Al-Ajnabi felt increasingly uneasy as the Eurostar train cleared the Channel Tunnel to regain the daylight on the British side. He looked across at the expressionless Hasan in the seat opposite, and suddenly felt a sense of loneliness and abandonment he had not known since the court martial and his initial internment, all those long, eventful years ago at Catterick.
This was to be the grand finale, but the closer he got to London the more doubt preyed upon his uncertainty. It was hard to believe that only a week had passed since he had hosted that final dinner party in Oxford. A lot had happened since then, not all of it the way he had intended.
Oh yes, he had dealt the cards and watched Goss and Easterby play their hands to perfection. But as for Sophie? That was something else; something beyond his expectations; something that could complicate their roles still further in the drama to come.
How he wished the bleak late-October English countryside streaming past the window to his right would suddenly metamorphosize into the bright scrub of Tarangire. Just for a few minutes back there Sophie had made him think the unthinkable. He had been ready to give it all up, his revenge, his political plans, everything, just to keep it between them the way it had been under the stars of Tarangire.
He stared out the window at a sad world of might-have-been’s. The crisscrossing yellow streetlights of South London suburbia twisted uphill and down on either side of the track, up hill and over river, perhaps, to Alison’s house. What would Alison be doing now? Would she have guessed what was happening? That would depend on how much her daughter confided in her.
And what of Clayton? What of McPherson? Of course, Clayton in particular would already know that the game was on, but unless there had been any major disasters in his absence, Bailey felt confident that Clayton and McPherson couldn’t possibly have guessed just how he would have his revenge or why he would do what he was about to do. It was almost certain that MI5 would be studying all Ramli diplomatic movements, but he knew that Al-Badawi would give them little to chase.
Sure, the Home Office would have alerted all ports and airports to check all incoming Ramli passport holders, and it was likely that he and Hasan would have their false British passports checked again at Waterloo. But they were good fakes. They would survive the most stringent computer check.
No, the weakest links were certainly Ferris and Driscoll. If Clayton had been probing the guests from the Oxford party, as he surely would sooner or later, he would be unlikely to swallow the investment bank story. He would start probing, would start digging underneath the surface details. Oh, let him dig! Max Clayton had known Rob Bailey, not Omar Al-Ajnabi! Max would anticipate the moves Rob Bailey would have made. Omar Al-Ajnabi was working to an agenda Max Clayton would never begin to understand until their lines were firmly drawn in the sand. As for Driscoll, Al-Badawi would have put the MP on a tight enough leash to guarantee the heat stayed off, at least till tomorrow afternoon.
Bailey’s eyes moved away from the window, then on to catch Hasan’s inscrutable stare and on from Hasan to the French lady with black-stockinged legs sitting opposite him.
She had pulled out the latest issue of Paris Match from her brown travel-bag, and Bailey was suddenly confronted with Douglas Easterby’s firm Army jaw jutting out from the cover towards him. Goss’s chunky head sat next to Easterby’s, and both heads were wearing the red beret of the Parachute Regiment.
The outlines of a map of Northern Ireland formed the background to Easterby’s photo; Goss’s head was macabrely smudged into a backdrop the shape of Ramliyya. Three-dimensional sand dunes erroneously protruded from the map of Ramliyya, while Saracens and British soldiers were patrolling the outline of Northern Ireland, underneath Easterby’s fixed stare. Above the top of the two faces ran the French headline: Colonel Shame! —The bloody past of the British colonel and the sergeant he betrayed to the Sword of Islam.
Bailey smiled at the pretty brunette and leant across, asking her permission to borrow the magazine when she had finished in his passable French. The woman smiled coquettishly, with an obvious desire for conversation he was not of a mind to provide.
Inside the magazine, Bailey could see that Dr Abdul-Aziz Al-Badawi had done his work well. The deputy ambassador had sent enough close-up colour photos of Goss’s execution to give the sensationalist rag the taste of blood, then fed the French journalists a lead back to Northern Ireland.
Bailey felt mixed emotions as he flicked through the archive shots of the Falls Road Massacre. Yes, it was good to see Easterby under fire for a change, but the Colonel was not yet dead and buried, nor was there any guarantee that he would soon be so. This was still only the beginning, and by the end of the coming week they would all have faced trial by media. Easterby’s crimes might yet escape punishment, forgotten in the furore of a far greater trial, whose verdict, Bailey was well aware, could well swing against him and his side.
The strong possibility of defeat made him distant and dismal again. He motioned to Hasan for his mobile, thrust the magazine curtly back to the French lady and made for the toilet to place the call.
Smedley picked up on the third ring, elliptical and careful with his greetings.
‘Glad to hear from you again, sir… yes, that’s right, the last three deliveries have arrived: they’re right here with me now.’
The miner’s son listened carefully to a detailed set of instructions, memorizing times and places without taking written notes.
‘OK, I’ve got it all,’ he concluded. ‘I’ll start spreading the word around right away.’