People on the Edge E-Book

Andrew Wells

• Herausgeber: novum pro Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 515

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Entanglement with Nadia, a beautiful, half-Arab, multi-lingual Italian girl leads Dale Connors' curiosity back over the previous fifty years as he uncovers an historical motive for a devilish terrorist plot in Libya. As sanctions against Libya are lifted he reluctantly leads a race against time to prevent a disaster as he and a young team from three of Europe's secret service agencies put together the pieces of a puzzle that stretches to Egypt, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. A tantalising and thoughtful thriller, built around real people doing real jobs. 'People on the Edge' twists its way to a fast-paced, unexpected finale.

Leseprobe

Contents

Imprint 4

Prologue 5

1 12

2 20

3 26

4 35

5 39

6 45

7 52

8 57

9 63

10 67

11 70

12 74

13 78

14 79

15 86

16 89

17 90

18 93

19 107

20 114

21 127

22 135

23 137

24 141

25 143

26 146

27 149

28 150

29 153

30 155

31 161

32 165

33 171

34 173

35 176

36 178

37 181

38 185

39 191

40 193

41 197

42 200

43 202

44 208

45 213

46 221

47 226

48 231

49 234

50 235

51 236

52 238

53 240

54 245

55 248

56 251

57 253

58 256

59 259

60 261

61 264

62 268

63 273

64 274

65 276

66 284

67 287

68 290

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70 295

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72 299

73 301

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79 331

80 333

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2022 novum publishing

ISBN print edition: 978-3-99131-111-9

ISBN e-book: 978-3-99131-112-6

Editor: Hugo Chandler

Cover images: Stevanovicigor, Valeria De Martini | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting:novum publishing

www.novum-publishing.co.uk

Prologue

Five and a half weeks had passed and Raya knew something was wrong. Sunlight streamed through the inadequate curtains, billowing slightly in the breeze and she desperately wanted to jump out of bed and wrench them aside. She yearned to throw open the apartment window and gulp in the fresh early morning air before the traffic in the almost touchable street below stirred up its daily dose of acrid pollution; but something seemed to be holding her down, like a great hand on her body, and so she lay timorously inert, unable, or maybe not daring to move until the feeling in her stomach subsided. She had experienced this yesterday and almost convinced herself that the feeling was simply caused by tiredness and too much lonely, late night red wine, but in the end, she had had to sprint to the bathroom where she had very inelegantly succumbed to the demands of what was politely called ‘morning sickness.’ Would it be the same today? She hoped not but suspected gloomily that it might.

She chose not to think of the future. That could wait a few minutes longer, at least. Instead, she allowed her mind to phase backwards to happier times, as if the mere thought of the past would undo what she dreaded might be happening to her. Memories flooded into her brain as she recalled her first sight of Gerald at London airport when she had landed. He had been the same tall, smiling, lean faced, well-dressed professional she held in her mind’s eye, with his windswept straw-coloured hair flopping seductively over one eye. Looking relaxed and sophisticated in his own surroundings, he was completely in his element as the immigration and customs officers rushed around to process his young VIP guest. She had been treated like royalty, in a quiet office very separate from the madding hoards who were queuing up in their hundreds to push to the front of the impossibly long ‘others’ line in the terminal building.

Gerald had arrived first after his three-year tour of duty in the Libyan deserts and had managed to pull some long strings in the British Embassy to help her visa application along. She had been nervously impatient, waiting for the process to be completed but then pleasantly surprised that the forebodings of her sister Hasna, about the British propensity for refusing entry to unmarried young women from unusual countries, had proven unfounded. She had simply done as Gerald requested and paid in advance for a run of the mill language school course. Then, waving the receipt at the embassy visa desk all manner of normally closed doors had been magically opened. She knew that Gerald had orchestrated this, and she would be forever grateful to him for that.

Raya now spent her daytime hours happily studying while Gerald went about his mysterious foreign office business. Occasionally, he travelled, often for days on end. She had no idea where, although his capability in Arabic, Italian, French and Swahili probably gave her an indication. Mostly, he stayed at her apartment in Earls Court, after all, he had paid for it, but he apparently still kept his own apartment elsewhere in London. She did not know why, and she had never been invited to visit him there. When she asked to see it, he politely demurred, citing vague national security reasons. Her upbringing had taught her not to question government officials too much and so she had pushed this to the back of her mind. There were more urgent and exciting things to entertain her thoughts.

Their nights together were the times she looked forward to most. She realised that inventiveness came second nature to her, and they rarely spent more than a few hours asleep before luxuriating again in intimacy. Every surface in every room in their tiny apartment had its own special memories and she pondered these when Gerald was away, like now. Raya found that she pined for his touch to such an extent that she seriously wondered whether she was simply addicted to sex. This idea of physical pleasure went against her childhood education so much that the thought had at first startled her, but her newly improved English and her ventures into the London libraries had calmed her concerns. She concluded that she was normal after all. Her research proved illuminating and she became an avid devourer of all things to do with erotic arts; so much so that she doubled the number of borrower’s tickets she held and set herself the challenge of educating her ever-willing Gerald.

The past few months since she had arrived in London had been a whirl of dazzling nightlife, from the London theatres to curious restaurants and weekend breaks in the country. She had visited his parents’ country estate twice but had never actually stayed there. For some reason she had not been able to fathom why, they had always moved on before nightfall and found some delightful out-of-the-way village inn with splendid food and a huge four-poster bed; but she was deliriously happy and saw no negative motives in anything her handsome lover might do.

