The Network

8

It’s now Saturday, five days after my temporary incarceration with Billy, the Face and the charming colonel with the nice green beret. My rib still hurts when I take a deep breath or laugh, and my eye has a purplish corona around it which gives me a slightly menacing look that I enjoy. It’s time for another briefing with Seethrough and, as promised, he’s laid on transport.

At dusk I drive with H to the outskirts of Hereford, where we board a black Puma helicopter fitted with additional fuel tanks and passenger seats around the sides. It’s run by the best specialist pilots from the RAF and is called the Special Duties Flight, part of the Firm’s special operations capability. It’s the limousine of helicopters, says H, and rattles much less than others because it’s maintained more diligently and they actually take the trouble to tighten up all the nuts and bolts. Even the pilot sounds quite posh. It’s the Firm’s preferred means of transport between London, Hereford and Fort Monckton on the coast, where among other things, H now tells me, he occasionally teaches the finer points of MOE – covert methods of entry – to selected aspirants, based on the exceptional talents of his mentor, a Major Freddy Mace.

We belt ourselves in and H gives a thumbs up to the loadmaster, who makes sure everything is properly stowed. The aircraft winds into the air and swoops south-east. I watch the Cotswolds race past beneath us as we roar at spectacularly low altitude towards London and over a carpet of glittering lights to a heliport that I didn’t know existed. It hangs over the Thames not far from Battersea and is marked london in big illuminated white letters. I can’t imagine why anyone who already knows how to fly a helicopter to Battersea might need to be reminded of this, and H is none the wiser.

A squat and pale-faced driver meets us and whisks us along Battersea Park Road in a powerful Vauxhall. A few minutes later the towers of Legoland, bathed in orange light, loom up ahead of us. We draw to a stop alongside the building beneath a security barrier where our IDs are checked, and descend into an underground car park.

I recognise Stella, Seethrough’s secretary, who’s there to meet us. I wonder whether this timid-looking Moneypenny, whose face and manner are so very forgettable and who asks us meekly whether we’ve had a pleasant journey, has perhaps just come up from the subterranean ops room where she’s been assisting the running of some far-off minor war. I’m tempted to make a joke and ask how saving the world has been for her today, but keep silent as she leads us to a row of capsule-like doors, runs her card through the reader and admits us to the lift.

Seethrough is ready for us upstairs with a briefing list of three items. The first is the latest imagery from our Cousins, as he calls the Americans. He unrolls two poster-sized satellite photographs of astonishingly high resolution and clarity, and military topographic maps that cover the same area.

For the first time we have the thrill of studying our target: a huge, medieval-looking fort with four giant turrets, nestling in the mountains north-west of Kandahar. In its cellars are the Stinger missiles that the Cousins have paid their tribal agents so handsomely to gather together. At the going rate, a minimum of $100,000 per missile, there’s over ten million dollars’ worth of them stashed in the fort, according to the TRODPINT reports. Some have been bought from the same commanders to whom they were originally supplied, others from profiteering middlemen, and others from the Taliban themselves. A few have been smuggled into Pakistan and spirited away by the CIA, who maintain a light aircraft at Peshawar airport for this very purpose.

An Afghan TRODPINT member will be assigned to help us reach the target, explains Seethrough. More on that in a few minutes, he says. Our job, he reminds us, is to find a good enough pretext to be in the area, to OP the fort from a distance, get inside and verify the serial numbers of the missiles, and then destroy them. We will receive a notice to move when the weather is clear enough for post-strike analysis and BDA by satellite.

I can’t remember what BDA stands for.

‘Battle damage assessment,’ interjects H.

The maps will travel back to Hereford with H, who will study the terrain and draw up a list of our requirements, while I’m to work on our cover plan.

Secondly, I have a forty-eight-hour visit to the US.

‘Go and see your kids,’ says Seethrough, ‘and in your spare time you can have a chat with the ops chap from CTC, who’ll brief you on the set-up from their point of view and show you how to find the serial number on a Stinger. Your flight’s tonight.’ He hands me my travel documents and a hotel reservation in Washington. ‘They want you there at night for some reason,’ he says. Then he hands the rolled-up photographs and maps to H.

‘Want to look those over while I have a word?’ He gestures to another table. H obliges by moving across the room and Seethrough retrieves a file with multicoloured tabs poking out of it and opens it in front of me.

‘Recognise anybody?’ he asks.

It’s a shock because I had thought him dead. He looks much older in the photograph but I do recognise him. It’s Gemayel, grey-haired now but unmistakable.

‘He’s become a big fish since you last saw him,’ says Seethrough. ‘Must have cut a deal and agreed to act as a source.’ That, he explains, is how these things work. Since I last saw him, nearly ten years earlier, Gemayel has become the chief financial officer of a Middle Eastern organisation with a wide popular influence. The Americans call it a terrorist organisation, but in the British government nobody can decide whether it’s got anything to do with terrorists or not, so we maintain contact. Gemayel is now in charge of its global funding network, and has kept open a channel back to the Firm, making him ‘onside’ in Seethrough’s parlance. He’s evidently been living in South America, where for some reason most of the organisation’s funds are funnelled and then redistributed. A few years ago he resurfaced in Beirut at the highest level of the organisation’s architecture, and since then has survived two assassination attempts by the Israeli intelligence service.

‘Still with me?’ asks Seethrough.

I nod, though it’s all getting stranger by the minute.

‘Most of the chatter we’re getting about Stinger purchases is coming out of the Sudan. Gemayel has an area-wide network based in the capital Khartoum. We on the other hand have precisely one operational officer, whose identity is already declared. What we need is for Gemayel to ask his people to listen out for noises about the Stingers. That way we can at least do some eliminating. He may be onside, but we can’t do a face-to-face with one of our known people without Mossad breathing down our necks. So when you’re back from America I thought you could talk to him and rekindle the spark. You’ve got the perfect excuse of wanting to catch up after all these years.’

‘I can remind him of our happy days together.’

‘Precisely,’ says Seethrough, taking me up on the irony.

‘Let’s say he agrees. What does he get out of it?’

‘He gets to keep his head,’ says Seethrough soberly, and turns the pages in the file to an immediate-level CX report from Lebanon station. It bears the secret router indicator actor, indicating that no one outside the Firm is allowed to see it. It’s addressed to the head of the Global CT controllerate, which is Seethrough, and the security caveat reads: UK T O P S E C R E T /DELICATE SOURCE. But it’s the subject title that shocks: proposed assassination of Elias Rashid Gemayel by israeli security services.

