As the plane approached Cairo, Olivia experienced a bout of euphoria: I wish I could freeze this moment in time and remember it forever. I’m a spy. I’m Agent Joules. I’m on a mission for the British government. I’m in Club Class, drinking champagne with microwaved nuts.
She had to stop herself grinning uncoolly as she strode through passport control. It was great to be on the road again. Away from the school-like atmosphere of the manor, she felt capable and as free as a bird of the nonfalcon variety. The connecting flight to Port Sudan was delayed by six hours. Hell, she thought. I’ve never seen the pyramids. “Just jump over the edge, baby, and roll.” The GPS wouldn’t pick up her earring signal until she reached the Sudan. She cleared Customs and hopped in a cab.
Back at the safe house in the Cotswolds, Scott Rich was about to leave for RAF Brize Norton. He would be taking an RAF flight to the aircraft carrier USS Condor anchored in the Red Sea between Port Sudan and Mecca. He was packed and ready and he had an hour. He was alone in the Tech Op Room, working on the computer by a single light.
He leaned back from the search, screwing up his eyes and stretching, then leaned forward again and blinked rapidly at the result. As photographs and information began to appear on-screen, he fumbled for the phone in his jacket and dialed Widgett.
“Yes, what is it, man? I’m in the middle of dinner.”
Scott Rich’s voice was shaky. “Widgett. Feramo is Zaccharias Attaf.”
There was a second’s pause.
“Oh, God in heaven. Are you sure?”
“Yes. We need to get Olivia back from Africa. Now.”
“I’ll be with you in forty seconds.”
Olivia’s taxi was on a dual carriageway, weaving alarmingly between the lanes. There was a Christmas decoration hanging from the rearview mirror and a pale blue nylon garland of some kind arranged across the dashboard. The driver turned to look at her, flashing a smile and one gold tooth.
“You hwan carrpeet?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Carrpeet. I geeve you verry good price. My brother have carrrpeet shop. Very close by. No go marrkeeet. In marrrkeet very bad man. My brother carrpeeet verry, verry beautifful.”
“No. No carpet. I want to go to the pyramids, like I said. Watch out!” she shouted, as cars started to swerve, horns blaring.
The driver turned back to the road with a curse, making a rude gesture out of the window.
“Pyramids. Giza,” said Olivia. “We go to the pyramids, then come back to the airport.”
“Pyramid verrry farr. Is no good. Is dark. No see. Better buy carpet.”
“What about the Sphinx?”
“Sphinx is okay.”
“So we’ll go to the Sphinx, yes? And back to the airport?”
“Sphinx is okay. Very old.”
“Yes,” she said in Arabic. “Old. Good.”
He roared off the dual carriageway at a crazy speed, plunging into a darkened residential area of dusty streets and mud houses. She wound down her windows, excitedly breathing in the smells of Africa: rotting rubbish, burnt meat, spices, dung. Eventually, the taxi ground to a halt beyond a labyrinth of unlit streets. The driver cut the engine.
“Where’s the Sphinx?” said Olivia, feeling a twinge of alarm, flicking out her hook ring.
The driver grinned. “No farrr,” he said, gassing her with his stinking breath. Suddenly, the total idiocy of her behavior hit her. What was she doing deciding to sightsee on a mission like this? She took out her mobile phone. It said NONETWORK.
“Sphinx very beautiful,” said the driver. “You come with me. I show.”
She looked at him carefully, decided he was telling the truth and climbed out of the taxi. He took out a long object, which seemed to be a cosh. She followed him along the darkened road, feeling extremely dubious. There was sand underneath their feet. She loved the dry scent of the desert air. As they rounded a corner, the driver put a match to the cosh, turning it into a blazing torch. He held it aloft and pointed through the darkness.
Olivia gasped. She was looking at a pair of giant, dust-covered stone paws. It was the Sphinx—no barriers, no ticket counters, just there, in the middle of a dusty square, surrounded by low ruined buildings. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, the whole familiar shape began to reveal itself, smaller than she had imagined. The driver, raising the blazing torch, encouraged her to climb up onto the paws. She shook her head, thinking that if not actually illegal, it was certainly not right, and settled instead for following him around the perimeter, trying to get a sense of century upon century of oldness.
“Okay,” she said, beaming. “Thank you so much. Better get back to the airport now.”
It might not have been the most responsible decision, but she was awfully glad she’d come.
“You hwant carrpeet now?”
“No. No carpet. Airport.”
