Brute Force ns-11

by Andy McNab

  I moved my hand onto the door handle, ready to do a runner back down to the beach and hope the tender was still there. If it wasn't, I'd just keep running.

  'Taruh fein?' the policeman asked again.

  Lynn jabbered a bit more then reached into his pocket, produced a five-dollar bill and nodded as Abraham Lincoln disappeared under the top sheet of the policeman's clipboard.

  'Shukran, ya effendi.' He banged the roof of the cab and we set off in the direction of the Medina, just as the sun began to rise over Tripoli's myriad roofs and minarets.

  'He wanted to know about our "tourist guide". I said we'd arranged to meet him at the Medina.'

  'He believed you?'

  'He believed President Lincoln – and that's all that matters.'

  80

  The taxi pulled up beneath the thick defensive walls of a castle.

  'The old citadel.' Lynn looked up at it like a kid admiring a Christmas tree. 'Tripoli's most famous landmark. Riddled inside with a maze of alleyways.' He tapped the driver on the shoulder and gave him a burst of hubba-hubba.

  The driver's face registered some alarm until Lynn dug a small wad of dollars out of his pocket. He held them under the driver's nose before slapping a ten-dollar bill down on the front seat. The driver picked it up, held it to his eye and appeared to sniff it. He nodded, satisfied, and we stepped out onto the cracked and crumbling pavement.

  Traffic hurtled in every direction. Vast portraits of Colonel Gaddafi, inscrutable behind his Aviators, stared down at us from every corner. The Great Leader was represented in a variety of roles and poses: in military uniform, in tribal robes, and even in a blue nylon suit with lapels you could land a plane on.

  Lynn gestured around us. 'This used to be Martyrs' Square until Gaddafi cleared it so his people could hold mass rallies in praise of his genius.' He pointed to a gap in the walls. 'We're headed in there, into the Medina. Most of the buildings are sixteenth to eighteenth century, the heyday of Libya's Turkish occupation, but a lot pre-date . . .'

  This was scarcely the time for a history lesson, but I let Lynn ramble on. Anyone watching us, and there seemed to be plenty of them, would think we were doing the guided tour.

  I told him to lead on.

  We entered the Medina through a tall stone archway. It was still fairly dark and our warm breath swirled in the flickering street lights. It didn't take long for the noise of traffic from the square to recede. A hundred metres in, all I could hear of the outside world was the occasional car horn.

  Ahead of us was a long, straight cobbled street with shops on each side and a minaret at the end. The puddles would have to wait until midday before the sun would reach in and dry them out.

  The wail of a bloke calling the faithful to prayer sounded up somewhere close by, and was immediately answered by rallying cries from tinny, crackling speakers all around us. The dawn chorus gradually gave way to the clatter of shutters being thrown open for the day and shopkeepers gobbing onto the pavement as we passed.

  Lynn went back into tour-guide mode. There were a number of souks in this part of the Medina. We were currently passing through the copper market. The gold, silver, jewellery, carpet, shoe, and even grocery emporiums were close by. You could buy anything you wanted here, as long as you didn't mind too much if it worked. 'The Gaddafi watch was all the rage in my day; they never managed to tell the right time.'

  Lynn stopped, and I took the chance to scan behind me. The only people who were out and about looked like they really did have a valid reason for being here, but there was only one way to be sure.

  'Take a left.'

  We headed down an alleyway that was too narrow for cars. An old man in a long gelabaya wobbled alongside us on a

  pushbike then peeled away at the next turning. We passed three houses with big, thick wooden doors and heavy, ornate iron knockers. One door was open. I saw a courtyard with a dried-up fountain in the middle. A young boy sat on its edge playing with a toy. A woman hung washing on a line stretched between two wrought-iron balconies. She stopped what she was doing to stare down at us. As soon as our eyes met she retreated into the shadows.

  We moved on. Lynn pointed out items of interest: the whitewashed walls, the tiles around the windows. He knew what he was doing: he pointed at stuff behind us occasionally, so I was able to do a scan. The only person who grabbed my attention was a guy with a load of cloth balanced on his head. I'd clocked him hanging around the main entrance to the Medina, seen him again on the main street, and now he was here.

  Lynn pressed on. Copper-workers hammered plates into shape near the entrance to a mosque. I kept expecting to be pursued, as I'd been in every other Arab country I'd ever been to, by a small army of the curious and the persistent – kids, usually, tugging at your shirt and asking for baksheesh – but all we got here was the odd sidelong glance and the occasional stare.

  We came to a crossroads. I nodded left down another narrow street, filled this time with shops and stalls.

  We wove our way between food, shoe and CD stalls until we eventually reached another crossroads.

  We took another left: the third side of the square. If the guy with the bundle of cloth on his head was still behind us, it was no accident.

  He was nowhere to be seen.

  81

  We hit a wall of noise. Cars stretched nose to bumper down the main street, their exhausts belching thick, badly refined Libyan diesel. Horns blared. Pedestrians jostled past us and each other: office-workers in suits; old men in white robes; women in long dresses and headscarves.

  Lynn glanced up and down the street, getting his bearings. 'Sharia Hara Kebir. The teahouse isn't far.'

