by James Becker
‘Suppose they don’t believe us?’ Stephen asked. He had perked up considerably the moment they’d turned on to the road inside Kuwait that paralleled the border.
‘I’d rather take my chances with British justice than sit in an Arab court hoping for the best. I took a bunch of pictures of the dead bodies on my phone before we left the camp, and that will help establish our innocence. My arrival time at Kuwait Airport should be enough to prove that the killings must have taken place well before our arrival. I’ll take some shots of the damage to this jeep as well before we fly out, and that should substantiate what we tell them.’
21
Vicinity of Al Muthanna, Iraq
‘My men did their best, Khaled,’ Farooq said, ‘but the woman was lucky. And whoever was driving that car knew what they were doing. We didn’t anticipate that. My gunner is certain he hit the vehicle at least twice, but obviously the bullets missed the engine and anything else that would have stopped them.’
Khaled nodded. There was no point in recriminations, and he was very aware that the main reason the woman was still alive was because of his original mistake.
He and Farooq had done a quick headcount of the bodies of the archaeological team while they were looking for the satellite phone, and he was now aware that one of the men was also missing. He guessed that archaeologist was one of the two men accompanying the woman, though he still didn’t know who the second man could be.
‘So what will you do now?’ Farooq asked.
‘I will decipher the inscription and follow the trail that it reveals,’ Khaled said. ‘That is the most important task, and the reason for everything we have done.’
‘So you’ll have to forget about the woman?’
Khaled shook his head.
‘No. That trail is still fresh. I have a good idea what she’s likely to do and where she’ll go. These people are very predictable. I have contacts I can task to find and follow her, and when they track her down I will see that she is silenced for ever. Bring me the sat phone. I have calls to make.’
22
Kuwait City
Their first look at the departure board at the airport was not encouraging. There were plenty of planes leaving, but almost every flight was not only operated by an Arab-owned airline, but was also flying to an airport in another Arabic country, precisely the combination Bronson most wanted to avoid.
‘We’ll take that one,’ Bronson said, coming to an immediate decision. ‘The Nile Air flight to Alexandria.’
‘Pardon me for asking,’ Stephen said, ‘but isn’t Egypt an Arab country?’
‘It is,’ Bronson agreed, ‘but it’s not a Gulf Arab state, and right now that looks to me like our best option. If you’ve got any better ideas, now’s the time to share them.’
There was only a short queue at the Nile Air ticket counter, and apart from the clerk nobody so much as glanced at them as Bronson bought the tickets. None of them had even heard of the airline, but the aircraft was a modern Airbus A320. Boarding was on time, the three-and-a-half-hour flight passed entirely without incident, and after the aircraft touched down in Alexandria they walked straight through customs and immigration.
The next problem was the complete lack of any useful onward destination from Alexandria, and after a few frantic minutes checking schedules and departure times, they knew they had only one option: get to Cairo. They left the airport after hitting a couple of the ATMs hard and piled into the first taxi they saw outside. There was a train service between Alexandria and Cairo, but even if it left spot on time it would get them to the airport precisely five minutes before the next possible flight took off. And that was never going to work. Their only hope was to put their trust in the ability and competence of an Egyptian taxi driver.
‘I hope you know what we’re doing,’ Angela said from the back seat, pulling her seat belt as tight as it would go.
Bronson glanced over his shoulder, gave her an encouraging nod and then waved a fistful of Egyptian pounds in front of the driver’s face.
‘Cairo International,’ he said, ‘as fast as you can.’
Getting from place to place quickly on Egyptian roads is never easy. The traffic, especially near the major cities, is invariably horrendous. The road surfaces frequently alternate between new smooth tarmac and stretches where the metal layer has almost completely disappeared to reveal the rutted and potholed base below the road. And, of course, there are frequent police checkpoints, toll booths, wrecked vehicles and other obstructions to impede progress.
But Bronson remained hopeful. The distance between the two cities was a little over 100 miles and there was even an almost direct road – the Cairo–Alexandria desert road – that was virtually all dual carriageway. Once they’d cleared the traffic around Alexandria, providing they didn’t run into the tailback after a major accident, and the driving conditions permitted the taxi driver to really wind it up, Bronson reckoned they ought to cover it in just under two hours. And that would be just enough time.
The biggest problem, really, was getting out of Alexandria.
‘Is this the evening rush hour?’ he asked the driver in English, as he looked through the window at gridlocked lanes in both directions.
The man shook his head, so Bronson tried again, this time in French.
That produced an immediate response, and the two of them had a brief but animated conversation, the driver gesticulating in both directions, but finishing up by pointing ahead of them.
‘What did he say?’ Angela asked.
Bronson half turned in his seat to face her.
‘He knows what the problem is,’ he replied, ‘because he can see it, and there’s been some stuff on his radio as well. A lorry has broken down, just stopped dead, in the middle of the road at the next intersection. He’s going to try to work his way around it, as soon as a gap opens up.’
