away a car did a three-point turn and two others that had been parked up started their engines.
‘He’s standing at the door. Looks as though he’s waiting for someone,’ came through from Dennis on the radio. As he spoke a black people carrier with smoked windows turned into the semi-circular drive.
‘There’s two, no, three men getting out,’ reported Dennis a few minutes later. ‘Leather jackets, short hair. They look military. They’re unloading big holdalls. I think they’re going to go inside.’
‘Get pictures – including the luggage,’ ordered Wally. Clutching her handbag, Maureen got out of the car, walked briskly across the road and past the flats. The camera concealed in her handbag would supplement the pictures Dennis got from his bench.
After everything was unloaded and all the men had gone inside, the people carrier drove away. Following his brief, Wally let it go, and kept his team at Halton Heights in case anyone left the flats. But by two o’clock, when their shift ended, no one had emerged, and Wally withdrew his people. Control at Thames House would make a preliminary report of their findings; Wally and his team would be debriefed in detail the following day.
EIGHT
Sami Veshara sipped his demitasse of Lebanese coffee and gave a small appreciative belch. The lunch celebrating his friend Ben Aziz’s forty-fifth birthday was almost over, and it had been a feast worthy of the name.
Not surprising, thought Sami, since most of the ingredients had been supplied to this London restaurant by his own company, and he had made sure nothing but the best was used for this meal. The
Beirut – you would not have had a better meal even there, he thought with some satisfaction. He looked idly at the plate of Turkish delight on the table, and decided he should show some self-discipline. So he only took one.
He sat back and lit a small cheroot, chatting from time to time with the dozen or so other friends of Ben Aziz gathered here. They were all fellow Lebanese, and often congregated for lunch in this small restaurant on a side street off the Edgware Road, just a few streets up from Marble Arch. Once the neighbourhood had been full of Yanks, Little America they’d called it. But those days were long gone, thought Sami with satisfaction, and now Arabs outnumbered the Westerners.
He contemplated the afternoon ahead of him. Business had been very good during the last twelve months, both the food-importing side of things that he was known for, and other activities he preferred not to be publicly associated with. He had been to the Bayswater offices of his import company that morning for a meeting with the accountants, and had been pleased by their low estimates of the year’s tax liability. A lot of thought had gone into that. He felt an afternoon off was well deserved.
Outside, his chauffeur waited in the Mercedes saloon. Sami’s wife and children were in Beirut for a pre- Ramadan visit to family and friends, staying in the large villa he had built off the Corniche when the troubles had subsided in the 1990s.
Normally, Sami would have found distraction in the arms of his mistress, an Italian beauty whose modelling career he was happy to subsidise. But she was on a shoot in Paris for two days, so he would have to find some other way to pass the afternoon. He thought fleetingly of other possible distractions, but he remembered there was a phone call due about a shipment coming in. And later a private meeting, where he would need to have his wits about him. Better to go home, snooze a bit, and read
Gradually the lunch party dispersed. Sami went outside and stretched his arms, his eyes blinking in the bright sun. His driver jumped out of the car, and ran around to hold the door open. Malouf was Egyptian, an obsequious man, eternally grateful to his benefactor. He was almost seventy years old and he had a heart condition. Sami’s wife Raya wanted her husband to get a younger driver, but Malouf had been with him for twenty-five years, and Sami valued his loyalty. He also knew that at least half of the salary he paid the man was sent back to relatives in the slums of Giza, not far from the pyramids. They would suffer if he let Malouf go.
Now Malouf asked, ‘Where to, Mr Veshara?’
‘Just home. Then you can have the rest of the day off.’ He would drive himself to his early evening meeting, since he trusted no one, not even Malouf, to accompany him there.
The call came on his mobile as Malouf turned the car around and headed north, towards the Vesharas’ twenty- room mansion on Bishops Avenue in the Highgate hinterland.
‘Yes,’ he said into the mobile.
‘The shipment arrives tonight.’ The voice was low, and respectful. ‘How many?’
‘Five.’
‘That’s one short.’
‘I know. There was an accident.’
‘Accident? Where?’
‘In Brussels.’
Not on his watch then. Sami was relieved: the last thing he wanted was Interpol sniffing around. He asked, ‘Is the ground transportation all arranged?’
‘It is. And we have a house in Birmingham.’
‘Let me know when the packages arrive there.’
‘Yes.’ And the line went dead.
Malouf was watching in the mirror. ‘Forgive me, sir, but there is a large car behind us, a limousine. It’s staying very close. Could it be one of your friends from lunch?’
Sami looked back over his shoulder. Sure enough, there was a black limo almost on their bumper, and as they went under the flyover and through the green light it momentarily flashed its lights. Who could it be? Not one of his lunch companions, he was sure of that. They were businessmen, but none of them could run to a stretch limousine. Yet he was not alarmed; London was full of idiots in cars. This wasn’t Baghdad, after all.
‘Relax, Malouf. It’s just some fool showing off.’
Suddenly a Range Rover pulled out sharply from the right, and cut in ahead of them on Edgware Road, forcing Malouf to brake. After its initial burst of speed, the Range Rover slowed, forcing them to cut their own speed even further.
‘I don’t like this, Mr Veshara.’
Neither did Sami. For the first time he sensed a threat; they were being boxed in. ‘Take the next right turn. But do not indicate.’ That should shake them off.
Malouf nodded. He angled slightly to make the turn but suddenly a large 4?4 appeared on their right side, drawing up alongside. When Malouf slowed, so did the 4?4. It hogged the middle of the road, and cars coming the other way were forced to move over, one blinking its lights furiously and its driver giving a vigorous two-finger salute.
Sami wondered who could be in these cars surrounding him. Had they mistaken him for someone else?
‘Turn left,’ he ordered. His throat felt dry, constricted.
But on that side, too, another car suddenly appeared, almost close enough to clip the Mercedes’ wing mirror. It was a white van, like the kind the police used to shuttle prisoners around, with smoked windows that screened its occupants from view.
The Mercedes was now effectively surrounded and Sami no longer had any doubt they were working together. Who were these people? The Russian mob had been making noises lately about his little sideline, the one that needed small boats running across the North Sea to the dock he’d rented near Harwich. Who else could it be? For a brief moment, he wondered if his deeper, darker secret might have been discovered. No, it was impossible. He had always been exceedingly careful. So maybe it was the Russians, after all. But what did they want? And for Allah’s sake, what did they intend to do? They couldn’t be trying to murder him in broad daylight, and a kidnapping seemed
