Not alive anyway.

Hassad led him into a small room. It measured ten feet by six, there was a straw bed in one corner, and some coffee was brewing on a stove made from hot bricks. There was a sweet, sticky smell to the air that Porter found nauseating. In one corner, there was a lamp, but there was a cloth thrown across it, as if Hassad didn’t like the light too much. He poured some coffee into two small white cups, and handed one to Porter. ‘So now we can talk,’ he said flatly.

Porter took a hit of the coffee. It was thick and black, with a sludge of grounds at the bottom. He could feel it hitting his veins, washing aside some the exhaustion that had afflicted him since he’d touched down in this country. He had thought about this moment for the last few days, but now it was here, he realised you couldn’t plan a deal like this one. Sometimes a man had to be guided by his wits and his instincts alone. If they weren’t good enough to get him through, then it was no use imagining anything else would.

‘You know who they were, don’t you?’

‘Who?’ said Hassad.

‘The bastards who took me.’

Hassad drained the last of his coffee and grabbed a handful of cashew nuts from a bowl next to the coffee pot. In the semi-darkness of the room, you could hardly see the deformity around his mouth. You could see the tiredness, however. This was a man who spent his life living underground, and only emerged blinking into the daylight for the occasional fierce firefight.

‘I went to the café to find you,’ said Hassad. ‘It was as I had arranged it. When I arrived, you weren’t there, but I spoke to the barman, and he said that you had been led away by two men.’

‘They had the password.’

‘Then you were betrayed,’ said Hassad. ‘The British can’t be trusted. That won’t come as news to anyone down here.’

‘Who says it wasn’t one of your people who betrayed me?’ said Porter. ‘There could be plenty of people who didn’t want me to come here.’

‘Everyone here is loyal to me, and loyal to the cause,’ said Hassad. ‘There are no traitors within Hezbollah.’ A thin smile twisted up his deformed mouth. ‘Betrayal is a British speciality.’

‘The bastards who took me looked like Arabs to me.’

‘They are, but they work for a company called Connaught Security Services,’ said Hassad. There was no emotion in his voice. Porter realised he was in the company of a soldier: a man who killed people when he had to, but who always respected his enemy.

‘It’s a British private security firm, with offices throughout the Middle East. They are in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and out here as well. They work for whoever pays them. Mining companies, oil companies, airlines. And the British government as well when it suits them.’

But why the hell did they take me? Porter asked himself. Who were they working for?