“Of course,” she said, standing as if to leave, “I understand. Thank you for your time.”
The young man looked slightly panicked.
“Oh, but I’m sure an accommodation can be made for you, Miss Fielding,” he said quickly.
Helene turned.
“Thank you so much, Mr al-Rahhbi. I am very grateful. Please assure your whole team of my gratitude and if a small gratuity could assuage their extra efforts, I would be delighted.”
He looked relieved that she had understood.
Helene passed him the well-stuffed envelope. The young man slipped it into his pocket without a second glance. Very smooth.
Satisfied, Helene allowed him to usher her from the office.
Mission accomplished.
When she got back to the villa, Charlie was nowhere to be seen. Slightly relieved, Helene decided against a massage, instead changing into a newly acquired swimming costume and plunged into the private pool. The water was warmer than she would have normally liked, but it was refreshing all the same. For a moment she had a pang for the chilly seawater of the Jubilee Pool in Penzance’s outdoor lido. Another lifetime.
After swimming some twenty or so lengths, she eased herself from the pool and flopped onto a lounger under a sun umbrella and was soon fast asleep.
The sun had shifted several degrees before the sensation of being watched woke her abruptly. Charlie cast a shadow over her.
“Hello, sleeping beauty,” he said. “I thought I was going to have to wake you with a kiss.”
“Knowing my luck you’d have turned into a frog,” she said.
“Not necessarily,” he said, sitting close to her on the sun lounger. “Would you like to risk it?”
Helene could see that his hair was damp from the shower and she smelled the soap on his cleanly shaven skin; his blue eyes were teasing, inviting.
“I’ve booked us a place at lunch with Hassan Ali tomorrow,” she said, avoiding a direct reply. “We’ll have to find a way to make our move then.”
Charlie smiled and stood up.
“Dinner has arrived – I’m ready when you are.”
Under his steady gaze she wrapped her towel primly around her and tried to walk naturally. She could feel his eyes burning between her shoulder blades.
She wished she’d kept the yukata, but as it was several thousand miles away she changed into a long-sleeved blouse, the useful harem pants and a new pair of flip-flops.
The humidity of the day increased as evening approached, the air heavy and moist. Helene felt overdressed but Charlie looked comfortable in chinos and an open-necked shirt. Conversation felt too awkward so she gave her attention to the food – a delicious array of delicate, portion-sized dishes: machboos, fish with rice; sweet rice with dates; falafel; spicy chicken wrapped in pita bread; a glutinous looking fish sauce; several delicate pastries; and a dalla pot of thick, black coffee.
Helene used the silence to tease out an idea that had begun to squirm around in her mind.
Replete at last, Helene leaned back. Charlie was sipping from a tiny coffee cup. He watched her look up, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
“How do we get him to talk?” said Helene, steering the conversation towards business.
There was no need to explain whom she meant.
Even so, Charlie sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Luck: work on his conscience – I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll have to wing it.”
Helene nodded slowly.
“Okay. I’ve made a photocopy of Kazuma’s sketch. I thought I’d let him catch a glimpse of it at lunchtime, then invite him to meet us here at the villa. At least then we can talk to him in private. But will he come?”
“I wouldn’t take bets on it,” Charlie replied. “Not if he wouldn’t talk to Kazuma – someone he knew and trusted.”
Helene felt a shiver run through her.
“What would scare a man like Hassan?” she said. “An ex-mercenary, a rich and successful businessman. What would scare him this much?”
“I’ve been trying to work that out,” said Charlie. “Someone more powerful: that’s all I can come up with.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought, too,” she agreed. “And who is powerful enough to follow us across three continents – and to have the technology to find our website – someone who might be bothered by the words: White House, Langley and Spycatcher?”
Helene looked directly at Charlie. “You see what I’m saying?”
“Jesus!”
He sat up straighter.
“So my theory is,” continued Helene, her voice barely louder than a whisper, “that whatever we’ve stumbled into, it goes all the way to the White House – maybe even to the President himself. That’s why we’re being hunted and that’s why Hassan is so scared. I’ve been going over and over it: it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
Charlie stared back at her.
“I think we’d better check the website,” he said at last.
“We should do it out here,” she said. “We’ll have to assume that we’re under surveillance. The rooms could be bugged.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference,” said Charlie. “If they were watching us they could hear everything we’re saying right now using a boom microphone. The beach is our best bet: we’d know if there was anyone within a quarter of a mile of us.”
“Well if they’re listening now,” said Helene, “they know we’re getting closer. We have to get to Hassan straightaway... the website can wait.”
“Agreed,” he said. “I found out which room he’s staying in.” He raised his eyebrows at her irritated expression. “I had to do something while you were out,” he said, looking smug. Then his expression changed and became hard. “I think we should invite Mr Ali for a walk on the beach.”
Hurrying now, Helene made one adjustment to her wardrobe: she changed her flip-flops for a pair of trainers. She hoped she wasn’t going to have to run after such a filling meal, but better safe than sorry.