In fact, a gap didn’t so much open up as be created by the driver. He sounded his horn in a long continuous blare as he swung the steering wheel to the right, sticking the nose of the Mercedes directly in front of a Toyota pickup. The moment the car in front of the pickup moved, he slid further over, angling the taxi towards a side street that appeared mercifully clear of traffic, the entire manoeuvre accompanied by a cacophony of noisy blasts from horns and hooters but, perhaps surprisingly, no angry gestures from the drivers he was inconveniencing. If he’d tried the same manoeuvre in a London street, Bronson guessed it would have ended in blows.
At the end of that street was a set of traffic lights showing red. The driver slowed, but didn’t stop – and neither did the three cars in front of him and the two behind – simply pulling out of the junction, sounding the horn and joining the traffic flow on the cross street. That manoeuvre caused Bronson to press his foot hard down on the imaginary brake in front of him, and take a firm grip of the grab handle on the door. But they didn’t hit anything, and the other cars parted to allow them in.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Stephen muttered from the back seat, invoking the deity yet again.
Bronson waited until they were travelling in a straight line once more, in harmony with the surrounding traffic, before he spoke again to the driver in French.
He listened to the man’s reply, and then laughed.
‘What?’ Angela demanded.
‘He’s just told me he’s heard that in England the drivers always obey the traffic lights. And that in Italy the drivers ignore the traffic lights. But here in Egypt, the traffic lights are only for decoration.’
‘That explains a hell of a lot,’ Angela said darkly.
But that was the last major hold-up they encountered, and within a few minutes the Mercedes was heading away from Alexandria on the desert road. The driver did well, holding the Mercedes saloon at well over an indicated 100 kilometres an hour when he could and travelling as fast as the conditions permitted when he couldn’t. They didn’t meet a significant amount of traffic and they didn’t see a single accident, and they stepped out of the taxi
at the departure building at just after nine forty-five. Bronson didn’t count the money, just handed the wad to the driver as he stepped away from the vehicle.
‘Where are we going now?’ Stephen asked.
‘Well, we’ve got the same problem at Cairo as we had at Alexandria,’ Bronson replied. ‘No flights to anywhere where we actually want to go. That’s why we’re heading for Sharm el-Sheikh. But look on the bright side.’
‘There’s a bright side?’ Angela asked.
‘Oh yes. Nobody would realistically expect us to be following the route that we’re taking, so if anyone is after us, they probably have no idea where we are right now, or where we’re heading.’
They caught the flight with minutes to spare, and exactly an hour later the EgyptAir Boeing 737 touched down precisely on schedule in Sharm at half past eleven.
Then Bronson felt they could breathe again, and for the first time since they’d left Kuwait they had time in hand, because the next flight he’d picked – to Milan – wasn’t scheduled to depart until two thirty in the morning.
He insisted that they delayed buying their tickets until about an hour before the flight was due to leave, to minimize the amount of time the opposition would have to work out where they were and to do anything about it. When he decided that the time was right, they again bought return tickets as they’d done on the previous two flights to arouse less suspicion.
They passed through the security check without incident and sat down in the departure lounge. It looked as if the flight would be at least half full, judging by the number of people already waiting at the gate, but they were able to find three seats off to one side where they sat and waited for boarding.
There was, clearly, only one topic of conversation that interested them. None of them could understand the reason for the apparently senseless massacre of their colleagues out at the dig site. They kept their voices low, just in case any of the other passengers, most of whom appeared to be Arabs, could understand English.
‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ Stephen said for about the third time.
‘The inscription in the temple …’ Angela said. ‘Whatever it said has to be really important.’
‘Pity we’ll never know what that was,’ Bronson pointed out, glancing at Angela. ‘Or is there something you should be telling me?’
‘You know me too well, Chris,’ Angela said with a slight smile. ‘You know the way I work. The very first time I went down into the temple I took my camera with me. I have plenty of pictures of the inscription. We can look at them right now if you want. If it is worth killing for, we need to work out why as soon as we can.’
Bronson smiled back.
‘Actually, I thought you might have done something like that, because I know you do enjoy a puzzle.’
‘So do you.’
‘That’s why I’m a copper, I suppose,’ Bronson replied. ‘And this could well be the biggest puzzle we’ve ever got ourselves caught up in. Just as much as you do, I want to find out why the hell that inscription was so important it had to be destroyed, and why everybody who’d seen it was murdered. There’s nobody near us, so can we take a look at the pictures now?’
Angela nodded, glanced around them, then pulled her camera out of her carry-on bag and switched it on. She navigated through the gallery until she found the image she was looking for, and handed the camera to Bronson.
He stared at the small image for a few seconds, then shook his head.
‘It’s not what I was expecting,’ he said. ‘It looks quite rough, like it was done in a hurry, or by somebody copying something unfamiliar.’
‘You can see it better on a big screen, obviously,’ Angela said, taking back the camera, ‘but you’re right: it was quite roughly carved.’
Stephen had barely even glanced at the screen of the camera; he just kept nervously looking around the departure lounge.
‘Do you think we’re still in danger?’ he asked.
