Except I’m not going to.

They haven’t locked me up because they know I’m not going anywhere. Not without Katie Dartmouth anyway.

He walked across to the metal bucket in the corner. The smell of the room wasn’t too bad: you could tell blokes had been kipping down on the straw, and certainly nobody had been in to change it, but when you’d been sleeping rough for a few years, you got used to far worse. The air was bad, however: there wasn’t any proper ventilation down here, and what oxygen managed to filter its way into the mine was already stale and old. You could taste the bodies it had already passed through with every breath you took, and it made Porter feel more unclean than he had at any point in his life. Dipping his hands into the water, he scooped up the cold water, and splashed it across his face and his hair. It was the same way he’d washed when he was living on the street. At least I’m used to it, he reflected bitterly.

There was no mirror in the room, and no shaving kit either. Porter hadn’t shaved since he’d left his room in the Firm, and that was getting on for forty-eight hours ago now. A beard was growing on his face: he’d always been a man who could put on a beard in a few days if he stopped shaving, and, living rough, he’d often had one when he hadn’t been able to get to a proper bathroom. Out here it might even be an advantage, he decided. If by some miracle I escape, then it will help me blend in among the local Arabs.

Porter paced around the room once then twice. Even though he didn’t know exactly what time it was, he thought it was late on Friday night. The execution was scheduled for eight tomorrow night: that meant if he didn’t make any progress with Hassad and the rest of the raghead bastards tonight, he wasn’t likely to get a second chance. Tomorrow, they’d all be sharpening their swords, ready for their big moment on TV.

He reckoned that for all their talk – and for all Peregrine Collinson’s talk in particular – the Firm hadn’t made any more progress in the last forty-eight hours. Katie was right here, and it was as clear as hell that the boys back in London didn’t have the faintest clue where ‘here’ was. If they had, they’d be raiding the place. Tonight. They wouldn’t leave it until the last minute. Too risky.

Porter paused for a second. He splashed some more water on his face, trying to clean the dirt that had clung to him from the cell and the firefight. There were a couple of small scabs from the cuts he’d picked up, but they flaked away easily enough. It was nothing too serious. If they do know where she is, then they might come tonight. If the Regiment have discovered this mine, they’ll send in a unit, probably around three or four in the morning. Even with regular shift changes, the guards were always a lot sleepier around then, and that pushed the odds up in your favour. They’d probably sneak in a few men first, and try and cut a few throats quietly before they set off the big fireworks. I need to be watching out for that in the next few hours. I might be in the middle of making my own move when suddenly a couple of dozen Regiment guys start rampaging through the place. Dressed the way I am, the bastards will probably shoot me on sight. I’ll be just one more incident of ‘friendly fire’.