As she lay there in the brightening daylight, her attention refocused on the second visit to his family’s estate. She had met his father then and the memory still made her shudder a little. Gerald had introduced her as a friend, rather than a girlfriend, but otherwise, there was nothing specific she could put her finger on. However, she recalled his cold looks and the limited conversation that had taken place, and it had scared her. Gerald had dismissed her concerns as being nervousness on her part, but in her heart she knew there was something wrong. Like today, she thought, there’s something wrong; and as if to prove the point she threw off the quilt and sat up quickly. Immediately she felt the urge to be sick and only just managed to reach the bathroom in time. After a few minutes to recover she managed to crawl back to bed, and into a safe horizontal position.

Gerald was due back that evening and she thought back carefully, to the crazy time they had had in Paris only a few weeks ago. That had been another display of family influence, in getting her a tourist visa at almost no notice, but that wasn’t the thought that occupied her at that moment. She realised that, of late they had become casual and lazy about contraception and had been taking ever more risks. It had become an exciting game to see how long they could engage in erotic play without actually reaching an orgasm. She realised too, that it was almost certainly her own pushing that had prompted this change in behaviour and her thoughts began to turn more towards regret. She wondered if another change of pace was needed although every erogenous zone her body argued for more, not less. She had no wish to disrupt their idyllic lifestyle and had fond hopes that one day soon they might be able to make their relationship legal, although she dreaded the obstacles that her family would raise to block her way, so she decided that some sort of plan was necessary. Firstly, she needed to be sure of her condition; no point in worrying unduly, she thought. Her stomach seemed to be behaving at last, so she forced her thoughts towards nearby pharmacies and looked up the English words related to pregnancy tests in her dictionary.

On the other side of London, Gerald was on a high. He had just completed a difficult negotiation to open the way for an exclusive oil deal in the Middle East for British companies. He regretted the fact that his recent three-year tour of duty in North Africa had not been as fruitful, during which he had been amazed at how little could be achieved when policy outranked money as the official language between governments. He was in a taxi from the airport and looking forward to seeing Raya. It had been nearly two weeks since they had been together, and he smiled in anticipation at the thought of their imminent reunion. Their parting was still burned into his brain, coming as it had a few days after their wonderful Paris holiday. It had been an emotional, if not completely exhausting occasion and he mentally urged the chattering cockney in front to drive faster.

He closed his eyes, and his near photographic memory captured her image and subconsciously catalogued his thoughts. Beautiful (of course, he thought), twenty-two years old, tall, slim, with an oval face, olive skin, and long, long black hair. How he loved the feel of that hair, and she knew exactly what to do with it too. He relaxed into the grinding cab and daydreamed his way back to her apartment. Memories of the tiny hotel with the huge bed near the Louvre, the cafés where water was more expensive than wine, and the romantic river trips all flooded back. He had been surprised, and pleased that Raya had taken such an interest in the Crazy Horse show, as if she was trying to see whether there was anything to be learnt. It certainly seemed there had been, as he found out late that evening back in the hotel. They had finally fallen asleep at eight o’clock the next morning before a wake-up call for the airport taxi dragged them back to reality two hours later. Happy days, he thought.

Gerald climbed the stairs eagerly to their second-floor apartment and pulled out his keys. He made a display of rattling and banging them against the lock, while he deliberately fumbled his way into the slot. Finally, he pushed open the door in the full expectation of having Raya fling her arms around his neck, shrieking joyously as she normally did when she heard him at the door; but she did not throw her arms around his neck, and there was no shriek, no sound at all. In fact, she wasn’t there.

He looked around the two small rooms quickly, searched the tiny kitchen carefully for signs of habitation but only found a few empty wine bottles, so with an almost audible intake of breath, he carefully pushed open the bathroom door. It was empty too. He walked to the fridge and opened the door, but everything was normal. His stack of beer was untouched, and the only other food was a stray orange. Raya was not the world’s most adventurous cook. He found a glass and poured a beer, then sat down to think. Maybe she’d mixed up the date, or maybe she’d gone to meet him at a restaurant, and he’d not got the message. He looked around the flat one more time, but found no notes, no messages, nothing. His disappointment sapped his energy. He kicked off his shoes, gulped down his beer and rested his head on the sofa. In a few minutes tiredness overcame him, and he slept.

Raya was sitting in the park, watching the children playing after school. Their mums were attentive to their charges but clearly relished the chance to chat together. Raya felt a little out of place but wondered what she might be doing herself in a few months’ time. Her mind raced as she tried to stop herself jumping to conclusions. Her trip to the pharmacy had allowed her to buy a couple of test kits but the pharmacist had reminded her that she ought to wait until the following morning to use them, otherwise she might get a false result. She felt betrayed by technology and her plans to do this, or that, depending on the outcome of the test were in complete disarray. She had no idea how long she had sat in the park but as she enjoyed the calm of the evening sunshine and the quietening scene in front of her as the mums and children wander homeward, she suddenly remembered that Gerald would be coming back today.

She glanced at her watch and in horror, realised that she had been sitting daydreaming for nearly three hours. But she was rooted to the spot. Her confidence had evaporated and, without knowing, she felt completely at a loss. She must ‘know’ she thought, and then it came to her, like a bolt from the blue. She looked hastily round and walked quickly to the nearby copse of trees. Another glance around but the few remaining mums were too busy rounding up their offspring. She went further into the shelter of the trees, took out one of the test kits, lifted her skirt with one hand and, holding the fragile spatula in the other, she crouched behind a holly bush, said a prayer, and peed.

A few minutes later found her running, running as she’d never run before. Her mind had slotted into gear and begun to function again. She wanted to see Gerald, now. She wanted to throw her arms around him as she usually did. She wanted to shriek happily as she normally did. So, she ran. It was not far, but it seemed to take forever to reach the main road, and forever to wait for the traffic to slow enough for her to dart between the cars, and then the pavements were so crowded. She pushed and shoved her way forward until at last she turned the corner of the road by the bank and ran up the steps to the large porticoed front door. She punched the entry code, pushed through and kept running, up and up the seemingly never-ending stairs. Their apartment door opened easily to her key, and she burst inside.

