‘What about the mercenaries?’
The general cut in again. ‘Syrian troops will arrive too late to prevent the massacre, but in time to intercept the killers as they withdraw. Swale will have no doubt that you, Captain Knox, were killed with your two Marines. Yes, they’ll be among the other corpses. You’ll have disappeared — you could be in the litter too: for all he’ll know, he may have been unconscious and he’ll certainly be wounded, losing blood and so forth. In fact a priority at that stage must be to ensure he’s kept alive… Your job will have been done, Leonid Ivan’ich, you’ll be on your way home to us from Damascus.’ The general broke off to nudge Vetrov: ‘Better make this point to our friends — that the Syrians who intervene must have a doctor with them, maybe an ambulance, blood plasma or whatever the medics consider necessary. They’ll move him out by helicopter, I imagine.’
Vetrov nodded, making a note. The general turned back to Leo.
‘One last item I’ll explain. So you’ll understand the scope of it. It‘s a small touch which I hope you’ll agree has some merit… The matter I touched on before — leaking to British intelligence a report that the kidnappers of Stillgoe have transferred him into Syrian custody? Well, that’s the sum total of the information they’ll be force-fed with, but it’ll be received as red-hot intelligence in their Foreign Office, who’ll naturally pass it at once to SIS — am I right? Yes… And — here’s the bottom line — friends of friends in London have a mole — isn’t “mole” what they call an employee who breaks his trust?’
Leo nodded.
‘It’s being arranged that this person will be on hand to leak the fact that the British government did receive this report, did have the information in their possession. The revelation will be splashed on the front page of a Sunday newspaper when the political storm is at its height, the world recoiling from the evidence of the atrocity. Imagine — parliament recalled, Whitehall in a state of siege, government ministers protesting ignorance and innocence: then the headlines — Foreign Office and Intelligence services were tipped off three days before SBS team must have been flown out…’
*
It was the icing on the cake, Leo thought.
But there was a bit of a worry now, too: the question of when it would happen. He hoped they’d be triggering it quite soon. Two factors governed the timing. Well, three: the third being unclear, only something Colonel Vetrov had muttered about having to plant the disinformation before Nezar Hindawi’s trial ended in London. He hadn’t explained why. Maybe, Leo guessed, they wanted the SBS action in world headlines and denunciations before the trial was concluded, maybe Damascus would then break off diplomatic relations and eclipse whatever the Brits tried to make of the trial’s outcome. But in any case the trial was expected to run for another ten or fourteen days yet, so the point wasn’t all that cogent; the considerations that did count were one, that the intelligence had to reach London a few days before the imaginary, non-existent SBS team would later appear to have been despatched to the killing ground — so the report would have to be allowed to drip through some time before this weekend, surely — and two, President Assad had to be out of his own country, isolated and insulated in Moscow. If for any reason his trip was delayed, the operation would also be set back, and from this there’d be certain inconveniences, worst of all the danger that Charlie Swale, this newly sober Swale, might have time to get his thinking straight and come up with questions, doubts, suspicions. There’d been no date given yet — nothing in this morning’s Daily Telegraph for instance — for the Syrian head of state’s forthcoming Moscow visit.
4
Thursday was hell, and not only because it rained hard all day. On Friday Tait worked them even harder, but Charlie found he’d broken through some kind of endurance barrier, begun to realise the worst was over and that he had plenty in reserve. On Friday evening at supper round the fire — a night cross-country yomp was to follow — Smiley Tait broke his customary silence to observe, ‘We’re twice the men we were when we got here, eh?’
The question seemed to have been aimed at Charlie. He agreed: ‘You‘ve done a great job.’
‘There.’ Bob Knox jerked a thumb towards him. ‘Praise from a Pongo. What about that, Smiley?’
‘Although—’ Charlie admitted — ‘there’ve been moments when I haven’t felt exactly brimming with affection for you.’
‘Thursday,’ Pete Denham said with his mouth full of pilchards in tomato sauce, ‘Thursday was your bad day, weren’t it.’
