December Ultimatum (13 page)

So they’d left to go back to the American Embassy to write their report. And he’d been given orders,
orders
this time, to catch the 1730 hours flight to Dublin that evening. Their contact would be rearranged to rendezvous as before. Meet him, they’d said threateningly. This time meet him!

He went into the bathroom to shower. He washed and rinsed gingerly in cold water, and went to the mirror to shave. He saw his neck. In places it was red raw where she’d bitten him and sucked blood to the skin. Then he remembered her, provocative and naked, with the red twist of silk around her neck. And somewhere in the hung-over and drugged recesses of his memory he remembered in their convulsive orgasm his tongue reaching inside the silk and touching a ridge of skin that could have been a scar.

One hour and ten minutes later, with the capricious English winter sun making his forehead tingle with a slight sweat as it beamed into the departure lounge, Franklin was sitting exactly where he’d been ordered to sit, reading the book Cheaney had given him for the occasion:
The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland
by J. Theodore Bent. He was about to finish his seventh cup of coffee when the man sat down at the table. ‘Keen on African archaeology?’ he asked.

‘Not at all.’

‘You’re Franklin?’

‘That’s right.’

‘
New York Times
?’

‘And sometimes Washington.’

‘How d’you do. Your people have told us. My name’s Howard.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Franklin. ‘Is that your first or second name?’

‘Sorry. Surname. John Howard.’ They shook hands.

‘It’s warm,’ Franklin said.

‘Amazing December, really. Very warm. I’d loosen that scarf, old lad. Hate you to explode. You’re looking really rather all-in.’

‘It’s been quite a time,’ Franklin said, loosening the scarf he had bought at the hotel to hide his bruising. Her red silk twist plagued him. And again and again his tongue moved inside it to caress the ridge of hard scar from the wound she’d received at the shoot-out at Leipzig. And he’d remembered too late. Too late to stop her. Too late even to catch her. By the time he’d called the Embassy she would have been in Dublin for six hours and might well have flown out of it again. He had told Cheaney they should use a professional. Now they knew what he meant.

‘You flying with me?’ asked Franklin.

‘Only as far as Dublin.’

‘Then?’

‘You make it on your own to the Lakes. They’re expecting you.’

‘Why do I go to Dublin? Why not straight to Fahd?’

‘I want you to meet someone there. Won’t take long. He’s a . . . he’s a fellow terrorist, a Provisional from the north but very active internationally, a go-between, Gaddafi, the Palestinians, the Syrians. He’s been involved in gunrunning with the Red Army. We got some movements from him. We’re hoping to get more. We’ll know when we arrive. They’re still working on him.’

‘You made him talk?’

‘Not me, old man. We. Quite a lot, actually.’

‘And he’s still alive?’

The Englishman laughed. He brushed aside his blond straggling hair from his forehead.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘They’ll be calling our flight any minute.’ ‘Yes?’

‘May I pinch your coffee? It’ll take half an hour in that queue.’

‘It’s cold.’

‘Love it cold. Drives my wife mad. Once she poured cold water on to the Nescafe thinking I wouldn’t notice. Silly ass.’

‘I’m surprised you’re married.’

‘Good heavens. Why not? You mustn’t think the English are all gay. Not all of us.’

‘Kids?’

‘Yes. Two. Boys. May I show you?’

He pulled a wallet from his inside breast pocket and opened it to Franklin. Two small faces smiled from behind the square cellophane window.

‘They’re good lookers,’ said Franklin.

‘Thank you. Very nice to say so, I must say.’

He drank cold coffee.

‘You were telling me about the man you tortured,’ said Franklin.

The Englishman’s blue eyes twinkled over the rim of his coffee cup. Very bright eyes. Small pupils. His face was thin and his nose was long and very straight. He looked as if he had come straight from the
Herrenvolk.

‘If I hadn’t been so punctual,’ he said, ‘this coffee would have been perfect. There’s our flight.’

The departure board clicked its computer way through the letters and numbers until it showed the Aer Lingus flight departing for Dublin at Gate 14.

The Englishman stood up from the table and watched Franklin gather his things together. He made the scarf more comfortable and then picked up a small shoulder bag, supplied by the Cairo Embassy, containing a shirt, a pair of socks and underpants. And Theodore Bent.

