drinking a little of the whisky opened by Gibbons the night before, not really enjoying it, and gazing across the garden. Then she went to the bathroom and washed the smell of burnt rubber from her hair under the shower. This took only a few minutes and when she came out she saw that a note had been slipped under the door. ‘Rooms and phones bugged. See you at Embassy soonest.’
She dried her hair, changed and was downstairs in less than five minutes. Bashkin was still out in the car park. ‘What is this, a twenty-four-hour watch?’ she asked him.
He looked at her a little ruefully. ‘Mease Errique leave soon? Tomorrow Bashkin drive you to airport.’
‘You know my plans before I do,’ she said, climbing into the Mercedes. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what you thought of what we saw up in the hills?’
‘Bashkin see nothing. Bashkin asleeping.’
‘Right,’ she said, ‘Bashkin asleeping. But not tired enough to go home after he’s dropped me at the hotel. Who do you work for?’
‘For you Mease Errique.’
‘And for Mr Marenglen also, I shouldn’t wonder,’ she said. ‘Drive me to the British Embassy, please.’
Harland was waiting for her just inside the Embassy gates with one of the Hereford-trained guards, who introduced himself as Steve Tyrrel.
‘Where the fuck did you get to?’ she said to Harland. ‘I thought you were following me. Where were you?’
‘We’ll talk inside.’ He gestured to a door where another armed man stood. ‘We’ve got Loz here, but I haven’t told him anything and I think we should keep it that way until we know what’s going on. There’s more to him than you could imagine.’
They found Sammi Loz seated nonchalantly in an outer office with a cup of tea and a copy of the day’s International Herald Tribune, looking for all the world as though he was about to go out in Manhattan on a warm summer’s evening. ‘Reunions later,’ said Harland roughly as Loz got up and made an elaborate fuss over Herrick.
As soon as the metal door of the communications room thudded behind them, Herrick gave Harland a brief account of what she had seen on the mountains. When she reached the end she said, ‘This wasn’t for real. I know that. Gibbons dropped the stuff about the Valleys of Fire like a pile of plates after he had spoken on the phone – obviously to Milo Franc. They wanted me to go up there and watch someone being thrown into the fire.’ She stopped and looked around. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any food, have you?’ Harland phoned Tyrrel and asked him to scratch something together.
‘Where’d you get to?’ she asked when he put the phone down.
Harland gave her an odd, crooked smile. Now that his back was on the mend the strain had left his face. ‘I went with Steve Tyrrel. I didn’t tell you because I think the Americans are listening to our mobiles. So I had to pretend that I was following you up there. Steve had a hunch they were taking Khan out of the country and he was exactly right. Khan was driven to the airport and put on a private jet. The plane is being tracked by GCHQ and our people on Cyprus. I have no word yet as to where it’s headed but the Chief will be on as soon as he knows.’
‘So that’s more or less that,’ said Herrick. ‘We’ve lost our man and I can go home.’
‘Better hear what the Chief says,’ he said with another smile.
Khan had known nothing after being rolled into the back of the car because a needle was plunged into his buttock. When he began to recover consciousness on the plane, all he was aware of was a raging thirst. He had been given no water during the previous day and whatever drug they’d used to knock him out had heightened the need for liquid. This blocked out his fear at finding himself on a plane, still hooded and bound, but now also with his mouth taped over and his ankles tied together. After a little while he started to explore his surroundings by moving his legs. He touched what he assumed was the seat in front of him and then angled them into the aisle and started to kick out, making as much noise as he could behind the tape. Someone stirred in front of him and he heard Lance Gibbons’ voice, then the big CIA man, Franc. He kicked some more and became aware of them consulting each other. ‘Look,’ said Gibbons. ‘Langley says he might have a capsule in his teeth.’
‘He would’ve used it by now,’ growled Franc.
Khan had no idea what they were talking about and heaved his torso forward so he was almost out of the seat and in the aisle.
‘Hey, hey, hold still there, buddy,’ shouted Gibbons.
The hood was removed and Gibbons’ face peered into his. Khan stared back, eyes popping and cheeks blown out.
Gibbons examined him in the dim light of the cabin, then pulled back the tape so it hung from the corner of his mouth. When he heard what Khan wanted he grunted and fetched a clear plastic beaker of water which he lifted to his lips. He replenished it twice from a bottle before Khan’s thirst was slaked and he was able to croak thank you.
‘Now I’m gonna put this tape back. There’s no use you getting excited. We got a lot of flying time ahead of us and unless you want us to give you another one of those shots you’ll take a nap.’
Khan saw that he was considering whether to replace the hood so shook his head vigorously. Gibbons hesitated, then folded the cloth and placed it on the headrest in front of him. Before returning to sprawl in his own seat he jabbed his finger in front of Khan’s face and said, ‘Now, sleep, buster.’
Khan wasn’t reassured by the water. These tiny acts of kindness meant nothing and indeed they often seemed to foreshadow some new, unpleasant turn in his story. In all the thousands of miles he had travelled he realised he had met almost no one he could trust, except perhaps in the case of Mr Skender – the consumptive interpreter who had accepted his money and the postcard with a look of solemn obligation. He was sure that Skender had posted the message and that it had arrived in New York. Moreover he understood that the pretty young English diplomat was letting him know she had met Sammi when she mentioned The Poet. It wasn’t just chance she used that name because he caught the look in her eye as she said it. And yet she couldn’t have any idea what it meant. Loz must have told her to drop it into the conversation, knowing he would recognise it while she would remain utterly ignorant of its meaning. That was smart of Loz.
But just as there seemed to be hope it was snatched from him. He was almost certainly on his way to Camp X-Ray, which he knew would be impregnable to all Loz’s money and cunning. He had heard enough about the place while travelling through Iran to know that no one left unless the Americans wanted it. What hope did a veteran of the jihad in Bosnia and Afghanistan have of persuading the interrogators that he was simply a soldier? He wriggled a little to ease the pain in his ribs where The Doctor had hit him. The discomfort reminded him that at least the Americans did not practise torture. They may have been prepared to leave the room while The Doctor suffocated him and pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets. But that wasn’t the same as doing it themselves. He could at least survive at Camp X-Ray and soon they would understand that he was cooperating with them and represented no threat whatsoever. Yes, he would make them understand that.
Although the drug made his mind sluggish and he was desperate for sleep, he kept on returning to the young woman. He had forgotten what a Western woman could be like and she brought back memories of his time in London. This woman was poised, intelligent and brave. It had taken courage to shout out in his defence when they tried to stop him talking.
He managed to doze for half an hour or so but then woke to a new kind of light in the cabin. He looked to his left and saw dawn rising through the window, an orange light below the wing tip, graded through azure to a deep mauve in the stratosphere. He watched it for a while before realising with a sudden, sharp dread that the sun rising on the port side of the aeroplane could only mean one thing – they weren’t headed west for the Caribbean and Camp X-Ray, but due south.
Harland and Herrick sent a long encrypted email to Vauxhall Cross about Khan being taken out of the country while the CIA and SHISK had set up a diversion in the mountains, then sat back to consume a meal of bananas, Marmite sandwiches, digestive biscuits and coffee, rustled up by Steve Tyrrel from the Embassy kitchen. Herrick found she couldn’t eat enough.
At 3.00 a.m. the Chief came on the phone. The British listening station in Cyprus had picked up the unscheduled flight an hour before and noted that, having executed a wide circle over the Mediterranean, the jet turned east into Greek air space and then followed the commercial air corridor down the coast of the
