He was happy to have freed Daniel from captivity, but he was just as sad that he had ‘lost’ James, as it was called in his line of work. Not a day went by when he didn’t think about whether he could have done things differently and if there had been openings along the way that he had overlooked. He wondered if it could have ended another way if he had had the same influence on James’s case as he had had on Daniel’s, and not just followed the decisions that the US authorities had mapped out. He didn’t know the answer.

Arthur was nervous about how he would be received – if the family would direct their frustration and anger at him. The easiest thing for him to do would have been to stay away from the memorial service and remain as a negotiator, the role for which he had been hired. In his field it was considered neither professional nor beneficial to get emotional about the work. But as a human being, Arthur needed to look James’s parents in the eyes and share their grief. So did Daniel, who hadn’t yet allowed the murder of James to sink in completely. He and Pierre had relaxed and talked about it together in Scotland, but he hadn’t wept. It still seemed unreal to him that his former fellow prisoner had been killed.

After James, the first to have his throat cut, it didn’t take long before Daniel saw the next video. The Beatles had unfortunately kept the promise they made in the video of James: that Steven Sotloff would be the next, despite his mother in the United States making a public video appeal to spare her son’s life.

Less than two weeks after Steven was executed, it was David Haines’s turn. He left behind a wife and two children at home in Britain. And on 3 October Alan Henning was killed; he didn’t make it home to his wife and their two children either. The only relief Daniel felt was that he knew they had found peace; the worst thing for him was the uncertainty about what would happen to the final two male hostages, John and Peter. It felt right to be on a plane beside Arthur on his way to say goodbye.

· * ·

Arthur steered the car through the forests, while Daniel chose music to listen to on his iPhone that reminded him of James. They stopped at a Starbucks, where Daniel bought a pumpkin spice latte before they rolled up in front of the family’s white house.

Daniel went in first and was received in the Foley family’s kitchen, where the whole family was gathered. He got a long hug from Diane, who showed him round and introduced him to the family. When Arthur appeared in the doorway, he got the same reception.

‘He’s the one who tried to get Jim home,’ said Diane.

In Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church in Rochester, Arthur and Daniel sat next to each other in the pews. Arthur looked at Daniel, who was in tears. He placed a hand on his shoulder and passed him a handkerchief.

One of history’s most notorious kidnapping cases ended here for them. While Arthur sat next to Daniel, he tried to come to terms with the fact that he had managed to save one but not the other. More than anything else, he wished he could have reunited them somewhere other than at a memorial service.

· * ·

Two days later in the predawn darkness, Daniel and Arthur drove off towards Boston. The sun was just rising above the horizon as they walked out on a headland near a coastal fort. The dark grey cliffs rose up from the Atlantic Ocean like jagged, inflexible monsters. They walked past signs saying ‘danger’ and ‘no swimming’, while they clambered over the rock formations. The fresh wind threw the cool ocean air against their faces and they shivered in their overcoats.

Daniel looked out over the water. He didn’t hold a grudge against the people who had tortured him and killed his fellow prisoners. The hatred that governed their actions came from somewhere: either from the way their lives had turned out in the Middle East, where they had grown up in lawless states and under dictatorships that treated their citizens far worse than he had been treated; or in Europe, where the Beatles didn’t accept what they saw as the hypocrisy of the western democracies, and instead used violence, terror and oppression to get their message across.

He had been one small pawn among many in a big political game in which the Islamic State was able to play a role because Iraq and Syria had collapsed, and because western countries had interfered, using methods that weren’t perceived as a democratic alternative. He found it easier to forgive than to be angry and filled with hatred. Daniel jumped from one damp rock to another.

‘I can just see the headline!’ shouted Arthur. ‘“Former hostage killed on rocks in New Hampshire under supervision of security expert.”’

They laughed at Arthur’s bad joke.

‘Let’s take a dip,’ suggested Daniel.

The waves were beating against the rocks and there was an undertow that threatened to sweep them out to sea and engulf them. They walked around the headland and found a place where the water was calmer.

Then they stripped off their clothes and dived in.

Postscript

Six of Daniel’s male fellow prisoners died in captivity. The last person to be killed was the American Peter Kassig, who was executed by ISIS on 16 November 2014.

Nor have the female hostages been spared. On 6 February 2015 Islamic State published a photo of what the organization claimed was the bombed-out building where the American Kayla Mueller was being held, alone, when she was killed by a Jordanian air strike. In fact, IS probably killed the American woman itself when negotiations stalled.

In late 2015 new information appeared about Kayla Mueller’s time in captivity. Apparently she had been kept in the residence of an IS leader best known by his nom de guerre Abu Sayyaf, who had a senior role in overseeing IS’s gas and oil operations. His wife Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar admitted to FBI agents that IS leader al-Baghdadi ‘owned’ Kayla Mueller while she was held in Abu Sayyaf’s residence. According to US officials, Kayla was raped repeatedly by al-Baghdadi while in captivity.

The wife of Abu Sayyaf is now charged in federal court in Virginia with conspiracy in the death of Kayla Mueller.

Jihadi John, a Kuwaiti-born British citizen from London who was later identified as Mohammed Emwazi, was killed in a drone strike in November 2015. In January 2016 IS acknowledged his death in their online magazine Dabiq.

Two days after Emwazi was killed, the man who is believed to be George and another friend of Emwazi’s from London were arrested in Turkey. Aine Davis, a former drug dealer aged thirty-one, was arrested on suspicion of planning attacks in Istanbul similar to the November 2015 attacks in Paris.

The Washington Post and Buzzfeed identified the third of the trio, Ringo, as Alexander Kotey, 32, a Londoner of Ghanaian and Greek-Cypriot background. His whereabouts are unknown.

On 24 September 2014 the United States placed ten new people on the so-called Specially Designated Global Terrorists list, which contains the names of the world’s most wanted terrorists and terrorist organizations. One of the names added was Abu Athir, the Emir of Aleppo, who was responsible for the hostages. According to the US State Department, using another alias of his, ‘As of mid-July 2014, Amru al-Absi was selected as ISIL’s provincial leader for Homs, Syria, in the Aleppo region. As a principal leader of ISIL in Syria, he has been in charge of kidnappings.’

Syria is still one of the most dangerous places for journalists to travel to, and kidnappings of journalists and photographers continue as the media tries to report from the war zone.

· * ·

Since the summer of 2015 Daniel Rye has been in the process of fixing up his new 150-square-foot allotment house in Odense. The house is where he is beginning his new life, in which he hopes to continue his photography.