‘Was it?‘ He scratched his head. ‘Maybe you’re right. If that was the day we circled Wales three times and still found time for forty thousand press-ups, then chased our tails round the fucking woods all night—’
‘Fed you well though, right?’
‘Oh, cordon bleu, Pete, absolutely.‘ Denham had done most of the cooking. Charlie asked Bob Knox, ‘What sort of rations are we taking to the Med with us?’
‘None. Supplies’ll be there for us to pick up.’
‘You mean like manna?’
Knox stared at him, seemingly without comprehension. Tait murmured, ‘Locusts and wild honey.’
Charlie said, ‘That was John the Baptist’s field rations, Smiley.’
‘Yeah. Right.’
Tait still wasn’t exactly loquacious. But prolonged exposure at close range to that wooden state of his had taught Charlie that it was not, generally speaking, an indication of scorn or dislike. It was simply that the muscles in his face rarely moved; and one could often read expression — amusement, annoyance, interest or lack of it — in his eyes. It was the other way about with Bob, whose eyes showed nothing at all while his facial expressions varied like anyone else’s. At Charlie’s mention of John the Baptist, for instance, there’d been an immediate reflex, visible in the fire’s glow even in this fading light, as if he’d only that second caught on, that the earlier reference to manna must also have come from a biblical context.
Maybe he’d missed out on religious education, Charlie guessed. He’d never said anything about his schooling, but that offbeat childhood, his Anglo-Egyptian parentage, might account for it.
Charlie asked him, ‘Suit may not be the usual ratpacks?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Charlie.’
‘How about weapons?’
Pete had asked this. Bob said, ‘Same applies. Laid on out there, waiting for us.’
‘Would it be giving away State secrets to tell us what kind of weapons we’ll be getting?’
Bob looked thoughtfully at Charlie. ‘If you’ll agree to make this the last question.’ Charlie nodded. Bob told him. ‘Uzis.’
‘There you are.’ Tait turned his poker-face towards Denham. ‘So we’ll look like we’re Israelis.’
‘Not necessarily at all.’
He’d said that rather too quickly and sharply, Charlie thought. The inference being that Smiley’s simple assumption might have been on target. He thought yet again, Syria — surely… Then, diffidently: ‘Bob, apologies, but as it happens I do have one other question. Affecting me personally, no one else.’ He fingered his moustache: it was almost luxuriant… ‘Thing is, you blokes are underwater experts, and of course I’m not. So the aquatics side of it — I mean, you won’t be expecting me to climb in and out of submerged submarines, I hope?’
Denham laughed, and began, ‘Oh, Jesus—’
‘No, Charlie.‘ Bob’s loud answer cut across Pete’s interruption, silencing him. ‘Nothing like that, don’t worry, we aren’t planning on drowning you.’ He looked up at the darkening sky. ‘Smiley, let’s get moving.’
Thanking his stars that he’d been fast on that ball. A few more words, and Denham could have blown it. Supposed SBS Marine expressing horror at the thought of being required to make a submarine exit and/or re-entry. In literally a couple of seconds that idiot could have destroyed all the careful planning, the whole damn thing. He could feel it still in his gut — that near-miss and the continuing danger. And Tait had caught on,
he thought: he’d been gazing at him — Leo — and now he was watching his pal Denham, shaking his head very, very slightly in sad reproof.
*
On the Saturday morning they turned out at 0500 instead of 0600 and went for a marathon cross-country run before breakfast. This was the finale. Pete then fried up all the eggs and bacon that were left, and fried slices of bread to go with it; it was a celebration breakfast, he announced. Charlie was on the point of asking facetiously where was the champagne, then thought better of it. The subject of alcohol had been taboo, he’d suspected, with the aim of keeping his mind off it.
Actually they needn’t have bothered. But he foresaw that there might be problems this evening, when he’d be alone in his flat with a cupboard full of Scotch and damn-all else to do.
Ring Paula, maybe. But he was supposed to be in Germany. There were others he could call: but it was a weekend now, and short notice. Also, he remembered, Knox had asked if he might come back up to London and doss down in the flat, after he’d returned all the camping gear to wherever it had come from.
