When she’d finished, she bound up the wound with gauze. Next, the woman looked at Katie. She worked quickly and swiftly, checking where Porter had patched up her cuts and wounds, redressing them, and then giving her another dose of antibiotics. She muttered a few words to Hassad in Arabic.

‘She’s going to be fine,’ Hassad said to Porter. ‘She needs a few days in hospital, with maybe a drip to get some fluids and calories back into her, but apart from that she’ll be OK.’

Porter could see the look of relief on Katie’s face. She was getting stronger by the minute, and you could see it in her face and eyes. Just knowing she had a chance of escaping had brought her back to life again.

‘Now you,’ said Hassad, pointing Porter towards the chair.

‘I’m fine,’ Porter growled.

‘She needs to check you out.’

‘I said I’m fine,’ snapped Porter. ‘A few cuts and bruises, that’s all. Nothing I can’t handle. Now let’s get the hell out of here before the rest of your mates show up and start trying to chop people’s bloody heads off again.’

The small room was dark and gloomy, but even in the dismal light it was possible to see that Hassad’s face was reddening with anger.

‘She needs to look at your teeth.’

Porter laughed. ‘I’ll get a check-up when I get home, thanks,’ he said with a rough grin. ‘I’ll even make sure I floss regularly.’

‘Your teeth, now,’ Hassad snapped.

He was standing just two feet from Porter, with the old woman another three feet behind him. Porter was looking hard into his eyes, still questioning whether he could trust the man. ‘Let’s just get on –’

‘If you won’t let me do this, there’s no point in trying to get to the border.’

‘This is ridiculous.’

Hassad moved closer, so that he was standing just a foot in front of Porter. ‘They sent a missile straight into the mine,’ he said, his voice calm and controlled but with a thread of anger running through it. ‘We were tracked to the safe house. They know exactly where we are.’

‘You mean …’ said Katie.

She hobbled towards John and Hassad, using the desk for support. She was looking from one man to another, her face confused.

‘You mean the missile was a British one?’

Hassad nodded curtly. ‘British or Israeli. A bunker-busting missile is a sophisticated piece of kit.’

Porter paused. He already knew that was true. If it was a bunker-busting bomb that attacked the mine, then it was almost certainly a GBU-28, a piece of kit manufactured by Lockheed in America, but sold to both the British and Israeli air forces. It was made up of 80 per cent TNT, and 20 per cent aluminium powder which powered up the conventional explosive. On tests, the GBU-28 had blasted its way through twenty feet of concrete, and cut through as many as fifteen different layers of bunker. It had probably been delivered by two fighter jets: one to mark the target, and a second to deliver two bombs. It was the only weapon capable of causing the kind of damage seen in the mine. And not many people had them.