Close Call

Chapter 31

Miles woke up slightly hungover, the after-effect of a long evening at the French Embassy, and discovered that his mobile phone was ringing. ‘Hello,’ he said tentatively; the screen read ‘number unknown’.

‘Ah, the croaky voice of a man who’s had a good night out.’

It was Bruno Mackay. At the best of times, Miles felt a mild antipathy towards his British Intelligence counterpart, and right now there was a jauntiness about the man he could do without.

‘What can I do for you, Bruno?’ he said shortly.

‘I’ve had a communiqué from London. It seems there’s been some progress. Better if we talk face to face, old man? I’ll see you at Sharim’s café in an hour.’

Miles made it in fifty minutes, feeling slightly revived after a long shower and a shave. He drove cautiously into the old city, keeping an eye on his rear-view mirror; after their experience on the road from Donation’s farm, he felt that his car might be a marked vehicle. Parking in a Diplomatic parking bay, under the eye of a policeman, he walked along the pavement until he saw the wide awning of Sharim’s – and Bruno, in a white cotton jacket and pink tie, sitting at an outside table.

Miles joined him. Bruno gave a commanding wave and a waiter scurried over with a fresh pot of coffee and a cup for Miles, who watched while the man poured out the syrupy local brew. Miles added two sugar cubes from the little clay pot on the table. As he stirred them in with a tiny wooden spoon, he said to Bruno, ‘So what’s the news?’

‘London’s identified the guy they sent the photographs of. The one at the meet in the Luxembourg Gardens that we were going to ask Donation about. His name is Samara and he’s Yemeni. He’s doing a Master’s degree at London University, the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS we call it. On the surface he looks perfectly legit. Only quite obviously he’s not. I’ve been asked to check out his credentials here, and I thought you might be able to help me.’

Why? wondered Miles, but then Bruno said, ‘You’re a bit better placed to ask, I think. If you get my drift.’

And Miles now understood. Official Yemeni–American relations were blossoming. A cynic might say that the United States was propping up a weak local government to further its own interests, but for whatever reason, a request for help from the American Embassy was likely to get a quicker, more favourable reaction than if the Brits had asked.

‘It may take me a little while,’ Miles said.

‘Not a problem, old boy. We’ve got a couple of hours on London as it is. They’ll still be fast asleep.’

Miles’s contact was a middle-level officer in the Yemeni Intelligence Service called Arack, who had been a graduate student at the University of Southern California. It was never entirely clear what he had studied there, and he seemed to know the beaches north of Santa Monica rather better than the classrooms of USC. But he was a useful contact, since the Yemeni bureaucracy was both ­legendarily cumbersome and unreceptive to foreign approaches, and Arack was always willing to help the Americans, provided the request was relatively easy to fulfil and his reward readily forthcoming. He was known to Miles and his colleagues, semi-derisorily, as ‘Sweet Tooth’ because of his love of sugary cakes and desserts, which made payment for his services unusually easy.

Miles and Arack met now for coffee and a baklava-like concoction in a café near the Yemeni Ministry of Defence. Arack listened sympathetically while Miles explained what he was looking for. ‘We just want confirmation that the personal details we have for this student are correct and that he is known to your authorities and is in London legitimately.’

‘Is there any reason to think he is not?’ asked Arack mildly.

‘No,’ said Miles, though it didn’t take a genius to realise there had to be a question about the ‘student’, or else Miles wouldn’t be checking him out. ‘It’s just a formality.’

Arack nodded, happy to hear that this was not something he would have to call to the attention of his superiors. ‘Naturally births and deaths are registered here, as they are in the United States, and there is a department for that purpose. But you might find its office difficult to navigate. Let me make a few calls and get back to you. Give me the details please, and I would be grateful if you could ask the waiter to come over.’

Arack rang Miles just before dinner. There was a shortage of eligible Western women in Sana’a and Miles was about to have dinner with one of them – a new shapely secretary called, appropriately, Marilyn, who had come out to work in the Embassy the month before. He waited impatiently as Arack went through the standard Middle Eastern formalities, applied rigorously even to a phone call. How was Miles? As if they hadn’t met five hours before. Was not the weather good this day, and would it not be fine throughout the evening? At last Arack came to the point, though even then he spoke elliptically. ‘I am afraid I have surprising news for you, my friend.’

‘Really?’

‘We have no record of this man, you see.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just what I have said. There is no birth certificate, no record of an education and no passport.’

‘Could the name be spelled differently?’

‘I have pursued all possible variants. More important, the residential address you say this fellow gave in Sana’a does exist but… it is a bicycle shop. I can assure you, there is no citizen with the particulars you supplied.’

Miles mind was no longer on his date with Marilyn. ‘OK. Thank you for checking this for me.’

‘My pleasure. I wish you luck finding this gentleman. But I can assure you, it will not be in the Yemen.’

Damn, thought Miles as he put down the phone, then picked it up to cancel his date. He hoped Marilyn wouldn’t be too disappointed – though he was, especially since he realised there would be a further call to make. It looked like he would be having dinner with Bruno Mackay instead.