I scan down the page. The Israelis, if the report is to be believed, are planning to kill Gemayel with an explosive charge in his mobile phone placed by one of his own security staff. They’ve managed to buy one of Gemayel’s own bodyguards, and the plan is to be carried out later this month, when Gemayel returns from Rome to Beirut and will receive a new mobile phone. In exchange for this deadly snippet of information, Seethrough is hoping that Gemayel will pass on whatever his people can find out about the Stinger purchases.

‘Fair trade, don’t you think?’ says Seethrough, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows in his signature gesture of enquiry.

‘The Israelis won’t be too happy when you give away their plan,’ I say.

‘You win some, you lose some. Par for the course. They know that. Though I shall probably be denied that marvellous Mossad cheesecake from now on.’

There are some further details, which I struggle with because my head is spinning a bit from all this. I’m given the name of my CIA Counterterrorist Center contact and a phone number to memorise for when I’m in Washington. There’s also a backup number for use with a PIN and a code name in case I can’t use the mobile and need to call London. The rest is transparent, he says. I’m on a trip to see my children. The hotel is paid for, but any other expenses, he reminds me with a cynical glance of regret, are not deductible.

I dread America. More correctly, I dread the prospect of seeing my ex, who holds my children hostage there, and makes it as difficult as she possibly can for me to spend time with them by skilfully inflicting the maximum psychological damage on me when I’m at my most vulnerable. It seems unfair to indict an entire nation on the behaviour of a single woman, but the feeling of anxiety returns to me whenever I board a plane to the US, and is countered only by my excitement at the prospect of seeing my kids. It’s the emotional see-saw between these two extremes that’s hard to manage, like the toxins and antitoxins administered by professional torturers to their victims.

Flying west, time goes backwards, so I have the strange experience of arriving at Dulles airport an hour or so after I’ve left England. According to local time, on my arrival it’s 1 a.m. At the immigration desk a uniformed officer glances humourlessly at the bruise above my eye.

‘You should see the other guy,’ I say.

He runs my green card, which isn’t green, through a reader, stamps my passport, and a grin comes over his face as he hands them back.

‘Welcome home, buddy. It’s a lot safer here.’

Which is comforting, because I’m already nervous at the prospect of encountering my ex.

I have no checked baggage and pass into the arrivals hall, where I scan for a driver holding up a sign with the name of a forgettable business written on it. He looks like a former soldier, to judge from his haircut and the muscles squeezed into his tight black suit.

‘Welcome to Washington DC, sir,’ he says after we exchange innocuous-sounding pass phrases. We walk outside to a line of waiting cars and he opens the rear door of a capacious four-wheel-drive Chevrolet with darkened windows. On the far side of the back seat is the ops officer from the Counterterrorist Center. I haven’t been sure what kind of person to expect, but this isn’t it.

At first I see only the hat, an expensive-looking dark Stetson with a leather braid around the base of the crown. I see the dark blue blazer, the starched white shirt and the jeans and cowboy boots. Then I take in the long blonde hair falling over the shoulders. The Stetson tilts up, and I’m looking into the face of a good-looking woman of about fifty, whose features break into a gleaming smile that makes me freeze momentarily in surprise.

‘Howdy, amigo,’ she says with unexpected earnestness. ‘You look like you never saw a cowgirl before.’

This is quite possibly true. I’m stammering for a reply.

‘Just not this late in the evening.’

‘Well, better late than never,’ she says. ‘You ready to saddle up?’

I climb aboard and we shake hands. There’s a Germanic-looking strength to her face, softened by the fairness of her hair and skin. Her jaw is square and tapers towards a prominent chin, and the thinness of her lips suggests a masculine hardness. I feel the steely quality of her gaze on me, as if she’s assessing the nerve of her guest. We follow the convention, adhered to in certain circles, of first names only.

‘Good to meet you, Tony. Heard good things about you. I’m Grace.’ She leans forward to the driver. ‘Full chisel, Mike.’ An opaque glass screen rises between us and the driver, muffling a hiss of static as he radios the news of our departure to wherever we’re going. The car surges forward and we merge into the river of lights flowing along the Dulles Access Toll Road, heading towards Tyson’s Corner.

‘It’s a pleasure to be here,’ I say, ‘but do you mind if I ask why it has to be at night?’

‘God, you English are so darn polite.’ She laughs. ‘Course you can. I understand your time here is short. I booked you for the night so’s we can keep our appointment in Afghanistan. Time zone there is nine and a half hours ahead of us.’

‘We’re going to talk to someone who’s in Afghanistan?’

‘Better than that. But I hate to spoil a surprise.’ She clips an ID card to my jacket pocket. ‘When were you last in-country?’ I’m assuming by this she means Afghanistan, not America.

‘About four years ago.’

‘De-mining outfit, right?’

I nod.

‘Ever meet Massoud?’

‘Twice.’

‘Like him?’

‘I never thought he was a saint, but you can’t not admire him,’ I say.

‘Hell of a guy,’ she agrees. ‘Wish I could be there now. Kind of place that gets its claws into you. Ran four missions to our friend up north. Hell, I’m an honorary male Afghan.’

It’s hard to imagine. Massoud’s base of operations in the Panjshir valley and the northernmost province of Afghanistan called Badakhshan aren’t the easiest or safest places to travel. They’re the only portions of the country yet to fall to the Taliban, and are doggedly defended by Massoud and his dedicated soldiers. I travelled along the dirt roads of the region and through its spectacular mountain passes and valleys on de-mining surveys for the trust. Now Massoud’s ailing forces, squeezed between the Taliban’s inexorable advance from the south and the frontier of Tajikistan to the north, are fighting for survival. I’ve guessed that the CIA has sent advisers to the area to liaise with Massoud, the Taliban’s final opponent, but I never imagined that a woman was among them.

‘Choppered out of Tajikistan last year with a few of the boys on an Mi-8 that was damn near ready to fall apart. There was a few times I thought we were all fixin’ to eat dirt,’ she says, grinning at some recollection of peril, ‘but Massoud looked after us best he could. Didn’t seem to mind my being a woman.’

I ask if she thinks Massoud will survive the Taliban’s advance.

‘I don’t rightly want to think about it,’ she says. ‘He’s the last chance that darn country’s got. If the Taliban take the north and Massoud has to ride out on a rail, Afghanistan’s going to become one giant threat matrix that’s going to break everybody’s balls.’

‘Not yours, I take it,’ I say.

She laughs. ‘All depends. If the State Department keeps up its no-account fantasy of cosying up to the Taliban and we don’t get a result soon on Obi-Wan, then yes, mine too.’

Obi-Wan, I’m assuming, is her pet name for Osama bin Laden, a mild-mannered Saudi playboy turned anti-American jihadist. The Western world has hardly heard of him.

