41.

ABOUT AN HOUR later, she heard the rumble of a truck’s engine outside, and urgent shouts in Arabic.

She opened her eyes and tensed.

A minute or two later, Dark Eyes came limping into the room.

He was all business, now.

‘Get up,’ he snapped. ‘Hold out your hands.’

Charlotte ignored him, so he gestured to the two AK men.

Slinging the weapons behind their backs, they hurried over and pulled her to her feet. One of them held her wrists roughly, and the other deftly lashed them together with a black cable tie.

They did the same with her ankles, and then they gagged and hooded her.

She heard Dark Eyes say something, and then felt herself being grabbed under the arms and half-lifted, half-dragged out of the room.

A moment later she was outside – the smell a strange, damp combination of sea salt, blossom, and sewage – and then she was being hoisted up and dropped in the back of the truck.

Her head hit the bed of the truck with a bang which sent stars flying across her covered eyes.

She lay there for a few moments, winded and disorientated, and then she felt another body land beside her.

Martha.

Then something like a tarpaulin was dragged over the top of them, and all was quiet and still for a few moments.

Somewhere a few feet from the truck, there was a sound of talking. She strained to hear, and suddenly several of the voices grew louder. She heard one man cry out in what sounded like surprise, there was a muffled groan, and then all was silent.

Charlotte moved her bound hands towards Martha and touched her face: the warmth of the other woman’s skin, and the knowledge that they were together, gave her some feeling of comfort. Martha began to sob gently, and Charlotte stroked her forehead with the back of her hand, to try to reassure her.

Nothing she could do would take away the image of Martha’s husband being executed before her very eyes just a few hours earlier, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try.

The silence lasted for quite some time, and then the vehicle bounced slightly as a man jumped into the back alongside the two women. At the same time there was the sound of the doors to the cab slamming.

The engine started.

The truck began to move, swaying and bouncing on the rough ground.

42.

CHARLOTTE MORGAN SAT on her haunches on a metal bench in the hold of the vessel, trying to ignore the foul mix of rotten fish guts and slimy, oily water which washed from side to side with the gentle roll.

She had a single cable tie clipped tight on her left wrist, and was held by that to a cargo loop on the side of the steel hull.

The boat was old, and creaking, and clearly it was not watertight.

Her mind kept telling her that it might strike a rock, or be turned over by a storm, and that she would drown inside its blackness.