Private London

Chapter 103

Harlan Shapiro’s mouth was bound with duct tape and he held his hands high in the air.

He was followed in by Annabelle Weston holding a gun, and by a woman wearing the full burka.

‘So it was the professor in the drawing room with the revolver all along,’ I said.

‘Sit over there,’ Annabelle said to Harlan, ignoring me and gesturing with her gun to a high-backed red leather chair.

Harlan Shapiro crossed over and sat down. Outside, a large man in black fatigues and with a scarf wrapped round his head walked past the French windows.

Mujahedin as security guards. Nice neighbourhood.

‘And you must be Mary Angela,’ I said, addressing the woman in the burka. ‘Shame to cover yourself up – you have beautiful eyes.’

The woman swept her hand up, removing the part of her garment covering her head, and swinging her lustrous hair behind her. She looked at me and smiled.

‘That’s very courteous of you to say so.’

I must have registered some surprise because her smile deepened. ‘Oh, I only wear it when it suits.’

‘Nice house you have, too. Mister Burka must be paid a pretty penny for his translation skills.’

‘I own the house, Mister Carter,’ said Annabelle Weston.

Of course she did. ‘Please call me Dan,’ I said. ‘I feel we’re bonding, Annabelle.’

‘I am sure you are a very charming man, Dan. You’re handsome, clearly very resourceful, more intelligent than you pretend to be.’ Annabelle shrugged. ‘I don’t know, in another life.’

I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘I quite like this life,’ I said, hoping that my voice was sounding steady.

‘I have no intention of harming you. Nobody needs to get hurt here.’

‘Tell that to the guy who used the back of my head as a tee peg,’ I said.

Annabelle frowned. ‘I’m sorry about that. That wasn’t supposed to happen. One of my team with a personal grudge against you. He has been reprimanded.’

‘Seems to have happened once before. Once too often,’ I said.

‘Again, that was never our intention.’

‘So what is your intention?’ asked Del Rio. I could see his jaw working harder than usual. His hands behind the chair flexing and unflexing, trying to loosen the rope.

‘Like I said. Nobody is going to be hurt as long as you cooperate’

‘So what’s the figure? Five million was just for openers, we get that. So what’s the number?’ Del Rio said.

‘It was never about money.’

‘So what is it about, you mad bitch?’ said Suzy coolly, possibly not helping matters.

‘It’s about justice,’ said Mary Angela Al-Massri.

‘For your brother?’

‘No, Mister Carter. For Palestine.’

‘And your husband thinks this will achieve it?’

‘My husband has nothing to do with this. Right now he is at a conference in Brussels.’

‘So the pair of you figured that you’d solve the problems of Palestine by kidnapping an American millionaire and demanding what for his release? That Israel allow you to set up a nation state just like that?’

‘We have no intention of releasing him. Not yet, at least.’

‘What’s the point, then?’

‘Our homeland for over a thousand years was taken from us to create the state of Israel. A crime in which the governments of both America and the United Kingdom were complicit.’

I noticed the guard pass again. Clearly he had a regular patrol around the grounds of the house.

‘I am familiar with the arguments. Terrorism isn’t the solution.’

The professor snorted derisively. ‘You know nothing about it. People resort to what you call terrorism when they have no other choice. Israel has a nuclear capability and Palestinians have slingshots.’

Mary Angela came over and took the gun from the professor, keeping it pointed at Harlan Shapiro. She was clearly the one in charge here. ‘Do you know what Gandhi said of the situation, Mister Carter?’ she asked.

I shrugged, as best I could, given that I was tied up pretty tightly. ‘You say tomato, I say tomato… let’s call the whole thing off?’

Mary Angela didn’t smile. Tough crowd.

‘He said “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. Nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.” And this is not an act of religion. It is an act of peace.’

‘You lost me there, princess,’ I said. ‘Seems to me that’s a gun you are holding, not an olive branch or a banana.’

I wanted to keep her talking. By my reckoning the guard should have passed by again and he hadn’t.

‘The only way peace can be brought about in that part of the Middle East is by parity,’ Annabelle Weston said, the passion sparking in her turquoise eyes.

‘All the Palestinians can do by way of retaliation against the fact that a part of their country has been made a concentration camp is to fire small rockets over the border from Gaza.’

‘And kidnapping Harlan Shapiro does what, exactly?’

Mary Angela looked at me and smiled. I took no comfort from it.

‘It will guide those rockets, Mister Carter.’