‘Had him in our sights a couple of times, but you have to promise me you’ll keep that dry. We even figured Massoud’s boys could do the job for us, but he’d take a whole heap of grief for it if anyone found out we’d sponsored it. Nobody in the Muslim world wants to be known for killing their very own Mahatma Gandhi.’

It’s not a comparison I would have thought of. But it’s true that bin Laden is beginning to be seen as a kind of hero in the Islamic world, and his message of defiance against American domination is catching on.

Our shared respect for Massoud has broken the ice between us, though there’s not much to break because she’s so refreshingly outspoken. I’m enjoying the contrast between talking to her and the tight-lipped Seethrough, who only shares information when he has to. We talk as the car heads along Dolley Madison Boulevard towards Maclean. Grace works for a secret unit within the already secret Counterterrorist Center, dedicated for the past couple of years to tracking and, if possible, capturing bin Laden and bringing him to trial for his role in the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. After having been hounded out of his native Saudi Arabia and then, under American pressure, from Sudan, he’s set up in Afghanistan. There he can move freely between his devotees’ training camps and preach his messianic message to all who’ll listen, though few of his fans are themselves Afghans.

‘What are the chances of getting him?’ I ask.

‘Take away some of the more hare-brained schemes and we’ve still got a good option set,’ she says. The technology to launch a cruise missile strike against bin Laden is all there. There are submarines in the Persian Gulf ready to unleash their weapons. But the White House can’t afford to repeat the spectacularly inconsequential strikes that took place in response to the African bombings in 1998, when a hundred million dollars’ worth of cruise missiles were fired into one of bin Laden’s training camps, where he was said to be holding a jihadist summit meeting. Twenty or thirty volunteer fighters, mostly Pakistanis, were killed as the missiles blasted the Afghan dust and rock. Bin Laden, it is said, had left the meeting a few hours earlier. But the failure gave him the best publicity for his cause that he could have dreamed of. Now the political climate isn’t right for another strike in any case. At the time, says Grace, the great American public was really only interested in one thing: the contents of Monica Lewinsky’s cheeks.

For legal and constitutional reasons, the CIA cannot sponsor or assist the assassination of an individual. They can, however, capture him. But bin Laden is both elusive and careful. His closest guards are not Afghans but Arabs, hard-core fighters from jihadist campaigns around the world. He is frequently on the move. At his compound in Tarnak near Kandahar, every inch of which has been scrutinised by Grace’s team, there are women and children, another reason to rule out further cruise missile strikes. Earlier hopes of enlisting Massoud’s men to kill bin Laden are dwindling, and the director of the CIA, the DCI, won’t approve American intervention on the ground. It’s been tried and failed. The White House and State Department, who between themselves are too dumb, says Grace, to tell a skunk from a house cat, are so tied up in legal knots they can’t formulate a coherent policy towards Afghanistan.

‘But there is a plan,’ she says. ‘We’re going to fire up the intelligence collection on bin Laden all around the country, and with the help of Massoud’s informers and agents the net will surely close. Doesn’t too much matter if it’s Massoud’s boys, SF, the Paks or the Uzbeks who bring him in,’ she says. ‘Doubt if it’ll be special forces who’ll get it done,’ she adds with a scoff. ‘You could put bin Laden in a room with a Seal and a Delta and they’d kill each other before they even noticed him.’ But it’s clear what she’s hoping. The successful capture of bin Laden will convince the White House to supply Massoud with greater levels of military supplies and put political pressure on the Taliban leadership. Only then might they give up on their designs to control the entire country.

‘It’s a tough row to hoe,’ says Grace, ‘but it’s the only hope there is to roll back the Taliban and all the hotheads fixing to spread jihad across the universe. Sure would make a world of difference if we had one good asset inside Obi-Wan’s camp.’

At the mention of this I look away, lest anything in my expression betray my thoughts. She can have no idea that my best friend has been assigned to this very task – nor that I have no idea whether he is alive or dead.

We turn left off Dolley Madison into a quiet road lined with trees. About a hundred yards along there’s a security post and a chevroned barrier. The windows come down and our IDs are entered into an electronic log by a guard, who peers inside the car and acknowledges Grace with a nod and a smile. The barrier lifts and the road curves to the left. There are trees on one side and an enormous car park on the other, beyond which the main complex of buildings rises like a giant cake with layers of cream and chocolate. Footpaths lit by miniature lamp posts snake between the buildings and lend a faint suggestion of amusement park. Grace sees me looking.

‘Somebody up there loves you, Tony.’ I’m not at all sure what she means.

‘On the seventh floor, I mean. That’s where the clearance comes from. These boys don’t let too many people see the toys they’re playing with.’

We loop around another vast parking lot and drive past smaller clusters of buildings until we come to a halt by a building surrounded by thick woods. As we get out of the car, Grace shifts her belt and adjusts what is probably a holster under her blazer. She’s tall and lean and walks like a man.

‘Come and meet the Manson family,’ she says, and we enter the building, press our IDs against a reader and enter a second door marked authorized personnel only.

About a dozen men and three women are in the briefing room, clustered around tables and overlooked by a giant blank screen. Grace shepherds me around with a series of first-name introductions. The majority are guarded in their manner, a few look puzzled to see a foreigner, and one or two fail to conceal their suspicion. I have the distinct feeling they are not accustomed to outsiders.

The exception is a portly middle-aged man wearing thick glasses, who I meet more or less by accident as I help myself, at Grace’s suggestion, to a cup of coffee. He’s ahead of me and nearly bumps into me as he turns around, and as if by reflex introduces himself. His face seems to be frozen in a perpetual grin. He mentions only his name and the acronym of the organisation to which he’s attached before launching into his job description. It pours out in a low drawl with infrequent pauses. He looks at me only occasionally, preferring to rest his eyes on a point somewhere near my left shoulder. His field is ‘fixed and dynamic target source analysis’, a subject on which I now feel obliged to appear knowledgeable.

His main task is prioritising and occasionally deconflicting ISR input from assets on the ground, he says, so that the sequence F2T2EA – find, fix, track, target, engage – commonly known as the kill chain, can run more smoothly. I nod sagely. He advises on kinetic collateral damage assessment and target restrictions based on operation-specific ROE, LOAC, the RTL and the NSL.

‘I don’t remember all those,’ I say. ‘Remind me.’

