girl nodded.
‘How can you make him pay?’
Janov belched and put his hand to his mouth. The sound was swamped by the noise pounding out from the speakers.
‘When I go back I will go to Kabul. Abdul goes there often.’ He pointed at Maggot. ‘That is where it will finish; I will see to that.’
‘How will you do that?’ asked Maggot, doubting whether Janov had the support in Kabul that he would need. ‘It isn’t your territory. You don’t have the people in place there.’
Janov smiled slowly. A shadow fell across him as the barmaid put a full glass in front of him. Janov put his hand up her skirt and squeezed her thigh. She pulled away sharply and looked daggers at him. Maggot laughed.
‘It isn’t always necessary to have people there, as you say Rafiq.’ His face brightened. ‘But so long as I have someone with me who I can rely on and trust, I can get the job done.’
‘Who’s that someone?’ Maggot asked, sensing the direction the conversation was going.
‘You, Rafiq.’
Maggot laughed. ‘Why me?’
Janov opened his hands in an empty gesture. ‘Because you are no longer safe here in England. You have to be there.’
‘I don’t have to be anywhere,’ he told Janov, shaking his head.
Janov nodded vigorously. ‘But you do, Rafiq. You are no longer safe in England.’ He leaned closer, repeating his point. ‘How much longer will it be before they connect you with The Chapter?’ He leaned back in his chair but kept his gaze fixed firmly on Maggot. ‘Don’t you see? You will be safer with me in Afghanistan than you are here in your own country.’
Maggot could see a modicum of sense in what Janov was saying. He thought back to the day he had met Susan Ellis in Marcus’s empty office and began to see one or two pointers into the way things were changing. He had told Susan that if Marcus was involved in the big boys’ games, he could be in trouble. He linked that thought to Susan’s reason for contacting Marcus, namely her brother David and he could see where those pointers were going: all the way to Afghanistan.
He put all this into the melting pot of supposition and conjecture, including Janov’s assertion that he might not be safe in England, and realised that it might be the time for another trip to Pakistan, or even Afghanistan simply to keep away from the security forces in England.
‘How easy would it be to hit Abdul?’ he asked carefully.
A huge smile blossomed on Janov’s craggy features and thumped the table top with his huge fist.
‘That’s it Rafiq; the old Rafiq that I know.’ He came closer. ‘First of all we must get you to Kabul, and then we can plan everything else once you are there.’
‘How will you know where Abdul is?’ Maggot asked.
Janov tapped the side of his head with the tip of his finger. ‘I have somebody close to Abdul. He tells me what I wish to know. So when we get to Kabul I will find out where Abdul is and you and I will finish it.’
EIGHTEEN
David was asleep on a small bed when the sound of his bedroom door opening woke him. He had been given a very tiny room to sleep in, much like a prison cell but without bars. Despite being allowed certain freedoms, David still found himself being contained rather than confined, and knew that his existence depended purely upon Abdul Khaliq’s state of mind. He had made precious little mention of the so called ‘freedom’ he had told David to expect and wondered if it was some delusion that Abdul carried around in his head all day.
He opened his eyes and rubbed the sleep from them, allowing himself a moment to get accustomed to the orange sunlight filtering through the small opening in the wall that served as a window. He blinked away the sleep and opened his eyes fully as the door burst open and Abdul Khaliq walked into the room.
‘Get dressed!’ Abdul shouted, flicking his arm in the air. ‘We leave in ten minutes.’ He stormed out of the room.
David sat there staring at the back of the door which was closing slowly. He had no idea why Abdul had done that, and he knew it would do no good asking. He stood up and pulled on a pair of trousers and then went out into the courtyard of the farmhouse in which they were staying. There was a small, square bathing area which was little more than a low walled box into which water was hand pumped from a subterranean well.
David operated the handle of the pump and doused himself in cold water. It brought goose bumps up on his skin in the chill morning air. Water ran from his beard and he shook his head vigorously sending droplets flying like a dog shaking itself after a dousing.
He straightened up and looked around the small courtyard. It was strangely quiet, as though as air of expectancy had suppressed any life. He guessed it had something to do with Abdul’s dramatic order to be ready to leave.
As he walked across the yard he could hear the sound of a Toyota Landcruiser starting up. He guessed it must have been Abdul’s wagon. David quickened his step and hurried back to his room where he finished dressing.
Seven minutes after Abdul had left his room, David walked out of the house eating an apple which he had picked up from the table in the kitchen. He had grabbed a drink of water from a jug that was always kept full, and hoped it wouldn’t be too long before Abdul explained what the drama was all about, and then perhaps he could get a satisfying meal inside his belly.
Abdul had seemed nervous lately, not that it was too obvious, but David had been in Abdul’s custody long enough now to know that something was worrying him.
As usual, the two lieutenants signalled David to join them in the Toyota. He clambered in and took up his usual position in the rear passenger seat, sandwiched between the two men.
Abdul came hurrying out of the farmhouse and looked quickly at another Toyota that had lined up behind his car. He gave a satisfying nod of the head and clambered into the Landcruiser. The driver slipped it into gear and hit the accelerator, spinning the wheels on the sandy ground and throwing up clouds of dust.
The second Toyota followed and the two vehicles motored away from the farmhouse in which the men had stayed overnight. David peered through the window and watched the dwelling grow smaller until it was lost from sight behind the rising ground they were leaving behind.
But if David had looked up into a sky that was coming to life in a mixture of reds and dark blues, he might, just might have seen an American MQ-9 pilotless drone watching their progress, eight thousand feet above them.
Cavendish was standing behind a United States Air Force Colonel who was sitting at the control desk of the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned drone. The aircraft was flying above Abdul Khaliq’s Landcruiser, looking down from the sky at an easy target. They were inside the MQ-9 control station that had been fitted into a windowless, air conditioned trailer at the American Air Force base at Khost.
Immediately in front of the USAF Officer was essentially the ‘cockpit’ of the MQ-9, with hand controls to fly the unmanned drone. In front of him were two, large coloured screens that gave him a camera shot looking down towards the ground, and a moving map on which he could track the drone’s progress. With the camera view he was able to maintain contact with the target which, in this case was Abdul Khaliq’s Toyota Landcruiser.
Beside him was the sensor operator who operated the sensors that were essential to fly the aircraft. Between them the two men were like the flight crew of a two man jet. Fortunately for Abdul Khaliq, this was not a hostile interdiction.
Cavendish was at Khost base at his own request; he had flown out the moment he had received the most unexpected text message on his phone just a couple of days previously, and had been met at the base by the Base Security Officer, Lieutenant Brad McCain.
Cavendish now knew that David Ellis was alive and well. Although Cavendish had put a trace on the call, the