Gerald stirred on the sofa and blinked open a bleary eye to find Raya’s face almost touching his. Not a word was spoken but within seconds they were kissing and tearing at each other’s clothes as they searched and found, again and again. They eventually progressed to the bedroom where they collapsed, almost steaming in the cool of the early evening. Raya nuzzled Gerald’s shoulder and pulled the quilt around them. They dozed for a while.

But Gerald felt something was different. Despite her energy, Raya was not her usual relaxed and happy-go-lucky free spirit.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Raya nuzzled deeper. He pushed her gently away and looked carefully at her face. She refused to return his gaze and after a few seconds, prised herself away and reached for her bag of books, where she had thrown it on the floor. Gerald was wide-awake now, his senses telling him something was wrong.

Raya delved into her bag and pulled out a white spatula, no longer than her middle finger. The small blue patch near the end caught the overhead light and flashed ominously. She handed the spatula to Gerald. His eyes widened and a look of shocked horror came over his face as the consequences of this tiny patch of blue ripped through his brain. He physically backed away from Raya, until he was almost falling off the bed.

“How could you?” he shouted.

Raya’s world fell apart.

1

Irrigation seemed such an obvious need. The dusty sand blew lazily in snake-like rivulets across the sizzling, soggy tarmac leaving a pristine surface in its wake. The few trees that had struggled through the dunes were now gnarled and shrivelled sticks, long polished by the blown sand and dried to tinder by the relentless sunshine. They appeared in the overpowering heat like ancient statues of wizened old travellers, tramping through the desert and frozen in time. In the distance, the outline of the airport shimmered like an oasis in the afternoon desert air, its verdant welcome of featured fountains surmounted by waving palm fronds; a forlorn attempt to give the necessary good impression to newcomers. In the surrounding environs there was nothing, no farms, no buildings, no people, and no water. A solitary camel waded sulkily through the spiky undergrowth, nibbling occasionally from the unappetising meagreness. Between the road and the camel was a rusty steel mesh fence that looked as if it was designed to keep out an army, rather than a few grizzled animals.

Dale Connors had imagined he would change great prairies of dusty desert sand into swathes of rolling greenness like the East Sussex Downs of his youth. Dale was Business Development Manager for Global Infrastructure Ltd, a large multi-country, multi-cultural, multi-services company that specialised in the creation, design and management of large projects around the world. If people needed infrastructure, airports, roads, dams, offices, palaces, parks, railways, schools or hospitals then Dale and his colleagues were interested. He had arrived on his first visit to Libya full of optimism that he could make a difference and change just a small part of the world for the better. He often wondered at his own gullibility, hesitating to call it naivety and preferring the description ‘optimism.’ After all, he thought, without optimism and courage there would be no progress.

But this place was tough; much tougher than anywhere else he had worked, and he had already been to every continent in the world in his fourteen-year career, which seemed to specialise in working in the more unusual parts of the world. In the time since he had been coming to Libya he had learned emphatically that nothing was ever as it seemed. The whole country was run by committees. In fact, it was more correct to say it was run by committees of committees, all monitored by further committees of security officials. Everyone was represented by someone, somewhere in the multiple machinations of the cumbersome system, and everyone was watched and reported upon by someone else; and so the great stage settings of committee work plodded their tedious way around meaningless work targets and endless reports of artfully created results. They dwelt relentlessly on bureaucratic topics and yet insisted on recording suggestions for improvement with a sense of purpose that belied their ability for change. The ill-informed chairmen listening half-heartedly to the representatives of the people who, had they been there themselves might actually have had something useful to say. Dale and his team found the process intensely frustrating. Obvious solutions were, for obscure and unrecorded reasons always relegated to second place behind political interests, generally of the personal, vested interest variety. So, they learnt to match the whims and cover the foibles of ministry officials with some of their irrigation project’s aims; and in this way, they managed to at least appease the demands of both, whether they be voiced, clearly perceived or merely hinted at. It was enough to make slow progress.

The Ministry of Agriculture was housed in a forlorn looking building, some nine stories high. Its windows were shrouded in impenetrable grime and dust, its doorways uninviting and its security staff unbending to all but the intensely persistent. The ministry’s remit nonetheless governed the lives of the vast majority of the population. Simply put, they had to feed the nation, striving to grow any and every possibly crop on the mountains of sand and dust, which formed the hinterland to the coastal cities, or cultivating the endless salty flatland close to the sea. Equally simply put, their resources to achieve such a task were close to zero and their obstacles considerable.

They needed water, but there was none within practical reach of the coastal cities. So, Agriculture had to deal with the Ministry of Power, as most water came in concert with electricity from the fearsomely expensive desalination plants installed in bygone years. The plants ran on oil, piped over huge distances from the country’s interior. The economics of these two staple utilities was a well-guarded secret, except that most knew that they had made a select few of the ruling group extremely rich in illegal offshore funds.

They needed equipment and pipelines to transmit water to where it was needed, but sanctions forbade their import. So, they resorted to cannibalising the country’s older oil fields for their basic necessities. This took time, of which they had plenty, and influence with the Ministry of Oil, of which they had very little.

They needed economic scale but there was none. The farming communities were deliberately divided into small tenant plots where a single family could supposedly survive. Equality was the political watchword. Small families, small plots, small-scale farming, large-scale administration and bureaucracy built on committees. It was the politics of people-empowerment and certainly kept the population employed, or at any rate occupied, although in such an inefficient manner that Dale wondered inwardly how long it could possibly last. Each family was allocated a part share in a tractor, and they had to plan and argue for their use of this with several other families in the co-operative. The fuel was free but rationed. In fact, there were more officials dealing with fuel allocations than there were mechanics looking after the tractors and their various antiquated attachments. So, getting things done was slow, painfully slow, and in the meantime, water was scarce to non-existent. The families laboured under the sun to bring up their children with whatever produce they could grow, in addition to the quota needed for the common good.

