Robert Wilson - The Ignoranceof Blood

The corridor was empty. He took the stairs down to the ground floor, came out into the hotel and immediately went through the door marked 'Staff Only'. It was quiet. He walked past the laundry and down a small flight of stairs to the kitchens. Voices. They were wrapping up the dinner service. He waited, gauging the different sounds, then stepped into the corridor, ducked underneath the portholes of the double doors and went out into the night and the stink of the rubbish bins. He climbed up the metal bin closest to the wall and checked over the top.

A complication had arisen here. On his return from his meeting with Falcon in Osuna, he'd been told that the CNI had put a car in the street at the back of the hotel as well as the front. The car was there now and almost directly opposite the rear exit of the hotel. He was going to have to drop over the wall into the street at the side of the hotel, and this involved a leap of some two and a half metres.

He made the jump, hit the wall messily, smacked his chin, but clung on to the top of it with his arms and shoulders cracking under the strain. He swung his leg up, lay flat on the top, gasped, looked down. Empty. As he lowered himself the strength drained from his arms and he dropped heavily into the narrow alleyway, went over on his ankle and limped to the corner. He checked out the car: only a driver with his head resting against the window. No movement. Yacoub looked left and right. Nobody around. He ducked and ran along the line of cars, found a gap, squeezed into it, held on to his ankle and waited. Blood trickled down his chin. A car turned into the street, headlights swept the tarmac. As it passed, he crossed the street running low and went straight up the narrow alley opposite. He hopped to the next street.

The Vespa and the helmet were locked to a lamp post. He used one of the four keys to unlock the heavy padlock and unthreaded the chain from the wheel and helmet. He used the second key to start the Vespa. He wiped out the helmet with his hand, put it on. It was sticky with the hair gel of the kid who'd left it there.

There was little traffic in the town. He set out west, heading for a small bay along the coast, which was protected from the sea and had shallow waters. On the other side of Estepona he turned towards the sea. He hid the Vespa and helmet by the side of the road and limped two hundred metres down to the water's edge where the boat was waiting for him. The only light came from the tower blocks of tourism set back from the road above.

Nobody could accuse the GICM high command of having no sense of humour. The power boat they'd bought for this mission was called the 35 Executioner. It was dark blue, ten metres long and had twin Mercury 425-horsepower engines, capable of speeds in excess of 130 kilometres per hour. It looked sleek, almost flashy, as it rocked gently against the small wooden jetty where it was moored.

He unclipped the awning over the rear of the boat and dropped himself into the cockpit. He inserted the third and fourth keys in the ignition panel on the right-hand side of the dashboard, but did not turn them on. He threw the sweater off his shoulders into the passenger seat. He opened the hatch, leading to the cabin, which had been stripped out and a false wall installed. Yacoub felt his way around to the side, peeled back the edge of the carpet. He ran his fingers over the wood until he felt the metal ring inset and lifted out a thirty-centimetre square of wood. He found the pen torch first, turned it on, put it in his mouth. Blood on his hands from his chin. He lifted out a compass and a mobile phone, which he turned on, and a pair of binoculars. All that was left was a switch mechanism from which two copper cables emerged. He could now see the five jerry cans of fuel strapped to the bulkhead, two five-litre flagons of water and a tupperware box of food.

The phone was ready. One message. He opened it, nodded, turned off the phone and threw it in the cache. He checked his ankle, fat and soft as a ripe mango.

Back outside he rolled up the awning, threw it in the cabin, checked the stern lockers, more jerry cans of fuel. He opened up the two engine hatches. He stood in front of the driver's seat and familiarized himself with the gauges, switches and controls. In the middle of the dashboard was the SatNav screen, which he would not deploy until he was outside Spanish territorial waters. He turned on the battery switches and flipped on the blowers. He gave them five minutes, checked that the shift handles were in neutral and the throttles down all the way. He armed the safety switch. He turned the ignition keys one click clockwise. Indicator lights and audible alarms came on for a moment. He turned them on to the start position and released. The engines came alive with what seemed like a colossal noise in the silent bay.

The pressure gauge told him that the water flow through the engine was normal and he glanced over the side at the exhaust tips. While the engines warmed up he checked the bilge and engine compartments, made sure there were no leaks or weird noises. He closed the engine hatches. He raised the throttles slightly to check response. Good. Checked shifters. He slipped the moorings, pushed himself away from the jetty. He put the shifter into forward gear and, at very low throttle, moved out into the open sea, which was almost as flat as the cove's protected waters.

It was warm but he continued sweating, even with the gentle cooling breeze. The first part of this mission had its difficulties. He had no SatNav and no moon. He had to find a bearing out to sea and get himself out of Spanish territorial waters. The compass could be illuminated by pressing a button and he did this once a minute to check his course. There were a few lights out on the water – fishing boats, which he had to avoid. He, himself, was unlit. He maintained low revs. The coastline of the Costa del Sol gradually revealed itself. The lights of Estepona appeared to the west.

It took him more than an hour to get three kilometres from the shore and only then did he open up the throttles a little, feeling the eagerness of the two big engines beneath him. He scoured the blackness for fishing boats, checked his bearing, looked back to the east at the lights of Fuengirola, Torremolinos and Malaga.

The danger was different now. He wasn't so scared of being picked up by the coastguard, but he was entering one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Colossal container ships, which could rise forty or fifty metres above the sea, coming in from the Atlantic, or massive Liquefied Natural Gas carriers sailing from Algeria to Sines on the Portuguese coast. If they hit him they wouldn't know it. He listened and searched the darkness.

Thirty kilometres out he switched on the SatNav to see where he was. He was supposed to be heading for a point forty-five kilometres south-east of Estepona and about the same distance north-east of the Monte Hacho, just outside the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north-east tip of Morocco. He was further east than he'd anticipated, the current much stronger than he'd allowed for. He was more than fifty kilometres from his rendezvous point with around two and a half hours to go before first light.

He had to have faith in his instruments. There was no longer any coastline to guide him. He turned the vessel direction south-west and gave it few more revs. He checked all the gauges, was puzzled to see the fuel had dropped to three-quarters. He'd been told the tank had a capacity of six hundred litres, that the extra jerry cans strapped to the cabin bulkhead and in the stern lockers were just for emergency. As he fussed over this new problem a cliff of black metal loomed out of the darkness and he heard the rhythmic thump of massive engines. He swung the wheel to his right, opened up the throttles, put a hundred metres between himself and the towering hull of a dry cargo ship. Eased back. Shaken. He didn't feel competent in this situation, had no real knowledge of the sea or boats, couldn't even name things properly. What was a cleat? He calmed himself, desperate for a smoke. His ankle throbbed. Panic rose again as he battled disorientation, a sudden queasiness and a tremendous desire not to be out in the middle of a black ocean on what seemed to be a matchstick, surrounded by mobile skyscrapers. His boat canted and rolled as the vast, unseen wake of the ship passed beneath him. Get the breathing going again. Don't hyperventilate. Look at your instruments. Get back on course. Proceed.