‘Rules of Engagement, Law of Armed Conflict, Restricted Target List and No-Strike List.’ He takes a sip from his coffee. He’s proud, he says, to be pushing the envelope on new protocols for mensuration software algorithms and datum management. But he’s lost me now. I’m relieved when Grace comes to my rescue and guides me over to some of the others. One is a tall man called Rich, who greets me briefly with formal authority before turning back to the conversation he’s in.

‘You just met the biggest toad in the pond,’ whispers Grace approvingly.

A few minutes pass before the assembly is complete, and there’s a resonant tapping on the PA system, which prompts us all to sit. The room darkens.

A young technician explains, for the benefit of those of us who aren’t familiar with tonight’s technology, how it is that we’re able to watch a live feed of imagery from Afghanistan. The screen above him flickers into life and displays a description of a Special Access Program called Afghan Eyes and the unmanned aircraft system that makes it possible: the Predator RQ-1.

A picture appears of a military-looking trailer with a satellite dish on its roof, called a ground control station, currently at an airfield in Uzbekistan, north of the Afghan border across the Amu Darya river. It’s from here, it now dawns on me, that the images we are about to watch are being beamed. Inside it are a pilot and a payload operator, who direct and control the unmanned aircraft by what is called knob control.

I can’t resist a sideways glance at Grace on hearing this expression, and am glad to see she’s got the joke too, and signals the fact with the faintest of smiles.

While the technician reels off the equipment’s characteristics, more pictures appear on the screen. The Predator itself is a long thin aircraft with weird-looking, downward-pointing tail fins that give the impression that it’s flying upside down like an injured fish. It has retractable landing gear, which enables it to take off and land like an ordinary plane. It has a camera in its nose, a sensor turret and a multi-spectral targeting system. It also has an infrared camera for use at night, synthetic aperture radar to see through smoke or cloud and listening devices for picking up radio signals in its vicinity. It’s a technological marvel, invisible and inaudible from the ground, and to judge from the hypnotised expressions on the audience, it impresses them as much as it impresses me. A newer version, we’re told, is under development, which will enable multi-role operations. Instead of just looking at things, in other words, it will be able to shoot at them with laser-guided missiles.

Then comes the near-miraculous moment when the small square at the bottom of the screen is suddenly expanded, and we’re looking at live video from a Predator’s nose. Spinning numbers at the edge of the screen give the aircraft’s position, heading and the time. I imagine the images will be still ones, but the video is as good as television and the impression is almost supernatural.

We are in the south-east of the country, near the border of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and what the British used to call the North-West Frontier. To the Pakistanis, it’s Waziristan; to the Pashtuns, for whom the border has never really existed since the British imposed it a hundred years earlier, it’s still Afghanistan.

The Predator is circling silently above a potential target designated by a tracking team on the ground. It’s a mud-walled compound typical of the region, and the feed shows several parked vehicles in a courtyard and a single man emerging from a doorway. The angle of view is not from directly overhead so unlike an aerial photograph we can see the place in two dimensions. The man is wearing Afghan clothes and, by the looks of it, a waistcoat, but no turban. For a few moments all our eyes are on him. Then he stoops down and reaches for something on the ground. The camera is almost still. It’s surreal. From 7,000 miles away, we’re watching a Pashtun housekeeper sweep the dust from the doorway of his house.

A few moments later he stands up and runs across the courtyard towards the entrance gates. Behind them, two squat Russian jeeps have pulled up, and I imagine the characteristic single-tone horn of the forward jeep that has interrupted the housekeeper’s task. I imagine the metallic clang of the gate as it sweeps open and the smell of dust and diesel as the jeeps enter the courtyard and park. Several men descend from the vehicles and are joined by two others from inside the house, one of whom is steadying his turban on his head as he comes out. They greet their visitors in turn. We can even see the fluttering of the untied ends of their turbans in the wind. Even at this distance the formalised solemnity of their gestures is somehow communicated, and I can almost hear the ritual exchange of blessings as they embrace, touching chests rather than shaking hands, in the timeless Afghan fashion. They carry no weapons. Who are these men? Traders? Government members? Brothers or friends? Terrorists? I will never ever know.

We hear the distorted electronic voice of the Predator pilot over the loudspeakers as he receives instructions from two men wearing headsets sitting at the back of the room at computers. They are searching for a single man in a country the other side of the world, hoping to encounter the visual signature by which bin Laden has now become known: a convoy of Land Cruisers and armed bodyguards. I’m filled with a feeling akin to awe at the effort and technological genius that makes this spectacle possible. It is matched only by private concern at the fragility of the search, which will only ever be as reliable as the informers inside the country providing the likely targets. I imagine the temptation faced by an Afghan informer, seduced by bagfuls of hundred-dollar bills, to select targets merely to please his handlers because he knows this is what is expected of him and guarantees the next instalment. But I dare not express my cynicism.

For several hours we stare at the images as they filter from the heavens onto our screen, following suspect cars and trucks along remote mountain roads and peering from afar into the private worlds of our unsuspecting quarries with angelic, or perhaps demonic, omnipotence. It’s 4 a.m. when Grace taps my arm and suggests we cut a trail back to my hotel. We shake hands in parting with a few of the remaining station members as we make for the door.

‘Really appreciate your input,’ says one of them, although I haven’t given any.

Our driver is summoned on a walkie-talkie and we speed into the city along the Memorial Parkway with the Potomac on our left. Grace asks me for my thoughts.

‘Very impressive,’ I tell her, then feel I should say more. ‘It’s a dedicated team.’

‘Sure makes you feel all-overish looking at those images, doesn’t it? You don’t think we’re barking at a knot with all that technology?’ She sighs and speaks again before I can answer. ‘I can tell you do, and you’re right. I’ll admit there’s a few hotheads in the family who want the glory of nailing bin Laden in some Tom Clancy black op. They don’t give a damn what happens in Afghanistan. Way I see it, the Company’s a strategic entity not a tactical one. You can’t do strategy with a motorised buzzard, even if it can see in the goddamned dark.’ She peers from the window. ‘Same goes for the DIA’s data-mining programmes. We can analyse the conversations of every member of every jihad chat room across the world. We can listen to their phones 24/7. We could hear them talking in their sleep if we really wanted to. But it’ll never tell us what they’re really thinking. You gotta be there to know that.’

We pull up outside the Hilton on Connecticut Avenue.

‘Here,’ she says, leans towards me and stretches out her arm. For just a second I’m not sure what her intentions are, until she unclips the ID from my jacket pocket. ‘I’d better take that. I’ll pick you up at 6 p.m. tomorrow and we’ll go through some details.’

‘I’m seeing my kids in the morning,’ I tell her.

‘How do you get along with their mother?’

‘I don’t. She doesn’t exactly make it easy for me.’

‘Give her hell,’ she says with a grin.

