“Impossible,” he said. “You are talking to the wrong man. Why did you come to see me?”
“A friend in Hamburg said you were extremely well informed.”
“Let me change the question: Why come to see anyone? Why not make it up? It is for a novel, after all.”
“Authenticity,” said Rowse. “The modern novelist cannot get things hopelessly wrong. Too many readers today are not fooled by schoolboy howlers in the text.”
“I’m afraid you are still in the wrong place, Mr. Rowse. That list contains some items that simply do not come under the heading of conventional weaponry. Booby-trapped briefcases, Claymore mines—these are simply not provided by the Socialist bloc. Why not use simpler weaponry in your ... novel?”
“Because the terrorists—”
“Fictional terrorists,” murmured Kariagin.
“Of course. The fictional terrorists apparently—that is, as I intend them in the book ... wish to carry out an outrage involving the White House. Mere rifles obtainable in a Texan gunshop will not do.”
“I cannot help you,” said the Russian, wiping his lips. “These are the days of
“There is an East Bloc copy,” said Rowse.
“—are simply not provided, except between government and government, and only then for legitimate defense purposes. My country would never dream of supplying such materiel or sanctioning its supply by a friendly state.”
“Like Czechoslovakia.”
“As you say, like Czechoslovakia.”
“And yet these weapons do appear in the hands of certain terrorist groups,” said Rowse. “The Palestinians, for example.”
“Possibly, but I have not the faintest idea how,” said the Russian. He made to rise. “And now, if you will excuse me—”
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” said Rowse, “but in the pursuit of authenticity, I do have a modest research fund.”
He lifted the corner of his folded newspaper, which lay on the third chair at the table. A slim white envelope rested between the pages. Kariagin sat down again, extracted the envelope, and glanced at the Deutschmark bills inside. He looked thoughtful, then slipped the envelope into his breast pocket.
“If I were you, and wished to acquire certain kinds of materiel to sell on to a group of American terrorists—all fictional, of course—I think I might go to Tripoli and try to seek an interview with a certain Colonel Hakim al- Mansour. And now, I really must rush. Good night, Mr. Rowse.”
“So far, so good,” McCready said as they stood side by side in the men’s room of a sleazy bar near the river. The two SAS sergeants had confirmed that neither man was being tailed, or the meeting could not have taken place. “I think you should go there.”
“What about a visa?”
“The Libyan People’s Bureau at Valletta would be your best chance. If they grant a visa without delay, it will mean you have been preannounced.”
“You think Kariagin will tip off Tripoli?” asked Rowse.
“Oh, I think so. Otherwise, why advise you to go there? Yes, Kariagin was offering his friend al-Mansour the chance to have a look at you and check out your ridiculous story a bit more deeply. At least no one believes the novel-research story anymore. You have crossed the first hurdle. The bad guys really are beginning to think you’re a renegade trying to make a fast buck by working for some shadowy group of American madmen. Al-Mansour will want a lot more than that, of course.”
Rowse flew from Vienna to Rome and thence to the capital of Malta. Two days later—no need to rush them off their feet, said McCready—he made his application to the People’s Bureau for a visa to visit Tripoli. The reason he gave was a desire to do research for a book on the amazing progress of the People’s Jamahariya. The visa came through in twenty-four hours.
The following morning, Rowse took the Libyan Airways flight from Valletta to Tripoli. As the ochre-brown coast of Tripolitania came into view across the glittering blue Mediterranean, he thought of Colonel David Stirling and the others, Paddy Mayne, Jock Lewis, Reilly, Almonds, Cooper, and the rest, the first of the SAS men, just after the group’s formation, who had raided and blasted German bases along this coast more than a decade before he was born.
And he thought of McCready’s words in the Valletta airport as the two minders waited in the car: “I’m afraid Tripoli is one place I cannot follow you. This is where you lose your backup. When you go in there, you will be alone.”
Like his predecessors in 1941, some of whom were still buried down there in the desert, he would find that in Libya, he was completely alone.
The airliner tipped one wing and began to drop toward the Tripoli airport.
At first, there seemed to be no problem. Rowse had been sitting in economy class and was one of the last out of the airliner. He followed the other passengers down the steps into the blazing sun of a Libyan morning.
From the observation terrace of the modern white airport building, a pair of impassive eyes picked him out, and binoculars trained briefly on him as he crossed the tarmac toward the Arrivals door. After several seconds the binoculars were laid aside, and a few calm words were muttered in Arabic.
Rowse entered the air-conditioned cool of the terminal and took his place at the end of the queue waiting for passport clearance. The sloe-eyed immigration officers took their time, scanning every page of each passport, gazing at each passenger’s face, comparing it lengthily with the passport photo, and consulting a manual that was kept out of sight beneath their desks. Libyan passport holders were in a separate queue.
Two American oil engineers who had been in the smoking section and were behind Rowse made up the rear of the queue. It took twenty minutes for Rowse to reach the passport desk.
The green-uniformed officer took his passport, opened it, and glanced down at a note beneath the grill. Without expression, he raised his gaze and nodded to someone behind Rowse. There was a tug at Rowse’s elbow. He turned. Another green uniform—younger, courteous but firm. Two armed soldiers stood farther back.
“Would you please come with me?” the young officer said in passable English.
“Is there something wrong?” asked Rowse. The two Americans had gone silent. In a dictatorship the removal of a passenger from the passport queue is a great conversation-stopper.
The young officer at his elbow reached under the grill and retrieved Rowse’s passport.
“This way, if you please,” he said. The two soldiers closed up from behind, one at each elbow. The officer walked, Rowse followed, the soldiers came behind. They turned out of the main concourse and down a long white passage. At the far end, on the left, the officer opened a door and gestured to Rowse to enter. The soldiers took up position at either side of the door.
The officer followed Rowse inside and closed the door. It was a bare white room with barred windows. A table and two facing chairs stood in the center, nothing else. A portrait of Muammar Qaddafi hung on one wall. Rowse took one of the chairs; the officer sat down facing him and began to study the passport.
“I don’t understand what is wrong,” said Rowse. “My visa was issued yesterday by your People’s Bureau in Valletta. Surely it is in order?”
The officer simply made a gesture with one languid hand to suggest that Rowse should be quiet. He was. A fly buzzed. Five minutes elapsed.
From behind him, Rowse heard the door open. The young officer glanced up, shot to his feet, and saluted. Then without a word, he left the room.
“So, Mr. Rowse, here you are at last.”
The voice was deep and modulated, the English of a kind that can only be learned in one of Britain’s better public schools. Rowse turned. He allowed no trace of recognition to cross his face, but he had studied pictures of this man for hours in McCready’s briefing sessions.
“He’s slick and highly educated—by us,” McCready had said. “He’s also utterly ruthless and quite deadly. Be