They needed a means of getting produce to market, even though prices were fixed, and the food supply was centrally directed and rationed; but the lorries used to transport produce were the responsibility of the co-operatives and the small holders would queue in vain to ensure that their produce was collected on time. Refrigeration was a thing of the future for these families and so the daily battle against the system was fuelled by the ever-imminent threat of rotten crops. As spoiled crops meant no pay, the families’ efforts were focused on beating the system, rather than efficiently growing food.

Dale’s project was to get irrigation water to the small farms and to make it safe for their families to use. It had started amidst what he jokingly termed an environment of militant apathy among the ministry officials who openly admitted that they knew all the answers, had had endless studies done before and all they wanted was the wherewithal to get on and implement something. More to the point, they wanted someone else to provide the money, enough money in fact that someone else could do the getting on and implementing and leave enough for them to participate in rich pickings too. Dale’s team nonetheless included an agricultural expert whose job had been to advise on crop selection and water optimisation.

Winston Stanford was an experienced dry-climate specialist who knew his stuff and always found, as he found here, that the clients already knew what they needed to know, just like they told him every day. They simply needed the means to do it, just like they told him every day too. Winston was an unusual Brit, a ‘character’ who insisted on wearing one of a colourful collection of sarongs when not actually working. He claimed it was a habit he had picked up in India and would appear at the hotel bar or pool wearing one of his frail and precarious garments. The way it was tucked into itself beneath his now ageing belly and hairy torso defied both gravity and physics as it clung tenaciously to his lower body.

No one ever knew what he wore beneath but his assistant, Marlena, a solid and sombre German girl who didn’t know a great deal about soils but did speak excellent Arabic, would hint in her rare moments of humour that he was really Scottish at heart. To the local lads in the hotel, this news was not especially enlightening and so Dale entertained them with lengthy discussions explaining the history of Scotsmen, kilts and underwear. For good measure, he told them stories about the haggis, and would have them believe in this mythical animal of the past, to the point where they constantly sought more and more of his seemingly never-ending tales; but all this tongue in cheekiness confused Marlena and offended her logical mind. She would raise her eyebrows in abject resignation at his so-called British sense of humour.

Dale was not altogether sure where Marlena had appeared from. His boss in the UK, Jim Westead had suggested her as a team member and had assumed that his suggestion would be adopted. There really had been no discussion, but her linguistic abilities made up for any perceived inadequacies and in the endless meetings with the co-operatives’ committees, she was invaluable. She was also a ferret for facts. They had sat with several families, always chaperoned by a collection of committee representatives and when questions about farming were raised, the official figures were trotted out, but at such evident disparity with the facts that Dale and his team ended up with two sets of notes. One was official for the files and one as real as they could tactfully manage. This generally stayed out of sight on their project computer hard drive. Everything they printed was scrutinised by their security chaperones. Everything they said was listened to for hidden innuendo. Everything they did was commented on and discussed by the small group who were allotted to them. It became a game they learnt to play quite effectively, and in time the local watchers grew tired and bored, and then careless.

In the Ministry of Agriculture, the technical staff were all Egyptian. They worked as expatriates for Libya’s national staff who were their senior managers. They were a dusty, large and ambling bunch, generally amiable but nonetheless a group who knew how to get things done, albeit slowly, without actually doing anything themselves. The people who ran around at everyone’s beck and call were Palestinian. They were not expatriates but a people in exile, and without them, the place would have fallen apart.

Kept on short leashes through an under-the-table system of visas and work permits that made them completely servile to their ministry managers, the Palestinian workers were willing, intelligent, underpaid and very under-fulfilled. They were however, as one young worker told Dale one evening, “alive.” “And when Palestine is free” he had mused, “we will return there with our families.” The young fellow had a six-year-old daughter who had been born in exile. There was no obvious end in sight.

Their visas could cost them half their pay and their accommodation, without long term papers, was expensive. They were indeed a people on the edge of existence, exiled westwards along the southern Mediterranean shore until they could be exiled no further. Without homeland, nationality, passport or rights, they were nonetheless part of a people bound together by such patriotic strength that it seemed to Dale that their very souls provided the life force on which they thrived. The country accepted them for what they were, people with a cause, but also competent and uncomplaining workers. It exploited them for what they could provide.

Dale’s project needed maps and here the Ministry of Security came into its own. When he had fought his way through layers of officials in explaining exactly why he needed the maps and that it was nigh impossible to plan anything engineeringly orientated without them, he was then faced with the inevitable negotiation of the fee. In vain, he explained that their contract stated that maps and government information would be issued free of charge. In vain, he attempted to bargain the astronomic price downwards. The only concession he obtained was that he could pay out of the local currency fee component of the project.

But in the Ministry of Agriculture, he came up against the ultimate barrier.

“Your money’s in the safe” advised a cautious Sulaiman, the large forty-year-old Egyptian in charge of procurement and contracts, “and we can’t open the safe. It’s stuck,” he added sheepishly.

Dale asked to see the offending chunk of metal and found that the safe was indeed closed. It was a circular combination lock with tumblers. “But surely you have the code?” he asked, “it can’t be so difficult to open.”

“Well, yes” pondered an embarrassed Sulaiman, as if not sure how to admit the real story, “but the instructions are in a strange sort of language that we can’t understand and so we aren’t able to open the safe.” He spread his hands expansively. “The fact is we don’t usually close the safe. It sort of closed itself.”