But by the time she’d made her way through the hotel’s grounds and lobby, she was feeling sweaty and distinctly underdressed. Several women guests, draped with designer evening dresses and festooned with jewels, had swept their gazes up and down and found her wanting; even some of the hotel staff looked mildly shocked at her lack of adornment.
Typical: she’d have been less obtrusive if she’d looked like a high-class hooker.
“Pay no attention,” said Charlie, hiding a smile.
Helene wasn’t surprised that he’d noticed the negative attention she was getting: he seemed to notice everything. It was comforting to have his support – if that’s what it was.
The irony was that to the men of the hotel, those robed and those in suits, she may as well have been invisible. Helene tried to remember when it was that men had first stopped looking at her. From her fortieth birthday? Between forty and forty-five? Post fifty? She couldn’t remember, nor did she care. Much. It would have been a liberating thought… if it weren’t so damned depressing.
At Hassan’s door they encountered their first serious problem: two serious problems, weighing at least 200 pounds each.
“Masa alkhair,” said Helene, nervously.
The two bodyguards exchanged a glance. Helene immediately caught their mood. She realised she’d made a mistake: it had been too long since she’d been in the Middle East.
“You should do the talking,” she whispered to Charlie. “I’ll stand back.”
Silently she passed him the photocopy in a sealed envelope.
“Evening, gents,” said Charlie. “We’d like to see Mr Ali, please.”
“He is not to be disturbed,” said the human portcullis on the left.
“He’ll want to see us,” said Charlie.
“No exceptions,” repeated the giant in good English.
“It’s important that he gets our message,” said Charlie, the slightest hint of granite in his voice.
It made
the guards look directly at him for the first time. This man commands, their body language seemed to acknowledge.
“Please give him this envelope and we’ll leave,” said Charlie.
He didn’t offer to bribe them: there was no point insulting the men who were going to help.
Portcullis accepted the envelope with a nod of his head: Helene and Charlie had no choice but to leave.
“What now?” she hissed.
“There are only two ways to leave the building from here,” he said. “Down the fire exit and along the main corridor. Take your pick. Have you still got your phone?”
She nodded.
“Good. Phone me if you see him first: speed-dial 1.”
“And do what while I’m waiting for you?” said Helene impatiently. “Am I supposed to wrestle him to the ground, knocking out the two goons first, of course?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” said Charlie coolly, “but I was rather hoping you’d use your charm. I’m told you have some.”
“Great plan,” snarled Helene, and stalked off.
God! but he could put her back up.
She waited, spending two frustrating minutes thinking of things she should have said to Charlie to cut him down to size.
But then she heard someone leaving Hassan Ali’s hotel room and walking towards her. He was alone. He was about the same age as Charlie, she noted, but shorter and more wiry-looking. His mouth seemed to be permanently pouting. It made Helene think of botox.
He saw her at once and his face hardened.
“Miss La Borde? Is this a subtle threat?”
He surprised her: his voice had a Black Country accent that he seemed to wish to suppress. Hassan Ali held up the photocopied sheet of paper. Helene realised he hadn’t used her alias.
“No!” said Helene startled. “We just needed to get your attention so you’d talk to us.”
“We? Who’s with you?” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“You must know,” she said softly. “You know who I am and you know why I’m here. You must know who I’m with.”
She paused, but he didn’t reply: “The man who flew the helicopter,” she said, “We must talk to you. Please. Will you come with me now?”
“If you’re lying to me, Miss La Borde,” he said slowly, “I’ll choke the breath from your throat and leave your corpse in the desert for the cormorants to feast on your dead eyes. I hope I’m being clear.”
“Crystal,” said Helene, trying to swallow with a throat as dry as bones. “I’d like to phone my partner to join us, if you don’t mind.”
“No tricks!” he snapped.
“None, I promise,” she said, her voice crackling with sincere fear.
She pressed speed-dial 1 and heard Charlie’s curt, “Yes?”
“He’ll meet with us,” said Helene, “where we agreed. Five minutes.”
“Are you wearing a wire, Miss La Borde?” Hassan asked silkily.
Helene shook her head dumbly as Hassan Ali swept a small, black device up and down her body, pushed her round and repeated the exercise across her back.
“So far, so good,” he said.
They walked down the main staircase. Helene was glad he had decided against the lift: she didn’t think she could have faced being alone with him in a confined space. Walking helped to disguise the trembling in her legs.
A spectacular sunset cast a bloody glow over the beach. Charlie was silhouetted at the water’s edge.
“Thanks for coming,” said Charlie.
“I do recognise you,” said Hassan.
Then he swept the device over Charlie who stood, arms stretched out as if preparing for crucifixion.
“What do you want?” said Hassan.
“Who is the man in the picture?” said Helene.
“Why do you want to know?”
Helene spoke quickly, spitting the words out.
“Because if we don’t find out soon, the agents who are undoubtedly following us will catch us and lock us up for a hundred years – or kill us. I don’t want that to happen without knowing why,” she said. “We know it’s to do with the man of three years ago that you, Bill Bailey, Charlie and Kazuma kidnapped. We suspect he knew something that the US government wants kept quiet. All we want to do is find out enough to make them leave us alone.”
