Amin was about to protest that he thought they might be lost, when he saw a security checkpoint in the distance. Now he recognised the street. He’d driven Anita here once, when her car was in the workshop. He’d dropped her at the checkpoint and the guards had called for a golf cart to come down and pick her up. Even with his security clearance, Amin wasn’t allowed in this facility.

Acid churned in his stomach as they swept through the checkpoint. This was not right.

‘Why are we here?’ he asked, craning to scope his environment. ‘This is the MERC, isn’t it?’

Johnny smiled. ‘MERC? I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

They pulled over beside a large white building, and were met by a plainclothes man—ISI, Amin guessed—at the side portico. The man searched Amin before walking him to an elevator. Amin wondered if he was going to faint; he couldn’t seem to get enough air.

‘We going down?’ asked Amin. His throat was dry and he was aware of sweat prickling on his forehead.

Johnny and the ISI man ignored the question.

The elevator stopped at B5. Amin walked out first, and turned right at the guard’s direction. The concrete walls were a pale green, made putrid by the weak fluoro lighting. The corridor smelled of damp and bleach. Behind him, Amin heard a throat clearing, and he turned—the ISI man had his hand on the doorknob of an unmarked room. Amin walked back to him like a man in a dream.

As Amin entered the dimly lit room, two thugs grabbed him, threw him into a steel-framed chair and shackled his ankles and forearms to it.

‘Hey,’ he yelled, struggling, but he knew the truth—he was going nowhere.

He looked around as he tested the straps on his arms. The room smelled of industrial cleaning fluids and cigarette smoke. The Colonel sat on the other side of a wooden desk, smoking and silent. There were four chairs arranged in a box formation. In front of him, Anita was strapped to her own chair, duct tape sealing her mouth. Javed stared back at him from the interrogation chair at his ten o’clock.

‘Why are my family here?’ Amin asked the Colonel, his voice high and frightened.

The Colonel exhaled smoke through his nose. ‘Perhaps we should try to answer that question?’

Amin shook his head, trying to shake away the reality—he’d played with the French devil and he’d lost. ‘It’s me you want, and I’m here. Let them go. Javed is seven. He’s just a boy.’

‘And boys turn into men,’ said the Colonel, his voice flat. ‘They can develop all sorts of hatreds against their country, especially if their father is a chatterbox—a well-paid chatterbox, yes, Amin?’

Amin’s thoughts were a jumble, his breath rasping in fast, shallow pants as panic flooded through him.