Dale did not believe his ears but offered to try and help, and Sulaiman handed over the instruction booklet and code with an obvious sigh of relief. After a couple of minutes study Dale could see the problem. The instructions were indeed long, running to some six pages and written in that form of instructional shorthand so beloved of board game manufacturers. He persevered through the demented dungeons-and-dragons-like literature, until after twisting and turning the reluctant, clunky tumblers backwards and forwards, he finally managed to open the door on the third attempt.

“La voila!” he exclaimed.

Sulaiman leapt into action and, retrieving an old tennis shoe from beneath his desk he stuck it firmly in the doorjamb of the safe. His wide face beamed his happiness and in short order, he had paid Dale the whole of his local currency fee and invited him round to his house for dinner on the following day.

“Does Fatimah know where you live?” asked Dale, thinking of his ministry-provided driver.

“Oh yes” chuckled a still happy Sulaiman, “no problem there.”

The safe door remained visibly propped ajar. Dale’s payment had hardly made a dent in its contents.

In due course, the maps were delivered personally by a Ministry of Security official. Fuad Asmi himself had done the honours and brought the bundle into their project office as if it contained the crown jewels themselves. After much signing and rubber stamping of papers the team carried their prize away and opened it up in anticipation. To their surprise, the maps were full of holes, huge gaping holes cut out by hand in the most unlikely places. It was as if a gigantic moth had feasted on their maps while in transit. It was a bizarre sight and only Marlena seemed to take this turn of events in her stride. She pointed out that every sensitive security risk, every official building, and every piece of officially secret land had been simply excised from the map. She also pointed out that some other countries’ agencies blackened sensitive areas but not many went to the trouble of cutting them out. It was as if the administration wanted to broadcast the locations rather than hide them from sight. Marlena also warned them that Fuad was the Deputy to Fayez Shakari, the chief of the country’s secret police. Her implication was clear. “Be very careful,” she added.

Dale wondered how she was so knowledgeable but let it pass. It struck him that Marlena was maybe not just a simple agronomist. Sure, she knew her stuff in an academic sort of way but lacked the fire and enthusiasm exhibited by Winston. She was also decidedly vague about her past experience in this type of work and her face was always a masterclass in inscrutability.

But for now, the team could at least make progress. They also knew where not to tread and although the holes were more representative of a giant colander it was comforting to have their limits shown clearly.

2

The two bearded, dark-complexioned men sat in the departures lounge at Heathrow. Their destination was Frankfurt but their route to reach their present location had been tortuous. Their travel plan had taken them first to Milan, then Paris by air, and then on to London by cross channel train, where they picked up a hire car. With the car they had visited Stanstead and Manchester airports.

Jamil Shakari was more interested in the cities and the nightlife. He was the only son of Fayez Shakari, whose capabilities and successes in charge of the secret police were legendary and whose contacts were impressive. Unfortunately, Jamil only appeared to have inherited his father’s size and propensity for food, drink and women, while attempting unsuccessfully to cover his lack of professional abilities through general vindictiveness and ordered-up brutality towards his luckless suspects. He was however careful to only allow others to indulge in any thuggery he demanded. His hands were kept spotless.

Jamil was over-fed, over-privileged, arrogant and impatient. He had money to burn and intended to treat himself well. In Milan, they had blown quite a considerable sum in the upper end clothing shops, followed by the bars and nightclubs around the back streets of the Duomo area, before finally parting company in the early hours. His companion Hussein pleaded tiredness and had headed back to their hotel, but Jamil wasn’t to be deterred and wended his way to an almost deserted Corso Sempione to find a girl for the rest of the night.

The girls were exceptionally well heeled. It was a cold April night and fur coats were very much in evidence. This was the serious red-light district in Milan, not like one of the infamous areas out towards the stadium where anything and everything was on display. In the cut-price areas, the girls wore very little all the year round, sometimes burning old tyres in an effort to stave off the cold, so desperate were they to show off their assets to full advantage in the competitive street environment, but not here. Corso Sempione was where you didn’t ask the price. If you did, you probably couldn’t afford it. This was for men with serious money only.

Jamil surveyed the girls arrayed along the roadside. Several lounged against upmarket cars and he walked purposefully towards a tall dark-haired beauty. Without speaking, she scooped him into her Porsche and then said something in Italian to him. He was overawed, completely enraptured by the girl and simply said “Yes.” He had no idea what she’d said and had been too awestruck to pay attention anyway. He struggled with rapid English, let alone Italian, so he hoped his pocket full of dollar notes would do the talking. The girl was stunning and murmured something further in Italian. Jamil simply nodded. She was so unlike any of the girls back home.

The girl slowly drove off and Jamil was surprised when they pulled into a tiny pensione only two hundred metres away. He looked around him and noticed that all the cars in the packed parking area were either very fast, very sporty, very luxurious, or all three. The old pensione owner spoke perfect English and was a paragon of helpfulness, although he met Jamil’s request for a room for the night with quiet amusement. “We rent the rooms by the quarter of an hour” he told them, “how many quarters would you like?” Jamil’s girl looked suitably impressed at the wad of dollars he handed over.

“Send us up a bottle of your special champagne,” she smiled knowingly at the owner who looked her straight in the eyes and nodded in response. She pulled her fur around her elegant shoulders and smiled. Tonight, she would have no trouble earning a good fee.

Hussein walked towards his hotel and when he was sure that Jamil wasn’t following he dived down a side street and into a phone booth. For ten minutes he grappled with his memory, but it was no use. The credit on his phone card was almost gone and so far he had failed to find the right combination of digits. He struggled again to remember the sequence. Why hadn’t he written them down, he wondered. Of course, he knew why. It was much too dangerous to carry such numbers around with him. His last attempt to connect was answered and he shifted his attention to the voice, but he immediately knew he had failed. The phone has been answered by an unfamiliar, angry voice, clearly not happy at being woken at such an antisocial hour of the night.

