She had a good idea what the fair-haired man wanted to do, if the woman let him. Maybe her amnesia was the only thing keeping her alive.

And now they were taking her somewhere. But where? Had they finally given up on her? Her heart raced at the thought. Maybe they were letting her go, taking her home.

Or maybe the time had come when they’d decided it was pointless, and they were going to finish it. End her life. Here, now, today. Her hands began to shake.

The fair-haired guy’s pistol was pressing hard against her spine as he shoved her across the beach. ‘Move it,’ he muttered. She tried to walk faster, but the soft sand was heavy going in her bare feet, and her legs felt like jelly. She stumbled. A rough hand grabbed her arm and jerked her up to her feet. The gun stabbed painfully into her.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. The man was glowering at her. Behind him, the woman was following with a pensive look on her face, checking her watch and gazing up at the sky. The other two men tagged along quietly with blank expressions. One of them was holding a gun loosely against his side.

Zoë trembled violently. They were going to kill her. She knew it.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ the low voice said behind her. ‘You want to run.’ He chuckled. ‘So run. I want you to run, so I can shoot you down.’

‘Keep your mouth shut,’ the woman snapped at him.

They reached the edge of the sand. Zoë was shoved towards the wooden jetty. She stepped up onto it, feeling the hard salt-encrusted planks against the bare soles of her feet. They followed. Were they going to drown her?

Then she heard it. The distant buzz of an aircraft approaching. She shielded her eyes and looked up to see a white dot against the sky. She kept watching it as she walked slowly along the jetty.

The white dot grew bigger until she could make out its shape. It was a small seaplane.

They reached the end of the jetty. The clattery rumble of the seaplane’s twin engines filled her ears as it sank lower and lower in the air. Its underside skimmed the waves, bounced and then touched down, sending up a fan of spray. It settled in the water and came round in a wide arc, leaving a churning white wake. It drew up level with the jetty and sat bobbing in the water. The spinning props settled down to an idle. The sound of the engines was deafening and Zoë cupped her hands over her ears. The gun was still pressed hard to her back.

A hatch opened in the slim fuselage, and a man peered out. He stared coldly at her, then nodded to the others. He and another man moored the plane up to the jetty and slid out an extending gangway, like a narrow bridge over the water. Zoë felt herself being pushed towards it. She staggered across the wobbling gangway into the plane. It was hot and cramped inside. A strange man thrust her down into a seat.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she gasped in terror.

The fair-haired guy appeared in the hatch, and for a moment she froze at the thought that he was coming with her. Then the woman put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head at him. He seemed to protest, then relented. He stepped aside and it was the two other men, the quiet ones, who climbed into the plane and sat down beside Zoë. They ignored her completely. Then the hatch was shut, and she felt the vibrations mount as the twin aircraft engines revved up for takeoff.

Hudson and Kaplan stood and watched the plane skim across the waves. It climbed into the blue sky and became a fading white dot. Then it was gone.

‘Out of our hands,’ Kaplan said.

Hudson cast a sullen look at her. He’d been counting on getting on the plane and being there when they went to work on the girl. After days and days on this rock, now he’d been cheated. ‘Then we can get out of here,’ he muttered.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘We have other work to do.’

Oxford

The tenth day

It had been a blur of time for Ben as he sat endlessly hunched over the desk in his flat, deep in study, completely immersed in textbooks and dictionaries and piles of notes, stopping only to eat and sleep. No phone calls, no visitors. It was a time of total focus, and his mind thrived on the concentration. It helped him forget.

By afternoon on the third day of it, his eyes were burning. The spread-out papers on his desk were turning into a mountain. The coffee at his elbow had gone cold hours ago, neglected while he’d been trying to decipher page after page of knotty Hebrew. It was driving him crazy, but as the lessons of twenty years ago slowly filtered back into his brain, things were coming into focus for him.

For the first time in days, his phone rang. He felt its pulsing buzz in his pocket, dug it out and answered. It felt strange to hear his own voice again.

It was Charlie. He sounded far away, anxious and agitated.

‘Ben, I need your help.’

Ben leaned his weight back in the reclining swivel chair and rubbed his eyes, light-headed from concentration. He forced himself back into the present. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m still here on Corfu,’ Charlie said quickly. ‘Things are turning out more complicated than you said they would. I’m running into problems.’

‘What do you need from me?’

Charlie said something Ben didn’t catch.

‘You’re breaking up.’

‘I said, I need you to come out here as soon as possible.’

‘I can’t do that. Can’t you just tell me what’s going on?’

‘I know it sounds odd, but I have to explain it to you face to face. I can’t talk about this on the phone. There’s a situation developing here.’

‘It’s a simple job, Charlie.’

‘That’s what you told me. But believe me, things didn’t turn out that way.’

Ben sighed and was quiet for a few seconds.

‘Ben, please. This is serious.’

‘How serious?’

‘Serious.’

Ben closed his eyes. Shit. ‘And you’re absolutely certain you can’t handle this on your own?’

‘I’m sorry. I need backup. You know this kind of stuff better than me.’

Ben sighed again. Shook his head. Punched out his left fist and looked at his watch. He did a quick calculation. He could catch the Oxford Tube into London and be at Heathrow in a few hours. Catch a flight to Athens and from there to Corfu. ‘OK, copy that. Give me an RV point and I’ll be with you by midday tomorrow.’

He was there by breakfast.

It was an island Ben had never been to before. He’d expected an arid landscape but from the air Corfu was strikingly green, a paradise of woods and wildflower meadows, mountains and blue ocean. In the distance he could make out rambling ruins and sleepy villages nestling in the pine forests as the plane circled and dropped down towards the airport at Kérkyra, Corfu Town.

But he didn’t have much time for the beauty of the place. He was tired, and fighting to contain his annoyance. He couldn’t understand why he had to be here, why Charlie couldn’t deal with this on his own. Had he misjudged him? The man had been a good soldier. Tough, determined, resourceful. But maybe he’d lost his edge. Ben had seen that happen before.

He stepped off the plane into the warmth of the sun. In the small airport he rented a locker and stuffed into it his passport, his return tickets and the thick hardcover philosophy book he’d brought to read on the plane. He wasn’t planning on staying long, and he wanted to travel light. The only items he kept with him were his wallet, his phone and his whisky flask.

He wondered about the Bible. He’d been carrying it around a lot lately, and had got used to having it to hand to dip into. It was compact and not too heavy. He decided to bring it along. He slung the lightweight duffel bag over his shoulder, secured the locker and put the key and his wallet into his jeans pocket.