Her medical training had equipped her with enough English to follow the command. Porter felt her hands clamping around the side of his head, gripping him tight, while her frail body pushed into him, providing a countervailing force to the wrench. Hassad immediately leant into a fresh blow. The tooth creaked. Porter summoned up one more ounce of resistance, trying to bring the pain under control. If this doesn’t work, maybe they should just toss me aside. Let Katie get to the border by herself. Collinson’s men can catch up with me and I’ll just have to deal with them as best I can.

Suddenly there was a sound like a floorboard cracking open. Porter’s eyes shot open. He could see Hassad rocking backwards, the wrench still in his hand, blood dripping from the small lump of white tooth at its tip.

The old woman was handing Porter a glass of water. He took it from her, but his hands were shaking so badly he was hardly able to hold the thing, and spilt much of it down the front of his shirt. A terrible pain was throbbing through his jaw. He swilled the water back, rinsing out his mouth, and spitting out the blood and tooth debris into the bin at the side of the chair. Next, she handed him six white pills. Porter took them in his shaking hand, and swallowed them methodically. Painkillers, or cyanide? he wondered to himself as the tablets sunk down the back of his throat. Let’s hope it’s the latter. That’s the only thing that’s going to make this pain go away.

‘They put that one in with concrete,’ said Hassad, holding the tooth in front of Porter. ‘I guess they didn’t want to take any chances of it falling out if you got into a fight.’

‘You found something?’

Tears were still streaming down Porter’s face, and he was finding it difficult to speak.

Hassad nodded, pointing to the underside of the tooth. Porter’s vision was still fuzzy, and the pain ripping through his head was making it hard for him to concentrate. The painkillers were still a long way from kicking in. But he could see a sliver of dark matter on the underside of the tooth.

‘Silicon,’ said Hassad. ‘A micro tracking device, sending out a signal that can be picked up by a satellite.’

‘Bastards,’ Porter muttered. ‘They promised me I was going in clean.’

He could feel the anger burning inside him. He’d walked into the Firm voluntarily. He’d put himself into the line of fire for them, because he wanted to get Katie out. And this was how they repaid him. By putting a tracking device into his tooth, and then trying to kill both of them. And just so they could save face.

Hassad chuckled. ‘Never trust the British government,’ he said. ‘That’s a lesson we learnt out in this part of the world a long time ago.’

TWENTY-SIX

The truck had Jordanian number plates, and it looked empty. That means it is on the way home, Porter decided. Completely the opposite direction to us. He checked that the driver was still in the café next to the shop, then knelt down, pulling out a piece of chewing gum he’d found in the Fiat, and carefully sticking the tooth to the underside of the lorry. ‘That’ll take care of them,’ he said, glancing back at Hassad. ‘Collinson’s boys will spend half the day searching for this vehicle, and when they catch up with it, they’ll just have a Jordanian truckie and bunch of empty crates.’