Hussein gave up and threw away the card in disgust, angry at himself for his stupidity in forgetting the number and brooding about what his new lords and masters would have to say. He stumbled back to the main road and turned his attention to finding the hotel. He pondered for a moment on what Jamil might be doing but put that from his mind too. He didn’t care for Jamil and certainly didn’t want to compete in his games.

On the top floor of the pensione, the girl carefully emptied the wallet of its remaining banknotes, wondered why there were no credit cards nor in fact any identification at all, and then replaced it in Jamil’s jacket pocket. She picked up the half-finished bottle of wine, opened the door quietly and slipped carefully out of the tiny room. Jamil slept on peacefully. His energy quickly spent, even quicker than his dollars, he had collapsed before the first quarter of an hour was over, and although the room was paid for until morning, the girl clearly had other things to attend to and had no compunction leaving her now unconscious and impecunious client to his own devices. She descended the stairs and tipped the pensione owner, handing back the bottle as she passed his desk. When Jamil asked him in the morning what had happened to the girl, the old owner would tell him she had just left. He had ‘just missed her,’ he would add. But Jamil wouldn’t be waking up for some hours yet, not with the extra sleeping draught he had unwittingly taken. The old man tucked the extra money away in his pocket and went through to the small bar to wash out the bottle.

As they sat in departures, Hussein was worried, and voiced his concern for what must have been the tenth time to Jamil. “Our tickets are traceable” he said, “and our hire car is traceable. If anyone puts two and two together they will trace our entire route.”

Jamil turned to face him. “Listen,” he warned, “we started with false papers and changed the whole lot again in the UK. By the time anyone catches up with us we will be long gone.”

But Hussein was a worrier. “Jamil” he continued, “how are we going to get enough information? This is our fifth airport in as many days, and we’ve not been able to get behind the gates of any of the cargo areas. There are cameras everywhere and we simply don’t look like most of the people here. We are very obvious. Since 9/11, every time an Arab travels anywhere half the world’s security staff are looking over his shoulder, especially at airports. I don’t understand how we can get the information we need.”

Jamil knew he was right but was not about to lose face in admitting it. He had already concluded the same thing and would have to face his father with the reality of modern airport security when they returned. “Don’t worry” he mumbled, “we have a plan,” although he had to admit that the current plan was not working, and he had absolutely no idea how to do better.

Hussein was right to worry. Their movements had already been noticed. In fact, from the time Jamil had been off on his night’s wanderings in London they had been marked men. They had stayed in a medium-priced hotel in Gloucester Road and Jamil had spent a happy two hours collecting hookers’ flyers from the local public telephone boxes before sitting down with the hotel telephone and notepad to do some serious research for the evening. Hussein had not seen him again until morning, when Jamil had appeared in the lobby late, with a happy glazed expression on his face.

“No sleep, no money,” he announced to the desk clerk. Hussein paid the bill.

What Jamil had not known was that the two girls he favoured with his London wad of dollars were informers who were paid to be on the lookout for high-spending Arab gentlemen of no discernible occupation. Jamil and Hussein’s exit from the Gloucester Road hotel had been telegraphed to a room in Whitehall and they were now targets of the British security services. Their names had thrown up nothing in any record, but Hussein’s photo had raised serious alarm bells. It exactly matched a known asset of British Intelligence, supposedly not in the UK at the time.

Somewhere in the labyrinth of buildings next to London’s Vauxhall Bridge a very senior intelligence officer looked at the file in front of him. The name didn’t match of course but the face was remarkably similar. The computer scan had given it fifteen points of similarity, but he ignored that and looked at the trace. The two Arabs had hired a car in London three days ago and returned it with nearly five hundred miles on the clock. So far, he didn’t know where they had been, but it evidently was not driving round Hyde Park. The officer placed a call to Russell Clark. He needed a second view on the picture of Hussein Al Baz and if it was the same person then Russell should know. After all, he had recruited him. There was something he did not like about these two. He made a note to call Frankfurt, the pair’s next destination, later. Meanwhile he had more of the men’s photographs run through the database. Better give the system a chance, he thought.

As the plane landed in Frankfurt, Hussein looked out of the window. There seemed to be an awful lot of police cars busily circling the plane. He was frightened. He was still kicking himself for forgetting the UK telephone number but even that had been an afterthought, a belated act of conscience. He knew his correct path should have been to forewarn his London contact about this trip before it happened but, he kept telling himself, there simple hadn’t been time. Of course, there was always time, but Hussein was seriously concerned for his safety. Back home, he knew his turf. Here he did not. In his darker moments he imagined that the Brits must have noticed him in London. After all they had cameras everywhere. Why had they not picked him up? Then he rationalised, even if they recognised him they would probably keep it quiet, because it was unlikely that they would want to publicise what they were doing in his country. He brooded on and on. Jamil was snoring at his side, despite the landing.

Their plan had been to leave Frankfurt airport using their current false ID and then to revert to their previous identity as soon as they returned to Libya. Jamil had a theory that immigration officials never cared who left their country, only about who arrived, so if someone disappeared after arriving then that was a fair way for them to play the game. Hussein’s view was that Europe was now much more co-ordinated. He was worried.

As they entered the terminal building they realised how large the airport complex was. To even walk around was a problem as they had no tickets or boarding passes. To approach the cargo areas looked impossible unless you were German and at least two metres tall. They clearly were neither.

“How about going to the nightclub district,” asked Hussein. “We can think through our plan there.”

Jamil had no trouble agreeing. They grabbed an old Mercedes taxi at the airport entrance and, as it sped them to yet another seedy hotel, they carefully stuffed their passports under the greasy rear seat cushion and reverted to their previous false identities. To Hussein it seemed a complicated way to achieve not very much. But at least the trip was nearly over. Only two more days to worry.

