The Network (26 page)

There are no mountains around Khartoum, but the city is blessed by the presence of the two Niles that converge there. The water is nearly half a mile wide and more powerful and serene than I imagined. I walk much further than planned. As evening falls I’m sapped by the heat and retreat to my room. I shower again and position myself back under the ceiling fan, wondering how long it will take me to get used to the heat, trying in vain not to think about the future and whether it is really written or not.

My meeting is at midday. I take a taxi halfway to the embassy and walk the rest, stopping to sample fruit juices at cupboard-sized shops along the sand-covered streets until I’m satisfied that no one is following me. I turn left from Sharia al-Baladiya between the Turkish and German embassies into a smaller street, and a little further on catch sight of the Union Jack fluttering on a rooftop. At the reception desk I introduce myself to an English-speaking Sudanese member of staff, asking as agreed for a Mr Halliday. He asks me to repeat the name, then speaks for a few moments on the phone while I sit wiping the sweat from my eyebrows.

There’s a door a few yards away to my left, which opens suddenly and takes me by surprise. I turn and see the head and shoulders of a man wearing a white shirt and tie studying me with a severe look of enquiry like a professor who’s been disturbed at his papers. The impression is strengthened by the thin circular gold frames of his glasses, behind which he blinks a few times before speaking.

‘Ah,’ he says, as if he’s making a mental calculation that seeing me has interfered with. ‘You’d better come with me.’

I follow him through the door, which he closes behind us, then shakes my hand.

‘Welcome to the Dark Continent. I’m afraid it is a bit hot,’ he says. He has an unctuous voice which sounds faintly comic to me, as if he’s trying out an impression of Noël Coward. He doesn’t introduce himself. I guess he’s no more than thirty, but he has the boffin-like mannerisms of a much older man, and looks as though he belongs on a university campus in the vicinity of some high, perhaps ivory, Gothic towers and carefully tended lawns. He’s tall and unnaturally thin and I can see the bones of his shoulders outlined under his shirt. We cross what looks like an interview room, where a photographic portrait of the Queen hangs above a wall of filing cabinets, and on the far side enter a smaller windowless room secured by an electronic lock. There’s the hum of an air-conditioning unit, and it’s mercifully cooler. We sit at a large wooden table.

‘Oh dear,’ says Halliday, or whatever his name really is, ‘I seem to have forgotten the map.’

‘I’ve got one, if it helps.’

I take the tourist map of the city from my small backpack and hand it to him.

‘Bravo. That’s actually the same one we use,’ he says with a comic expression of mischief. ‘Shall we have a look at where you’re going to walk the dog?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Walk the dog. The term applied to the chance meeting of an acquaintance, most often achieved while innocently exercising one’s pooch.’

‘Right,’ I say.

We open the map and he points to Jabal Awliya and the road that links it to the city. Halliday steadies his glasses and blinks as he sweeps back a mop of dark hair from his forehead.

‘The target vehicle will be returning on this road at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. It’s a white Daihatsu. Your helpers will be looking out for it at the halfway point and you’ll be waiting a little further along. In the event of a successful interception I won’t expect to hear from you, but if anything goes wrong I must ask you to return here and let me know.’

‘There isn’t much that can go wrong, is there?’ I ask.

A schoolteacherish look of disapproval comes over his face.

‘Oh but I think there is. Target vehicle changes route unexpectedly. Target vehicle has mechanical difficulty. Target vehicle fails to yield to persuasion. Target vehicle crashes. Pursuit vehicle fails to execute manoeuvre. Pursuit vehicle crashes. Target is seriously injured, summons civilian assistance, summons law enforcement; law enforcement vehicle stops at interception site before you do—’

‘I get it,’ I say. He’s from the health-and-safety generation.

‘I think you’ll find you can’t be too careful. Any of the above, and you drive on. We can’t have you getting into a local imbroglio.’