It was dark when they got to Dublin. The man they kept in the long squat grey building had talked some more, just as the Englishman Howard had expected. Irish Intelligence had had the most extraordinary luck—as they put it. Once the Americans in London had alerted them to Schneider they had checked with their airport watchmen who remembered a known and as yet unconvicted Provo at the airport about the time of the London flight. As far as they knew he met nobody and left on his own motorcycle. It was only after Schneider’s description reached them that one of the younger watchmen remembered the Provo stopping a tall blonde for a light. Innocent enough, until it was recalled that the young Provo didn’t smoke, and never had.

‘You did this?’ asked Franklin.

‘’Fraid so,’ said the Englishman. His blue eyes smiled.

‘You’ve crippled him.’

‘Apparently.’

‘Bastards!’

‘Don’t be absurd. Your people want Fahd back on his throne. We gather he’s rather vital, and we mean to keep him alive for you. With the help of young Kieran here I think we will.’

The Englishman raised his hand and the guard by the door switched off the ceiling light. For five seconds or more they stood in the dark. Then an intense beam of light from the Englishman’s torch shone into the prisoner’s eyes.

‘Good evening, Kieran,’ he said softly and pleasantly. ‘I’ve brought someone here to see you. From America. I am going to ask you some of my questions again and I want you to answer them just the way you’ve been doing. D’you understand, Kieran? Just the way you’ve been doing.’

The grey eyes looked into the beam of light, wide and unblinking. Morphine, injected to ease the enormous pain between his legs, had dilated the pupils and they were so grey and so empty it was like looking directly into the brain behind.

‘Kieran, you met Miss Schneider at Dublin airport?’

‘Yes.’ It was a whisper from the back of the throat. The eyes did not move.

‘And you took her back to your rooms. To meet others?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did Schneider want from them? What did she ask for?’

‘A plane.’

‘To?’

‘Fly to Carlisle.’

‘To refuel?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then?’

‘Newcastle.’

‘Why?’

‘A ferry to Stavanger, Norway.’

‘Was she flying anywhere in between Carlisle and Newcastle?’

‘Ullswater.’

‘Why, Kieran? Why Ullswater?’

‘To drop a bomb.’

‘A bomb, Kieran? A bomb?’

‘Canister.’

‘And where did Schneider get this canister?’

‘Brought to my room.’

‘When?’

‘Two days ago.’

‘Who brought it?’

‘Arab.’

‘From? Where from, Kieran?’

‘Iraq.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Searched him.’

‘A passport?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the canister? What was in the canister?’

‘It was sealed.’

‘Made of?’

‘It was heavy.’

‘Metal?’

‘Lead.’

‘A canister made of lead, Kieran. And what was inside?’ ‘I don’t know.’

The grey eyes quickly closed and the young man squeezed his eyelids tight and held his breath.

‘Don’t be afraid, Kieran,’ said the Englishman softly and gently. ‘I believe you now. When you say you don’t know, I believe you. I didn’t before, did I? But I do now. Really I do.’ The grey unseeing face slowly relaxed again, and the grey eyes opened.

‘And the Arab, Kieran? What happened to the Iraqi?’

‘He stayed.’ The voice was so small that Franklin moved a step closer. He smelt the man’s sweat and his excreta smeared across the chair. And the clinical alcohol splashed across the man’s bruised genitals.

‘He stayed with the canister, Kieran, until Schneider came?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then he gave the canister to Schneider?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then you killed the Arab?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Schneider left?’

‘Yes.’

‘With the canister?’

‘Yes.’

‘But we don’t know where she went, do we Kieran?’

‘No.’

‘Thank you. Now you can sleep again. Goodnight, Kieran. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Lights, please,’ said the Englishman loudly, suddenly, pleasantly.

In the sudden brightness Franklin held his hand to his eyes and turned away from the torture chair and the dull grey shape slumped in it. The guard held open the door and stood to one side for them to pass. The Englishman smiled to him.

‘You can clean him up now and put his trousers on.’ He stopped and touched the guard’s arm. ‘If the doctor agrees, of course. Only if the doctor agrees.’ He walked out into the corridor and Franklin followed.