3

Dale and his small team were driven everywhere by their willing Fatimah, and it was with some difficulty that they persuaded her to drop them at a street-side café, rather than the hotel. She had become agitated and concerned, both for their safety and also about her job, and her usually stilted English became determinedly non-existent. So, in the end they compromised and had her drive past the hotel on the way to the coffee shop they had in mind. It was only a ten-minute walk back to the hotel and she could at least say that she had taken them back to their official residence. Honour had been satisfied.

The café had an Italian name emblazoned in faded grandeur across its front window. Who Marco had been, and why he had started a café remained a well-hidden mystery as there was certainly little sign of the owner’s former foreign influence anymore. The tables were cracked pieces of laminate mounted precariously on bent, flimsy metal supports and the wooden stalwarts which served as chairs were so old that their legs had long since given up any attempt at staying level. It was a hangout for young and old, but curiously served no middle-aged customers. The old sat and sipped their sweet coffee or tea. They would play cards or chess and had been there for years. The young preferred the local brand of cola. Either way they knew how to make a glass of something last all day. How the owner made any money from his ramshackle, open-fronted establishment remained a mystery.

Dale, Winston and Marlena squeezed around a tiny corner table out on the pavement. To their left two gnarled and turbaned old men were playing some variant of chequers. The two huddled over their dog-eared board and communicated in asthmatic grunts while a small crowd of onlookers muttered their comments as the game progressed. To their right, a group of students studied their books, a mixture of seriousness and wariness on their faces. A young Palestinian appeared instantly and in commendable English asked them what they wanted to drink. “My name is Raheem. Tea okay?” he continued, and then he departed before they had chance to utter a sound.

The glasses of hot, sweet amber liquid appeared quickly. The bottom two fingers of each was a sea of grainy grey sugar and a solitary bent spoon accompanied the tray of three.

“If you only want it sweet, rather than incredibly sweet, then don’t stir” warned Dale, but Winston was already whisking the concoction with vigour.

The waiter dragged up another apology of bent sticks and sat down. “Hi,” he proffered his hand. “My name is Raheem” he introduced himself again, “are you new here?”

Dale took his hand. “Hi” he said, “nice to meet you. I’m Dale. We’re starting a project here. An irrigation project.”

“In Al Samudra?” quizzed Raheem.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“They’re always in Al Samudra!” Raheem beamed. “There have been three projects there already, but nothing ever gets done. What they really need is some large-scale irrigation work out in the desert but there’s no money for that sort of thing.”

“You seem very well informed.” Winston put down his syrup and paid attention. “How come?”

“I’ve been here eight years,” Raheem was disposed to chat. “I have a job with the ministry in the mornings and then work here in the evening. The Ag Ministry is pretty poor. It has no income and so the Minister can only make money from doing projects which get special funding. That’s additional to the money he makes from hiring us Palestinians,” he added ruefully. “He has his fingers in everything.”

“He makes money by hiring you?” Dale was curious.

Raheem paused, as if he wasn’t sure which story to tell. Then he made up his mind and in an instant was off down what was obviously a very well-trodden path. “We are welcomed here, unofficially, and liked by the people, I think” he began his tale, “but officially we’re refugees and under threat of repatriation without cause and without notice. Some of us have sometimes been shipped off in trucks and have ended up back in the West Bank without homes, families, jobs, nothing. In fact, I believe they ship a few back every now and again to keep the rest of us under control,” he added.

“To stay I need a visa and a work permit, and to get them I must have a passport and I have to come here legally. But, I don’t have a passport and I didn’t come here legally. So, I’m stuck. The only way is to have a sponsor, and I think that the sponsors have all been to the same training school. They say, ‘trust me – I understand your situation – rely on me’ and then they go off and talk to their friends. The next thing you hear is that they can’t get you a normal visa but, because of their influence they can get you a short-term, two-month permit. Of course, you have to pay, and every two months you have to pay again, and again and again. If you don’t pay, you find yourself on the truck back to the West Bank. That’s not a good option, so you keep paying.”

Raheem drew breath. “So” he said, “you become a slave, because all your money has to go towards staying here. You are living on the very edge of life with your sponsor holding you by your wallet to keep you from falling over the brink.”

“And you can’t simply apply for a longer-term visa, or maybe a passport?”

“As I said, I have no passport. I don’t officially exist. The only place I could apply for a passport is back in Palestine, and the chance of getting one there is zero. They are not kind to people who run away.”

He paused. “I’m luckier than most, as I’m now quite useful at the ministry, especially for the Minister himself.” Raheem looked sombre, “so I don’t have to pay him so much now.”

Dale could see where the conversation might be going. He wondered whether it was all part of a carefully orchestrated story for a good tip. “Expensive?” he asked politely.

“Now only 50% of my pay” said Raheem, “and my pay isn’t much anyway.”

Dale’s eyebrows raised a notch and Raheem saw he had his attention. “Anyway” he shrugged, “we have to live and that’s just part of the price.”

Marlena picked up on the ‘we.’ “You have a family?” she asked.

“Wife and two children” was the prompt reply, “my daughter is six and my son is four. We live on the coast” he explained, “which is cheaper but a long way to travel.”

The three foreigners said nothing, and Raheem leapt into the silence. He had jumped to his feet and was waving his hands vigorously to illustrate his speech.

“We live at the old Yanbu Beach Resort, in one of the guest villas. The hotel is closed now and so there are no services, and no guests of course, but there are still a few staff. The manager’s a friend of mine and he lets us use the villa for a small fee. It’s a bit broken down, but we manage. We can do our own cooking there too,” he continued as the three sat mesmerised, watching his hands stirring an imaginary pot.

“Before we found this place it was terrible. Everywhere was so expensive and none of the landlords really cared about us. The only problem now is that it’s right out of town, in the old tourist resort area and it takes a while to get there and back.”

