Brute Force

in?'

'I am sorry?'

'The Russians. You decided that some of these priceless artefacts weren't quite Libyan enough, and that entitled you to do a little trading with your old mates?'

Mansour stared straight ahead, tuning me out.

I didn't want to let him off the hook. 'Let me see if I've got this right. In the eighties, Libya's foreign terrorist programme was up and running, and you were the guy who put it all together. The training, the weapons, the shipments . . .'

'If you want to put it that way, yes.'

'The market was big – PIRA, PLO, the Red Brigade, you name them. And the Soviets fell over themselves to supply you with all the kit. So there you were, top of the heap, pulling all the strings. Until the Bahiti op went to rat shit . . . And when you finally got out of jail, it wasn't just Gaddafi's little slice of paradise that had changed, was it?'

'No.'

Too right it wasn't. The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union didn't exist any more. But a lot of those GRU colonels Mansour used to deal with, his regular weapons suppliers, had grown rich – or, at the very least, had some extremely rich, well-connected friends.

I swerved to avoid another pothole that was deep enough to rip a wheel off. 'If there's something a wealthy Russian loves to spend his money on, apart from bling, powerboats and football clubs, I bet it's bits of old Roman bric-a-brac.'

Mansour bristled. 'The alabaster bust in my house is of Septimus Severus. It is one of a pair. The other one is at the Capitol Museum in Rome. On the black market, it would fetch millions.'

It explained a lot, not least the Q7, the briefcase of cash and the curious symbols I'd noticed on the sat nav's map display. Mansour had marked the location of these out-of-the-way archaeological sites. Nice work if you could get it. It almost made me wish I'd paid more attention at school.

Mansour turned and looked directly at Lynn. 'I was only ever prepared to sell things that didn't matter – a late classical statuette here, a bust from the Hellenistic era there. These things are two-a-penny, Al-Inn. You know that. But they always want more.'

'It's a Russian thing,' I said. 'Old habits die hard.'

He turned and watched the road. 'Some of my former contacts are still in the military and the GRU. Some now work for the FSB and Russian arms manufacturers. Many of them have a great deal of money. They also have some powerful friends.'

No surprises there. The Russian mafia were everywhere. 'What did you do that means you have to sleep with a weapon?'

Mansour sighed. 'There were certain treasures, like the Severus bust, that I am not prepared to sell. They should remain in Libya. But the people you speak of are putting me under a great deal of pressure. Their clients – some of them well-known public figures – these men are extremely powerful, and they want only the very best. When they set their eye on something, they will stop at nothing to get it. I have started to become . . . nervous . . . There is no one I can turn to here. I needed the advice – the help – of someone I could trust.'

'So you decided to call Lynn?'

Mansour didn't answer. Something on the dead-straight stretch of road ahead had caught his eye. It had also caught mine.

Half a mile away, shimmering in the morning sunlight, was a checkpoint.

96

As we slowed to join the queue of waiting traffic, I told Mansour to put on his shades.

I tucked the Makarov under my thigh. 'Got that .38 within reach?'

Lynn shuffled about in the back.

'Make sure you can get to it.'

The old familiar feeling was crawling through my stomach – that sickening lurch, when you know you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and, worst of all, with no one and nothing to back you up.

'Get about $400 out of the case. Then keep it closed and under your feet.'

Our passports didn't have visas or entry stamps. To a guard who was even half alert we'd stick out a mile. But a few hundred USD might help us on our way.

I watched a sentry making his way towards us, past taxis laden to capacity, the odd private car and a couple of long-distance trucks headed for Benghazi and beyond. Immediately in front of us was a Toyota pick-up stuffed with farm produce. A goat stared vacantly at us from the tailgate, alongside a stack of bamboo cages filled with emaciated chickens.

I left enough room to pull a hard right into the scrub and loop back on the road to Tripoli if it turned into a gang fuck. We'd have to find another route to Ajdabiya. I wanted this sorted; I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

The checkpoint was basic: a red-and-white-striped pole tied to a couple of sand-filled oil-drums. The sentry was picking vehicles out of the line at random and waving them through. A voice at the back of my head told me we weren't going to be one of them.