David McMillan

working out how it would be that the authorities could place me to Singapore, which I think they could.

If the authorities had simply figured that I'd left the country, gone down, got all the passenger lists, figured that if I was in a false document, it would be, what, American, Canadian, British, I mean, quite a few to choose from, New Zealand, maybe even South Africa.

and compare that passenger manifest with any reported lost or stolen passports.

We were speaking about being wanted, and what's that like?

Well, people often overthink the idea of going through an airport computer because the document they might have is being reported lost or stolen, but really they don't hold that information.

That's in the back room.

The front room is the Interpol watch list.

By this method, they could really identify me and probably several others who were traveling on assumed names that day.

So I knew I had to get out of Singapore fairly quickly.

and I sent for another passport.

And you traveled, if you went to dinky enough travel agency, you'd end up with a handwritten ticket.

the agencies could write them out by hand and then take all those slips to a consolidator.

It was a very old-fashioned system.

It was glorious, really, because there were so many mix-ups writing out those tickets, you wouldn't believe it.

Names would get backwards and forwards.

But in due course, I found myself in Balochistan, in the western provinces of Pakistan, where my old friend, Tribal Lord Chief Norjan Magsi,

whom I'd met back in the days of first crossing into Afghanistan.

It was the right place to be because nobody could find me there.

And if they did, no good would come of that for them if they had.

The desert holds a lot of secrets.