Clayton bit his thumbnail in frustration and had the surveillance officer replay the CCTV tape for the third time. He was interested in a twenty-minute section that had recorded the VIP lounge between eleven and eleven-twenty that morning. Hasan was clear enough in several stills, but Prince Omar Al-Ajnabi was painfully camera-shy. The more Clayton watched, the more certain he became that this was no accident. On the rare occasions when the prince did not have his back to the camera, he had most of his face wrapped in the folds of a long, white headdress; the dark sunglasses were never either re-adjusted or removed.
‘Freeze it there, can you,’ Clayton snapped. The face was still shrouded, but it was as near to the camera as the Special Envoy got, taken just as the prince was about to leave the departure lounge.
Clayton had the surveillance officer print him out a still. It wasn’t much to go on, but maybe one of the wizards back at GCHQ would be able to play around with CCTV data files once they were sent over.
Just then, the pleasant young female security officer returned.
‘Miss Sophie Louise Palmer left first class on the Egypt Air morning flight to Cairo,’ she smiled at Clayton.
‘No surprise there,’ Clayton sighed. ‘Any onward flight from Cairo?’
‘No. Final destination was Cairo.’
Clayton was surprised. ‘Invoice? Who paid for her ticket, and when?’
The young woman shuffled some papers on her clipboard.
‘Here we are. The ticket was bought last week by a Mr Hasan. He paid by Visa. Full price.’
Clayton nodded. ‘You say that Prince Omar Al-Ajnabi didn’t enter the country through the VIP terminal here?’
‘No,’ replied the young woman breezily. ‘There’s no record of such a flight. Last private jet from Ramliyya was…yes, a Prince Ayman Al-Janoubi, one of the old sultan’s brothers, I believe. That was three months ago.’
Fuck! Clayton was seething inside. If Al-Ajnabi had entered the country via the normal channels, it could take days even for a full staff to sift through hours of dull CCTV tape, looking for a face that would probably reveal no more of its features than the shrouded still he already held. The Ramli had slipped away. The best Clayton could hope for would be to give the pretty girl a torrid time when she got back to Oxford, and maybe (who could say), a little more besides!
Clayton turned to the young woman, switched on the charm, and appropriated a private office where he could use his mobile without an audience. He was lucky enough to catch the minister at his Downing Street residence, in the process of squeezing his gaunt frame into a dinner jacket.
Initially, there was just a blank silence, as there usually was when the things weren’t going McPherson’s way.
‘All right, Max,’ the minister sighed eventually. ‘No point in organizing a special watch on our bird if he’s already flown the nest. We’ll reassess the situation if and when Prince Omar Al-Ajnabi returns to the UK on another visit. Meanwhile, you’ll want to get busy with our little Chinese problem.’