The Lost Testament

47

Anum Husani’s route to the centre of Spain had been somewhat tortuous.

Almost as soon as he’d walked away from the meeting with Ali Mohammed with the retrieved parchment and the photographs, he’d flagged down a cab and headed straight for the airport. He’d been careful — paranoid might be a better word — to check all around him before he even got in the vehicle, and had spent most of the journey peering out of the rear window, trying to see if the cab was being followed. Of course, in the Cairo traffic that was an almost impossible task, but he’d done his best.

He’d paid off the driver at the airport, gone inside and found a vacant spot on one of the rows of back-to-back metal seats, and for almost an hour he’d just sat there, watching the crowds ebb back and forth in front of him, and trying to decide where to go. Again, nobody had appeared to be paying him the slightest attention. As far as he had been able to tell, he was safe.

His choices of destination had been fairly limited. At that time of day, late afternoon, most of the flights heading out of Cairo International Airport had been to places that he didn’t want to go, like Dubai or Kuwait. He’d really wanted to get somewhere in Western Europe. Eventually, he’d bought a ticket for cash for the 18.00 Egypt Air flight down to Sharm el-Sheikh, the popular Red Sea holiday resort, got himself over to Terminal 3, lost himself in the crowds and had then boarded the flight without any problems. He had guessed there would be international flights out of Sharm that he could take, even if he had to wait until the following day.

Absolutely the last thing he’d done, before he walked through the security check and into the departures lounge, was lock his pistol in one of the small left-luggage containers. The weapon had very probably saved his life in his headlong flight from his house in Cairo, and he’d decided he didn’t want to just throw it away.

The flight took almost exactly an hour, and as soon as he was on the ground, Husani had checked the departures board at Sharm. What he’d seen hadn’t been quite what he’d expected. What he’d really wanted was somewhere like Paris or Madrid, but the only destinations on offer in Western Europe had been London, Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin. To be cooped up in an island like Britain wouldn’t, he’d believed, give him the freedom of movement he might need.

But he’d recognized that he needed to keep moving, to get out of Egypt, and so eventually he’d taken the 21.15 flight to London’s Gatwick Airport. The aircraft had been somewhat delayed on departure, not leaving until almost ten that evening, and hadn’t arrived at Gatwick until just after two thirty on Thursday morning.

There had been no point in trying to find a hotel at that hour, and there were no outbound flights either, so Husani had bought himself a selection of snacks and drinks from a machine, consumed his purchases and then tried his best to get some sleep, stretched out on another unyielding metal seat.