It’s a brilliantly clear and cold morning, and the sky is a luminously bright blue. I haven’t had much sleep but force myself to run a few miles, dropping into Rock Creek Park to get off the streets. When I run in England, I see no one. Here there’s a steady stream of joggers and bikers in the latest running gear, and I feel distinctly shabby by comparison. Everything they wear is new. In my crumpled T-shirt and three-year-old trainers with holes beginning to show at the toes, I’m definitely not up to local standards. There are men dressed head-to-toe in body-hugging Lycra, women in pink tracksuits with their dogs, and octogenarians with miniature dumb-bells, which they lift as they trot along. Husband-and-wife teams tow their babies behind their bicycles in prams with suspension systems and disc brakes. I feel as though I’ve strayed into the recreation area of an insane asylum.

After a shower back at the hotel I pick up the phone with a familiar sense of dread and call my ex. The phone is answered by her new husband, to whom good luck. He’s civil and has the annoying habit of saying ‘Stand by’ when asking me to hold the line. I ask to speak to my older daughter.

‘Stand by,’ he says. He’s too stupid to realise I’ve been standing by for years. But it’s not my daughter who comes on the line.

‘Hello, Anthony,’ says my ex with scarcely disguised contempt. ‘You said you would call at ten.’

‘Sorry about that. I’m a bit jet-lagged, actually.’

‘Well that’s alright,’ she says. ‘We’re used to your excuses. But in future lateness is unacceptable. You may think you can swan in from England and expect everyone else to change their plans, but from now on you’re going to have to modify your behaviour.’

‘I just want to see the girls for a few hours,’ I say.

‘Well if you’re not here by eleven you won’t find us.’

The line goes dead. As much as I try, every time, to prepare myself for this kind of treatment, it never fails to have the intended effect.

Half an hour later I’m at the front door of their house in Chevy Chase, thanking God it’s Sunday and the traffic has allowed me to reach the house in time. I ask the taxi to wait because I don’t want to get into an argument, which I will inevitably lose. There’s a silver Mercedes SUV and a convertible BMW in the driveway beside the perfect lawn.

I kneel as the girls run out and throw themselves at me, nearly knocking me over. They’ve both grown since I saw them in the summer and I can hardly believe how changed they are. The sight of them brings a lump to my throat but I daren’t let my feelings show. I’m being watched from the doorway by their mother, who glowers at me as if there’s a tramp in the driveway.

‘Jesus. You look like you’ve been in a bar brawl. That’s not an appropriate impression to give in public.’

‘Yes, it does hurt, actually. Thanks for asking.’

‘Make sure you’re back by three. We’ve given up a family afternoon for this. And no sugar. They’re not allowed candy, whatever you may think is alright in England.’

There’s no response I can give to any of this, so we pile into the taxi.

‘Alright, girls, where to? We can go to China to see pandas, buffalo racing in India, or we can go to the North Pole and hunt reindeer. Or if you’re both very good, we can go and have waffles with maple syrup and loads of whipped cream.’

There’s a chorus of approving giggles at the suggestion. We head for a diner and repeat the usual ritual of waffles and hot chocolate. I watch them eat, and the sight fills me with joy. But the thought that they’re growing up so far from their father is like a knife in me at the same time. We catch up on news about the pond which we built together the previous summer. There’s now a family of newts, the tadpoles have turned into frogs, the goldfish are fattening up and there’s a big duck with a red beak from the farm across the road who comes and has a morning wash, but the last time he came the pond was frozen over so he slipped and fell on his duck bottom and couldn’t figure out what was happening. The goldfish, all of whose names they both remember, will be too fat to fit in the pond by the time I next come to America to see them, I say.

‘Did you catch the mouse?’ asks the younger. I’d forgotten about the mouse.

‘I caught him and put him in the garden,’ I say. ‘But he came back. He prefers his home behind the kitchen cupboards. But maybe we can catch him again when you next come to England and train him. Think mice can learn the violin?’ She giggles.

‘Mummy says you only come to America on business,’ says the older one.

This is crushing news because it’s so untrue. I’ve never been to America on business, with the exception of this trip, which is hardly business. I can’t bring myself to say their mother is lying to them.

‘Well, perhaps Mummy doesn’t know everything. I always come to America to see you both because I love you and I miss you. And, well… because you can’t get such amazing waffles in England.’

We walk south a few blocks, hand in hand, to the zoo, where we seek out the animals we know from the Just So Stories. They stand inches from an elephant, peer wide-eyed at the snakes in their glass enclosures and make faces at a white-cheeked gibbon.

The penguins steal the show.

It’s cold and we make for the diner for a top-up of hot chocolate. It’s only when we’re on the way home again that I realise one of the girls has lost a mitten. There’ll be hell to pay but there’s no time to retrace our steps. A renewed feeling of dread replaces that of joy as we return to the house.

‘Typical,’ snarls their mother from the far side of the front door. ‘I can’t leave them with you for a single afternoon without something going wrong.’ I do not know what drives this cruelty. I don’t contest it because the girls are looking up at me, wondering whether they should say goodbye, and their faces waver between smiles and expressions of concern.

‘By the way,’ says their mother, ‘there’s riding camp for two weeks in August. You can see them for the last week of the month and we can do make-up time the following summer.’

‘I only have three weeks with the girls this summer. It’s my only chance to have a proper holiday with them. I can’t fly them to England for just a week. I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

There’s a tightening of her jaw and a renewed look of contempt.

‘Fine. If that’s how selfish you want to be. I shouldn’t have expected anything different from you. We can make things difficult too.’

I have no reply to this, so I kiss the girls goodbye, and they step beyond the threshold under their mother’s arm and disappear. Then, as I’m walking back to the taxi, the door opens again and the two of them race out to me for a final hug.

There is a strategy, I’ve discovered, to manage the feeling of devastation I experience when I leave my kids. I put my mind on something different and force it to stay there until the feeling subsides. There’s a radiating sensation of grief in my chest which I know will pass if I let it run its course. I need in the meantime to get back to another world where my feelings cannot be allowed to run riot. As the taxi rolls back to the hotel past the manicured lawns of the perfect homes of Chevy Chase, I force myself to the meeting I’ll be having later with Grace. I wonder what level of clearance she’s been authorised to read me onto. I’ve had top secret clearance since Seethrough reinstated me with the Firm, but it doesn’t mean I’m automatically cleared for what the Americans call an SCI or sensitive compartmented information, or for SAPs – special access programmes, like the Predator missions, the very existence of which is classified.

