Quiller Solitaire

Chapter 18: IBRAHIMI

It was almost six o'clock, and the air was turning cool. The sirocco had died away from the south, from the Sahara; the leaves of the tall eucalyptus trees were still. Beyond them in the west the sun was low, the sky the colour of blood.

Maitland had come into the courtyard a few minutes ago and spoken to Dieter Klaus; then he'd seen Helen by the pool and had gone over to her. They were talking now. He was in a dark jumpsuit and carried a padded jacket. He was talking seriously, no smiles.

I could hear the pilots, speaking to each other quietly in Iranian, a language I didn't know. The boys had taken away the empty bowls and the muslin towels. The water – the holy water – had made a puddle on the tiles.

A suicide run: hence the ritual and the look of exaltation on the pilots' faces. There were talking with their heads close together. Klaus watched them from across the pool, still crouched forward with his fingers interlaced. He watched the Iranians with a degree, I thought, of fascination. From the nearest archway I too was being watched, by my personal guard.

A suicide run, but that didn't tell me the target. The other Iranian could be a pilot too, or at least aircrew: they'd both been through the ritual of their preparation for their ascent into heaven, had possibly been taken through a more elaborate ritual at the mosque. So it involved a big aircraft, with a crew of at least two. A bomber?

The evening prayer was being called by the muezzin from the minaret of the mosque; the voice sounded tinny: I think they use tapes these days, in the bigger towns.

Then the telephone began ringing again, and Klaus came over to it and picked it up. Two of his bodyguards had moved away from the wall, closer to him. This had become routine since the business with the knife.

'Out. Un instant.'

He took the telephone to Khatami, pulling the long cable clear of a deck chair. 'Pour vous.'

'Merci.' Khatami spoke into the phone. 'Oui?' Klaus stayed where he was, on his haunches, arms across his knees. 'Non, c'est pas bon. Vous avez un crayon? Alors, ecoutez. C'est precisement 26°03' au Nord par 02°01' a I'Ouest. Repetez. Bon, c'est bon. Ecoutez, il faut synchroniser les montres, hein? J'ai maintenant exactement 18:04 heures. C'est ca. A bientot, oui.' He put the receiver down.

I turned a page of the Tribune I was reading, got it creased, flattened it out, began reading again.

'Tout va bien?'

Klaus.

'Oui. 'Tout va bien. 'Tout est en ordre.'

Khatami.

I wasn't all that far away, a dozen yards or so, and I'd heard them quite clearly. But I don't think that Klaus even realised I was there; I don't think it mattered. I was under close guard and I was going to remain under close guard until the flashpoint out there at the airport, and whether the Miniver was delivered on schedule or not, whether London had sent forces in or not, my expectations were that I would be silenced at that time and in that place. Klaus would have ordered it. So it didn't matter what I overheard, what information I might pick up: it would remain safe for all time in the chill of the shrivelling brain.

But it was interesting, academically. I had the target.

26°03' north by 02'01' west.

Much good may it do me, so forth, that man Muhammad Ibrahimi had a bullet for me and he wouldn't leave anything to chance: if he failed to carry out his orders he wouldn't survive the day. I suppose it was the tinny ghost-voice of the muezzin wailing from the mosque that was giving me the creeps, that and perhaps the killing of the dog and the boy. The psyche was in despond, and this was dangerous, though difficult to change: time had started to run short. There was no The telephone rang again and Klaus answered it at once.

'Ja. Jawohl!'

George Maitland came across from the edge of the pool and the pilots got onto their feet. They're ready' Klaus said, and his voice was charged. 'Allons-y!' He went over to speak to Geissler and then made for the building, his bodyguards with him. The Iranians followed them, hurrying, their robes flying.

I noted the time: it was 6:14.

'I'm sorry you're going to miss this,' Maitland said. His bomber jacket was hanging across his shoulder from one finger. He was smiling, if you could call it that; there seemed a kind of light on his face, in his eyes, and I thought he'd lost colour a little. Yet I'd think he wasn't a man to get excited easily. It's going to be something quite spectacular.'

