The Network

9

In the few days that I’ve been in America Seethrough has been busy, as usual. He’s liaised with the Italian intelligence service, SISMI, and managed to borrow a team of watchers to help arrange a meeting with Gemayel. The Italians have been kind enough to let us know that on Fridays Gemayel has the habit of walking from his apartment on Via Hongaria and strolling along the shady gravel paths that criss-cross the gardens of the Villa Borghese. He is accompanied by two armed Arab or Italian bodyguards, who trail discreetly behind him in expensively tailored casual jackets and Ray-Bans. So on the chosen afternoon, instead of calling up Gemayel and requesting a meeting like a normal person, I’m sitting in the back of an Italian telecom van watching him from half a mile away through a high-powered miniature telescope.

My partner for the day is a former Italian special forces soldier from Naples called Gaetano, who tells me a funny story about surrendering to a troop of British paras on a joint escape and evasion exercise in Germany. When he’s caught, which is not supposed to happen on E amp; E training, he produces a fine bottle of Montepulciano and a large Parmesan from his Bergen, and settles down with his captors to a picnic, after which they generously decide to let him go. Mysteriously, he is the only member of the Italian team to successfully complete the exercise, and receives a commendation from his proud commanding officer.

The old rule of surveillance applies. We must assume at all times that our target is being observed, so the plan is to deliver a message directly to one of Gemayel’s bodyguards under cover of an innocent encounter. The message is a piece of paper on which I’ve written a note requesting an urgent meeting. There’s enough detail for Gemayel to know who I am, and though I don’t put my name, I’ve given him details of my hotel. I have to trust that his memory is still intact and he isn’t too upset about the past.

For the contact, two SISMI officers, a couple posing as American tourists, have rented bicycles for an afternoon ride through the Villa Borghese. Directed by Gaetano through their hidden body comms, they’re able to position themselves ahead of Gemayel as he turns along one of the tree-lined pathways. They keep their backs to him and pretend to be consulting their tourist map of the park from the saddles of their bikes. The timing has to be just right. Gemayel walks past the couple, and the bodyguards are a few yards behind.

‘E proprio dietro di te,’ whispers Gaetano into his microphone. Right behind you. ‘Cinque secondi – adesso, vai vai vai.’

I watch through the scope as the female team member, pretending to lose patience with the map, turns around and catches the attention of one of the bodyguards as he passes and asks him directions to the exit of the park. They talk for a couple of seconds. Then her partner reaches out his arm in thanks to the bodyguard, and shakes his hand.

‘Fatto,’ says Gaetano. It’s done. The bodyguard is well enough trained not to show any reaction to the message that’s been pressed into his palm, but closes his hand and walks on. The bikes speed away, but the message has been passed.

By the time Gaetano has taken me on a tour of his several favourite bars in Rome it’s not only dark but I’m pleasantly drunk. I take a taxi to my hotel, recounting to myself the list of things which Gaetano says the Italians have invented.

‘Everything that matters in life,’ is how he puts it. Electricity, the radio, opera, fashion, the violin, the atom bomb, the best cars in the world, and pizza. Not to mention the most beautiful women of infamy in the world, he says with a wink, calling them donne di costume facile, meaning easy virtue. A pair of whom, he adds, are available to us this very evening.

It’s a kind offer, which I decline politely.

There’s no message for me at the desk. I’m wondering how and when Gemayel will get in touch when the answer is unambiguously provided. As I open the door of my room and reach for the light switch, I feel a sudden and overwhelming force pulling me down. I’m totally off my guard and whoever’s doing the pulling has done this kind of thing before. Before I hit the floor my arm’s already in a half nelson, and pressing into my temple is the muzzle of a pistol, which now emits a series of clicks as the hammer is drawn back. It’s a little too close to be in focus and I can’t turn my head, but I can just make out the design from the configuration of the slide assembly, which I recognise from my evenings spent poring over H’s weapons manuals.

‘Bella pistola,’ I say. ‘Beretta 92.’ Another very accomplished Italian invention, it now occurs to me.

‘Chi cazzo sei?’ says a voice at the other end of the weapon. Very colloquial Italian, somewhat lacking in humour, with what I suspect is a Lebanese accent.

‘Sono un amico del tuo capo.’ I’m hoping if I tell him I’m a friend of his boss, he’ll think twice about misbehaving.

‘Cosa vuoi da lui?’

‘E una faccenda privata.’ It’s time to switch to what seems likely to be his native language. ‘Haida beini w’beinu w’bein Allah,’ I say, switching to my best Lebanese. That’s between him and me and God.

While his partner watches me from a standing position beside the door, he turns me over, returns the Beretta to its holster and frisks me carefully twice, emptying my pockets in the process.

