“As you said, it would have been predictable.”

The thump of a boot outside the door, the flicker of a shadow across the window pane. I thought about all the rugs on the floor, how the water would destroy them. I pushed my plate away from the edge of the table lest its contents be spilt.

“Samir?” A stammering, a heat, that might have been acid tears on a ravaged face.

“Yes?”

“Good luck.”

A metal object broke a pane of glass. I pulled my hands over my ears but still heard the flashbang roll on to the floor. I ducked beneath the table, and the light as it exploded knocked against the back of my brain. I curled up with my knees to my chin and my elbows covering my head as the front door slammed off its hinges, as heavy boots and heavy men charged in from the front, from the back, their trousers tucked into their socks, their sleeves taped around their gloves, and through the scream of my ears and the whining in my brain I half-heard Janus climb to his feet, hold his hands out wide and proclaim in cheerful bouncing English,

“I fucking love this body!”

He must have moved as he spoke, must have lunged, tried to grab, because the gunfire that ensued–a burst of silenced shots–kept going long after the body had fallen. I half-opened my eyes, and as my retinas strained to adjust to the restored gloom, I saw the pocked body of Marcel hit the floor on the other side of the table, each silenced shot a crater in his chest, one through his throat, another through his lower jaw, the final one to the head, and even as he lay there, the shooter fired and fired again, three more bursts, Marcel’s shirt popping and splattering red blood as the bullets bit in, until silence descended save for the drumming of the rain.

Then, as was inevitable, someone put a knee in the small of my back, a gun against the base of my neck, and I begged for mercy in what I hoped was my very best Maghrib Arabic.

Chapter 71

Military hit squads never do things by half.

If you could throw some circuit breakers, why not cut a power cable.

If you could cut one power cable, why not cut all power to the town.

That’d be convenient.

I sat, knees tucked up in front of me, hands at my back growing numb from the cable ties, and watched heavily armed men lift the broken and bloody corpse of Marcel… whoever he had been… from the scarlet-soaked floor of his living room, deposit it in a black rubber bag and carry it outside. As they did this, more of their colleagues, all silenced pistols, balaclavas and a bare minimum of skin, stood over me, guns levelled at my head, their expressions unknown. Every now and then I begged. I begged for mercy, I begged for answers, I begged for them to leave me alone. I begged on behalf of my dear and beloved mother who would not live without me. I begged for my dreams not yet fulfilled. I begged for my life. And I did so in a language which they didn’t speak.

Eleven men.

They could have killed Janus with fewer, but eleven there were, distinguishable only by height and movement. They swept the house by torchlight, examined the half-eaten remains of dinner on the table, the cutlery drying in the kitchen. They patted down my pockets and, finding no identification, barked in Parisian-accented French, Who are you? What is your name?

I made a guess at how French would sound if spoken with an Algerian accent and replied, I am Samir. I am Samir Chayet. Please don’t kill me.

What are you doing here, Samir Chayet?

I was here to see Monsieur Marcel. Monsieur Marcel was going to help me.

Help you do what?

Help me get a job. He was friend with my cousin. Please. I don’t speak your French well. Algerian, you see? I am Algerian. I have not been long in your country, please let me go; are you police?

They are not police. One of the skin-clad darknesses approaches another, murmurs in his ear. What is this, who is this man?

He claims to be Samir Chayet, Algerian. His French is poor. He has no identification papers on him. We can’t be sure.

Eyes settle on me, study my face, and a voice breathes, Will he be missed?

Show no reaction. My French is not good enough to understand a conversation about my demise. Show no fear. Focus on the problem at hand. Focus on innocence.

Then a voice speaks, and its French is heavily accented, and even through the language barrier I recognise that sound, and against the fire I recognise that shape, that height, that build, and the voice says, “We can’t stay here. Do we take him?”

And the voice is known, because it was once my own, a comforting heaviness as I twisted it round Turkish, Serbian and German, before shoving a sock in its mouth and leaving it handcuffed in silence to a radiator in Zehlendorf, all those faces ago, and the voice is that of Nathan Coyle, murderer, assassin, fanatic and, quite possibly, salvation.

His boss replies, “Take him,”

And this they proceed to do.

I sat, hands tied, head covered, in the back of a van in the middle of nowhere, and I prayed.

It had been a long, long time since I’d prayed.

I rocked, and in breathless Arabic I gabbled my imprecations to the All-Merciful, the All-Seeing, the Compassionate and Mighty, and when I’d run out of clichés, I babbled a few more things besides, until finally someone nearby shouted, “Will you please shut him up?!”

A gloved hand pulled the bag from my head, caught me by the chin, tugged my face round hard. I stared into eyes which had for so long regarded me with contempt from the bathroom mirror and heard a familiar voice proclaim in soft, poor French, “Quiet now. Or we’ll shut you up, understand?”

And for a moment I felt almost hurt that he didn’t recognise me, as if there might be something in my eyes, in a twitch of iris and a contraction of pupil which whispered, Hello, stranger.

“Please,” I whispered. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Coyle pulled the bag back over my head.

We slowed.

We stopped.

Hands pulled me from the vehicle. Through the cloth across my face I saw nothing, not even the glow of the moon.

A voice called, Kestrel, help me!

Arms linked arms with mine, one on either side, led me along tarmac, then gravel, then soil going steeply downhill. A rough path which slipped beneath my feet as I stumbled in the darkness. The sound of a stream rushing below, the cracking of twigs, stir of an engine growing distant. In the darkness a bird shrieked, its midnight rest disrupted by the intruders, and mud became pebble, became wet rounded stones, became a damp riverbed where I was pushed to my knees.

“Please don’t hurt me!” I wailed, in French, then Arabic, then French again. “I am Samir Chayet. I have a mother, I have a sister; please, I never did anything!”

Two–three at the most–bodies moved around me. They have taken me here to die.

“Please,” I sobbed, shaking in my bonds. “Please don’t hurt me.”

It’s OK to piss yourself in these circumstances. It’s only a physical thing.

The click of a gun near my head. This was not how I planned on things ending.

Janus.

Do you like what you see?

“Galileo.”

The word slipped from my lips, a bare breath in the dark, and instantly hands were there, grabbing me by the throat, pulling my head back and up, and though I couldn’t see him, I could feel Coyle’s body against mine, his hands wrenching me up. “What did you say?” he hissed. “What did you say?”

“Step back,” barked another, the man in charge, the man who, if I had to speculate, was going to do the killing.

“Galileo!” Coyle pulled the hood off my head and stared into my eyes, shook me and roared, “What do you know of Galileo?”