'Klaus didn't invite me,' I said. 'Should I ask him?' He shook his head slowly. 'He and I are the only ones going. Not even Geissler. Some of the minions, of course, but they're just monkeys, and won't be coming back.'

I sensed Helen shiver, and she turned away. 'It's getting cold,' she said. 'I must go and get some clothes on.'

'Did you talk to her much?' Maitland asked. He watched me with his eyes shining.

'Not a lot,' I said.

'Do you think she's attractive?'

'Very attractive.'

'It's that innocence of hers… I find it extraordinarily seductive.' He turned, looking across to the archway where she was just vanishing into the palace, long pale legs among the gathering shadows. 'God knows,' Maitland said, 'what she'll think when she sees the media break. She'll know we're responsible. She likes power, you see, the kind of power she knows I can wield.'

'Or enjoys her fear of it?'

'I've never thought of it that way.'

He was dying to blurt things out; in times of great emotion we say things we know we shouldn't, can't possibly say. I think if I'd had him alone with me for a bit longer I could have got enough out of him to give Solitaire a final chance, reach a phone, bring London in. But there wasn't time, and it wouldn't get me anywhere: Klaus knew that as far as security was concerned I presented no risk, was already silenced.

Ibrahimi came across to us. 'We shall be leaving in thirty minutes,' he said in French, 'For Dar-el-Beida.'

For the flashpoint.

I went in to change.

Scorpion in my shoe and I tipped it out and it scuttled under the bed.

I held my hands out and watched the fingers. They were perfectly steady. The nerves were singing quietly in that flat inaudible monotone that is simply a vibration, palpable but discernible to no other sense; perhaps it's what happens when a violinist tightens the string infinitesimally and hears, knows, that he has reached perfect pitch.

A woman was keening somewhere below, and I could hear faint voices. Perhaps she was the boy's mother. The scent of jasmine came through the open window with its iron scroll-work, and I saw two men in flying jackets standing in the forecourt near one of the cars. They were the Iranian pilots, changed and ready and presumably waiting for Klaus.

I put on the clothes I'd worn in Berlin, where it had been cold. It would be cold here tonight, though less so.

There might conceivably be a chance of preempting the flash-point and getting clear, turning the car over as I'd done once in Moscow and taking advantage of the confusion. But I couldn't do that. It's not what we're for, the ferrets in the field. I could save my skin that way or by using some other crude but effective technique but that would mean abandoning the mission: I had got to stay with Nemesis for as long as I could in case there was the thousandth chance of blocking their operation, if possible destroying it. I couldn't simply bail out: to abandon the mission is against the most sacrosanct edicts of the Bureau, the Sacred Bull. If those bastards in London expect us to protect the mission with our lives – and they do, or they wouldn't give us capsules, they wouldn't hand out capsules like bloody Twinkies – it follows that they also expect us to stay with the mission until death do us part in the natural course of events, death from a bullet or a knife or a fifty-foot drop from a rooftop or a head-on smash or the last turning of the screw in the interrogation cell with the light blinding and the music blasting away at full volume – Brahms, they usually go for Brahms or Beethoven – death from whatever cause, then, it is in our contract, you understand, with the Reaper at our side we have said I will.

I put on my shoes. The scorpion was running inquisitively along the wainscoting, and it was in my mind to go over there and step on it, perhaps out of envy, because it was liable otherwise to outlive me; but I left it alone, reminded of Ferris, that inestimable but sometimes revolting director in the field who takes dark and perverse pleasure in stepping on beetles. With a full-blown Algerian scorpion he would have had a ball.

The guard outside my door was on the move: I heard his shoes squeaking on the marble floor -they were gym shoes, rubber-soled, making him sound athletic, impatient for me to do something wrong so that he could blow my head off and show the brains to Klaus in atonement for letting that Arab boy pull a knife. There was another guard below in the courtyard, watching the windows here.

I was beginning to sweat a little in the cool of the evening, and this worried me, and not only because sweat makes the hands slippery. I had good reason to be frightened as the minutes ran out to the flashpoint: I was almost certain by now that Klaus suspected my cover, beneath the lust in his breast to possess a real live nuke for the icing on his cake. If there was no delivery made I would be shot, but the same thing would happen if London hadn't laid a trap and the Miniver was handed over: after that I'd be worse than useless to Klaus: I'd be a danger, knowing too much.