Bob stopped the VW at the farmhouse and went in to pay the few pounds they owed. Then they were on the way and it was still only just after 0800.
The ultimate destination, Charlie thought, sitting back with his eyes shut while Bob piloted the van carefully through winding, narrow lanes, would be Syria, almost for sure. Because surely it had to be either that or Libya, and for some reason he believed in Bob’s denial — in the flat on Monday evening — that Libya was to be the target. But also, Libya was so much in the news, and there’d been nothing about any Brit having been locked up there recently. OK, not in Syria either — which would in fact have been a lot more unusual — but Syria bordered the Lebanon, and the Palestine refugee camps were surrounded by Muslim extremists of various kinds. In the copy of the Daily Telegraph which Bob had bought on the way down here there’d been an article in which it was stated that terrorists of the numerous factions –— Islamic Jihad, the Ayatollah Khomeini’s followers, had been mentioned amongst others — were currently believed to be holding three Americans and three Frenchman, but there were also two Brits, one Irishman, one Italian and a South Korean missing, presumed kidnapped.
Maybe an intrusion via Syria, back-door entrance to the Lebanon behind the backs of that assortment of crazies, snatch some poor bastard and bring him out?
Emerging from his thoughts, he heard Denham and Tait discussing cricket, the British team’s recent deplorable performances and their prospects in Australia. Denham talking volubly, Tait mostly in grunts.
They took a long time getting to the motorway, and then stopped for an early lunch when the VW needed petrol anyway. It was about 3 p.m. when Charlie climbed out of the van outside his flat and Tait slung his gear down to him.
‘Thanks. And thanks for the torture, Smiley.’
‘Any time.’
Bob Knox called down, ‘What’ll you do with yourself between now and midnight, Charlie?’
‘I’m glad you asked.’ He’d been thinking about it. ‘When I’ve washed the mud off and done a bit of essential shopping I’m going to jog round to the Lansdowne and swim up and down that pool until my arms drop off.’
‘I’d stop just short of that point, if I were you. Otherwise — great.’
Tait looked pleased too. As if Charlie was a pupil of whose progress he was proud. Charlie raised a hand to him and Denham: ‘See you boys at the check-in desk. then.’ He watched the van pull away. Wondering which check-in desk: and deciding that after the swim he’d do a few circuits of Green Park. Jogging and sprinting — weekend crowds permitting. After all that rain this was a fine, if somewhat muggy afternoon, warm and windless; Londoners and the tourists who were still around would be out in swarms. But — it occurred to him as he ran up the stairs to his flat — it would be a damn sight hotter in Syria.
*
In Damascus, it was stifling; too hot, for October.
Hafiz murmured, mopping himself with the sheet, ‘I hate to say this, but I have to leave soon. I have to force my body off this bed, out of this nice apartment and into my car which will be so hot you could roast a lamb in it.’ His dark head turned on the pillow as he thrust the sheet away. ‘You know. I don’t want to leave this is bed.‘
‘Then don’t. I don’t want you to.’
Saturday afternoon, in this Syrian capital which Hafiz called Dimashq and where the time was two hours ahead of London’s. Liz was conscious of the time difference because London had so often to be in her thoughts and calculations; she was Information Officer at the embassy. And the man beside her on the bed, Hafiz Al-jubran, was special personal assistant to the Minister of the Interior, Muhammad Gharbrash.
Labels — for two bodies on a bed in a half-dark, comparatively cool room, this cool because of shade trees close to the house’s white stucco front and the depth of the iron-railed balcony with its overhanging, shading eave. In contrast, the temperature in the streets was well into the eighties. A glass door was open to the balcony, tall shutters semi-closed outside it; an overhead fan circled, stirring a flimsy curtain whose primary function was to restrict the ingress of flies.
Hafiz kicked the sheet off. Sweat glistened on his dark, angular body. On her own too, Liz realised, feeling the fan’s draught.
