heavy heat and the smells of diesel, sewerage, dust, decay and rubbish that had hung in the air since Green Square.
I found myself in a quiet residential area. The cars had transformed themselves from old rust-buckets into new-model BMWs and Mercedes. Apart from the occasional burst of birdsong, the street was quiet. I moved past three-storey houses shielded from the street by high walls and ornate railings.
I reached a junction and glanced to the left. Mansour was seventy-five metres away by a wrought-iron gate set into a high wall. He stood in a pool of bright sunlight, busy with a set of keys.
I slipped behind a tree and pored over my map until I heard the clang of the gate behind him. I stepped back onto the pavement and did a walk-past.
The wall was three metres high with broken glass set into the cement along its top. I glanced through the gate. The house – an old villa – stood in a lush, well-watered garden about six metres back from the street. It looked like a wedding cake, with white walls and pink window surrounds. I couldn't see the lower floor, but the windows on the upper two levels were securely barred.
A large satellite dish was mounted between a couple of balconies on the first floor. There was no immediate sign of motion sensors, alarms, CCTV or proximity lighting, but I didn't really expect any. Mansour had carried clout in military intelligence, and the locals knew it. The mob at the bath house had parted like the Red Sea for Moses. Everyone for miles around would know not to fuck with him. The lack of electronic defences could mean there were dogs roaming the grounds, or men in black leather jackets in the basement – but if he had bodyguards, they hadn't accompanied him to the
We didn't have a phone number for him and we couldn't risk just ringing the bell at the gate: if he wasn't in the mood to repay the debt he owed Lynn, we'd be fucked. The only plan I could come up with was to break in and grip him; there was no other way.
Palm trees circled the front and the side of the house. A creeper ran rampant up the right-hand wall. It would all provide valuable cover. I didn't have a clue how we were going to get in. I wouldn't be able to recce the locks on the gate until after last light.
I carried on walking. The house next door was a building site, another three-storey villa being pulled apart before being put back together again.
87
2212 hrs
'How are we going to do it?'
There was an edge to Lynn's voice. He almost sounded excited.
We were looking into the garden of Mansour's house from a second-floor window in the building site. The windows had been stripped of their frames, all the wiring had been pulled out of the walls, light switches and power sockets had been removed. The place was a shell.
The front of Mansour's house was shielded by pull-down blinds, but there were plenty of lights on at the back: in the hallway on the ground floor, in what was probably a sitting room off the hallway on our side of the house, and in what was clearly a kitchen.
'Don't know yet. Wait.'
There was movement behind the kitchen window, and I could see that Mansour wasn't alone. Through the bug-screen on the kitchen window, in the glare of an unprotected strip-light, disembodied hands were preparing food.
I nudged Lynn. 'Is Mansour married?'
'He was married. We knew she was receiving treatment for cancer in Riyadh when Mansour was in London. She died around the time of the Lockerbie settlement.'
Staring out across Mansour's lush garden, looking at his big fuck-off house, remembering the cut of his suit, hearing that his wife had received expensive cancer treatment in Riyadh . . . none of this seemed to gel with the profile of a public servant living out his retirement.
Lynn's take on this had been that Mansour had either skimmed off a few quid from the arms deals he negotiated with the Soviets, or he'd been given an unofficial thank-you present by Gaddafi after Lockerbie for making things sweet with the Brits and Americans.
Lynn watched through the binos as the owner of the hands revealed himself to be a boy in a
'I'd say that the house-boy is Pakistani – Indian or Sri Lankan maybe. No Libyan I met here ever employed another Libyan, for fear they'd kiss and tell.'
I had other concerns. 'Will he have weapons?'
'Expect handguns – one in the bedroom and at least one elsewhere. They love cash. Mansour will have a bag of dollars hidden away, in case he has to make himself scarce.'
There was no street lighting so the garden remained largely in shadow. The light from the sitting room fell across a welltended lawn, maintained by a sprinkler, which was switched off but visible in the middle of the garden. There was plenty of barking from around the neighbourhood, but none from down below, and I didn't see any turds on the grass. Things were looking up.
The only other sounds were distant traffic, the odd car on the street and an occasional aircraft taking off from Tripoli International a few Ks away.
A shadow moved behind the blinds at the front of the house. The kid was still in and out of the kitchen – worked off his feet. It was close to midnight by the time the light was switched off.
I waited. The boy didn't exit via the front door, as I expected. Instead, there was a creak from the back and a second later an outside light went on, spilling down a set of steps and some bins between the back of the house
