Adam Hall - Quiller Solitaire

Klaus said at once – 'You think there's the chance of a security leak?'

'Not really. I run a tight show, like you. But nothing in this life's ever certain, is it? I think you're right: I ought to phone my contact.'

He became very still. I was running things terribly close, but it was so tempting, because if I could get London direct on the dial and use speech-code and warn them off the rendezvous they'd have time to signal whatever forces they'd sent into Dar-el-Beida and clear them out before I got there with Ibrahimi. I'd have a clear field with no one to mess me up if I could do anything useful.

'There's no time,' Klaus said, 'to phone anyone now.' He checked his watch. 'You're leaving here in fifteen minutes, and if your associate has left the rendezvous open to exposure it won't be my fault if you get shot. You understand me?'

'I don't need fifteen minutes to -'

'Do you understand?'

He was standing in front of me with the look on his face I'd seen when he'd killed the dog and when he'd killed the Arab boy, and I was ready for him to blow, had the angles worked out as a matter of routine, the synapses flashing throughout the system and devouring data and sifting it and presenting the analysis for the motor nerves, and if Klaus had made any kind of move I would have gone straight into the killing area and he would have started choking on his own blood as the bullets went into me from the guards.

I don't know if he knew I was ready for him, but I don't think so, because it would have been a challenge and he would have accepted it and come for me, just as a dog will do if you stare it down.

Adrenalin running in the veins like strong red wine: I could taste it in my mouth. He went on staring at me. 'Yes,' I said, 'I understand.'

'I want that warhead.'

'Of course. And I simply hate to sound tactless, but does Monsieur Ibrahimi have the funds?' I looked at the Arab.

'I have the funds,' he said, 'in cash.'

'In hundred-dollar bills?

'That is correct.'

Klaus stood back, and Maitland joined him. 'I hope all goes well,' I said, 'with the operation. It'll give me a certain sense of satisfaction in the morning when I read the headlines, to think I played a minor part.'

Klaus left his eyes on me for a moment and then swung away, didn't answer, knew I wouldn't see any headlines in the morning. Maitland went with him through the archway that led to the forecourt, where chrome glinted under the first faint light of the moon. Two of the guards followed them; two stayed behind. They were both men, both European, probably German; they were flat-faced, crew-cut and had eyes with the indifference in them that we see in animals, but I made them change, moving my hand suddenly to tug the zip of my jacket higher, and they became the eyes of the animal that sees the prey.

'We shall make our way, then,' Muhammad Ibrahimi said.

He walked beside me, the guards behind. No one else was in the courtyard now, and as our feet rustled through the fallen eucalyptus leaves and we reached the archway I had the feeling that a curtain would come down behind us.

Exhaust gas was on the air as we reached the forecourt; the tail lights of a car showed among the trees where the driveway curved towards the road. Above the minarets of the palace the last of the daylight had gone from the sky, and with the coming down of the Sahara night a three-quarter moon was already silvering the chrome and cellulose of the 560 SEL Mercedes limousine that was waiting for us. An Arab driver and another European guard were standing beside it.

Ibrahim! gestured for me to get into the back of the car, then followed. Two of the guards got in and pulled down the jump seats facing us; the third sat next to the Arab driver. The last door was slammed and the hydraulic locks clicked home. I felt for the seat-belt and buckled it. Ibrahimi folded his hands, leaving providence to Allah.

'The funds,' I asked him, 'are in the boot?'

It was just to keep the polish on my cover. Two thousand five hundred bills would need a suitcase, and I didn't see one here.

'Yes,' he said.

He would have a knife, Ibrahimi, a knife rather than a gun. The European clothes he'd changed into hadn't altered his image very much: with his beard and his hawk-beaked nose and his silences he was intensely Arabian, and would have been brought up with an affinity for the blade in time of need. It would be the same for the driver. The others would have guns.

Be not sanguine, my good friend, upon this inauspicious night, 'tis hardly meet. We are not super-ferrets, we the ferrets in the field, we are but ferrets, and subject to the laws of nature, red in tooth and claw.

South along the rue Khelifa Boukhalfa and across the Plateau Sauliere district, with the scents of the evening coming through the ventilation system: the smell of broiling lamb mechoui from the Berbers' open-air kitchens, of jasmine arid donkeys and incense and bruised oranges and the acrid reek of the leather tanneries in the souks . Our driver knew his job, made detours around the congested areas where merchants lined the streets with their loaded carts and their rickety makeshift stalls.

'What is his name,' I asked Ibrahimi, the driver's?'

'I do not know.'

We spoke in French, Ibrahimi and I, when we spoke at all. I would have liked to know the name of the driver as a matter of routine tradecraft: if you call a man by his name you establish immediate intimacy by however small a degree – you are no longer a complete stranger. And in a scene of confusion when other sounds are pervasive, call a man's name and you'll get his immediate attention.

I didn't expect there to be any scenes of confusion on this cool Saharan night. Klaus had things running with the precision of a Swiss watch. But habit was ingrained in me and I let it work. It could save Solitaire at a pinch, given the advent of a miracle to help things along.

I didn't expect miracles either.

From where I sat I could see the digital clock on the softly-lit dashboard of the Mercedes, between the shoulders of the two hit men who sat facing me. The time was now 6:49: twenty-six minutes to the rendezvous, to the flashpoint. The airport at Dar-el-Beida is 20 kilometres from the city, and we were now nearing the motorway. Since I could see the clock I wouldn't have to look at my watch. I didn't want Ibrahimi to know I was interested in the time. The hit men sat watching my hands. I didn't know if they spoke or even understood French, but it was unlikely. Ibrahimi wouldn't need to give them any verbal instructions. If I made a wrong move they'd go for me: they were robots with guns, knee-jerk reflexive. I didn't move my hands; I left them folded on my lap. If I were going to move them with malice aforethought I'd need to do it very quickly.

The limousine accelerated onto the motorway, its headlights sweeping over the moonlit landscape. There were twenty-four minutes to go. One thought kept obtruding as I looked over the options that were left: that fix I'd overheard couldn't be the target for Midnight One. 26°03' north by 02°01' west must be somewhere in the Sahara desert, because London was the zero east-west meridian and almost due north of Algiers, and Baghdad was somewhere about 30 degrees latitude. Klaus hadn't mounted this operation to blow up a lot of sand. It would be nice to look at a map, one of the maps in the leather pocket at the back of the driver's seat, but I couldn't think of any excuse to ask for one.

Khatami, the Iranian pilot, had been quite insistent on the telephone at the poolside, making sure the caller got the fix correct and asking him to write it down and repeat it, even telling him to synchronise watches. But it couldn't be the target for Midnight One. Then was it the location of Midnight One? In the middle of the Sahara desert?