‘After the efforts they made to kill us today,’ Bronson said, ‘I think you can safely assume that if those people can possibly do so, they’ll kill us immediately. But it’s a bit different assassinating someone on the streets of London than machine-gunning a jeep in the Iraqi desert. Once we get back to Britain, my guess is that we’ll be safe enough, especially if we do the obvious and post pictures of the inscription on the Internet, which will release the images into the public domain. They’d probably still like to tie up the loose ends, but they wouldn’t actually achieve anything if they did murder you.’
‘Cold comfort,’ Angela said, ‘but comfort all the same.’
The talk ranged back and forth, but without them reaching any conclusion that made sense of what had happened. Although they were talking together, all three of them were supremely conscious of their surroundings, and in particular the possibility of police officers or airline officials approaching them. Not that they could have done anything much if that had happened. But eventually they boarded the Meridiana Boeing 767 to Milan without incident. As they buckled up their seat belts, Angela breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Are we really safe now?’ she asked.
‘We’re safer, but I wouldn’t say we’re actually safe yet,’ Bronson replied. ‘Just work out the timing. The police from Baghdad will have reached the camp this afternoon, and when they found that we weren’t waiting for them as they instructed they would immediately have started looking for us, because that’s how the corporate police mind functions. They would know, and if they didn’t know they would definitely have guessed, that about the only place we could go would be Kuwait, and if I was running the investigation absolutely the first thing I’d have done would be to block the two of you from getting on any aircraft, going anywhere.’
Stephen looked around anxiously, as if already checking for a policeman brandishing handcuffs to be approaching him down the aisle of the aircraft.
But Bronson shook his head.
‘I think we’re okay for the moment,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I reckon it would have taken at least two or three hours for the wheels to start turning, and even if they began by running checks on credit card usage, it will still take them a significant amount of time to find out where we went once we left Kuwait. The electronic trail will basically stop in Alexandria, and they might well assume that we went to ground somewhere there. Obviously they’ll eventually discover that we flew down to Sharm el-Sheikh, and from there up to Italy, but I doubt if there’ll be any kind of a reception committee waiting for us in the arrivals hall at Milan airport. I just don’t believe that they could get the information in time to move that fast.’
Ten minutes after they’d boarded, and three minutes after its scheduled departure time, the Boeing lifted smoothly into the air and climbed swiftly up to its cruising altitude.
23
Milan
It was early morning, a few minutes after six, when the aircraft touched down in a damp and muggy Milano Malpensa airport. They passed through customs and immigration without any problems, and immediately made their way to the departure side to check on outbound flights to London.
‘We’re in luck,’ Bronson said, pointing at the board, which showed two scheduled flights to London, both leaving at around eight.
But when they presented themselves at the ticket counters, they discovered that not only were both flights fully booked, but there were around a dozen people on the waiting list for each one.
That really only left them with two other options. They could find a hotel or get out of Milan using a different form of transport than an aircraft, and in Bronson’s opinion, keeping moving was far more important than getting some sleep.
Stephen had a different point of view.
‘Do we really need to do this?’ he complained. ‘I’m completely knackered.’
‘We all are,’ Angela snapped, ‘but Chris is just trying to keep us alive, and I’m going with him. If you want to stay here, that’s entirely up to you.’
Stephen
looked from one to the other, and shook his head.
‘I can’t see how they could possibly trace us this far in such a short time. This is Milan anyway, it’s not like we’re still in the Middle East. I’m going to find a hotel near the airport, get some sleep and then fly back to London this afternoon or sometime tomorrow.’
‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea, but it’s your choice,’ Bronson said. ‘One word of advice, though. When you check in, make sure you use a different name and pay in cash. Definitely don’t show the clerk your passport or anything that can identify you. Tell them that you’ve been robbed and that all your personal documents have been stolen. That way, if anybody does manage to trace us here, they’ll have no way of telling where you went after we disembarked from that aircraft.’
Stephen nodded absent-mindedly. ‘Thank you for everything you did back there,’ he said.
He hugged Angela, shook Bronson’s hand, and walked away towards the exit from the arrivals hall.
Angela watched him go, a thoughtful expression on her face.
‘I’m tempted to say he’s right, you know,’ she said. ‘This could be a bit of overkill on your part.’
Bronson shrugged. ‘Maybe it is. Maybe not. I just really don’t want to take the chance, especially not if you’re likely to be in the firing line. Doing this should hopefully break the chain completely. Nobody – not the men following us or the Iraqi police or anybody else – should know that I’m involved at all yet, so the paper trail that you’ve left from Kuwait City will end right here in Milan, and there’ll be nothing to show where you went or what you did after you walked out of the airport.’
Angela nodded. ‘You’ve talked me into it,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to go with you to the desk?’
‘Definitely not. I don’t want anybody here to remember us being together. There’s a café opening up just over there. Grab yourself a coffee and buy some soft drinks and a couple of sandwiches or something for the journey, and then walk out of the building. I’ll pick you up outside.’
