I think he’d have kept talking for ever if the ceiling hadn’t given way. I honestly think he’d have talked himself up into a full-on fit. But I was so intent on hearing every bloody word that I didn’t even feel the floor creak or the ceiling joists give way. The floor simply split in two and I dropped into the room below in a great explosion of plaster, wood and dirt; a strangled scream cut off in my throat as I crunched into the projector and onto the floor; spun inside a great hurricane of pain and fear and sound.

The last thing I heard before the oblivion came was the sound of shouts and curses, wood on wood, fists upon bone, metal and leather and a riot of desperate pleas. And then it was all gunfire and darkness.

CORDELIA

A sickle moon overhead, gleaming white. Birdsong, brittle as cracked glass, pecked mercilessly at the threads of pain in my head, my ribs, behind my eyes. Everything felt muffled but hypersensitive, like a dead limb slowly returning to life. There was a numbness to everything and yet I fancied I could hear each individual blade of grass crunching beneath my boots. The rifle knocking against my hip sounded like a bass drum at the head of a parade.

I tried to centre myself. I needed to be in control. To be calm. To order my thoughts and listen to my training and identify each objective before executing the plan that would move me closer to my goal. I had to keep a sense of perspective. I had one responsibility, and that was to ensure the safety of my friends. I wasn’t able to do anything else. It would be somebody else’s duty to tidy up whatever mess Walt was making. Let him play out his game, manoeuvring his chess pieces around, sacrificing his pawns, manipulating bishops and rooks; his eyes set only on one decisive checkmate. I couldn’t even fathom what it was he wanted, let alone whether I supported him in his mad ideology. All I knew was that he had brought a lethal presence into the heart of a community I used to call home. Somehow, one of the former leaders of MI6 had secured the services of an elite team of Kaibiles. Whether they were mercenaries or loyal to the ruling military didn’t really matter. They were men who knew how to kill. Men who weaponized rape and horror. Men who had all sense of humanity juiced out of them during training and who revelled in their international reputation as the most merciless and barbaric of jungle warfare specialists.