  'Mansour's local?'

  Lynn kept going, talking as he walked. He kept his voice low. 'Went there every day. Military intelligence, the Istikhbarat, maintained a small office just off Sharia an-Nasr, about half a kilometre from here. It was from that office that Mansour ran the PIRA operation. We had it under surveillance. There wasn't much about the people who worked there that we didn't know.'

  I thought about the images of Gaddafi I'd just seen. It was easy to rubbish these people as self-inflated; easier still to dismiss them as incompetent. But in Mansour the Libyans had found someone who had successfully given PIRA the ability to carry on its war.

  'Every day, at about eleven, Mansour used to walk from that office, pretty much taking the route we just have. He'd take an outside table if the weather was fine, order himself a glass of shay and a nargileh, and chill out, as my children would say.

  'Libya is very tribal and Osman's is – or, at least, was – a popular hangout for members of the Al-Waddan tribe. Mansour could let his hair down there. He didn't need to look constantly over his shoulder, which is more than you could say for the offices of the Istikhbarat. The walls there had ears and they'd shop you for looking at Gaddafi's portrait the wrong way.'

  'Got a plan for when we get there?'

  I never liked being in somebody else's control, but until we found Mansour this was Lynn's world.

  'I haven't thought beyond just waiting for him to turn up.'

  If I'd had a better suggestion, I would have made it. I had no idea how long it would be before Gary and Electra were picked up, but, worst-case, I reckoned, was twenty-four hours – maybe thirty-six if we were lucky – before some bright spark at Vauxhall Cross or wherever put two and two together and realized where we'd been headed in the Predator. It wasn't much of a window, and if Mansour didn't turn up because he was needed to schmooze Britain's Foreign Secretary, there wasn't a Plan B.

  We carried on, dodging traffic and people. The sun was bright by now and glared back at me off the tall white buildings each side of the street. I rounded a corner and turned to ask Lynn how much further we had to go, but he wasn't there. My gaze flitted in and out of the sea of faces around me. No sign of him. Smoke drifting from a kebab stall blew into my eyes and I lost another second or two.

  Then I saw him – leaning against a wall, s
taring at something over my shoulder.

  I doubled back, angry enough to give him a bollocking no matter who was watching us. He spotted me and must have read my face. He held up his hand. 'I know, Nick. I'm sorry. But it really does take the breath away, doesn't it?'

  I looked back over my shoulder. 'What?'

  'The Arch of Marcus Aurelius – the last intact remnant of the Romans' city. Legend has it that if anybody removes so much as a stone from the arch they'll be cursed for all eternity. That's why it's so beautifully preserved. You won't find a finer triumphal arch . . .'

  I shook my head. 'How much further?'

  'To Osman's?' Lynn looked surprised. 'We're here.'

  He nodded in the direction of the smoke. Shimmering heat and smoke rose from red-hot coals in an oil drum, split down the middle and folded out, with a grill on top. A kid of about fourteen in a grease-smeared gelabaya was turning a chunk of what looked like goat meat on a spit. A group of people jostled around the makeshift barbecue, trying to attract the boy's attention. A few tables had been spread out behind them, along a narrow shop front. Its metal shutter had only been pulled halfway up, providing a glimpse of more people sitting at tables, smoking and talking in the cool, dark interior.

  All in all, Osman's looked to me like a complete shit-hole.

  82

  Lynn ducked under the shutter and went in first. A scabby-kneed kid came and hauled the shutter open as I followed, allowing sunlight to spill inside.

  I grabbed the table closest to the pavement and sat down with my back against the wall. From here I could watch the street as well as what was going on inside.

  There were about twenty tables under cover and five outside. Approximate head-count: fifty males. No women.

  The low murmur of conversation dropped still further as Lynn approached the bar.

  The kid who'd opened the shutter came to take my order. I pointed at myself and Lynn. 'Shay.'

  I gave the whole area the once-over. There wasn't much to take in, unless you were the health inspector: an antique orange-presser on the bar counter that looked like it had squeezed its last around the time the Romans left, and a giant copper pot, tea-stained and beaten out of shape. A row of Turkish coffee pots bubbled away on a gas stove.

  An old guy with a white handlebar moustache shooed flies away from a plate. He looked like he should have been flying Lancaster bombers over Nazi Germany. On the plate sat what looked like an over-sized haggis. I remembered they called this osban – a sheep's stomach filled with rice, herbs, liver, kidneys and other meats, then boiled. And the Jocks think they have a monopoly on all the delicacies.

  Lynn started waffling away to the Wing Commander. A moment later, they shook hands.

  The clientele, seeing this, visibly relaxed. People went back to doing what they'd been doing – smoking their hubble-bubbles, sipping shay, reading papers, playing draughts, talking.

  The hubbub gradually filled the room again.

  Lynn said something else to the Wing Commander. He nodded and produced a calculator from the folds of his gelabaya. The handlebars twitched alarmingly as he punched in some numbers and handed the calculator to Lynn. Lynn looked at the screen, muttered a couple of words and passed it back again. This charade continued for a minute or so, then the Wing Commander gave a big nod and they shook again.

