‘You speak English?’ said Porter.

The man nodded. ‘A little,’ he said. ‘You want coffee?’

‘That’s why I asked for it,’ said Porter.

The man went to the machine behind the bar. ‘Where you from?’

Porter took the small white china cup that had just been placed on the counter, and flicked away two flies that were sitting on the sugar bowl next to it. He pushed a couple of Lebanese one-pound coins across the bar. For a moment, he thought about lying. The British weren’t popular in Lebanon: they never had been, and they’d got a lot less so since the Iraq war kicked off. He didn’t need to get into any kind of argument with the locals. He could pretend to be Australian or a Kiwi: the trouble was they would probably recognise the accent. And who knows, they probably hate the Aussies as well. ‘England,’ he said.

A couple of the men from the group around the newspaper looked at him. One of them had narrow eyes and a thick scar that ran down the side of his cheek and into his neck. He spat the half-smoked cigarette from his mouth and ground it beneath the heel of his boot. You don’t need a translator to figure out what he’s saying, thought Porter. He’s tooling up for a fight. And the next thing he wants to put underneath that boot is my face.

‘You hear about the English girl,’ said the barman. ‘The one who got kidnapped?’

Christ, thought Porter. It’s even a big story out here.

‘Something,’ he replied tersely.

‘What they think of that back in London?’ said the barman, with a smile.

‘Maybe they get their soldiers out of our country now?’ said the man with the scar, standing up and walking over to the bar.

‘We’re not in your country,’ said Porter.

‘The Arab nation is one nation,’ said the man. His scar quivered slightly as he spoke, as if it was the wound talking. ‘You occupy one land, you occupy all our lands.’

Shit, thought Porter. The last thing I need here is a bar-room brawl.

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said firmly. ‘I don’t really know anything about it. I’m just getting a coffee while I wait for the next bus.’

‘What are you doing here?’ said the man with the scar. He had edged a foot closer to Porter, and he could smell the cheap cologne and the nicotine clinging to his skin. ‘There are no foreigners up here.’

Porter paused for just a fraction of a second. ‘Family business,’ he said. ‘A Lebanese family in London, they need some land sorted out. I’ve no interest in politics.’

He walked past the man, sitting down at a plastic table at the far end of the bar. Taking two sugars from the bowl, he stirred them into the thick black coffee, then discreetly took out the tiny bottle of Johnnie Walker he had taken from the plane and poured half of it into the cup. He sipped on the small cup, and could instantly feel the rich mixture of caffeine, sugar and alcohol all hitting his bloodstream at the same time. He could feel his head start to spin, and his eyes were getting dizzy, but the whisky worked its magic, the way it always did, and he could feel his head start to clear and his spirits reviving. The guy with the scar had gone back to his group of mates, but he was still looking occasionally across at him, a glint of anger in his eyes.