility jacket, designed to carry everything an operative would need in the field. In Shah’s case, this meant four knives, a SIG Sauer P229 pistol and a collection of clips containing ammunition for both the handgun and the Heckler & Koch G36C close-quarters assault rifle he was openly carrying.

Grace was behind him, similarly dressed and identically armed. She had questioned the fact that none of them were making any attempt to disguise themselves or their hardware, to which Shah had provided a compelling answer: the average Afghan male stood five foot five in his bare feet and, in shape, weighed around one hundred and forty pounds. With Dempsey standing six two and weighing around two twenty-five, it would not take visible weapons for anyone to notice that a stranger had come to town.