Mike nodded slowly. ‘Well, you wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. How’s your mum?’

‘Loving Netflix but doesn’t like all the swearing,’ said de Payns.

‘Ha! That’s her. That’s exactly her.’

Then he leaned forward between the front seats and asked his driver something in the local tongue. They nodded and went back and forth, and then the driver met de Payns’ eye in the rear-view mirror.

Moran sat back. ‘Abed can get you on a government supplies plane, but it lands in Frankfurt. That useful?’

‘Sure is,’ said de Payns.

They motored west to the Hamid Karzai International Airport and swung around the back, past cells of soldiers and vehicle-mounted heavy machine guns, into the government and military annexe. They were checked at the gate with mirrored wands under the vehicle and a dog handler walking around the LandCruiser. De Payns fished the Georges Morel passport from his windbreaker and handed it to Moran, who did the talking. Abed drove them along an endless series of bomb-proof hangars, the air conditioning keeping them cool as the morning air started to shimmer with heat outside. They stopped at a collection of freight depot hangars in which de Payns could make out large pallets of plastic-wrapped boxes with European names such as Siemens and Krupp on them. Obviously this was the receiving depot for Germany.

They stopped beside a security post and Abed became all smiles for a local woman in a security uniform with no hijab. By the way he flirted—despite her no chance, mister look—de Payns assumed they were well known to one another. Eventually she stood and came around to the passenger seat, electronic clipboard under her arm, and climbed in.

‘Which one is Georges Morel?’ she asked, peering into the back seat.

De Payns raised his hand and smiled.

‘You have friends in high places, monsieur,’ she said. ‘But you’ll have to go on the manifest. That a problem?’

‘No,’ said de Payns, handing over his passport.

She brought up a screen on her iPad and input de Payns’ fictive name and passport number.

‘I need an address,’ she said.

‘Place d’Armes, Versailles, France,’ said de Payns. He spelled it out for her and she hit ‘enter’.

The woman said, ‘Come on, then,’ and got out of the LandCruiser.

Moran extended his hand. ‘Good luck, brother.’

‘Thanks, Mike,’ said de Payns. ‘I owe you.’

‘All you owe me is a beer,’ the Englishman replied. It was an old joke between them—it didn’t matter what they did for one another, the only debt was a drink.