‘Siediti,’ he says, more calmly now. I oblige by sitting in the chair by the window, as he tosses my phone, wallet and passport onto the bed. I massage the side of my head as he scrutinises my things. Then he takes a mobile phone from his pocket, dials a number and speaks briefly in Arabic. The phone is passed to me and, as I’ve hoped, I hear Gemayel’s voice. He sounds older and I’m unexpectedly reminded of how much time has passed since I last saw him. But the tone is unmistakable.

‘I will be happy to meet an old friend,’ he says. ‘You have some news?’

‘I can give it only to you.’

‘My men will bring you. Forgive me if I do not tell you the location on the telephone.’

Without much further ado, because Gemayel’s men don’t seem to be the type for small talk, I’m escorted in silence to a black Mercedes parked outside the hotel. We speed through the Roman night. To judge from the number of times we change direction, I’m guessing the driver is doing his best to disguise the location we’re heading for, and he’s succeeding because I don’t know Rome and we might be anywhere. But I’m not too bothered. Even though it’s switched off, my phone will keep track of me and, more importantly, I’ve got my meeting.

It’s past midnight. I have no sense of where we are. The car pulls to a halt in a narrow cobbled street and I’m hastened towards a heavy wooden door in a high wall. Beyond it I find myself descending several steps from street level towards a crypt-like space which smells faintly of incense and ancient stone. A second door opens into a small windowless church, its vaulted roof supported on three pairs of polished pillars in oak-coloured Carrara marble. The walls are ochre and the lines of the vaults are decorated with elaborate floriated mouldings in white plaster. There are a dozen dark wooden pews on the chequerboard marble floor, and the whole space is poorly lit by a pair of bulbs inside frosted domes.

I’m shown forward to the apse, to one side of which is a dusty velvet curtain. Another, smaller door lies behind it, and opens onto stone steps leading down. I count twenty-four, which means we are a good way underground and the signal from my mobile won’t survive. Nor will any sound carry to the outside world. It’s the perfect site for a clandestine meeting. A transmitter won’t work, and there’s no chance of eavesdropping through the walls. But the isolation makes me uncomfortable.

There’s a crossroads of passages and we descend again as the walls roughen and take on a prehistoric look. They are cold to the touch, though the air is surprisingly warm. One of the bodyguards leads and the other follows me as we turn into a long broad tunnel with horizontal niches on either side. I realise now we are in a portion of one of the city’s many catacombs, and the ghostly mounds lying in the niches are the calcified contours of human skeletons. Then the tunnel opens into a series of rooms decorated with ancient murals depicting gardens and animals. They have a primitive beauty about them but it isn’t really the moment to stop and lecture my escort on the iconography of pre-Christian murals.

We pass into a larger chamber almost as big as the church above us. The floor is bare but the walls are covered with more faded but colourful murals of mythological landscapes and encounters. There are blind windows and door frames carved meticulously out of the pale stone and, running the length of the base of the walls, a low platform. On this platform, at the far side of the chamber, sits Gemayel.

The guards settle on either side of the entrance we have come through. Gemayel stands up and greets me warmly. His hair and moustache are grey now, but he looks in good health. There’s a patrician look of approval on his face.

‘You were a boy when I met you,’ he says. ‘Now I see a man.’

‘I did not expect to meet you again in a church,’ I say, for lack of a better reply.

‘Our Prophet recommends that if you cannot find a mosque to pray in, then you should go to a church.’

‘Better than a prison, I think.’

‘For some, even a church can be a prison.’ He smiles. ‘But for me the churches of Rome are the most beautiful in the world. This is the best city in which to take the Prophet’s advice.’

He knows I have an important reason for calling a secret meeting but is happy to delay the moment of asking until we have caught up. We talk a little of our lives and are led back to the fateful events of his capture by the Israelis, ten years earlier.

‘I do not forget what you did,’ he says. ‘I am still in your debt.’

‘There is no debt,’ I tell him. ‘What I did was my duty.’

‘To protect me, you killed a man.’

‘I failed to protect you.’

‘There is honour even in failure,’ he says, and smiles again.

It’s strange, but at this simple statement I feel a burden lifted from me. It’s as if he’s exorcised an old and troublesome ghost that’s been haunting me for years, and I feel suddenly grateful towards him.

‘Ask anything of me, and it will be repaid,’ he says.

‘Insha’allah, the opportunity for that will come. Now I have other news.’

I tell the truth, as much as I’m able. He will never know the full story: that his violent release from prison was a favour to the Israelis for providing the cover for Manny’s infiltration. That he was sold, in effect. But the rest is true. I explain I’ve come not only as a friend but as a representative of my government, and that we are seeking his people’s help in Sudan for any word of the Stinger purchases. If bin Laden is involved, we need to know. He listens attentively and nods in agreement at the request. He can guarantee no result, he says, but will alert me to any news as to whether Sheikh Osama, as he calls bin Laden, is connected or not. He reminds me that his own organisation wholly rejects the killing of civilians and has no policy of contact with any of the groups calling themselves al-Qaeda. But he will ask his people to listen.

