‘Where the fuck is Hassad?’ he growled.

Silence.

He could hear one of the men breathing. And he could hear his own voice echoing around the tiny room.

‘I’m supposed to be his bloody guest,’ shouted Porter. ‘Why the fuck are you treating me like this?’

Porter started to lift himself up from the floor. His hands were reaching up to the back of his head to untie the blindfold. But the knots were strong, and it was taking a moment to unpick them. He started to stand up – and as he did so, the door slammed shut. He could hear the turning of the key in the lock. And then he could hear the sound of metal scratching against metal as the bolt was pushed into place.

He pushed himself up against the door, slamming his fists against it. ‘Take me to see Hassad,’ he shouted.

The words echoed around the room, taunting him like a hundred different mocking voices.

But the only response was the tread of four sets of boots walking away along the corridor. And then a laugh.

‘Fuck it,’ he muttered.

For a moment, Porter just rested against the side of the door. He was catching his breath. And, more importantly, trying to catch his thoughts as well.

What the hell have they done to me?

Why have they brought me here?

He started to unpick the knots on the blindfold. It was slow and frustrating, but at least it gave him something to do. It stopped the questions raging through his head: Where have they brought me? Why are they treating me like this? Has it all gone wrong already? Slowly the blindfold came free. He unwrapped the black cloth from his face, and threw it to the floor.

‘Shit,’ he said. Maybe I was better off not being able to see anything.

The cell measured ten feet by fifteen. Up by the doorway, there was enough room for Porter to stand up, but the ceiling sloped away fast, so that by the other end it was no more than four feet high. There was a slit window at the far end of the room, measuring no more than a foot across, to a depth of six inches. It looked out onto a wall, and had bars across it. Outside, it was dark already, but the moon was shining, and a few weak glimmers of light were managing to trickle through the tiny window. It took Porter a few seconds to adjust his eyes. For what? he wondered. There was some straw tossed across the rough stone floor, but it must have been here for at least a year, Porter reckoned, because it was damp and sodden with dirt. He knelt down to where he had fallen from the doorway. There was some smeared blood on the floor, but he could tell it wasn’t his: it was caked crimson and dry, so it must have been at least a day or two old. Next to it there was a human tooth, with some dried blood caked around its torn root, which looked if it had fallen from a man’s mouth during a beating. Porter kicked it away with the toe of his boot, then explored the rest of the cell. There was some writing on the wall but all of it was in Arabic: some of the letters looked like they had been scratched into the walls with a man’s fingernails. In one corner was the only object of any sort in the room, a metal bucket with a vile, putrid smell rising out of it. The bucket was half filled with water, and there was a human turd floating on its scummy surface.