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for any funny business, Triggs. Make me nervous, I’m going to start squeezing triggers. ’
    The line went dead.
    ‘He’s suspicious,’ Danny said.
    Triggs sniffed as he turned the engine over. ‘Of course he’s suspicious,’ he said. ‘That’s the only reason he’s agreed to the RV.’ He yanked the steering wheel down and sped into a full turning circle.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Danny said.
    Triggs gave him another of those sidelong glances. ‘I keep him close, he keeps me close. That’s what enemies do. But he’s greedy too. Gilad Friedman isn’t going to risk turning down 15k. He wants to sound me out.’ He gave Danny a sidelong glance. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, boy. A hell of a lot to learn.’
    Danny let that pass. Triggs accelerated across the desert, leaving the ramshackle building with the two dead doctors in the darkness behind them.
    They travelled, at first, in silence. Triggs kept his eyes on what just about passed for a road. Danny stared through the windows into the surrounding desert. The stony ground, lit up by the vehicle’s headlamps, zoomed past like a piece of black and white film. In the middle distance he saw nothing except the night. Further than that, toward the horizon, he saw the occasional set of moving lights.
    ‘Who’s that?’ he asked Triggs when he first saw them.
    Triggs shrugged. ‘Probably Rashaida,’ he said.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Rashaida. Desert nomads, a bit like the Bedouin, but with a nasty edge. They trade in camels – make a lot of money out of them – but they shun modern technology.’
    ‘Except cars.’
    ‘Right. I never said they were consistent. Some of them have vehicles, and they often travel at night. If it’s not Rashaida, it’s Eritrean police or military, running them down.’
    ‘What for?’ Danny asked.
    Another shrug. ‘We’ve got Yemen across the sea, Ethiopia to the south, Djibouti and Somalia to the south-east. Surely you don’t need me to tell you parts of those countries are full of jihadists and other militant groups. The Eritrean authorities refuse to crack down on them. They use this route to move weapons and personnel across Africa and up into Europe. I heard a rumour that some of the Charlie Hebdo killers came this way. Anyway, the Rashaida are devout Sunnis. Veils, child marriages, all that bollocks. They value their women because they know they can sell off daughters for marriage at a decent price. They also help terrorists – particularly the Somali ones – transport themselves and their weapons across Eritrea. They pretend to be doing it for ideological reasons, but that’s a load of horse shit if you ask me – I never met a Rashaida who wouldn’t sell his grandmother for a few nafka.’
    ‘I’m more worried about the military.’
    ‘You shouldn’t be. Soldiers and police, we can bribe. The Rashaida are more unpredictable. Trigger-happy.’
    They fell again into an uncomfortable silence. Danny kept his eyes on the distant lights, whenever they appeared. He found himself wishing they had night-vision goggles. That way they could drive blind, without the headlamps. As it was, they were lit up, visible from miles around.
    They’d been travelling for an hour when Triggs said: ‘When we get there, you’ll need to stay out of sight. Gilad’s a jumpy bastard. If he thinks I’ve got company, he might decide to do something about it.’
    Danny didn’t like that idea. How did he know he could trust Triggs? He didn’t. These days, Danny Black didn’t trust anybody.
    Triggs cleared his voice. ‘You know, I was in the Province, boy,’ he said. ‘Long time ago now. One time, we’d put in surveillance on a Provo target. He was holed up in a supposed safe house in Antrim, and our orders were to enter the house and apprehend him. I made the call to move in, but we hadn’t clocked a Provo shooter on a nearby rooftop. My oldest mate took a round and died at the scene.’ Triggs gave Danny a meaningful stare. ‘I know the