They hide out in mountain caves either side of the Nile.’
‘Where’s he from?’
‘He’s Jordanian, based in Turkey. He had something to do with the Iraqi opposition but now works all over the Middle East. I came across him about a year ago when the UN needed a line to Hamas. Foyzi fixed a meeting in Lebanon.’
‘And you trust him?’
‘Yes, so does the Chief.’
They drank for a further fifteen minutes, then Harland looked at his watch and said they should call Teckman. He set up the satellite phone in a clear patch of ground nearby and plugged it into a laptop equipped with powerful encryption software. He dialled three times before getting through to one of the duty officers at Vauxhall Cross. There was a further delay while the office patched through the unscrambled call to the Chief. Harland passed the handset to Herrick. ‘You’re the secret servant round here,’ he said. ‘I’m just the help.’
The Chief came on. ‘Your father is going to be fine – a suspected fracture in his wrist, that’s all. They’ll be back with us by midday today. What about our friends?’
‘He’s sedated, and the osteopath is doing a good job, as far as one can tell.’
‘Well, we’ll send reinforcements to you later. Two of your colleagues are nearby.’ He paused. ‘You’ve all done very well, but now comes the hard part. I need you to get as much as you can, as soon as possible. I know the fellow is in a bad way but you should make a start tomorrow. You can use the computer to send your reports. I’d prefer you do that than spend any time speaking on the phone. If you log on now, Harland will find a message.’
Harland was signalling that he wanted to talk to Teckman, but before she could tell the Chief, he had gone.
‘What’s the bloody hell’s he playing at?’
Herrick told him about the message. For the next ten minutes Harland struggled with the decryption program. Eventually she took over and retrieved the email.
‘Good news, I hope?’ she said.
He shook his head.
‘Well?’
‘It’s nothing important.’
‘Anything that comes through that computer is important. I need to know what it says.’
Harland lit another cigarette. ‘This is personal. A deal which I don’t propose to discuss with you.’
‘If it has a bearing on this situation, I insist you do,’ she snapped.
‘It doesn’t, except that I may have to leave the island over the next day and a half. This is your business now. I don’t work for HMG. I’ve got another job to go to. And I do have to go – the Secretary-General is leaving for Syria and Jordan tomorrow. I must find a way of joining him.’ He paused and looked at her. ‘You’ve got Foyzi. You won’t have any problems. ’
‘Oh yeah, stuck on some bloody island in the middle of the Nile with a known Afghan veteran and a man who has direct links with Hizbollah. That’s to say nothing of the minor interest the Egyptian government and the Americans have in finding Khan and apprehending those who freed him. And when you throw in the Islamic jihad skulking in the mountains, the whole thing is a mere picnic. You bloody well can’t leave me here. I need you. Tell me why you’re really going. It’s not your job.’
Harland shook his head. ‘Look, you knew I had a deal with the Chief. In return for helping to get Sammi Loz out of Albania and bringing him here, the Chief said he would find a friend of mine. And he has now given me the information. This is something I have to do.’
‘Well, which is it? This friend or the job?’
‘Both.’
She sighed heavily and swallowed the remainder of her whisky. ‘I need sleep. I can’t think about this any longer.’
They got up and went to Khan’s room. Loz was sitting on a three-legged stool watching him sleep. He looked up.
‘Thank you for rescuing my friend,’ he said. ‘You have undoubtedly saved his life.’
‘We weren’t doing it as a favour for you,’ said Herrick.
‘I know,’ he replied, ‘but you risked much. I am grateful to you both and so will Karim be when he’s able to speak.’
‘Which will be tomorrow. We need to talk to him as soon as he wakes in the morning.’
‘That will be too soon,’ said Loz evenly.
‘Too bad,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you need some rest, Isis. You look tired.’
‘Don’t tell me what I need. Just make sure he’s ready to speak to us by morning.’
Loz was taken aback. Even Harland was surprised by the sudden flare of temper.
She woke six hours later, and for a few minutes stared through an open door, astonished by the intense, green lush-ness that surrounded her. Apart from a few bird-calls there was a strikingly profound stillness, and she felt that only now had Cairo stopped ringing in her ears. She swung her legs from the bed and glimpsed a reed bank through the trees.
A few minutes later Harland called out from the courtyard and announced he was bringing her coffee. She drew over her the blue cloth that had served as a blanket during the night and said he could come in.
‘Feeling better?’ he said, as his head came round the door. He handed her a bowl of thick, black coffee, and held up a dark blue robe with a hood. ‘It’s been suggested by Foyzi that you might be prepared to wear this while you’re here. He says you won’t be so conspicuous to people passing in boats. If it makes you feel any better, they’ve found me one as well.’
‘That’s fine. Leave it over here,’ she said.
He dropped it on the bed.
‘What about Khan?’
‘He’s still asleep.’
‘Something came to me in the night,’ she said. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it – a sense that we’re looking at the wrong thing.’
‘Maybe.’ Harland’s shrewd eyes narrowed. ‘Let me know when you think of it. I’ll go back to them now. One of us should be there when he wakes. Why don’t you get something to eat from Foyzi and then relieve me in an hour or so?’
She put on the robe and trainers and walked around the building until she found Foyzi standing by a clay oven. With him was an old man in a brown skull cap and dirty shift who, on seeing her, whisked a roundel of unleavened bread from the fire. Foyzi cooled it by flipping it between his hands, then spun it through the air to her. He walked a little distance to a patch of bare earth and looked up at the smoke from the oven curling to the top of the trees.
‘You should look around,’ he said. ‘It’s quite a place. A piece of paradise.’
‘You’re moving better,’ she said. ‘You’ve lost your limp.’
‘Oh yes, the doctor took a look at me last night and pressed a few buttons,’ said Foyzi. ‘He’s got quite a touch.’
She nodded. ‘“Big lorry jump all over little car,” I liked that. Were you actually hurt in an accident?’
‘Yes, a long time ago in Manchester, England. I worked there for eighteen months. Four of those were spent in hospital with a broken hip bone.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘This and that,’ he replied.
She smiled at the evasion.
‘Okay, I have a question for you,’ he said suddenly in the manner of an eager college student. ‘How did you learn to lip-read?’
She told him about catching meningitis when she was young, the deafness that followed and the operation to cure it a few years later.
‘Only in English, not other languages?’
