Brute Force

95

We drove out of Tripoli into the rising sun.

I was at the wheel. Lynn was in the back, and Mansour was beside me, ready to take on any checkpoints. Nobody spoke much. Nobody needed to. All I'd had to do was reset the sat nav's voice commands from Arabic to English and load in Ajdabiya. According to Mansour, the house we wanted was located on the beach. His memory wasn't great. He'd have to point out the actual building once we got there.

We got past the city limits. I'd given Lynn the .38 and told him to keep behind Mansour's seat. On the coast road, with the sea on our left, the desert stretching away on our right, there weren't many opportunities for the Libyan to cut and run, but there was no telling what he might try.

I glanced across at him. 'What's with the Russian?'

'Excuse me?'

'You started to talk to me first in Arabic, then in Russian. Why?'

'I didn't know who you were. I still don't know who you are – only that you are British. When you were in my room, you could have been anyone. And a man like me has many enemies.'

Lynn leant forward. 'Why would the Russians be after you?'

Mansour kept his eyes on the road. 'I have always been a survivor, Al-Inn. But how could a man like me, with my background, survive in the new Libya? Our Great Leader had publicly renounced terrorism. He'd informed the world that Libya was ridding itself of its ballistic missiles, its weapons of mass destruction. I had emerged from prison with nothing. Nobody was interested in a disgraced former spy. What was I to do?'

'What did you do?' Lynn asked.

'All I had were my connections – contacts built up over many years – and my interests . . . our interest, Al-Inn. In the desert, there are treasures beyond your wildest imaginings – you know this – many of them still waiting to be discovered. From prehistory to the time of the Romans – the desert is full of these priceless remnants of my country's past. And there is only so much room in the Al-Jamaheri Museum . . .

'Now, many people come to Libya to look for these artefacts. I know what is out there, Al-Inn. I have spent years in the desert. The desert is my home. There are places I know that nobody else does. Why should some archaeology student from an American, Italian, British or French university be allowed to make these discoveries – to take these antiquities back home with them, supposedly for study? They are Libya's heritage and they should stay here.'

I couldn't see the problem. If some geek with a metal-detector discovered Septimus Severus's money box, he should be allowed to hang on to it. Finders, keepers.

But Mansour was getting sparked up. 'It is we who should decide what is to be bought and sold, what is to stay or leave my country.'

I loved how this guy twisted and spun. Now he'd recast himself as some kind of custodian of national treasures. It was fucking obvious he wasn't just squirrelling these objects away for posterity; he was trading them as well, and not on eBay.

I kept my eyes glued to the potholes that peppered the lumpy tarmac. 'And that's where the Russians fit in?'

'I am sorry?'

'The Russians. You decided that some of these priceless artefacts weren't quite Libyan enough, and that entitled you to do a little trading with your old mates?'

Mansour stared straight ahead, tuning me out.

I didn't want to let him off the hook. 'Let me see if I've got this right. In the eighties, Libya's foreign terrorist programme was up and running, and you were the guy who put it all together. The training, the weapons, the shipments . . .'

'If you want to put it that way, yes.'

'The market was big – PIRA, PLO, the Red Brigade, you name them. And the Soviets fell over themselves to supply you with all the kit. So there you were, top of the heap, pulling all the strings. Until the Bahiti op went to rat shit . . . And when you finally got out of jail, it wasn't just Gaddafi's little slice of paradise that had changed, was it?'

'No.'

Too right it wasn't. The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union didn't exist any more. But a lot of those GRU colonels Mansour used to deal with, his regular weapons suppliers, had grown rich – or, at the very least, had some extremely rich, well-connected friends.

I swerved to avoid another pothole that was deep enough to rip a wheel off. 'If there's something a wealthy Russian loves to spend his money on, apart from bling, powerboats and football clubs, I bet it's bits of old Roman bric-a-brac.'

Mansour bristled. 'The alabaster bust in my house is of Septimus Severus. It is one of a pair. The other one is at the Capitol Museum in Rome. On the black market, it would fetch millions.'

It explained a lot, not least the Q7, the briefcase of cash and the curious symbols I'd noticed on the sat nav's map display. Mansour had marked the location of these out-of-the-way archaeological sites. Nice work if you could get it. It almost made me wish I'd paid more attention at school.

Mansour turned and looked directly at Lynn. 'I was only ever prepared to sell things that didn't matter – a late classical statuette here, a bust from the Hellenistic era there. These things are two-a-penny, Al-Inn. You know that. But they always want more.'

'It's a Russian thing,' I said. 'Old habits die hard.'

He turned and watched the road. 'Some of my former contacts are still in the military and the GRU. Some now work for the FSB and Russian arms manufacturers. Many of them have a great deal of money. They also have some powerful friends.'

No surprises there. The Russian mafia were everywhere. 'What did you do that means you have to sleep with a weapon?'

Mansour sighed. 'There were certain treasures, like the Severus bust, that I am not prepared to sell. They should remain in Libya. But the people you speak of are putting me under a great deal of pressure. Their clients – some of them well-known public figures – these men are extremely powerful, and they want only the very best. When they set their eye on something, they will stop at nothing to get it. I have started to become . . . nervous . . . There is no one I can turn to here. I needed the advice – the help – of someone I could trust.'

'So you decided to call Lynn?'

Mansour didn't answer. Something on the dead-straight stretch of road ahead had caught his eye. It had also caught mine.

Half a mile away, shimmering in the morning sunlight, was a checkpoint.