The scent of woodsmoke was richer now as night began falling and more fires were lit and the couscous went into the beaten copper pans.

I got my jacket. It was the same kind as Maitland's, black, padded, Berlin style. I like them; they're good in cold climates and short, hip-length: you can't run in an overcoat, you can't turn, spin, kick, roll, rebound, dear God, my brain was working like a chicken's with its head cut off- those buggers had guns, it wouldn't matter what I was wearing, how fast I could run, they'd pick me off, concerted fire power.

I left my bathroom stuff and the flight bag where they were and hung the swimming trunks a servant had lent me to dry on the window sill; then I went to the door and jerked it open and the gun was in his hand before I took another step, they were nervous, these people, didn't want to have Klaus shouting at them again. But I could have taken him, this one little peon, because I was alone with him and there are so many moves you can make if you've done it often enough; his weak point was that the gun gave him confidence while I was barehanded, and I'd work on that. But I couldn't do it before he'd got the first shot out and even though it'd go wide of the mark it would make a noise and the others would come and Klaus would have me wiped out because I would have blown my cover and he'd know there wasn't a nuke waiting for him at Dar-el-Beida, finito.

'That way!'

I was going down the arabesque staircase in front of him and took a wrong turn at the bottom and not by accident, I wanted to rile the little bastard, ease the resentment. I turned the other way and went into the open courtyard. It was quiet here, deserted except for Maitland: he was standing at one end of the pool, staring down into the water. It was still now, and no longer tinged with the blood of the Arab boy. The voice of the muezzin had stopped, and the only sound beyond the high white walls were women's voices and the distant ring of cooking pots.

A ripe orange fell, on the far side of the courtyard, and burst among the dry scimitar leaves of the eucalyptus. I felt, for these few moments, a profound peace settling like gossamer on my soul, something close perhaps to what the two Iranians were feeling, and for the same reason: we weren't long for this world now.

'Hello,' Maitland's voice came from across the courtyard, and I remembered how it had been when I'd first found Helen, this man's wife, standing as still as this on the frozen lawn in Reigate, the day before yesterday. She'd sensed my presence and turned and said, Hello.

'Where's Klaus?' I asked him.

'Coming. We'll be taking off at seven.'

I went over to him, not hurrying, looking into the pool, watching his short dark reflection. 'The deal I made,' I said, 'is for the exchange to take place at 7:15.'

'We're not taking the warhead on board.' Maitland's eyes were still shining; his excitement was burning in him like a fever. 'It's going on a later plane.'

With the conventional explosive: with the teddy bear.

'Fair enough. I wouldn't want any last-minute complications – this is quite an important deal for me.'

He watched me for a moment, his eyes bright, and I wondered if he knew what the orders were that Klaus had given Muhammad Ibrahimi: that I was not to survive the rendezvous. Maitland would probably know, yes, had possibly advised it, even insisted on it, for the sake of absolute security, and some of the unholy light in his eyes could be there because he knew he was talking to a dead man. I'd seen a degree of fascination in Klaus's look when he'd been watching the two Iranians.

'Dieter Klaus,' Maitland said slowly, 'hasn't planned this operation to include the risk of last-minute complications.'

He didn't know I was English, this man, as English as he was. It'd be funny if we'd been to prep school together – he looked about my age. Not that it would have made any difference to our relationship. KGB Colonel Kim Philby had been an Englishman too.

'I'm reassured,' I said, and then Klaus came into the courtyard with his four bodyguards and an Arab in a jump-suit and a military-style jacket, compact and black-bearded.

'I don't think you've been formally introduced,' Klaus said in French, 'have you? Muhammad Ibrahimi – Hans Mittag. I know you'll get on very well. You'll be going to the airport with a driver and three guards for your own protection.' He was in a black flying-jacket with a fur collar, had a pair of military field-glasses slung round his neck. 'I'm sure your associate has taken every precaution' -his black eyes were locked on mine – 'and that he too has protected the rendezvous from unwanted attention. Or am I perhaps over-confident?' His French was stilted but I got the message.