“Just talking to you is dangerous,” said Hassan.
“You agreed to meet with us, mate,” said Charlie. “And you know they’re probably watching us. Passing on what you know is the only thing that’s going to keep you alive now. Which is why you’re here.”
“Maybe I’m here to kill you,” said Hassan calmly.
Charlie shook his head. Helene shook her knees.
“No,” said Charlie. “If you wanted to kill us you’d have had it done as soon as you heard we were here.”
Hassan smiled.
“True.” He seemed to be weighing his decision. Then he spoke.
“The man we took was a US citizen: his name Wally Manfred,” he paused as if expecting a reaction from them. “He is – or was – part of an underground team of computer hackers, dedicated to finding out all the dirty little secrets that the US government would rather were kept hidden. The hackers call themselves the Gene Genies. They developed the program that was used by Wikileaks to reveal top secret information on Guantanamo Bay detainees. That’s how powerful they’ve become. Three years ago the Gene Genies were just getting going but they were pretty vocal and the media were starting to take them seriously: Wally Manfred was their founder. My guess is that the spooks thought stopping him would stop the Gene Genies… or he came across something so sensitive that we were hired to remove him.”
Helene was floundering in the excess of information after such a long drought. But something came to her from the morass.
“When you talked to Kazuma you said to him, ‘I can’t believe he worked for them’. What did you mean by that?”
Hassan looked at her, a calculating expression on his face.
“I don’t know why Kazuma trusts you,” he said after a short pause, “but he’s never led me wrong before so I’m going to tell you what I know. A month ago I came across an old article on a website. I was surfing hacker sites for a client. That’s when I saw his photo: Wally Manfred. I recognised him straightaway. The article said that he was working for the US government, specifically the NSA. It seemed so unlikely that it caused a lot of noise in the hacker community at the time. Some people didn’t believe it and thought it was some kind of set up to discredit the Gene Genies. Which is ironic when you think about it. But the point is, the photo was taken after we did the job. The US government must have had some serious leverage on him to turn a guy like Wally Manfred.”
Helene shivered.
“What do you think he found out?” she said.
“I’ve been trying to work that out. All I can tell you is that before he disappeared – before we disappeared him – he’d been researching the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the US debt at the end of the First World War.”
Helene looked at Charlie blankly. He shook his head, bewildered.
“Since then I’ve looked everywhere I can think of,” said Hassan, “but I couldn’t find anything else. All other traces of what he’d researched have been pretty comprehensively wiped: I couldn’t say by whom. The trail I could find – Wally Manfred’s one weak spot was that he had – has – a daughter living in San Bernadino. She’s still there. I’ve checked and re-checked her bank balance and there’s been no change in her status in the last three years: no excess money either going into or out of her account and she doesn’t have a new car. So if Wally Manfred has been bought off, the money hasn’t gone to his daughter.”
“But they wouldn’t need to buy him off,” reasoned Helene. “By kidnapping him they’d already shown that they could get him any time they wanted to and, by extension, her. They wouldn’t even need to threaten her.”
“Maybe,” said Hassan, “but there’s something else. Sh
ortly after that photo was taken, Wally Manfred was diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s. I tracked him down and ever since he’s been living in a home for dementia sufferers in a retirement village near his daughter. Here’s the weird bit: I’ve checked his medical records and there is nothing, I mean nothing that shows he’s had any medical tests whatsoever in the last seven years.”
“Which means what?” said Helene, struggling to take in all the new information.
“It means,” said Hassan impatiently, “that up until the day he was institutionalised, Wally Manfred was as healthy as you or me.”
“Oh my God!” said Helene quietly as the realisation sank in. “We have to find that poor man!”
Charlie nodded. “Yes, whatever he knows, that’s the key to this.”
Hassan shrugged. “Yes, I think so. Whatever it is – it’s big. NSA big.”
“Will you help us?” said Helene.
Hassan looked at her levelly, the failing sun lengthening his shadow into an alien spindle.
“I already have. I’m done. I’m just a businessman these days. I have a good life: I’d like to keep it that way. They’ll leave me alone now.”
“You seem pretty sure of that,” said Helene, bitingly.
Hassan smiled. “I am. I’ve passed the baton: they’ll follow you now. I’m past history.”
Helene nearly choked.
“You… you’ve set us up!”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Hassan, curling his plump lip. “You got what you wanted. I got what I wanted: that’s a fair trade.”
Helene was breathless with indignation.
“He’s right,” said Charlie, breaking his silence. “We’ve got what we need: it’s time for us to go.”
But Helene wasn’t finished yet.
“Don’t you care about Wally Manfred?” half choking as she spat out the words.
Hassan almost laughed out loud.
“No! Why should I? All I care is that I never hear his name again.”
“But why did you tell us and not Kazuma?” said Helene, her voice becoming shrill.
“Who says I didn’t?”
Helene’s mouth dropped open in shock.
Hassan walked away leaving her and Charlie to the night.