Brute Force

81

We hit a wall of noise. Cars stretched nose to bumper down the main street, their exhausts belching thick, badly refined Libyan diesel. Horns blared. Pedestrians jostled past us and each other: office-workers in suits; old men in white robes; women in long dresses and headscarves.

Lynn glanced up and down the street, getting his bearings. 'Sharia Hara Kebir. The teahouse isn't far.'

'Mansour's local?'

Lynn kept going, talking as he walked. He kept his voice low. 'Went there every day. Military intelligence, the Istikhbarat, maintained a small office just off Sharia an-Nasr, about half a kilometre from here. It was from that office that Mansour ran the PIRA operation. We had it under surveillance. There wasn't much about the people who worked there that we didn't know.'

I thought about the images of Gaddafi I'd just seen. It was easy to rubbish these people as self-inflated; easier still to dismiss them as incompetent. But in Mansour the Libyans had found someone who had successfully given PIRA the ability to carry on its war.

'Every day, at about eleven, Mansour used to walk from that office, pretty much taking the route we just have. He'd take an outside table if the weather was fine, order himself a glass of shay and a nargileh, and chill out, as my children would say.

'Libya is very tribal and Osman's is – or, at least, was – a popular hangout for members of the Al-Waddan tribe. Mansour could let his hair down there. He didn't need to look constantly over his shoulder, which is more than you could say for the offices of the Istikhbarat. The walls there had ears and they'd shop you for looking at Gaddafi's portrait the wrong way.'

'Got a plan for when we get there?'

I never liked being in somebody else's control, but until we found Mansour this was Lynn's world.

'I haven't thought beyond just waiting for him to turn up.'

If I'd had a better suggestion, I would have made it. I had no idea how long it would be before Gary and Electra were picked up, but, worst-case, I reckoned, was twenty-four hours – maybe thirty-six if we were lucky – before some bright spark at Vauxhall Cross or wherever put two and two together and realized where we'd been headed in the Predator. It wasn't much of a window, and if Mansour didn't turn up because he was needed to schmooze Britain's Foreign Secretary, there wasn't a Plan B.

We carried on, dodging traffic and people. The sun was bright by now and glared back at me off the tall white buildings each side of the street. I rounded a corner and turned to ask Lynn how much further we had to go, but he wasn't there. My gaze flitted in and out of the sea of faces around me. No sign of him. Smoke drifting from a kebab stall blew into my eyes and I lost another second or two.

Then I saw him – leaning against a wall, staring at something over my shoulder.

I doubled back, angry enough to give him a bollocking no matter who was watching us. He spotted me and must have read my face. He held up his hand. 'I know, Nick. I'm sorry. But it really does take the breath away, doesn't it?'

I looked back over my shoulder. 'What?'

'The Arch of Marcus Aurelius – the last intact remnant of the Romans' city. Legend has it that if anybody removes so much as a stone from the arch they'll be cursed for all eternity. That's why it's so beautifully preserved. You won't find a finer triumphal arch . . .'

I shook my head. 'How much further?'

'To Osman's?' Lynn looked surprised. 'We're here.'

He nodded in the direction of the smoke. Shimmering heat and smoke rose from red-hot coals in an oil drum, split down the middle and folded out, with a grill on top. A kid of about fourteen in a grease-smeared gelabaya was turning a chunk of what looked like goat meat on a spit. A group of people jostled around the makeshift barbecue, trying to attract the boy's attention. A few tables had been spread out behind them, along a narrow shop front. Its metal shutter had only been pulled halfway up, providing a glimpse of more people sitting at tables, smoking and talking in the cool, dark interior.

All in all, Osman's looked to me like a complete shit-hole.

82

Lynn ducked under the shutter and went in first. A scabby-kneed kid came and hauled the shutter open as I followed, allowing sunlight to spill inside.

I grabbed the table closest to the pavement and sat down with my back against the wall. From here I could watch the street as well as what was going on inside.

There were about twenty tables under cover and five outside. Approximate head-count: fifty males. No women.

The low murmur of conversation dropped still further as Lynn approached the bar.

The kid who'd opened the shutter came to take my order. I pointed at myself and Lynn. 'Shay.'

I gave the whole area the once-over. There wasn't much to take in, unless you were the health inspector: an antique orange-presser on the bar counter that looked like it had squeezed its last around the time the Romans left, and a giant copper pot, tea-stained and beaten out of shape. A row of Turkish coffee pots bubbled away on a gas stove.