As a British citizen I can’t get top secret clearance in the US, but can be granted a limited access authorization if it can be shown, which it obviously has been, that a clearable US citizen isn’t available for the same job. This allows me to be read onto the relevant SCIs. The rest is NTK or need to know, which limits access to whatever is necessary for carrying out the task involved. Seethrough has smoothed the process through with his counterparts at Langley, and as Grace has reminded me, somebody loves me on the seventh floor. Clearance isn’t in itself secret, and may even lapse after a given period. But one’s accountability to it is for life. It’s a disturbing thought. I’m comforted by the paradoxical knowledge that at the highest levels of all, as exemplified by the Baroness’s dealings, there’s no such thing as clearance at all, nor any paperwork to support it. Or to deny it. Just conversations in quiet rooms, on benches in public parks, and words exchanged in chance meetings that quite probably never happened.

I have good intentions to go for a swim in the hotel pool, but instead collapse on the bed and sleep fitfully for an hour before waking with a sense of panic at not knowing where I am. When I come down to the lobby, Grace is already there, reading a copy of the Washington Post. I see her in daylight now and realise how blue her eyes are. There’s the same mixture of hardness in her gait, voice and manner, and softness when she smiles or laughs.

Grace lives alone in a neighbourhood called Adams Morgan, jokingly called Madam’s Organ by its inhabitants. An inordinate number of different locks on her front door protect a narrow house on four floors, small by American standards but huge by all others. There are Persian and Turkish carpets on the floors and Georgia O’Keefe prints on the walls. Above an elaborately hand-tooled saddle on a wooden stand in a corner of the living room hang several rodeo trophies. Among a collection of family photographs, there’s one of Grace shaking hands with the president and a second woman, another with the former president, another with the CIA’s director George Tenet, his Levantine features offset by a pink tie, and another with the former DCI, John Deutch. A miniature flag of the state of Colorado pokes up between them. I ask who the other woman is in the photograph.

‘Secretary of state,’ she answers, coming over to peer at the picture. ‘Stuck-up bitch. Know what she said to me? Said Massoud’s a drug dealer and we can’t deal with a drug dealer. Here.’ She passes me a tumbler, which prompts me to look at my watch. ‘Never too early for a sip of prairie dew.’ Her prairie dew of choice is a twenty-one-year-old single malt matured in port casks. ‘One of life’s small pleasures,’ she says.

I concur. We sit and cradle our glasses.

‘Massoud was never cash-averse, but he’s a man you can ride the river with. I sure hope we can shore him up before he has to give up his last patch of turf.’

‘What do you think are the chances of that?’ I ask.

‘Slim,’ she says. ‘Mighty slim.’ Then she recalls her last mission to Panjshir, and it’s obvious she was impressed, like so many others, by Massoud’s charisma, energy and humility.

‘We were fixing him up with a hotline to Langley and a box of tricks from the NSA so’s we could listen in on Taliban comms. All of a sudden there’s artillery causing a ruckus down the valley and turning his men into buzzard food. Took us up to the head of the valley so’s to keep us out of range, then heads back to the fight. Damn. Still found time to look after us later, making sure we were fed and warm. Son of a bitch slept on a bedroll just like a cowboy. Next day he’s directing the war again and busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.’

‘God, don’t make me laugh,’ I protest, clutching at my rib.

‘Been meaning to ask you if you’ve been in a fight recently,’ she says.

‘Just with my friends.’

‘You’re not your average gringo spook,’ she says, chuckling as she refills our shot glasses. ‘And I’ve met a few. Self-satisfied sons of bitches, most of them. You’re not a man who lives a life of quiet desperation.’

‘You’re not your average cowgirl,’ I say. ‘Cowgirls don’t quote Thoreau, for one thing.’

I ask her how she got into the spook side of life, and she surprises me by saying it’s the family business. Her father, she says, was friends with ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services, the secret American organisation dedicated to espionage during the Second World War. I know that the OSS was a parallel entity to Britain’s SOE, and its daring and innovative founder became a prodigy of behind-the-lines derring-do, rather as David Stirling became a legend as the founder of the SAS. Years later her father, a dedicated cold war warrior, had ended up as head of station in a number of Middle Eastern countries, in the golden days, as Grace calls them, when the Company actually had reliable human assets in the region.

I see no reason not to tell her that my father was involved with SOE, and that I’d joined the army with the vaguely romantic ambition of following in his footsteps. ‘Wasn’t quite the army I thought it would be,’ I say. ‘I had a shot at becoming a proper spook, but made the mistake of committing what they call an indiscretion. As I am now,’ I say, ‘by telling you this.’

‘I appreciate your looseness,’ she says, meaning frankness, but it’s probably no coincidence that she’s plying me with whisky, probably the oldest tongue-loosening technique in the book. I try to work the conversation back to Afghanistan.

‘What will happen?’ I ask. ‘I mean if Massoud’s forced out.’

‘Like I said. Whole of Afghanistan’ll turn into a training camp for Obi-Wan and his hotheads. Won’t leave us with a lot of choice. There’s a plan,’ she begins, then catches herself. ‘I can’t talk about that, Tony. Hell, there’s always a plan.’

‘For America to intervene?’ It’s unimaginable.

‘Listen.’ She puts her glass on the edge of the table. ‘We know al-Qaeda’s trying to kill Massoud. Someone’s been guarding his shoes, for crying out loud, in case they try to put a dose of anthrax in them. If they get lucky, we lose our one ally on the ground. I don’t want to have to spell it out. We’ve been acquiring a target archive in Afghanistan for nigh on two years. We may have survived the millennium, but the system was blinking redder than a coyote’s ass in heat with all the threats cables we had coming in. Most of it single-threaded and too damn vague to be actionable, but all we need is for one of them to happen on US soil, trace it back to Obi-Wan, and you know the Pentagon’s going to go to work on the place.’ She retrieves her glass. ‘Strategic depth. You know where that gets us?’

‘Up shit creek?’ I offer.

‘And some,’ she says. ‘If we piss off twenty million Afghans, we’ll have a war, my friend.’

‘That’s a dark thought,’ I say. ‘It’s too bizarre. The most powerful country in the world invading the poorest?’