  Lynn handed over some dollars and got a fistful of local in return.

  He waited a minute, then, above the background noise, I overheard him mention Mansour's name.

  There wasn't a flicker of acknowledgement from the Wing Commander as he poured coffees from their little copper pots into some shot-glasses.

  Lynn said it again, this time giving the full name – 'Mansour Al-Waddan?'

  The Wing Commander shrugged and carried on pouring.

  Lynn got to his feet. He clapped his hands and the conversation subsided. Then he started giving hubba-hubba to everyone in the room. Lynn's tone was apologetic and yet determined – I guessed that he was saying sorry for disturbing the peace, but had we seen his old mate?

  The boy brought over our tea and Lynn carried on. At the mention of Mansour's name, I expected some kind of a reaction – something like the way the conversation had died when we'd entered the teahouse. But once everybody had got used to a foreigner talking to them in their native tongue, they just went back to what they'd been doing.

  Lynn turned back to the bar, downed his coffee, put some money on the counter and walked over to me.

  'Come on. I've paid for everything. We're leaving.'

  I got up and followed him onto the street. We melted into the crowd on Sharia Hara Kebir. Lynn took a second to get his bearings, then motioned me to a table in front of an equally minging teahouse in the shadow of Marcus Aurelius's arch.

  Lynn gave me the ghost of a smile. 'Let's see what that produces, shall we?'

  As I sat down, I noticed that we had a perfect view of Osman's.

  A waiter appeared. Lynn ordered shay and stretched back in his chair.

  'Do you know the origin of the word Tripoli, Nick? It's named after the ancient Roman province of Tripolitania: from the Greek – 'the land of the three cities'. There was Oea, Greek originally, then Roman – its ruins actually lie beneath our feet. Then there was Sabratha to the west of Tripoli and, of course, Leptis Magna to the east. Don't worry about what I did back there. Think about it: what choice do we have?'

  The waiter arrived and placed our tea on the table. Lynn turned to me. 'Breakfast? I don't know about you, but I'm absolutely starving. I'm also betting on the fact that we may have a bit of a wait ahead of us.'

  As he gabbled his order, I kept my eyes on the entrance to Osman's. Behind the activity around the barbecue, the teahouse was as we'd left it.

  I took a sip of the very sweet mint tea instead of ripping into him for putting the message out over the tannoy. It wasn't the way I would have done things.

  I didn't have a contingency plan, but we were going to have to think of one. 'Nobody in there had ever heard of Mansour, had they? We're going to have to find a telephone directory or something, or—'

  'No.' Lynn shook his head. 'Like I told you, Osman's is Al-Waddan. The old boy behind the counter has worked there all his life. I asked him. Seventy years, man and boy. He is also Al-Waddan. And yet, did you see how he completely blanked me? It was like Mansour never even existed.'

  'Or they're too shit scared to admit knowing him.'

  Lynn's eyes played over the arch. 'Perhaps you couldn't see it from where you were sitting, but there was a chap in the corner, rather funny-looking. He was smoking a nargileh and had a lazy eye.'

  The waiter arrived with bread. Lynn tore off a chunk. 'Of all the people in the room, Lazy-Eye was the only one who kept listening.' He put the bread in his mouth but kept talking. 'He knows, Nick. And I made sure everyone saw me doing my money-changing routine, so he also knows I've got cash. He's not going to be in a hurry. It might be an hour or it might be two or three – he won't want anyone to make the connection with us. But when he makes his move, he'll either go straight to Mansour, in which case we'll follow him, or he'll be out here, looking for us. You'll see; I know these people.'

  83

  Lazy-Eye made his move shortly after 1 p.m., when I was halfway through my fifth or sixth glass.

  Lynn nudged me and pointed through the arch at a tall, thin man standing on the edge of the pavement outside Osman's. He was dressed in the worst mix-and-match combo I had ever seen, even by local standards – a cherry-red shirt, light green trousers and cowboy boots the orange side of tan.

  Lazy-Eye glanced at his watch and peered anxiously up and down the street. Finally, he stepped off the pavement and joined a throng of people heading away from the arch down Sharia Hara Kebir.

  Lynn slapped some coins on the table and we joined them, hanging back but close enough for me to cut him off if he had second thoughts.

  We followed him for several hundred metres down the main thoroughfare, then left i
nto the maze of alleys. The ground was dry; the sun had done its stuff.

  I grabbed Lynn's arm. 'You stay with him and I'll parallel and try to cut him off.'

  I picked up my pace, walking another thirty metres along Sharia Hara Kebir before taking the next left turn. There were no shops here, only houses – I was back in the labyrinthine streets with the whitewashed facades and interior courtyards we'd passed by earlier.

  Off the main drag, there were fewer people around, too – in winter, Arabs tend to finish working at 1 p.m., then go home for a siesta, returning to work at four and finishing for the day at around six thirty.

  With no one behind or in front of me, I quickened my pace down the alley until I picked up the first junction. I took a right – no one there either – and ran down it. As I approached the alley where I'd left Lynn and Lazy-Eye, I slowed to walking pace, took some deep gulps of oxygen, regulated my breathing and listened.