Andy McNab - Brute force

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.

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, staring 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.

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.