“Where did you learn such good English?” Marlena was as ever determined to be precise about her facts.

“At school, at work and from talking with the students” Raheem admitted, “and also your famous World Service radio. I listen to the news and the weather forecast! I’m trying to teach my children English.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the international language of the world and I want my children to be brought up in the world, not here. We have suffered for so many years that I want to either go home to a proper country or take them into the international world. You can help me if you like.” He cocked his head into a cheeky grin.

“How?”

“I need English books and story tapes so my children can read English and hear it spoken properly. This is very important please. My wife doesn’t speak English much, hardly at all really, and so she can’t teach my children. You see, my time’s very busy working. I thought these books might help. I don’t want a gift” he frowned, “I can pay”

Dale could only be impressed. Raheem’s clear determination was infectious and before long the three of them had promised to come and meet the family, and also to search out books and story tapes for their next visit. With further promises of eternal friendship, they paid their modest bill, left a sizeable tip, and started their short walk up the main street towards their hotel. It didn’t occur to any of them that there was no traffic. Usually there wasn’t much, just a few cars and trucks rumbling by, but now there was nothing. The street was completely and eerily empty.

As they turned the first corner a lump of broken concrete thudded into the column beside them. It was the size of two or three house bricks and was followed by another smaller missile, a hooked, evil looking piece of steel reinforcing bar with the end shrouded in more ragged concrete. Dale and Winston dragged Marlena down behind the column. The rocks kept on coming.

Dale peered out and saw that they were on the edge of a makeshift battlefield. Youths had appeared, as if from nowhere and were now frantically hurling construction rubble at each other across the street. The leader of the nearby stone-throwing crowd glanced in their direction and waved them agitatedly to stay down. His attention was then grabbed by the activities of the other crowd of youths across the road who were clearly the object of their barrage. Through the dusty fusillade of concrete remnants Dale could see that the two gangs were well seasoned at hurling rocks at one another, although it was the buildings that seemed to be suffering the most. The nearby group looked smaller in number but rather better organised whereas their opponents across the road were already resorting to returning fire with the same concrete shrapnel they were receiving. Windows shattered as smaller stones were hurled by the less talented throwers.

The noise showed no sign of diminishing and it was becoming scary. Dale thought about returning to the café but to even think of deserting the sanctity of their column seemed madness. They were at least safe, for the time being. They huddled.

A camouflaged lorry roared up the street behind them and, without regard for the stones and concrete it ground to a halt in the centre of the crowd and disgorged a dozen or so seriously dressed riot police, with shields and rifles and the whole paraphernalia of street warfare. A shot ricocheted off their column and they scrunched lower and tighter behind its sandstone comfort. They didn’t dare to raise their heads.

Then a frantic hooting came closer and closer until its source, a dilapidated Mercedes taxi, pulled up less than a metre away with its rear door open.

“Get in!” shouted Raheem, his face grinning feverishly in the open front window, “quick as you can!”

They needed no further encouragement and dragged themselves into the back of the Mercedes where they huddled in a dishevelled heap on its capacious floor. Marlena hated smelly taxis, and this one stank.

“Don’t worry about them” Raheem waved his hand airily towards the rear window and tried to sound reassuring, “they’re just having a bit of fun. You’re safe now.”

Dale sat up and straightened himself out. Marlena was quiet but Winston looked as if he had seen a ghost. They didn’t recognise the road but were sure it was not in the direction of the hotel.

“I’ll take you home for a while,” Raheem was a mind reader too. “You can meet my family” he explained. They continued with Raheem directing the driver and twenty minutes later he ushered them out of the taxi and pointed through the side entrance of the Yanbu Beach Hotel. “Follow me!” he commanded and set off at a swift trot.

Dale stopped to pay the taxi. “You wait here?” Dale was always cautious about taxis, but the driver seemed happy enough to slump down behind the wheel and sleep. He was in no hurry to be paid and so Dale repocketed his money and ran to catch the others.

Raheem was as proud as a peacock as he led his charges through the once ornate gardens of the famous hotel. Now all was dust and barrenness as the trees had long since given up any struggle at life in the arid environment. The grass must have died within a day of the water being turned off. But the guest villas had at least been sturdily built and as Raheem moved a large piece of plywood that served as their outer door, Dale wondered how many of the others were similarly rented out to the manager’s friends.

Inside was gloomy but cool. The pleasantness of leaving the torrid heat behind was palpable. As their eyes accustomed themselves to the lack of brightness, it seemed that the villa was empty. It comprised two largish rooms plus two bathrooms and a maid’s quarters. The décor was standard hotel fare, and it had aged much over its few years of life; but no services meant no electricity, no water, nothing. Raheem called two names and from behind a sofa two small children rose like tiny phoenixes. When they saw Raheem, they jumped over the sofa and sprinted towards him, arms outstretched. He beamed and turning to his guests introduced his daughter Naomi and her brother Ibrahim.

Marlena crouched down. “Hello Naomi,” she said in Arabic. “My name’s Marlena, and how old are you?” Naomi shrank behind her father’s scruffy shirt and said not a word. Ibrahim was even quicker and dived for cover behind the sofa again.

They became aware of another presence in the room. Raheem looked round and waved his wife forward. She was dressed in jeans and a faded Coca-Cola tee shirt and was somewhat shorter than Raheem. She looked worn and pensive, and much older than her likely years.

“Salma, we have guests,” Raheem was in his element. “They are going to help me with the children’s English education,” and then he lapsed into Arabic and Dale was lost. Never mind, he thought, Marlena will bring me up to speed later.

Dale and his colleagues sat and drank tea and eventually the two waif-like children found their voices. Raheem went to help his wife while Marlena chatted to the children in a mix of languages that Dale could only admire.