‘Darn right it’s bizarre,’ she says, emphasising the word as if to extract its full meaning and filling our glasses again. ‘Want to know how bizarre? We fund a ten-year proxy war against the Soviets to bury the ghost of Vietnam, and a million Afghans die in the name of freedom. Then the Wall comes down and freedom says, “Adios, amigos, we’re done here.” Afghanistan drops off the agenda faster than butter off a hot knife and the Afghans are left to slaughter each other with the same weapons the US taxpayer’s been kind enough to sponsor. Bizarre enough for you? Cut five years till the country gets taken over by a one-eyed mullah supported by our last remaining ally in the region, Pakistan. Said mullah gets it in his cracked head to play host to a tier-zero terrorist who’s declared a global jihad against guess who? America. Secstate wants to climb into bed with the one-eyed mullah, just to see how the cat jumps. “We can deal with the Taliban,” she says. “Massoud’s history,” she says. Meantime she’s fine if the Russians and Iranians send him all the guns he wants so’s to keep the Taliban tied up. Pentagon says, “Engage with Pakistan, maintain the strategic relationship; Massoud’s a lost cause.” Know why we missed Obi-Wan in the cruise strike? Know why we fired a hundred million dollars’ worth of missiles to carve up a pile of fucking rocks in the Afghan desert? Because the Paks warned him. Our dearly beloved allies. Jesus Christ, ours is not to reason why, but how bizarre does it get? Rest of the CIA thinks we’re obsessed with a hot-headed playboy who’s got a fatal kidney disease and what’s our fucking problem? No wonder they call us the Manson family. We could’ve nailed the sucker last year, but the White House won’t give the go-ahead in case we hit one of his Arab buddies who’s about to buy ten billion bucks’ worth of F-16s, and whose government is, you guessed it, the chief supplier of weapons to the Taliban. Massoud’s strongest ally? The Russians, his sworn enemies for ten years. How’s that for bizarre?’

There’s not much to add to this, except that it’s consistent with Afghanistan’s mysterious power, despite being one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, to affect the affairs of the world so disproportionately.

Grace sighs heavily, pours another pair of whiskies, and her mood recovers. A businesslike tone enters her voice. ‘We need to talk about those Stingers.’

She retrieves a laptop computer and brings up a collection of photographs, with which I’m half-familiar from my earlier session with H, onto the screen. The photographs are labelled to show the pressure-release valves on the weapon-round containers, which need to be opened before the missiles are removed. They also show the panel on the weapons where the lot and serial numbers are to be found. These need to be listed, she says. If there are really as many missiles as we’re all hoping, I’ll need to allow sufficient time for finding and photographing the serial numbers.

Once I’m in Afghanistan, a member of the TRODPINT team will advise on the situation on the ground before I move to the target. He’ll meet us before and after the operation and pass on a progress report to his American handler based in Pakistan. Another trusted source will brief me before we get inside the country.

She pulls up the documents on the screen, and I notice some of the security caveats on the Defense Messaging System headers. NODIS means that the distribution of the information is strictly limited. FGI means the document contains sensitive information concerning a foreign government. X5 is one of many declassification exemptions, meaning it all stays secret longer than the assigned number of years.

The photographs appear in turn. The first is of a thin-faced handsome young man with dark features called Abdul Sattar.

‘Speaks English, Pashto and Dari,’ says Grace. ‘I need you to check in with him before and after the operation. I need third-party confirmation that you came and went, that’s all. I wouldn’t trust him with more than that. Nothing operational. We’ve had him signed up for a year but you can be sure he knows some bad people.’

The second is an older man in his forties, with softer features and an oval-shaped elfin face.

‘Name of Hamid Karzai. Comes from a good southern family,’ she says as if she’s talking about Tennessee rather than Kandahar. ‘He was press officer for Mojaddedi in the jihad years and deputy foreign minister in Massoud’s government till he had a bust-up with Massoud’s intelligence chief and rode out of town. Seems he was pretty cut up about the way he was treated and hitched himself to the Taliban for a year or two. Plans took a bath when his father was killed by the Taliban last year and now he’s trying to take the fight back to them in the south. He’s switched on and some of us have got money on him. He’ll talk your ear off, but you can trust him.’ His brothers, she adds, have Afghan restaurants in San Francisco, if I ever get to craving a qabli pilau while I’m Stateside.

It’s Karzai who will receive the money that we’ve been asked to deliver. The tactical details are our business. Once we’re inside Afghanistan, Grace will liaise with London as and when.

‘Wish I could be there with you,’ she says. Then the steely look comes back into her eyes. ‘I’m counting on you, Tony.’

It’s after ten now. The effect of the whisky is pleasant and has anaesthetised the day’s earlier worries. I’ve enjoyed our talk and wish it could last longer. We walk to her front door.

‘There’ll be a car for you in the morning,’ she says.

‘Thanks. You’ve been good to me. I’ll miss all the cowboy talk.’

‘Wait a second,’ she says. Her hands move to her belt buckle, which she undoes hastily and begins to slide her belt out of its loops. A few seconds later I see in her outstretched hand a woven snakeskin pouch which contains a Leatherman multi-tool. ‘Take this with you,’ she says. ‘Darn useful where you’re going.’ It’s obviously precious to her and she looks at it thoughtfully for a moment before she hands it to me.

‘The Company’s lucky to have you,’ I tell her. We embrace. ‘Give them hell.’

‘Adios, amigo,’ she says.

The streets are quiet and I decide to walk and think things over on the way. I realise the secret world into which I’ve been allowed sits more comfortably with me now. For a month it’s as if I’ve been in conflict over the need for secrecy and the urge to find expression for what I know. But now the two are less at odds. The work is bringing me confidence, and I’m feeling buoyed up by Grace’s frank expression of faith in me. Her gift was not a calculated act, I decide. I take it out of its pouch and look it over. It’s an expensive version, well made and virtually indestructible, although only the Americans could design a multi-purpose tool without a corkscrew. I pocket it again and turn it over in my hand as I walk.

In the lobby of the hotel I announce I’ll be checking out in the early morning and have a brief conversation with the concierge, from whom I’ve earlier asked a favour. I’m tired and it’s time to get some rest. But as I head for my room I pass the lounge and my attention is momentarily caught by the sight of two women perched on stools at the bar. They’re hard to miss. The blonde is wearing a dress that’s open from her shoulders to the small of her back, and the black woman sitting next to her is wearing equally black leather trousers that look as though they’ve been sprayed on her extravagantly long legs. As I’m looking, she catches my eye and smiles, then turns back to her friend.

I think involuntarily of Tintin’s inseparable companion Captain Haddock, in one of his difficult moments, tormented by the contrary promptings of the angel above his right shoulder and the devil above his left.

‘You’ve got a flight early in the morning,’ says my angel.

‘You’re all alone and far from home,’ counters my devil, ‘and you can sleep on the plane. Life is short,’ he adds with a wink.

‘You should be tied to a mast until those sirens are out of earshot,’ protests the angel.

The devil wins.

