In early April 2013 he travelled to Gaziantep in southern Turkey to investigate the situation. He came into contact with a so-called ‘fixer’, a person who knows the local area and on whom journalists rely. The fixer, Mahmoud, drove him along the border to the official crossing in the town of Kilis, which led to the Syrian town of Azaz.

‘You can also go to Syria now. We can just enter,’ said Mahmoud.

‘No, thanks – I’m only here to get a feel for the atmosphere,’ said Daniel.

He spoke with Syrian refugees to get an idea of the situation in their homeland. He sought out journalists and NGO workers who described how the war had been moving in new directions. And when he returned to Denmark, he called a man named Arthur, who would later turn out to have a great impact on his life.

· * ·

The boats were sloshing around in the water along the quayside in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn neighbourhood. Daniel was walking beside a tall, pipe-smoking man and his black dog, which ran around them, off the leash, sniffing here and there. Daniel had called Arthur because he had heard that he was a walking encyclopedia of practical and safety-related advice for journalists travelling in Syria. Arthur had immediately invited him out for coffee.

It was 24 April 2013 and Arthur happened to be home in Denmark on a stopover between his many trips to Turkey and Lebanon. As the owner of a consulting firm specializing in security, he had many years of practical experience as a negotiator and investigator in kidnapping cases around the world – from Nigeria and Somalia to Syria, Poland and Egypt. When he met Daniel, he was working on a remarkable kidnapping case in Syria, which he couldn’t talk about openly.

Daniel later learned that in late November 2012 Arthur had received a call from an acquaintance in the United States who was working as a hostage negotiator. He told him that the American freelance journalist James Foley had disappeared in Syria on 22 November. Arthur was assigned to the case and immediately flew to Turkey, where James’s friends and acquaintances had already started searching for him. Arthur’s first task was to separate rumour from fact, which turned out not to be so straightforward. No one had any real information about who had taken James. Although Arthur knew from James’s driver and fixer exactly where and how James had been kidnapped, no one recognized the perpetrators. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack of contradictory information that Arthur had collected from his network of local informants. Some reported that Foley had been seen in Aleppo; others that he was in Saraqeb.

Reports also came in that someone had seen his body. After long deliberations, James’s family and one of the newspapers he worked for, the Global Post, launched a public campaign in January 2013, entitled ‘Free James Foley’, but it was a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, the campaign focused on James’s personality and therefore spoke to the kidnappers’ compassion. It also helped to spread the news that someone was looking for him. On the other hand, no one knew who had taken James, and Arthur feared that a sustained media campaign could backfire, because it would focus attention on a case that the kidnappers might think should have been ‘run under the radar’.

‘We risk damaging the negotiating environment,’ Arthur pointed out to the family and the Global Post. In fact, the campaign only led to more misleading information. However, in the spring of 2013 the hunt for James turned south towards the Syrian capital of Damascus. The investigation changed course, spurred on by at least two other kidnapping cases in which the hostage had ended up in the hands of Assad’s informal militias, the Shabiha. James had been taken within a radius of about six miles from a place where it was known the Shabiha were operating, so, in the FBI’s opinion, Arthur had to consider that scenario as a possibility.

It was a matter of determining who had the means and the motivation to hold someone secretly captive for months on end without making any demands. The Assad regime seemed like an obvious choice, but the question was whether the insurgency also had the capability to make people disappear.

It was with the James Foley affair and the critical situation in Syria in mind that Arthur was now walking along the waterfront, giving the young photographer advice.

‘It isn’t the best place in the world to go right now,’ said Arthur, as they strolled along the harbour and looked out over the water.

Daniel looked up at the tall man, who, seriously but also with a twinkle in his eye, gave him his four-hour ‘stump speech’ of the most important things to remember if he went to Syria. As a starting point, Arthur advised against making the trip, because the risk of kidnapping had grown since the end of 2012. The mood towards journalists had changed, especially among some of the Islamist rebel groups. Arthur told Daniel that he should beware of Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra. They were operating in northern Syria and were behind the kidnappings of several journalists.

‘Most cases, however, were resolved fairly easily in a few days or months,’ said Arthur, who mentioned the kidnapping of James as the most dramatic and still unresolved.

Daniel listened intently and wrote down all the information Arthur gave him.

‘I have all the prerequisites for being an idiot,’ said Daniel, who had never been to the Middle East. ‘My greatest fear is that I’ll end up on the front page of the tabloids as the idiot who hadn’t thought about the risks involved.’

Arthur went through a series of basic safety precautions. First, Daniel had to make sure not to be seen by too many people or walk around with people he didn’t know.

‘It’s a jungle where you don’t know who you can trust,’ he continued.

In addition, Daniel should take out insurance, give his family written information about his trip and constantly send messages home about where he was. Arthur thought to himself that it was the last two measures that James hadn’t taken into account, which had made it difficult to locate him.

If Daniel were kidnapped, the golden piece of advice was: never tell a lie, create a routine for yourself and play the game. Arthur recommended that Daniel take only a brief trip to Syria and not to stay too long in one place.

‘Stay close to the border, so you can cross back again before it closes around five p.m. Don’t stay there overnight,’ said Arthur finally.

When they parted, Daniel felt well equipped, even though he was taking a risk by travelling into a war zone, especially for the first time.

He compared going on this trip with learning a new gymnastics routine. The chances of landing on his head and breaking his neck was highest the first few times, when he was still a beginner. He vowed to himself that he would follow Arthur’s advice. He would take care not to travel too far into Syria and make it just a short trip to get a feel for the atmosphere.

But in Syria all the rules, statistics and know-how dissolved and there was one unknown that no one could avoid: no matter how experienced and prepared a journalist is, they can end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Syria was no longer the place to take a risk or try one’s luck. The kidnapping of James Foley was proof of that.

· * ·

Daniel bought a ticket to Turkey, departing on 14 May 2013. He spent the weekend before at home with his parents, where he packed a bulletproof vest and a first-aid kit borrowed from Arthur.

Susanne and Kjeld were well aware that there was a war in Syria, but they had given up trying to follow what was happening. Susanne was focused on her new job as an assistant in a clothing shop at the Legoland amusement park and Kjeld transported grain around Denmark.

Susanne was in the kitchen while Daniel was packing. ‘What are you going to do down there?’ she asked.