‘Why and where d’you have to go?’
‘To meet with some people. Government business, something I have to do, unfortunately, even though this is Saturday.’ His had moved, a forefinger tracing her jawline and, continuing past her ear, pushing back her streaky, medium-blonde hair. He professed to find her beautiful: which she didn‘t mind — even quite enjoyed — although she knew for sure it wasn’t true. Not true that she was beautiful, or even pretty. Quite possibly true that from some peculiar viewpoint of his own he thought she was. It was also possible that he’d cease to think so quite suddenly, when the excitement of the affair wore off for him or when she decided she might be getting in too deep.
Like any threat of marriage. From which anyway she’d run a mile. She’d done it before and she knew she would again, but in any case marriage to a Muslim would be unthinkable, for entirely practical reasons.
Hafiz was beautiful, fine bone-structure, large sensitive eyes: a mystic’s eyes, their whites gleaming in the half-light and his dark face, and fixed on her now — each of them studying the other as if each might be wondering who — or what — the other was.
Which either of them might quite reasonably wonder, she supposed… She asked him, ‘Why didn‘t you say before that you were going off somewhere?’
‘I didn‘t want to think about it. Or have you thinking about it.’
‘When will I see you again?’
‘I can’t be sure. As soon as I get back I’ll telephone you — naturally. Or maybe before, before I start back, to let you now I’m on the way… It’ll be several days, however, maybe a week.’
‘You’re going now — and for a week?’
‘Not necessarily so long.’
‘Where, Hafiz?’
He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘You’re so inquisitive.’
‘Don’t I have some right to be?’
‘Oh, I suppose — since curiosity is a known female characteristic.’
‘If I told you I was about to vanish for a bloody week—’
‘Surely there’s a difference.’
‘Oh, is there?’
‘This is my country, I have duties which can take me anywhere. You on the other hand are a foreigner, your workplace is here in the capital and you would have no reason — except to go sightseeing, or—’
‘In practical terms you have a point. But not in principle.’
‘OK.’ He kissed her, properly, this time. Then: ‘OK. For the sake of your principle, I tell you. My journey now is to the town of Homs. You know where that is, of course.’ She nodded. ‘You see — no secrets. And no lady friends there either, I swear it.’ He kissed her again, then pulled away. ‘It’s on my mind now, yo
u see why I didn’t speak of it before. I have to go now, Liz.’
There was a back way out which he always used — hurrying head down, a surreptitious exit to a car that would, as he’d said, be broiling hot although if he’d parked it in front, under the tree, he’d have spared himself most of that discomfort. She’d have preferred it if he’d been less secretive, less seemingly ashamed. Although, she realised that for him there would be shame, if his affair with her became public knowledge; and from that point of view, she supposed, even his scuttling to and fro with his head down and those quick eyes darting from side to side might be thought an act of courage.
It didn’t look like it. It seemed to Liz to be drastically out of character. One of the attractive things about him was his arrogance, a kind of haughtiness which appealed enormously to her. There could hardly have been a sharper contrast to his than the scurrying exit that wasn’t far off an impersonation of Groucho Marx.
Not that she would have welcomed publicity, exactly. But discretion didn’t have to appear quite so ignominious.
She wondered about his motivation, why he’d have wanted the affair with her in the first place and why he was continuing it now when his involvement with her did so obviously scare him. It wasn’t a new line of thought: she’d have needed to be stupid or ludicrously vain not to have looked for some ulterior motive. Knowing herself to be quite ordinary, no femme fatale by any means and also damn near thirty, whereas he was twenty-four and really about the most attractive man she’d ever known, let alone been to bed with. Anywhere in the world, Hafiz could have taken his pick.
There’d been a hint or two recently, in the embassy; one in particular, an embassy wife, quite senior, who’d obviously been put up to it, a woman whom Liz liked and who liked her, speaking in an entirely friendly and private way but plainly not by chance or quite off her own bat, asking her whether she thought she was being entirely wise… ‘In all the prevailing circumstances?’
Special Deception Page 6
