Porter stood up.

A man was walking into the room. He must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, but like a sumo wrestler, it was strong, meaty flesh, as much muscle as flab. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. His face was pudgy and mean, dark-coloured, and with tiny eyes and a small nose like a pig’s.

And in his hand, he was carrying a strip of thick, black hosepipe.

Porter instinctively stepped backwards.

‘Where the hell is Hassad?’ he snapped.

The man said nothing.

‘We had a deal,’ said Porter, the anger evident in every syllable.

The man was cradling the hosepipe in the palm of his fist.

‘I spoke to Hassad, and he told me to meet him here,’ Porter shouted. ‘He gave me his word, soldier to soldier. I saved the bastard’s life once. Doesn’t that mean a sodding thing to you people?’

The man took another step forward. His eyes were staring straight into Porter, and there was something about his expression that made Porter nervous. He’d seen it dozens of times before on drunks tooled up and high on the prospect of violence.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ said Porter.

‘Your worst nightmare,’ replied the man. He spoke in cold, slow English, with a heavy Middle Eastern accent.

He cracked the hosepipe. It lashed through the air, smashing into the side of Porter’s chest. The plastic snapped into his shirt and then into his skin with the force of a hailstorm of bullets. Porter screamed out in pain: a howl of agony that started somewhere deep inside his lungs, and erupted through his mouth with the force of a volcano. As he did so, he was staggering backwards, but his head was cracking against the narrow, sloping ceiling. ‘Get the fuck away from me,’ Porter shouted.

The hosepipe cracked through the air once again. Instinctively, Porter raised his hands to protect himself but it was no good. It smashed past his hands, and laced itself around his chest, neck and throat. The force of the impact rocked him back, crashing his head once more against the low ceiling. He could feel his eyes dancing and his brain spinning. The blows were emptying all the air out of his lungs, and sending a bolt of pain stabbing through him.

Underneath him, Porter could feel his knees buckling. He was reaching out for something to hold on to but there was nothing there.

The whip crashed down once more.

‘Who the fuck …’ mumbled Porter, hardly even able to breathe.

But the words died on his lips.

He had already lost consciousness.

SIXTEEN

Porter opened first one eye, then the other.

He was half awake, half asleep, and in that dreamlike state he could barely remember what had happened to him. His throat was parched dry, and his stomach felt as if it was only slowly recovering from a violent sickness. He could recall the outlines of his mission, arriving in Beirut, travelling halfway across the Lebanon, and then being met by the men who were supposed to take him to meet Hassad.