Sean Connor, her sometime boyfriend, was thirty-three. An American of Irish descent out of Eastport, Maine. ‘As north and east as is possible and as close to you Brits as that,’ he’d said to her, holding up his thumb and finger an inch apart. ‘Just the Atlantic Ocean between us.’ The gesture had come with a wink and a raising of his glass as they’d sat in the bar on the base in Kabul. She’d first met him earlier in the day as the stars had twinkled in the predawn sky. Her patrol was making final preparations for an excursion into the mountains south of the city when the CO had turned up with Sean in tow. Plainly annoyed, the CO had introduced Sean and gruffly added ‘out of Langley’ as if that was all the explanation needed. Later, as they’d sat in the back of the Foxhound patrol vehicle taking them to their drop-off point, Sean had elaborated. He was a CIA intelligence officer, there to identify a particular terrorist leader believed to be in the area. Silva had spent the rest of the day with Sean, hunkered down in a makeshift bunker with only Itchy for company. Sean had watched as Silva had dispatched a fighter who’d made the mistake of venturing forth and then nearly crapped himself when the one man had turned into twenty and they’d had to do a rapid exfil down a steep gully.

Back in the Foxhound, speeding along the dirt road towards the base, Silva had ribbed him. ‘I thought you were a spy. James Bond, Jason Bourne, derring-do and all.’

‘Fuck that.’ Sean had given her a grin and tapped his head. ‘I’m an intelligence officer and my brain tells me to steer clear of bullets.’

‘Right.’

‘Forgive me for saying so, but force alone never wins the battle.’ Sean nodded at Silva’s rifle. ‘Analysis of the situation leading to the formation of a specific strategy for victory will.’

‘And what’s your strategy for victory?’

Sean smiled, his intent now obvious from his flirtatious look. ‘To ask you to have a drink with me tonight when we get back to the base.’

It had started there and ended, at Silva’s behest, three years later. Their relationship had been conducted on Skype and WhatsApp and in the short periods of leave they could arrange to coincide. Silva had been in Afghanistan, then back to the UK, and then to Afghanistan again on what would be her final tour before she was court-martialled. Sean had flitted between Baghdad, Kabul, London and the US. He’d visited her once when she’d been in the glasshouse and she’d told him not to come again. When she’d been released she’d met him in London during one of his stopovers and that was the last time she’d seen him.