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Wahed was outraged. ‘But that’s slave labour!’

‘There are no slaves here. Look around you. No walls, no locks. You can walk out of here any time.’

It was slave labour all the same, Abdul thought. The desert was more effective than a wall.

And that was the final piece of the puzzle. He had wondered what drew people here, and now he understood. They were not drawn, they were captured.

Abdul wondered how much Hakim had been paid. Perhaps a couple of hundred dollars for a slave? If so, he had left here with $7,200. This was nothing compared with the profits from the cocaine, but Abdul suspected that most of those profits went to the jihadis, and Hakim was paid a driver’s fee. That would also explain why Hakim worked so hard to chisel a few extra bucks out of the migrants en route.

Mohammed said: ‘There are rules. The most important are no alcohol, no gambling and no filthy homosexual behaviour.’

Abdul would have liked to ask what the punishment was, but he did not want to call further attention to himself. He feared that Mohammed already had him in his sights.

‘Those of you who want to be given supper tonight need to start work now,’ Mohammed went on. ‘The women should go to the kitchen and speak to Rahima. The men, come with me.’ He stood up and walked out.

Abdul followed, and so did all the other men.

They trudged along the littered path, hearing the din of the jackhammer grow louder. Most of them were in their twenties or thereabouts; they might struggle but they could probably do the work. Wahed certainly could not.

An armed guard unchained the gate of the pit enclosure, and they all walked in.

The men working inside had the dead-eyed look of those for whom both hope and despair are things of the past. They did not speak or show any animation, they just hammered a rock until it was crushed, then moved on to the next rock. They all had traditional robes and headdresses, but the clothes were falling apart. Their beards were full of dust. They stopped work periodically to go to an oil drum full of water and rinse out their mouths.

They were all lean and muscular, which surprised Abdul, until he realized that those who were less fit had probably died.

The supervisors could be identified easily by the better quality of their clothes. Many of them were intently watching the rocks as they were crushed.

Mohammed gave the newcomers hammers, each with a long wooden handle and a heavy iron head. Abdul hefted his. It seemed to be well made and in good condition. The jihadis were pragmatic: poor tools would have slowed the output of gold.

Wahed was the only man not given a hammer, and Abdul felt relieved, assuming Mohammed would give the older man some lighter work. That assumption was wrong. Mohammed took him to the pit and told him, with a grin, to operate the jackhammer.

Everyone watched.

A section of the ground had been marked out with white paint, clearly delineating the area to be dug next, but Wahed was not able to lift the drill to move it into position. He could barely hold the thing upright, which made the young supervisors laugh, though Abdul could see that some of the older ones looked disapproving.

Wahed held the jackhammer vertical, leaning over it, struggling to prevent it falling over. Abdul had never used a jackhammer, but it was obvious to him that the operator had to stand behind it, not over it, and the tool had to lean slightly back towards him, so that if the blade slipped it would move away. Wahed was almost certain to injure himself.

He seemed to realize that, and hesitated to operate the drill.

Mohammed pointed to the lever and showed him the hand-squeezing motion required to set the machine working.

Abdul knew he would get into trouble for intervening, but he did so anyway.

He walked over to the pit. Mohammed angrily waved him away, but he ignored that. He took hold of the two handles of the jackhammer. It weighed thirty or forty kilos, he reckoned. Wahed backed away gratefully.

Mohammed said: ‘What do you think you’re doing? Who told you to do that?’

Abdul ignored him.

He knew that jackhammer operators were trained, but he would have to improvise. Taking his time, he shifted the chisel to what looked like a small ridge in the bedrock and lodged the blade there. He took a small step back, so that the drill was angled. Gripping the two handles hard, he pressed down and squeezed the lever for an instant, then released it. The blade bit into the rock briefly, and a small puff of dust rose up. Abdul squeezed the lever again, with more confidence, and had the satisfaction of seeing the blade chew into the rock.

Mohammed looked furious.

A new person appeared, and Abdul was intrigued.

The man was East Asian, and Abdul guessed Korean.

He had on heavyweight moleskin trousers and engineer boots, plus sunglasses and a yellow plastic hard hat. He was holding a spray can, of the type used by graffiti artists in New Jersey, and Abdul guessed it was he who marked out the next section of the pit to be broken up. He was undoubtedly the geologist.