They turned the corner to head back to the car, and the driver cursed loudly. Another car was parked beside their taxi, headlights full on. Figures emerged from the darkness, coming towards them. Olivia shrank into the shadows, remembering her kidnapping training: the first moments of the kidnap attempt are key, on your territory, not theirs, when you have the best chance of escape. The men were focusing on the driver. There were raised voices. He appeared to be trying to placate them with an oily smile, talking very fast, heading towards his taxi. Olivia tried to melt away into the shadows. She was a hundred yards from the Sphinx, for God’s sake. There had to be some other people somewhere. One of the shadowy figures saw her and grabbed her arm. At the same moment her driver got into his taxi and started the engine.
“Hey, wait!” yelled Olivia, starting to run towards him. Now, make a noise, make a fuss, raise the alert while you’re still in a public space.
“Help,” she started to yell. “Heeelp!”
“No, no,” said her driver. “You go with him. Verry good man.”
“Nooooo!” she yelled, as he slammed the car in gear and moved off. A rough arm restrained her as she tried to run after the car, its taillights disappearing into the labyrinth of streets.
Olivia looked round at her captors. There were three of them, young men in Western clothes. “Please,” said one of them, opening the car door. “Farouk must leave for other customer. You come with us. We take you to airport.”
As the man took hold of her, she jabbed him with the hook ring, breaking free as he yelled in pain, starting to run, yelling, as she’d been taught, in a way that left no doubt to anyone listening that she was under attack. “Help me, oh God, please help me. Heeeeeeelp!”
It was a wet, windy night in the Cotswolds. On the tarmac at RAF Brize Norton, Scott Rich was yelling into the phone, trying to make himself heard above the roar of the jet engine. “Where the hell is she? I said, where is she?”
“No bloody idea. Flight was delayed by six hours. Suraya’s set up Fletcher in Cairo to watch for her: messages at the desk, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Suraya?”
“Yes. Anything wrong with that?”
Scott Rich hesitated. An aide approached, trying to rush him onto the plane. Scott waved him aside and headed into the shelter of the hangar. “I want you to give me your word that you’ll order Olivia back.”
Widgett gave a strange laugh. “You’re asking a spook to give you his word?”
“Zaccharias Attaf is a psychopath. He has killed eight women in exactly these circumstances. He becomes obsessed—as he is with Olivia—and when they fail to live up to whatever his insane fantasy happens to be, he kills them. You’ve seen the pictures.”
“Yes. He has a tendency to suck bits of them off, it would seem. Are you sure it’s him? How did you get there?”
“It was what she said about Feramo’s mother and the finger-sucking. There are no pictures of Attaf to go on, as you know, but everything else adds up. Pull her off the case. Bring her home. She’s not a professional. Where is she now? You can’t knowingly send her out to meet a psychopath.”
“A psychopath who is also a senior al-Qaeda strategist.”
Scott Rich lowered his eyelids. “You seem to view her as completely expendable.”
“My dear fellow, Ms. Joules is entirely capable of taking care of herself. We have all risked our necks in our time for the greater good. That,” said Widgett, “is the business we are in.”
Calm, don’t panic, breathe, calm don’t panic breathe. Does it really matter? Yes. Oh fuck yes. Olivia tried to keep her head together and think as the kidnappers’ car rattled through the blackness of the mazelike streets. They were Feramo’s people, that much was clear. She’d failed on the first bit of kidnap training by allowing them to get her into the car. The next thing she’d been taught was to “humanize the relationship with one’s captors.” Well, honestly, she’d thought at the time, how obvious could you get? She fumbled in her bag for the pack of Marlboros she’d been given and held them out to the young man who had bundled her into the car. “Cigarette?”
“No. No smoke. Very bad,” he said curtly.
“Quite right,” she said, nodding fervently. Idiotic. She was idiotic. They were probably devout Muslims. What next? Slug of whisky, Muhammad? Dirty video?
There was a change in the streets outside: more light, figures, a donkey, a bicycle. Suddenly they burst out of the dark streets into a brightly lit souk. There were crowds of people, sheep, strings of fairy lights, music and cafés. The car ground to a halt at the entrance to a dark alleyway. The driver turned round. She clenched her fist, the hook ring outwards, clutching the hatpin in her other hand.
“Carpet,” said the new driver. “You buy carpet? I give you good price, special for you.”
“Yes,” she whispered, slumping back against the seat, eyes closed, shaking with relief. “Very good. I buy carpet.”
It was deemed necessary, unfortunately, to buy quite a large carpet. As they roared up the approach to the airport thirty-five minutes before takeoff, the carpet protruded precariously from either side of the car boot. Olivia was so tense she was having to dig her fingernails into her palms in an attempt to stop herself yelling pointless things like, “For God’s sake, hurreeeeeeeee.”