'The counter-terrorist people,' I said in a moment, 'are quick off the mark these days. You know that. It wouldn't be the first time an arms dealer's come unstuck.'

Telephone.

It was all I wanted: a telephone.

Klaus said at once – 'You think there's the chance of a security leak?'

'Not really. I run a tight show, like you. But nothing in this life's ever certain, is it? I think you're right: I ought to phone my contact.'

He became very still. I was running things terribly close, but it was so tempting, because if I could get London direct on the dial and use speech-code and warn them off the rendezvous they'd have time to signal whatever forces they'd sent into Dar-el-Beida and clear them out before I got there with Ibrahimi. I'd have a clear field with no one to mess me up if I could do anything useful.

'There's no time,' Klaus said, 'to phone anyone now.' He checked his watch. 'You're leaving here in fifteen minutes, and if your associate has left the rendezvous open to exposure it won't be my fault if you get shot. You understand me?'

'I don't need fifteen minutes to -'

'Do you understand?'

He was standing in front of me with the look on his face I'd seen when he'd killed the dog and when he'd killed the Arab boy, and I was ready for him to blow, had the angles worked out as a matter of routine, the synapses flashing throughout the system and devouring data and sifting it and presenting the analysis for the motor nerves, and if Klaus had made any kind of move I would have gone straight into the killing area and he would have started choking on his own blood as the bullets went into me from the guards.

I don't know if he knew I was ready for him, but I don't think so, because it would have been a challenge and he would have accepted it and come for me, just as a dog will do if you stare it down.

Adrenalin running in the veins like strong red wine: I could taste it in my mouth. He went on staring at me. 'Yes,' I said, 'I understand.'

'I want that warhead.'

'Of course. And I simply hate to sound tactless, but does Monsieur Ibrahimi have the funds?' I looked at the Arab.

'I have the funds,' he said, 'in cash.'

'In hundred-dollar bills?

'That is correct.'

Klaus stood back, and Maitland joined him. 'I hope all goes well,' I said, 'with the operation. It'll give me a certain sense of satisfaction in the morning when I read the headlines, to think I played a minor part.'

Klaus left his eyes on me for a moment and then swung away, didn't answer, knew I wouldn't see any headlines in the morning. Maitland went with him through the archway that led to the forecourt, where chrome glinted under the first faint light of the moon. Two of the guards followed them; two stayed behind. They were both men, both European, probably German; they were flat-faced, crew-cut and had eyes with the indifference in them that we see in animals, but I made them change, moving my hand suddenly to tug the zip of my jacket higher, and they became the eyes of the animal that sees the prey.

'We shall make our way, then,' Muhammad Ibrahimi said.

He walked beside me, the guards behind. No one else was in the courtyard now, and as our feet rustled through the fallen eucalyptus leaves and we reached the archway I had the feeling that a curtain would come down behind us.

Exhaust gas was on the air as we reached the forecourt; the tail lights of a car showed among the trees where the driveway curved towards the road. Above the minarets of the palace the last of the daylight had gone from the sky, and with the coming down of the Sahara night a three-quarter moon was already silvering the chrome and cellulose of the 560 SEL Mercedes limousine that was waiting for us. An Arab driver and another European guard were standing beside it.

Ibrahim! gestured for me to get into the back of the car, then followed. Two of the guards got in and pulled down the jump seats facing us; the third sat next to the Arab driver. The last door was slammed and the hydraulic locks clicked home. I felt for the seat-belt and buckled it. Ibrahimi folded his hands, leaving providence to Allah.

'The funds,' I asked him, 'are in the boot?'

It was just to keep the polish on my cover. Two thousand five hundred bills would need a suitcase, and I didn't see one here.

'Yes,' he said.

He would have a knife, Ibrahimi, a knife rather than a gun. The European clothes he'd changed into hadn't altered his image very much: with his beard and his hawk-beaked nose and his silences he was intensely Arabian, and would have been brought up with an affinity for the blade in time of need. It would be the same for the driver. The others would have guns.

Be not sanguine, my good friend, upon this inauspicious night, 'tis hardly meet. We are not super-ferrets, we the ferrets in the field, we are but ferrets, and subject to the laws of nature, red in tooth and claw.