We talk over a few more details, and on the way out he collects a small bag of tokens, redeemable against drinks at the Pickwick Club in the embassy grounds.

‘Very exclusive,’ adds Halliday with a buffoonish wrinkle of his nose. ‘When you feel the need for a G & T. Just next door. Do be aware there are two listening devices pointing at the club enclosure from the eighteen-storey building opposite.’

‘I’m sure you’ve told the Hanslope Park people about them,’ I say. He hands me a small packet with the Firm’s specially designed tamper-proof seal on it, and I recognise the code card for my satphone.

‘There is one other thing,’ he says, by way of a reply. ‘The pool isn’t in use on Thursday nights and if you fall in you receive a lifetime ban.’

Seethrough called the local Sudanese helpers elves, but they don’t look like elves. The pair I meet the next morning are tall, lean and fit-looking men with serious faces. Their blue-black skin does not seem to sweat. They are in a pickup truck, which the locals call boxes, laden with what looks like the contents of somebody’s house, half-covered in canvas and lashed with an old nylon rope. Their vehicle pulls out ahead of me as I leave my compound, and then stops as the driver gets out, opens and closes the tailgate as if to check it’s properly closed and gets back in. It’s the agreed signal.

I follow them out of the city to the south, and we drive past the dilapidated suburbs for about half an hour before stopping in a sandy enclave of small warehouses, where we park in the shade. One of the men is in contact by two-way radio with the watcher vehicle a further quarter of a mile south, who confirms his position every fifteen minutes.

After an hour’s waiting there’s a sudden burst from the radio confirming the target is heading our way. The elves’ pickup moves to the edge of the road and gets ready to turn into the traffic, and I start the engine of my jeep but keep out of sight of the road for the moment. There’s only a small chance of it happening, but I don’t want the target to see our two vehicles together – mainly because the one ahead of me is going to deliberately run her off the road.

I can’t see her clearly as she passes. The pickup pulls out and settles two cars behind her. I follow after they’re several hundred yards ahead. We’ve gone about a mile when I make out the elves’ pickup veering out of the flow of traffic to overtake the target. They’re dangerously close to an oncoming car, but that’s the idea. They pull in suddenly and disappear from view again, but the move has worked, because to my right I see the target vehicle lurch onto the unsurfaced shoulder, sending up a cloud of dust before plunging into the sand beyond.

But it doesn’t stop. I’m reminded suddenly of H’s maxim
no plan survives first contact with the enemy
, and I feel a mixture of frustration and admiration for the driver, who’s kept control of the Daihatsu and is now circling away from the road at high speed. It looks as if she’s going to try and drive back onto the road. If she succeeds, we’ll have to come up with a new plan, and I hear myself cursing out loud as she manages the turn and begins to head back towards the road. But the offside wheels of her car are fighting the sand now, and throwing it up in little waves as she slows just before the circle is completed and ploughs to a stop before she reaches the road again. From a hundred yards away I see the driver get out and wave her arms angrily in the direction of the pickup, which has now disappeared. As I pull over she’s kicking at the front tyre in frustration, and it sounds like she’s swearing.

I get out and wave, and in reflex she pulls a white scarf, which has fallen onto her shoulders, back onto her head.

‘
As-salaamu aleikum
.’ It’s time to play the role of the helpful passer-by.

She returns the greeting peremptorily and looks up at me full of suspicion. She says something angrily in Arabic which I don’t catch, then rolls her eyes as if help from a white tourist is the last thing she wants.

I walk down from the shoulder of the road to where she stands beside her car, the wheels of which have sunk into the sand up to the axles.

‘I saw what happened. Can I help?’

‘No, thank you,’ she says, putting up her hands in a gesture of refusal. ‘Everything is OK. I don’t need help.’ She has a clear soft voice with a distinct French accent.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ she says testily, ‘I’m sure. I’m a woman, but I’m sure. Thank you.’