The Englishman stopped half-way down the narrow corridor and leant against the wall, hands in his trouser pockets. Everything was painted high gloss green and there was a strong smell of floor wax. There were no windows and no doors other than the one they had just left. It was like a long narrow prison cell.

The Englishman smiled. Franklin looked away to the blurred image of him reflected in the shine of the green wall opposite.

‘A lead canister, Franklin, stolen from the Al Ahrish laboratories in Baghdad, containing twenty grams of plutonium, highly radioactive and, you understand, a deadly contaminate. Schneider intends to deliver it to King Fahd. It’s a fantasy, Franklin, except the reality is that we know that canister was brought to Dublin and that it is now somewhere en route to Lake Ullswater.’

‘And Fahd dies.’

‘You miss the point. There are simpler ways to kill a king than plutonium. If that canister is opened, its radioactive contamination could spread twenty miles in every direction from its centre point . . . forty miles depending on the wind and weather. That’s an area of two thousand square miles. It will destroy the lakes and the land and every living thing. It would be a. biological desert for half a century or more. Schneider’s target is Fahd, but more than ten thousand people live inside that circle. Can you begin to imagine what would happen if it became known that the canister was somewhere in England? Can you? On its way to kill an Arab and every living English thing just because he had become their neighbour in exile?’

‘So either way Schneider gets Fahd.’

‘Exactly. Dead by her hand or that of any one of a million English. The threat would be enough to force the British Government to deport him. And where could he go with such an assassin for company?’ He went on, ‘I’m told flights between here and the British mainland have just been grounded, but I’ve a feeling the bird has already flown. Nothing goes within sixty miles of Ullswater, even the scheduled flights must detour.
RAF
Fighter Command is patrolling.’

‘She needn’t use a plane,’ said Franklin.

‘All roads are being sealed off. Everything, even the mountain tracks. And we’ll have special army units patrolling, And helicopters.’

‘She doesn’t have to go by automobile.’

‘Oh yes, she does. That canister weighs over thirty pounds and it’s three feet long. Schneider is young and strong, but not strong enough to carry thirty pounds of lead very far.’

‘Couldn’t she ride?’ asked Franklin.

‘Ride? Ride what?’

‘A horse! No plane, no automobile, how else could she carry thirty pounds deadweight? How did they do it before cars and planes? And it would be easy by night without the helicopters. And silent. The night patrols might come across her but then again they might not. She stands a chance. She doesn’t have any other way.’

‘What extraordinary fantasy, Franklin. A German terrorist on horseback riding through the Lakeside dales by moonlight carrying plutonium to kill an Arab king. Improbable, but not impossible, I suppose. When you have dismissed the improbable only the impossible remains, as the famous detective said.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Put guards on every stable and farm around the cordon area.’

‘She may already be inside.’

‘Yes, Franklin. But it’s all for nothing, because we’re already evacuating. Army and police and civil defence have been on the go now for three hours. It’s a slow job, farms are miles apart and some without telephones, but with luck we’ll make it. As you say, she can only move at night so that must mean tonight and by then, please God, we’ll have everyone well out of the contamination area.’

‘Fahd?’

‘Out first, what did you expect? Your people came in for him as soon as we alerted them.’

‘Schneider will know.’

‘She can’t. Nothing on radio. Nothing.’

‘So we’re safe?’

‘People are. But not Ullswater, not the land. Not the animals. It’ll be a desert, Franklin, untouchable. God, d’you see the panic once it happens? Where next? What ransoms will we pay in the future if this one comes off? It’s too horribly fantastic.’

He moved to the door at the end of the corridor and held it open. He said, ‘Your people will meet you in Manchester before you go on with the police to Ullswater. You, plus nine of our own with radiographic metal detectors to give you something on the lead canister. And you’ll have suits. Anti-contamination suits. You’ll be safe.’

‘My people said I go?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I’m not even a regular.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I mean I’m not a regular. Not a professional.’

‘You really do write for a newspaper?’

‘New York Times.’

‘Good Lord!’ Howard was not smiling. ‘How much do you know about the Fahd thing?’