The transformation was weird to watch. It took a few more minutes for the man to start loosening up. His face hung expressionless, as though the muscles had been anaesthetised. His eyes rolled back in his head. Then he began to talk, in a mumbling voice.

Ben knew what he had to do. He was at the end of a thousand-mile trail of dead government agents and police. That added up to some of the worst trouble he’d ever been in, and it was going to take a lot of very persuasive evidence to get him out. He only hoped that Jones was about to provide just that.

He reached back into his bag and found the oblong shape of his phone. He took it out, turned it on and activated the video camera function. Pointed the phone at Jones.

He spoke loudly and clearly. ‘Tell the camera who you are.’

The agent’s eyelids fluttered. ‘My name is Alban Hainsworth Jones,’ he muttered without hesitation. ‘I work for the CIA.’

Ben nodded. Looked like the stuff was working. Now to press on. ‘Tell the camera the name of the person who was kidnapped on Corfu by former Government agents Kaplan and Hudson, with the collusion of active members of the CIA.’

Jones’s eyes darted back and forth. His fingers were twitching and clawing, as though there was some desperate internal struggle going on to hold in the truth despite the chemical signals flooding his brain. ‘Zoë Bradbury,’ he mumbled. ‘Zoë Bradbury was kidnapped by US agents and brought to an unauthorised secure facility in rural Montana for questioning.’

‘What was your part in this, Agent Jones?’

‘To extract the information from her using brutality and torture if needed,’ Jones said. ‘And to eliminate any opposition, which is why I murdered Dr Joshua Greenberg and two Georgia police officers.’ Sweat was pouring off his brow. His face was contorting, veins standing out in a livid Y-shape on his forehead. The conflict inside him seemed to be tearing him apart.

Ben held the camera closer. ‘Why was Zoë Bradbury’s information so important?’

‘Because of Jerusalem.’

‘Explain that.’

Jones’s eyes rolled back in his head, so that just the whites showed. His lips peeled back to show his jagged teeth. He looked like a zombie. It sent a shiver down Ben’s spine.

‘Too late to stop it now,’ Jones muttered. ‘It’s in motion. It’s inevitable. It’s going to happen in less than twenty-four hours.’

‘Too late to stop what?’

‘It was never about the girl. It was about war.’

‘What war?’

Jones’s eyes rolled back down and focused on him. He smiled weirdly. ‘The war in the Bible,’ he said.

Ben processed the words. They were like a slap in the face. They wouldn’t sink in. ‘Keep talking.’

Sweat dripped down the man’s nose. It was pouring off him faster than anything Ben had ever seen. Pooling in the hollow at the base of his throat, soaking rapidly through his clothes. He seemed to be on fire. His eyes were rolling and darting alarmingly. ‘The end of the world,’ he croaked. ‘The End Times. Armageddon. They’re starting it. They’re going to make it happen. Starting in Jerusalem.’

‘What are they going to do?’

‘Something massive,’ Jones said. ‘And there’s nothing you or anyone can do to stop it.’

Ben was stunned, hardly able to think straight as his mind raced to make sense of this. ‘Slater’s in charge of all this? Who is he?’

Jones’s grin was frozen and wild. He was beginning to shake violently. He mumbled something incomprehensible.

‘Speak clearly,’ Ben said.

Jones looked up at him. His eyes were rimmed with blood. ‘I’m going to go mad,’ he whispered.

‘Yes. You are. Now answer the question.’

It might have been the effect of the drug, or it might have been just the horror in the man’s mind, knowing that he was going to spend the rest of his life as a babbling lunatic. But something snapped in Jones’s head. Ben read it in his eyes – but reacted too slowly.

Jones was suddenly rearing up to his feet. Ben reached out to press him back down, but there was some kind of mad power in him that allowed him to force past.

Before Ben could stop him, Jones had covered the ten steps to the edge of the hayloft platform. There was no rail or barrier to stop him. He didn’t slow down. He hurled himself off the edge and sailed out into space, twisting in midair. Ben caught a glimpse of the wild light in Jones’s eyes as he dropped towards the floor below.

He didn’t hit the floor.

His fall was arrested by the upward-pointing fence post that he’d tried to spear Ben with earlier. It caught him between the shoulder blades, and his falling weight drove it right through him, through organs and ribcage and right out of his chest. The wooden point protruded grotesquely, slick with gore.

Jones stared upwards at Ben. His head was thrown back at an unnatural angle. The blade of the old circular saw was embedded in his skull. Blood and cranial fluids oozed down the rusty steel disc, down the housing of the machine to the dirt floor.

Ben shut off the phone, dropped it in his pocket. He grabbed up his bag and climbed back down the ladder. His mind was still reeling from what Jones had said.

They kidnapped Zoë to start Armageddon.

It seemed insane, and for a moment he wondered whether what he’d heard was genuine or the brain-frazzling effects of a drug that turned men insane.

But no. There had been something in Jones’s eyes, even as his sanity was slipping away. He was telling the truth.

Ben stood staring at the CIA man’s corpse, trying to understand what he had meant.

Then he tensed, alerted by the sound outside. He ran to the barn door and out into the sunlight. The wreckage in the yard and the alleyway was still blazing, hot on his face. Through the shimmering heat-haze and the slowly rising pall of smoke he saw the helicopters landing beyond the farm gate. Four of them, so dark green as to be almost black, the letters FBI in white across their sides.

The first one to touch down was the big twin-prop Boeing. Ben hadn’t seen one since his army days. Hatches slid open. A man stepped out. He wasn’t wearing tactical clothing, but a grey suit. His sandy hair fluttered in the whipping blast of the rotors as he hurried across the grass, keeping his head low.

Behind him was Alex. Her eyes were wide as she took in the devastation of the farm, the burning buildings, the wrecked choppers. Then she caught sight of Ben and her face lit up.

Ben walked towards them out of the carnage. He reached for the Beretta in his belt and tossed it away into the dirt.

More personnel were spilling out of the helicopters as they landed. The grey-suited man strode purposefully up to Ben. His hand went to his jacket, and came up holding a badge. Armed agents swarmed round his flanks, pistols trained on Ben.

Ben wearily raised his hands.

‘I’m Special Agent Callaghan,’ said the grey-suited man. ‘And you’re under arrest.’