I thank him and then tell him about the plot we have discovered against him. He says nothing but shifts his position a little and grips the bridge of his nose between his thumb and first finger.

‘First they want to save me, then they want to kill me.’ He lets out a heavy sigh. ‘But God knows best. There are details?’

I tell him what I know. Then I give him a phone number and instruct him to notify me, using a code, if our intelligence proves to be correct. He agrees again, knowing that we also need to verify the reliability of our own source.

‘Remember, our friendship is outside all of this,’ he says, and stands up. ‘We have work to do.’ His guards come to their feet as we cross the open space, and then he pauses, as if he’s remembered something.

‘You will go to Khartoum?’ he asks. ‘Perhaps there is a better way to search for such knowledge while you are there. There is a woman who has been in contact with the people in my office, to speak about our charitable work. She works with the mellal al-mottahed – the United Nations.’

I’m puzzled, because a woman with the UN isn’t much of a lead. Then Gemayel speaks again, and it’s as if he’s put gold dust in my hand.

‘She belongs to the family of the Sheikh, and she knows many things that will interest you. Her name is Jameela. I believe she is very beautiful, as her name suggests. If you become her friend…’ A vague wave of his hand suggests both uncertainty and promise. ‘You are young and handsome. You know how these things are done.’

I don’t. But it occurs to me I’ll be interested to find out.

‘Not exactly house style,’ says Seethrough, tapping the nail of his index finger against a pink file which I’m guessing is the contact report I’ve written up for my meeting with Gemayel, ‘but you get the message across. Have a seat.’

I’ve been escorted to another anonymous-looking room at Vauxhall Cross to talk things over with Seethrough, who’s there to meet me with another man who epitomises the description grey man. He’s about sixty, wears glasses and a shabby grey suit, mumbles a greeting, avoids eye contact and says nothing else while Seethrough turns the pages in the file.

‘This isn’t bad for your first approach,’ he says. ‘Now we have to make it fly. At least she exists.’

‘Who exists?’

‘Your Sudanese floozy exists,’ he says, opening the file towards me. I haven’t forgotten about the woman Gemayel mentioned, but haven’t expected a file to be put together on her so quickly. She’s even been assigned a code name: Hibiscus.

‘She wasn’t in the CCI,’ he says, referring to the giant database that the Firm maintains on every operational contact. ‘So we asked Santa’s little helpers for some details. Titbits from CX KHARTOUM and our friends at the Mokhabarat. Good-looking girl.’

He’s used this phrase before, and he’s right. There’s a photograph of her, taken only two days earlier by the Sudanese security service, whose members Seethrough is pleased to call the elves. She’s standing outside a shop talking to a passer-by or friend. One arm is half-raised as if in the process of giving directions. I can’t tell if she’s tall or not, but her face is slender and intelligent-looking, and her features suggest seriousness. Her eyes are large and expressive. Over her head she wears a long and loose white scarf, which accentuates the smooth dark brow it encloses, and the impression of youthfulness is at odds with the intensity of the gaze that the photograph has captured.

‘Clever too,’ he says. ‘Parents moved to Paris when she was a teenager and she ended up with a doctorate from the Sorbonne. Married into the bin Laden family six years ago after she moved back to Sudan, but we don’t have any details. She’s worked for UNICEF for the past two years. We think she’s worth cultivating.’

‘Cultivating?’ Spy-speak, I now remember, for winning a target’s trust.

‘All you have to do,’ says Seethrough, ‘is be there when she drops her shopping. Play the game. Get to know her. And find out everything she knows about bin Laden and his best friends in the Sudan.’

‘What if she doesn’t know anything?’

‘If she doesn’t know anything, you can take lots of pictures of Khartoum for us instead. Enjoy the local food. Spread goodwill, that sort of thing.’ Then the other side of him surfaces. ‘But she does know. And as long as she knows more than we do, she’s an asset and a potential source.’

‘How close,’ I ask, ‘are you expecting me to get to her?’

‘As close as the situation on the ground permits,’ he says with a leer. ‘If you think she’ll have you, I don’t care if you sleep with her and all her sisters. But do be careful about her brothers.’ He gives a signature bounce of his eyebrows. ‘We don’t want to unleash the Mahdi’s revenge. Just judge the situation as it develops. I need gradable CX that we can’t get anywhere else.’

‘When?’

‘Saturday alright for you? We’ll put you in a nice guest house in a quiet part of town. Shouldn’t be too many cruise missiles this time of year.’