I cross the lounge and order a top-up of whisky at the bar. A pianist is coaxing mellow jazz from a grand piano, and a dozen guests are drinking at low tables from white leather chairs and couches. The barman pours the whisky with a dextrous flourish and twirls the bottle in his hand as he replaces it on the mirrored shelf.

I turn towards the women nearby as if I’ve only just noticed them. They are both strikingly beautiful and look at me in unison. The blonde has eyes the colour of fresh lime juice and a finely sculpted face, from which she brushes a tributary torrent of topaz-yellow hair. The black woman, whose hair is drawn back from her perfectly oval face, has the smouldering look of a tigress, and is wearing saffron-coloured lipstick as if she’s pressed her lips against the soil of a volcano in her ancestral home.

‘Hello, ladies,’ I say, and a kaleidoscope of fanciful scenarios tumbles into my mind. I’m in the grip of that perverse longing for closeness devoid of intimacy, and my devil is suggesting a bold approach. ‘If I’d known you were both here I’d have cancelled my plans for the evening.’ There’s an exchange of smiles, and the blonde speaks first.

‘We don’t talk to strangers,’ she says in a tone of counterfeit coyness that suggests just the opposite. ‘But we might change our minds if you introduce yourself.’ She has a Southern accent which I inexplicably associate with sexual voracity. ‘I’m Summer,’ she says, looking me squarely in the eye as we shake hands. I resist the temptation of allowing my gaze to fall towards her chest, but it’s not easy.

‘Don’t tell me,’ I reply, looking towards her friend. ‘You’re Pudding.’ But the joke misses its mark, evoking looks of confusion.

‘Summer,’ I point to them in turn, ‘and Pudding. It’s a special dessert we make in England. The secret is to make sure the fruit is really ripe. You have to squeeze it without bruising it. I miss it terribly. I have a permanent craving for ripe fruits of every kind.’

‘Do you ever give in to your cravings?’ Summer asks.

This is a green light if ever there was. They accept my suggestion to move from the bar to a table, around which we settle into soft armchairs. I order a bottle of champagne. We chat for half an hour. Summer takes the lead, and the Tigress is sultry and largely silent. They can’t get over my accent, they tell me, so I make the most of that. They’re matching my innuendos as fast as I can produce them. The guests fade away, and when the pianist plays a final version of ‘Georgia on my Mind’, we’re the only ones clapping.

‘It’s getting late, ladies,’ I say, because it’s decision time. ‘What does a man do in this town when it gets this late?’

‘Depends what you enjoy doing most,’ says Summer with a lascivious smile.

‘Well, there is one thing I’m into,’ I say, ‘but it’s not really what you’d call conventional.’

‘Try us,’ says Summer, dipping a finger into her champagne.

‘Think I should trust you with such a private thing?’ I ask.

‘We won’t tell,’ says Summer, and puts her finger in her mouth.

The moment is definitely ripe to let them know.

‘Pond life.’

‘Pond life?’ They giggle uncertainly.

‘Ponds,’ I say. ‘Absolutely fascinating. The whole of life is represented in even the smallest pond. As small as this very table. Every kind of life is in it. Things that swim, run, crawl, fly, burrow and slither. I don’t just mean toads and frogs and newts. Everybody loves them, right?

‘Right,’ says Summer, exchanging glances with her equally perplexed friend.

‘Think of all the lesser creatures that people never bother to mention: water beetles, water scorpions, water fleas, damselflies, skaters, dragonfly nymphs, nematodes, flukes and tapeworms. They’re all there.’

‘I’m with you, kind of,’ says Summer, but I can tell she’s wondering where I’m going with this. Understandably.

‘But it’s right at the bottom of the pond where things get interesting,’ I say. ‘That’s where all the debris sinks to, where you find all the life that has no place in ordinary pond society. There’s a whole world down there with its own rules. That’s where you get the mud dwellers and the scavengers, the parasites and the leeches.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I say. ‘Some of the creatures that live in the mud are actually beautiful, so beautiful you can’t really imagine what they’re doing down there.’

I’m watching their faces quite closely now. Summer is confused, but trying hard not to let it show. The Tigress is ahead of her and close to glowering at me.

‘There’s a family of parasitic worms, I think they’re called planarians, which produce slime that allows them to move over any surface. There’s little hydras which hunt by waving their tentacles around to entrap their prey. Then there’s the medusa. Surely you’ve heard of them. They belong to the Coelenterata phylum. They’re free-swimming. Free agents, you might say. Difficult to identify if you’re not trained to spot them of course, but unmistakable if you know their distinguishing features.’

The girls exchange glances again, and their body language is betraying their restlessness. Neither of them is smiling any more. There’s actually a frown on the face of the black woman.

‘There’s little crustacea. They’re very active. Nocturnal too. They swim on their backs and capture their prey with their legs. Imagine that. I mean, what creature would fall for that?’

‘We need to go,’ says the black woman, quietly but abruptly.

‘I do believe you’re right,’ says Summer, or whatever her name really is. The smile hasn’t entirely left her face, but it’s a different kind of smile now. Her lips are held tighter against her teeth than before, in the manner of someone swallowing a bitter medicine. The two of them reach for their handbags.

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘I haven’t told you about the best creature of all. It’s a beetle which beats the surface of the water with its little feelers to attract its prey. They say it’s a sexual signal, but who knows what sex with a beetle is really like. Anyway, there’s another beetle that knows this trick, so you know what it does? It swims up and goes through all the motions of being attracted to the other one, and it gets really close, and just as the other one is getting ready for its snack – gotcha! It swallows it whole. Doesn’t even chew.’

I don’t get up as they stand. They leave without looking back.

I feel bad that I’ve deceived them. It isn’t pond beetles that trick their prey at all, but a tropical species of land beetle, which flashes fake signals to fireflies. Somehow I don’t think this detail will get as far as the reports they have to make. But I do wonder if Seethrough will reconsider when he’s about to make another joke about ponds.

I finish the champagne and walk back to the lobby. I give a twenty-dollar bill to the concierge and thank him for his vigilance, because it’s he who’s told me about the two good-looking women asking after me by name earlier in the evening.

Then I’m alone in my room. My mind spins in a black whirlwind of thoughts. Soon I will meet Gemayel and confront him with the news that one of his own staff will attempt to be the instrument of his murder. I’m sickened at the deceitfulness of the people I’m mixing with. I wonder if I will be sent to the Sudan. And I wonder about a friend I haven’t seen for ten years.

But it’s something Grace said that worries me the most. All they need is an excuse, she says, and there’ll be war in Afghanistan.

I loathe the duplicity of some of my own countrymen, but I am even more afraid of the power of America, and of what will happen if the giant is unexpectedly provoked.