Then there were flashing lights, sirens, police cars and barricades and a line of red taillights. It was a massive holdup. Her mouth was dry. She had escaped death but, as is the way of things, her relief had immediately been replaced by another worry: missing the plane and therefore screwing up the mission. She felt herself trying to speed up the car by physically leaning forward as they slowed to a snail’s pace. There’d been an accident, plainly. A man’s body was lying on the tarmac, a pool of dark blood flowing from his mouth, a policeman chalking an outline around it. The driver leaned out of the window and asked what had happened. “Shooting,” the driver yelled over his shoulder to Olivia. “Englishman.”
She tried not to think about it. As the car pulled up at Departures, she almost threw the agreed fare of fifty dollars at the driver, grabbed her bag, leapt out and charged into the terminal, heading for the desk. Unfortunately, the two youths started to follow her, carrying the carpet.
“I don’t want the carpet, thank you,” she called over her shoulder. “Take it back with you. You can keep the money.” She reached the Sudan Airways desk and flung her passport and ticket down. “My bag is already checked through. I just need a boarding pass.”
The youths triumphantly dropped the carpet onto the baggage scales.
“You want to check in this carpet?” said the Sudan Airways attendant. “It is too late. You will have to take this carpet as hand luggage.”
“No, I don’t want the carpet. Look,” said Olivia, turning to the youths, “you can take the carpet. No room on plane. You can keep the money.”
“You no like carpet?” The boy looked devastated.
“I love the carpet, but . . . look. All right. Thank you, very nice. Please, just go away.”
They didn’t go. She handed them each a five-dollar bill. They left.
The airline lady started typing into the computer in the way the ground staff do at airports when you’re late for a flight—rather as if writing a contemplative poem, pausing to stare at the screen searching for exactly the right word or phrase.
“Er, excuse me,” said Olivia. “It’s very important that I don’t miss the flight. I don’t actually want the carpet. I don’t need to check it in.”
“You wait here,” said the woman, who walked off and disappeared.
Olivia felt like swallowing her own fist. It was ten past nine. The departures screen for the delayed SA245 to Port Sudan said DEP 21:30. BOARDING GATE 4A. LAST CALL.
She was on the point of making a run for it and blagging her way through without a boarding pass when the woman returned wearing a sepulchral expression and accompanied by a man in a suit.
“All right, Ms. Joules?” said the man in a slight East London twang. “I’ll see you through to the flight. Is this yours?” he asked, picking up the carpet.
Olivia started to protest, then gave up and just nodded her head wearily. The man rushed Olivia and the carpet past the queues and through security, taking her into an office a little way from the gate. He closed the door behind him.
“My name’s Brown. I’m from the Embassy here. Professor Widgett wants to speak to you.”
Her heart sank. He had found out. She had fallen at the first hurdle. Brown dialed a number and handed her the phone.
“Where the hell have you been?” bellowed Widgett. “Buying carpets?”
“I’m sorry, sir. It was a dreadful mistake.”
“Never mind now. Never mind. Forget it. A man who never makes a mistake never makes anything.”
“I promise it won’t happen again.”
“All right. If it makes you feel better, a certain unpredictability of movement is no bad thing. The agent we had lined up to meet you just got himself shot.”
Oh my God. Oh my God. “Was that his body I just saw on the way into the airport? Was it my fault? Were they trying to get me?”
A dispatcher in a luminous yellow jacket put his head round the door.
“No, no, nothing to do with you,” said Widgett.
“Better ring off,” mouthed Brown. “They’re about to shut the doors.”
“Professor Widgett, the plane’s about to leave.”
“All right, jolly good. Off you go now,” said Widgett. “Don’t miss the flight after all this. Good luck and oh, er, with, er, Feramo . . . Probably best to play along with this little fantasy he has about you as long as you can.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know . . . these types that build a girl up, put her on a pedestal, are inclined to turn a bit nasty when the imaginary edifice crumbles. Just, er, keep him where you want him. Keep your wits about you. And, remember, Rich is just a shout away in the Red Sea.”
Olivia rushed onto the plane, finding the carpet thrust into her arms as the doors closed. She tried vainly to shove it into the overhead locker under the baleful stare of the stewardess. It was only as the captain turned off the FASTENSEATBELT signs and they were leaving the lights of Cairo behind, as she looked down at the vast, empty darkness of the Sahara, that she had time to digest what Widgett had said. She realized that the wiser course might have been not to get onboard the plane at all.