Jack Higgins - The Death Trade

‘Who offered me the use of his helicopter when he heard I was coming to New York, and suggested I drop in and see you on the way. I’m supposed to offer an opinion or two on the Middle East to some UN select committee or other.’

‘Will the President be there, too?’

‘No, he’s on his way to the UK to spend a couple of days at the Prime Minister’s country retreat at Chequers. Then on to Berlin, Brussels, perhaps Paris.’

‘Oh, the times I’ve spent at Chequers.’ Cazalet laughed. ‘I used to love that place. I’ve been asked to put in an appearance at the UN myself – but I imagine you knew that.’

‘Yes, I can’t deny it,’ Ferguson said.

‘I expected nothing less from the commander of the British Prime Minister’s private army. Isn’t that what they still call you people in the death trade?’ He smiled. ‘You’ll stay the night, of course, and accept a lift in my helicopter to New York tomorrow?’

‘That’s more than kind,’ Ferguson said.

Lightning flickered on the horizon, thunder rumbled, it started to pour with rain. ‘Another stormy night,’ said Cazalet. ‘Let’s get up to the house for the comforts of a decent drink, a log fire, and the turkey dinner Mrs Boulder has been slaving over all afternoon.’

‘That’s the best offer I’ve had in a very long time,’ Ferguson said.

‘In you get, then.’ Cazalet smiled. ‘Let’s see if we can reach the point where I’ve flattered you sufficiently that you can tell me why you’ve really come to see me.’

The dinner was everything Cazalet had promised. The coffee and port were served, Murchison steamed on the rug in front of the fire, and Dalton sat at the end of the small bar by the archway to the kitchen at his usual state of readiness.

‘Well, it’s an interesting situation,’ Ferguson said. ‘It concerns a man named Simon Husseini. He was born in Iran to a French mother, his father an Iranian doctor who died of cancer years ago. Husseini followed in his father’s footsteps, and his work on medical isotopes has saved thousands of lives.’

‘Good for him,’ Cazalet said.

‘Yes. But as one of the world’s great experts in the field of uranium enrichment, his masters insisted that he extend his research into nuclear weapons research.’

‘And he agreed?’

‘No choice. He’s a widower, but his ancient mother is still alive and living with his 40-year-old daughter, who’s an invalid. They’re under house arrest in Tehran.’

Cazalet was not smiling now. ‘The suffering some people have to go through. So how do things stand?’

‘Very badly. The word is he could be close to making a nuclear bomb, and, worse, one that is cheap and four times as effective as anything else on the planet.’

Dalton looked startled, and Cazalet said, ‘God in heaven. How sound is this information? Is there real substance to it, or is it just bogeymen stuff put out by the Iranians to frighten the pants off us?’

‘That’s what we’ve got to establish,’ Ferguson said. ‘One of our people has a connection with Husseini, very tenuous at best, but it provides the hope, rather slight at the moment, I admit, of my people touching base with him.’

‘Then make it happen right this instant, General, before the whole damn world blows up in our faces.’

Ferguson nodded. ‘I thought you’d say that, sir. In fact, as we’ve been talking, I’ve already changed my mind about this trip. The UN committee is just going to have to get on without me. As soon as we get to New York tomorrow, I’m heading straight back to London.’

‘Very sensible,’ Cazalet said. ‘And since it’ll be an early start, I think we’d better close the shop and go to bed. But not before you tell me about this connection of yours …’

At the Holland Park safe house in London, Roper sat in his wheelchair in the computer room, drinking tea and smoking a cigarette, when Ferguson, wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown, called him on Skype.

‘There you are,’ he said. ‘What time have you got?’

‘It’s four o’clock in the morning in London, people tucked up in their beds, the sane ones anyway.’

Ferguson said, ‘I’m at Jack Cazalet’s beach house on Nantucket. It sounds like the storm of the century’s outside trying to get in.’

‘That must be interesting. How is the great man?’

‘Not best pleased at the news I bore about Husseini. At least, he wants us to get moving on it right away. Some of the people I’ve talked to seem not to want to believe it could even happen. I get an idea that’s even the way the CIA sees it.’

Roper said, ‘I can’t blame them, in a way. The possibilities are horrendous. No sensible person would want to face the kind of future that would bring. Did you tell him about—’

‘Yes. I mentioned Husseini’s history as an academic ten years ago, when he was a professor at London University.’

‘Where he met a certain Rabbi Nathan Gideon and his granddaughter, a young second lieutenant out of the Military Academy at Sandhurst named Sara Gideon. Who now works for us.’

‘Correct. And I’ve actually figured out how we can use her. Did you know that Husseini is due in Paris this Friday to receive the Legion of Honour?’

‘No, I didn’t. That’s a surprise, that he’s being allowed out of Iran,’ Roper said. ‘But maybe not. His work on medical isotopes has saved a great many lives, his mother is French – from the Iranian government’s point of view, the signal it sends letting him accept the award is: Look what nice people we are.’

‘Except that they’ve got his mother and daughter in Tehran under threat and they know Husseini’s not the kind of man to let anything happen to them. He’s totally trapped,’ Ferguson pointed out. ‘But still, there might be an opening. That’s why I’m arranging for Sara to be on the guest list at the Élysée Palace. She’ll stay at the Ritz, which is where Husseini will be.’

‘Together with his minders,’ Roper said.

‘Of course. But I’m betting there might not be as many of them as we might think. With his mother and daughter held hostage, there’s no need. We have an asset at the Ritz named Henri Laval. He told me that when Husseini visited a year ago to lecture at the Sorbonne, he had only one man with him, a Wali Vahidi, who stayed with him in a two-bedroom suite.’

‘Do I look him up or have you already done that?’ Roper asked.

‘Wali Vahidi, thirty years a policeman of one kind or another. He’s been Husseini’s bodyguard for eight years, sees to his every need, more like a valet, but I’d be wary of taking that too much for granted. He saw plenty of action in the war with Iraq and survived being wounded. He holds a captain’s rank in the military police, so he can look after himself.’

‘What does Sara think of all this?’

‘I haven’t told her yet,’ Ferguson said. ‘I left a message to say I’d be back for breakfast on Thursday morning, and that you and I would like to call in at 10.30. It would be interesting to get her grandfather’s input, too, since he knew Husseini so well. You could also check with Colonel Claude Duval to see what kind of security French Intelligence is putting on Friday night at the Élysée Palace. He’s in London at the moment.’

‘Is that all?’ Roper asked.

‘You have something to contribute?’

‘Yes, I think she needs back-up. What do you think of sending Daniel Holley with her? Though we’d have to find out where he is – in Algiers or deep in the Sahara, for all I know.’

Ferguson said, ‘No. Those two enjoy what people of a romantic turn of mind describe as a relationship, and I don’t want anything getting in the way of this serious business. I agree she should have back-up, though.’