of his hired car. “Is a tiger dangerous? Does a hawk kill? Ha! Dangerous.” He mocked the inadequacy of my description, then accelerated into the airport traffic. “He is a great man,” Shafiq said solemnly. “One day they will name a city for him in Palestine, a great city! Built on the bones of the Jews.”
“What happened to his right hand?”
Shafiq mimed a pistol being fired. “He was shot in the wrist. The bullet severed some nerves and tendons. He can still use the hand, but clumsily. It happened in Lebanon, near the Israeli border.”
“Thank Allah it was his right wrist”—I spoke in a very matter-of-fact voice—“and not his left. It would have been a shame to have lost that pretty watch.”
Shafiq glanced at me, smiled, then roared with laughter. “That’s good, Paul! Very good! You are not so blind, eh? But you will say nothing. You understand me? Nothing! Halil has a long reach and a lethal grip.” I noted how Shafiq still has a long reach and a lethal girl.” I noted how Shafiq still used the pseudonym “Halil” rather than the nickname il Hayaween. Both of us might know Halil’s identity, but it would be risking fate to admit it openly, even to each other.
“Am I going to meet Halil today?” I asked.
“Not here, not in Monastir, but he will bring you the gold.”
“Where?”
“At Ghar-el-Melh. It’s on the north coast and will be safer, much safer. Not so many eyes watching.”
“Do I pick up my crew there?”
“No. They came yesterday.” Shafiq sighed and I suspected he was glad that I was taking Brendan’s two gunmen off his hands.
“What are they like?” I asked.
“They are young,” he said grandly, and as if that quality forgave all their sins. “It is a pity,” he went on, “that we could not have sent Palestinians to help you, but such men would surely have raised suspicions on their arrival in America.”
“I think that’s a fair statement,” I said drily.
“So these two will suffice.” It was a grudging judgment.
“Have you met them before?”
“Never.” He looked more lugubrious than ever, then gave a brief shake of his head. “It isn’t like the old days, Paul. I don’t deal with Ireland any more, and I hear nothing from anyone. These days I just work at the Centre and run a few errands. I go to Marseilles sometimes, but never further north.” His mood had plunged as he made the sad confession and I supposed that poor Shafiq must have been tarred by Roisin’s accusation that I was one of the deep penetration CIA agents; the ones whom Halil had described as “the agents who did not exist.” What a clever story she had told! If an agent did not exist then he could not be detected, which meant anyone could be an agent, even Shafiq, so poor Shafiq had been relegated to the minor leagues, sowing discontent among French Arab immigrants by carrying messages to mad-eyed clerics in backstreet Marseilles mosques. Then, when it was decided that I was the perfect man to sail Halil’s gold across the Atlantic, Shafiq must have been reactivated as the person most likely to recruit me. No wonder he had seemed so pleased to be in Paris; it must have been Shafiq’s first visit to his dream city in four years. “Just errands,” he now added in a self-pitying echo.
“But you must be important, Shafiq,” I sounded him out, “if they trust you to work with Halil.”
“Ah, yes! They trust me.” He tried to sound confident, but failed. He shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Things change, Paul. Things always change.”
“What I don’t understand,” I said, looking away from Shafiq into the monotonous flicker of an orange grove, “is why a man as important as Halil, and a man as experienced as yourself,” I added that sliver of flattery to prime him, “should be dealing with a matter as trivial as Ireland. Nothing that Brendan Flynn is doing will bring the destruction of Israel one day nearer, yet your movement is devoting its best men to his ambitions! It is all so”—I paused as though searching for the exact word, then launched it like a killer blow—“so unsophisticated, Shafiq!”
I had known the accusation would goad Shafiq who, sure enough, shook his head angrily. “What we are doing is just one tiny part of a massive operation, Paul. You see only a, what do you call it? A cog! You only see a cog while all around us, unseen, great millwheels are turning.” He was pleased with the metaphor and embellished it by taking both hands off the wheel and churning them vigorously in the air. “Halil is the planning officer for the world- wide punishment of Iraq’s enemies! And the enemies of Iraq are the enemies of Palestine! And wherever those enemies might live, Halil’s work will be seen! That is not unsophisticated!”
I stared at him in silence, knowing I dared not ask the obvious questions, but would have to glean what scraps I could. “Stingers? In Ireland?”
Shafiq waved a dismissive hand. “Everyone knows that Britain does America’s bidding, and that America is Israel’s master, so Britain must be made to suffer. Your anti-aircraft missiles will hurt Britain, but they are only a small part of the pain the West will feel as a punishment for opposing the legitimate demands of Iraq and the Palestinians.” He had become quite angry as he trotted out the well-worn propaganda.
“Oh, I see now!” I said, in a tone that suggested I had been culpably obtuse. “We had to wait for the gold to arrive from Iraq! What is it? Gold captured in Kuwait?”
Shafiq waved a hand in a gesture that I could translate as an affirmative, but which also suggested he knew he had revealed too much.
“What I still don’t understand”—I was pushing my luck to see if I could tempt Shafiq into further indiscretion—“is why Halil sends money by boat when he might just as well send it electronically.”
“Ha!” Shafiq accompanied the scornful exhalation by once more throwing his hands into the air. The Peugeot wandered toward the oncoming traffic, provoking a chorus of horns. “Everyone knows,” Shafiq said when he had regained control of the car, “that the Americans can now monitor every electronic transfer of money in the world! It is the computer that does it! So instead we shall be old-fashioned. We shall smuggle gold like a pirate! I thought that would please you, Paul. Does it not please you?”
“Oh it does,” I said, “it truly does.” But it pleased me even more that I had been given a glimpse of the truth, il Hayaween’s truth, that the Stingers were not just meant to make Britain weep, but were a small part of the world-wide campaign of terror that Saddam Hussein had sworn to unleash on his enemies. And that il Hayaween was the coordinator of that threatened slaughter which had provoked governments across the world to guard their airports, harbors and military installations. So Brendan Flynn, I realized, had not been dealing with Tripoli, but with Baghdad, and Baghdad’s urgency would explain why the price of the Stingers had gone so high; because a world- wide terror campaign would hugely increase the demand for illicit weapons, and that increased demand would be reflected in inflated black-market prices. It all made sense, so much sense that I wondered why I had not understood the equation earlier.
Shafiq was suddenly scared that he had been far too indiscreet. “I have said nothing you can repeat, Paul! Nothing!”
“Shafiq!” I said earnestly and with a hurt expression in my voice. “Shafiq. You and I are old friends. We have endured much together. We have taken risks for each other and protected each other. We have trusted each other.” I was laying it on with a gold-plated trowel for I knew it would all be music to Shafiq’s ears and, sure enough, tears showed in his eyes as I went on. “We have been fellow soldiers, and do you think I am the kind of man to betray an old comrade? My dear friend, I have heard nothing today that I had not already guessed, and I have heard nothing today that I will ever repeat to another soul. May my mother die of worms if I tell you a lie.”
“Thank you, Paul, thank you.” Shafiq took a deep breath as if to contain his emotion.
We turned into Monastir’s marina. It was winter, and the pontoons looked drab. There were plenty of yachts, but most were under wraps, their sails unbent, waiting out the winter months until the Mediterranean spring fetched their owners south again. There were a handful of liveaboards in the harbor, but not as many as usual for the prospect of war in the Gulf had scared people away from Muslim countries. Only
“Your crew.” He sounded hurt that I should be so distrustful. “I hope you like them.”
“I’m sure I will.” I plucked my oilskin and sea-bag from the boot, then went to meet the two men Brendan had sent to guard me and, I suspected, to kill me when my usefulness was done.