It’s over two years since the retaliatory American strike reduced Sudan’s showcase pharmaceutical factory in north Khartoum to a pile of rubble, and it seems unlikely there’ll be any more. The US needs all the help it can get from the Sudanese intelligence services, and cruise missiles have proven a poor way to win friends.

There’s a satellite picture of the city on which a number of key points are marked, to which now Seethrough points.

‘On Mondays our target drives on her own to a refugee camp called El Salam in Jabal Awliya, about forty klicks south of the city. Your best place for a first meet will be on the road, out of the city and where nobody’ll be watching.’

‘So what do we do, give her a puncture?’ I’m half-joking, but he’s already considered the scenario and his seriousness comes to the surface again.

‘No. She parks in a gated compound at home and at work. A puncture’s too unpredictable in any case. If she’s clever she’ll suspect something. Better to be in charge of the moment ourselves, and make it quick and unexpected.’ He doesn’t elaborate. ‘You’ll get help with it when you’re there.’

His eye falls back to the photograph of Hibiscus, and lingers there.

‘Ant,’ he says. ‘CX is like an investment account. You have to have some capital to put in to start with. That’s you. It has to outperform anything else in the same field. If the CX reaches the threshold, you put some more money in. But if you’re putting in money and nothing’s happening, you close the account. I’m giving this a couple of weeks. Three at the outside. That’s what you’ve got to work with. George here will run you through the SOPs and help you sort out your legend.’

Then he leaves.

I spend an hour with ‘George’, a retired Security Branch officer who’s previously served in Khartoum and now offers his services to the Firm in the manner of a consultant. It’s a challenging hour, which begins with a geography lesson.

‘The Sudan is the largest country in Africa,’ he begins in a dreary monotone, ‘and the tenth-largest country in the world, with a population of approximately thirty million.’

I haven’t been this bored since Sandhurst.

‘The capital Khartoum is centred around the confluence of the two major tributaries of the Nile, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile’s water and fertile soil, but the former being the longer of the two.’

George uses a pencil to point to the features on the map, but is careful not to let its tip make contact with the paper. ‘The White Nile rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, and flows north from there through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and southern Sudan, while the Blue Nile starts at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, flowing into Sudan from the south-east. The two rivers meet at Khartoum.’

He moves on to history, racing me through the Mahdist revolt against the British that leads to General Gordon’s untimely demise at the siege of Khartoum in 1885, the British withdrawal and subsequent reoccupation after Kitchener’s victory at Omdurman, where Churchill rode with the 21st Lancers. He mentions the long British efforts to resist the unification of Egypt and Sudan until the country’s independence in 1956, when a seventeen-year-long civil war began. He points out that the ongoing civil war has been rekindled after a hiatus of ten years, and is now being fought between the government of the north based in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army based in the south. The SPLA, he points out, is a non-Arab secular movement with an interesting history, having been supported in turn by the Soviets and the Americans.

Consulting nothing but his own memory, he moves on to average temperatures and rainfall. Land use and natural resources. Different types of law enforcement. Different types of electrical outlets, traffic hazards and places to visit. He points out that the city is divided into three parts: Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North or Bahri. Alcohol can be legally served only in the small Pickwick Club, which forms part of the British embassy.

My initial bemusement has turned into a kind of awe. He identifies the location of the UNICEF headquarters in Street 47, the whereabouts of the British embassy, the embassies of several other countries that can serve as a refuge in an emergency, and the location of other emergency RVs, as well as the main routes in and out of the capital. The CIA station, he tells me, closed down five years earlier, although the American and Sudanese spooks have been talking again since the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

He shows me the target’s home address and her route to work. He shares with me a frighteningly long list of organisations considered to be terrorist outfits, all headquartered in the city. And he ignores my joke that, with so many terrorist organisations, it’s probably the safest city in the world to be.

My legend should remain as close to the truth in every detail. He asks if there’s a particular one that I’ll feel comfortable with. I suggest that I be working on a mine awareness project, since mine awareness is all the rage nowadays. He likes that, and notes it down in spidery handwriting. It will give me a reliable pretext to be in the UN building and to mix with its staff, because the UN has its own mine programme in the country, he says. We invent a mine awareness organisation based in London that sounds like the real thing but doesn’t really exist. He’ll have Central Facilities, whoever they are, check the name and print business cards with phone numbers that work in the UK. Then other details. The car reserved in my name at the airport is a four-wheel-drive Isuzu. My visa, he tells me, has already been applied for.

George gathers up the maps and papers and returns them to their files. I realise it’s the only trip I’ve ever planned where all the relevant documents are deliberately left behind in the office.

‘Khartoum?’ says H, when I call to tell him the op is on. ‘Well, say hello from me.’

‘Have you been there?’

‘Can’t remember now.’ I picture a wry smile spreading across his face, the way it does when he’s not telling the whole story.