She looks even more annoyed now. Her reaction has caught me by surprise. I had the impression from her photograph that she’d be meek and reserved, a timid Muslim woman who only speaks when she’s spoken to. I couldn’t be more wrong. She’s all fire and pride, conspicuously strong-willed and too stubborn to admit how angry she is. She’s also more beautiful than in the photograph, which is perhaps why I’m staring. Even without having seen her picture, I’m certain I would have this feeling that I already know her, as if we’ve met before. But we haven’t. I catch myself and look away, as if breaking free from the spell of a hypnotist.

‘I can help to pull you out,’ I say. It worked with the Uzbek girl.

‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I don’t need your help. I can take care of this.’ Then, half to herself but distinctly enough for me to hear, she mutters ‘
Imbecile
’ under her breath.

I say nothing. It’s a stand-off. She won’t accept help, and I’m too proud to be rebuffed. We look at each other for a few seconds. It’s the first time our eyes really meet. Her face is still but her scarf is moving slightly in the breeze. My mind’s racing with unexpected thoughts and I’m reluctant to take my eyes off her. I walk back to my car and fetch the tow rope. She’s still glowering at me as I return, but there’s a hint of curiosity in her eyes now.

‘
En cas d’urgence
.’ I put the tow rope on the bonnet of her car.

‘I don’t need that,’ she says.

‘I’d say you need it more than I do,’ I say. ‘In case you have trouble parking again. Nice to meet you.’

She opens her mouth to speak but then decides not to. I turn and walk back to my car. I have my pride too.

On the roof of the guest house I can sit unobserved and power up the satphone. It’s been modified by the operational support geeks back home to accept a memory card with randomised codes on it, which makes it the modern equivalent of a code book and one-time pad combined. Each word of my contact report for Seethrough has a corresponding code number which is then encrypted and sent in a burst that lowers the probability of recognition or intercept to virtually nil. The most challenging part of the operation is shielding the screen from sunlight so as to see the words as I select them:
first contact hibiscus successful arranged new rv next week
. It’s not perfectly accurate, but he’s not to know. I’m just hoping I can think of a way to meet Jameela again before the week is out.

The solution comes after I pay a visit to the UNICEF office in Street 47 and am given an armful of documents about the organisation’s activities in the Sudan. Among them is a list of upcoming events in Khartoum, which I scan down until Jameela’s name leaps out at me beneath the title Global Programme for Polio Eradication. In three days’ time she’s giving a briefing on the progress of an immunisation campaign in the Nuba mountains in the south of the country. Staff and NGO partners, it reads further down, are welcome.

When the time comes, I find a seat among an audience of about thirty people and remind myself that I’m supposed to have found my way there by accident because the woman I’ve come to see hasn’t even told me her name yet. Listening to her speak about the inter-agency appeal targeted at multi-sectoral activities, I’m reminded that the world of humanitarian aid is almost as afflicted by jargon as the army. But when it’s time for questions, I make sure I’m the first to raise my hand, introducing myself and my company in the process, to ask about the risk of anti-personnel mines to children in the region.

There’s a flicker of puzzlement on her features as she wonders where she’s seen me before then delivers a textbook answer. At the end of the session I linger by the door as the others file out, and am glad to see that while she’s talking to another of the participants her eyes turn in my direction several times. I don’t make any effort to hide my pleasure at seeing her again. She walks up to me, clutching her papers across her chest.

‘So, Mr Tavernier.’ She’s Frenchified my name. ‘Is it a coincidence that you are here, or are you spying on me?’ The charm in her restrained smile robs the suggestion of seriousness, but her manner is bold all the same.

‘It’s a coincidence.’ I return the smile. ‘Although I’m sure I would enjoy spying on you too. Unfortunately I’m in Khartoum only for a short time.’

She puts out her hand and introduces herself. She uses her maiden name. The surname bin Laden is not mentioned. ‘It’s nice to meet you again,’ she says. ‘I gave your rope to a village chief. He liked it very much. I have a few minutes before my next meeting. Would you like some tea?’