‘We have contacts inside their organisation, which was how we found out that they had taken you, and where,’ said Hassad. ‘Once we knew that, we had no choice but to come and get you. Three of my men died, however.’ He looked sternly at Porter. ‘Your life doesn’t come cheap, Mr Porter. Now it is time to tell me why you are here.’

‘To bring Katie Dartmouth home,’ said Porter.

Hassad listened to the statement without a flicker of reaction.

‘You have details, I suppose, of your government’s willingness to bring its troops home from Iraq,’ he said flatly. ‘We have already said the woman will be released so long as this one simple condition is met.’

Porter took a step forward. ‘Is she here?’

Hassad nodded.

‘I want to see her.’

There was a flicker of doubt across Hassad’s face, but then the twisted mouth turned up into a smile.

‘Of course,’ he replied.

He started to walk from the room. Porter followed him, out into the corridor, and back along to the main meeting point at the bottom of the staircase. Hassad took another tunnel. It stretched for thirty metres, although Porter quickly realised the lamp wasn’t powerful enough to illuminate it to the end. They had walked for ten metres along its length when Hassad suddenly stopped. Right in front of him there was a solid steel door built into the side of the rock. Two men were standing outside, both of them dressed in black, and with AK-47s strapped to their chests. Hassad nodded to them, and they nodded back, but neither of them spoke. Hassad pushed the door open, then stepped inside. ‘This way,’ he said, glancing back.

Porter started to follow. The pictures of Katie Dartmouth broadcast over the Internet and TV in the days after her captivity had been burned into his memory. But this was different. This was real life.

Hassad extinguished the gas lamp: an electric line had been fed down here from the generator above, and there were two lamps illuminating the room, making it far brighter than anywhere else in the mine. The room was a decent size, significantly larger than Hassad’s own room, or any of the other spaces Porter had seen cut into the rock. It was at least fifteen feet deep and twenty wide. The walls were squarer than they were elsewhere, and the room felt dry: there was none of the metallic dampness that filled the rest of the mine. There was a smell of sweat and excrement, like walking past an open sewer. In one corner, there was a webcam fixed to a wooden tripod: Hassad switched it off as soon as they stepped inside. But although the room was probably better than he expected, Katie Dartmouth herself looked far worse. As Porter looked at her, he could feel his heart sinking within his chest. What kind of barbarians could do this to an innocent woman? What kind of political point could possibly be worth this kind of suffering? How low into the pits of cruelty can a man sink that he would make another human being endure this amount of humiliation and pain?