‘You are talking to me in person,’ said Shepherd. ‘That’s how phones work. Now, get to the point or piss off.’
‘I mean, I want to meet you. To talk about what we want to buy. We haven’t done this before.’
‘That’s blindingly obvious,’ said Shepherd.
‘So we want to meet you, face to face, see if we can trust you.’
‘I’m the one who should be worried about trust,’ said Shepherd. ‘Where do you want to meet?’
‘We thought maybe Hyde Park. Near the memorial to Princess Diana.’
‘We? How many of you are there?’
‘Two.’
‘Tom and Jerry?’
‘What?’
‘You’re Tom, right? Is your mate Jerry?’
‘No, his name’s… James.’
‘Tom and James?’
‘Yes. Tom and James.’
‘And how will I recognise you?’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m assuming you don’t know what I look like.’
‘Better you tell me what you look like.’
‘I’m devilishly good-looking with a twinkle in my eye,’ said Shepherd. ‘Does that help? Of course it doesn’t. Look, be at the memorial tomorrow at noon. You and your mate carry a copy of the Financial Times and the Guardian. One each. And stand together. I’ll approach you. If I spot anything I don’t like, you won’t see me for dust. Understand?’
‘Okay. Yeah.’
‘Tomorrow, then,’ said Shepherd. He ended the call and put away the phone.
Back in the room, the Major was leaning back in his chair, tapping a pen on the table.
‘Do we have a plan?’ asked Shepherd.
‘We’re working on it,’ said the Major.
There were three loud bangs on the door. ‘Please stand against the wall, Colin,’ shouted Kamil.
Mitchell stood up, went to the far wall and stood against it, arms outstretched. The door opened. Kamil was holding a paper plate loaded with rice and chunks of lamb, and a bottle of water. Behind him, a man in a ski mask held an AK-47. It was feeding time.
Kamil walked into the centre of the room and sat down cross-legged. He placed the food in front of him and beckoned Mitchell to join him. ‘I shall eat with you, Colin,’ he said.
Mitchell hadn’t told Kamil that nobody had called him Colin since he’d left school. Even his brother called him Geordie. It had been his army nickname, and once his parents had passed away it had been the only name he answered to. But he wanted Kamil to keep calling him Colin. It was a constant reminder that he was the enemy; an enemy that Mitchell would have to kill if he was to escape from his prison.
‘Can you play chess?’ asked Kamil.
Mitchell nodded.
Kamil reached into a pocket and brought out a travel chess set, a plastic board that folded in half with circular magnetic pieces. He placed it on the floor and set out the pieces as Mitchell chewed a chunk of lamb.
‘How long have you been in Baghdad?’ asked Kamil.
‘Six months, just about,’ said Mitchell.
‘Can you speak any Arabic?’
‘ Allahu Akbar,’ said Mitchell.
‘Ah, good,’ said Kamil. ‘God is great.’
‘ Inshallah.’
‘God willing,’ said Kamil, nodding. ‘If you speak only two phrases in Arabic, they are the two to know. “God is great” and “God willing”. He is all powerful and everything that happens is because of Him.’
‘You believe that, do you?’ asked Mitchell.
‘Of course. All Muslims do. And all Christians do, too. Are you not a Christian?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Mitchell. He used his fingers to shovel rice into his mouth. Sometimes they gave him a plastic spoon and sometimes they didn’t.
‘Either you are or you aren’t,’ said Kamil. He finished placing the pieces on the board and waved for Mitchell to go first. Mitchell pushed his king’s pawn two spaces forward. ‘I was christened a Catholic,’ said Mitchell, ‘but I’m lapsed.’
‘You don’t believe in God any more?’ said Kamil. He moved his king’s pawn.
‘Not the sort of God my parents believed in,’ said Mitchell.
‘What sort of God do you believe in, then?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ said Mitchell.
They played for a while in silence. Within the first half-dozen moves Mitchell realised that Kamil was by far the better player. He was methodical and stared at the board for a full two minutes before each move. Mitchell played impulsively and rarely looked more than a couple of moves ahead. He had never much cared for board games and preferred to play cards, ideally for money. ‘Have you always been a Muslim?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ said Kamil.
‘The reason I ask is that a lot of people become Muslims, right?’
‘When they realise that Allah is the true God and that only He can be worshipped. And that Muhammad was Allah’s messenger.’
‘And you pray five times a day?’
‘That is what is required of us. But there is more to being a Muslim than praying five times a day. One is a Muslim every second of every minute of every hour until one draws one’s last breath.’
They continued to play. Kamil took one of Mitchell’s bishops in a fork attack with his knight, then gradually pressured his queen. Even though he clearly had the advantage, he continued to study every move carefully, bent forward over the board, deep creases in his brow. Mitchell knew that he could kill Kamil. He could grab him and break his neck as easily as snapping a twig. He could smash his windpipe and watch him die on the floor clutching his throat. He could punch his nose so hard that the cartilage would splinter and spear the brain. He could kick him in the stomach with such force that his spleen would rupture. There were a dozen ways that Mitchell could end the life of the man sitting in front of him, but it would serve no purpose. The door was locked and on the other side there were men with guns.
Kamil looked up. ‘You are in a bad position,’ he said, smiling.
‘I know,’ said Mitchell, ‘and I fear it can only get worse.’
Shepherd sipped his coffee and looked at the Serpentine. ‘The two over there, throwing the Frisbee,’ he said quietly. A homeless man in a grimy overcoat and wellington boots was throwing bread to a group of Canada geese; he grinned at them, showing a mouthful of blackened teeth.
‘They know me,’ he said.
‘Great,’ said Sharpe. He looked casually to where two Pakistani men in their twenties were half-heartedly tossing a blue disc back and forth. ‘Yeah,’ he said. They were close to the Princess Diana memorial, a concrete water feature in the shape of a battered oval. Several dozen tourists were sitting on the edge, paddling their feet in the water that gushed around as if it was a natural stream.
It was a quarter to twelve and Shepherd and Sharpe had been in the park since eleven. ‘They’re the brothers,’ said Shepherd. ‘Asim and Salman. I’m guessing they’re there to keep an eye on things because they don’t have newspapers.’
It was a warm day so Shepherd was in khaki trousers and a pale blue polo shirt, with a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head. There was little risk of anything happening in the open but he wanted the men to see that he wasn’t carrying a weapon. From the phone conversation he’d had, he was sure that the men weren’t professionals. ‘Tom’ had been clearly out of his depth, and the brothers playing with the Frisbee seemed ill at ease and hadn’t once looked in their direction.
Sharpe drank his coffee and grimaced. ‘This is horrible,’ he said. He was wearing a Glasgow Rangers shirt over baggy blue jeans.
‘Good job you didn’t pay for it, then,’ said Shepherd.
