A Delicate Truth (4 page)

Kirsty had turned to examine him by the
passing lights. Her bony face, freckled from the outback. Short, dark hair tucked into
the bush hat. No make-up, and nothing behind the eyes: or nothing for him. The jaw
crammed into the crook of her forearm while she gave him the once-over. The body
indecipherable under the bulk of a quilted bush jacket.

‘Left everything in your room, Paul?
Like we told you?’

‘All packed up, as you
said.’

‘Including the bird book?’

‘Including it.’

Into a dark side street, washing slung
across it. Decrepit shutters, crumbling plaster, graffiti demanding
BRITS GO
HOME
! Back into the blaze of city lights.

‘And you didn’t check out of
your room? By mistake or something?’

‘The lobby was chock-a-block. I
couldn’t have checked out if I’d tried.’

‘How about the room key?’

In my bloody pocket. Feeling an idiot, he
dropped it into her waiting hand and watched her pass it to Hansi.

‘We’re doing the tour, right?
Elliot says to show you the facts on the ground, so’s you have the visual
image.’

‘Fine.’

‘We’re heading for Upper Rock, so
we’re taking in the Queensway Marina on the way. That’s the
Rosemaria
out there now. She arrived an hour ago. See it?’

‘See it.’

‘That’s where
Aladdin
always anchors, and those are his personal steps to the dockside. Nobody’s allowed
to use them except him: he has property interests in the colony. He’s still
aboard, and his guests are running late, still powdering their noses before they go
ashore for their slap-up dinner at the Chinese. Everybody eyeballs the
Rosemaria
, so you can, too. Just keep it relaxed. There’s no law says
you can’t take a relaxed look at a thirty-million-dollar super-yacht.’

Was it the excitement of the chase? Or just
the relief of being got out of prison? Or was it the simple prospect of serving his
country in a way he’d never dreamed of? Whatever it was, a wave of patriotic
fervour swept over him as centuries of British imperial conquest received him. The
statues to great admirals and generals, the cannons, redoubts, bastions, the bruised
air-raid precaution signs directing our stoical defenders to their nearest shelter, the
Gurkha-style warriors standing guard with fixed bayonets outside the Governor’s
residence, the bobbies in their baggy British uniforms: he was heir to all of it. Even
the dismal rows of fish-and-chip shops built into elegant Spanish façades were like
a homecoming.

A flash-glimpse of cannons, then of war
memorials, one British, one American. Welcome to Ocean Village, hellish canyon of
apartment blocks with balconies of blue glass for ocean waves. Enter a private road with
gates and a guard-box, no sign of a guard. Below, a forest of white masts, a ceremonial,
carpeted landing bay, a row of boutiques and the Chinese restaurant where
Aladdin
has booked his slap-up dinner.

And out to sea in all her splendour, the
Rosemaria
, lit overall with fairy lights. The windows on her middle deck
blacked out.
The salon windows translucent. Burly men hovering among
the empty tables. Alongside her, at the foot of a gold-plated ship’s ladder, a
sleek motorboat with two crew in white uniforms waiting to ferry
Aladdin
and
his guests ashore.

‘
Aladdin
is basically a
mixed-race Pole who has taken out Lebanese citizenship,’ Elliot is explaining, in
the little room in Paddington. ‘
Aladdin
is the Pole I personally would
not touch with a barge, to coin a witticism.
Aladdin
is the most unprincipled
fucking merchant of death on the face of this earth bar none, plus also the chosen
intimate of the worst dregs of international society. The principal item on his list
will be Manpads, I am given to understand.’

Manpads
, Elliot?

‘Twenty of them at last count. State
of the art, very durable, very deadly.’

Allow time for Elliot’s bald, superior
smile and slippy glance.

‘A Manpad is, technically, your
man-portable air-defence system, Paul,
Manpad
being what I call an
acronym
. As a weapon known by the same acronym, your Manpad is so
lightweight that a kid can handle one. It also happens to be just the item if you are
contemplating bringing down an unarmed airliner. Such is the mentality of these
murderous shits.’

‘But will
Aladdin
have them
with him, Elliot, the Manpads? Now? On the night? On board the
Rosemaria
?’ he asks, playing the innocent because that’s what
Elliot seems to like best.

‘According to our leader’s
reliable and exclusive intelligence sources, the Manpads in question are part of a
somewhat larger inventory of sale comprising top-of-the-range anti-tanks,
rocket-propelleds, and best-brand assault rifles from state arsenals around the known
bad world. As in the famous Arabian fairy tale,
Aladdin
has stashed his
treasure in the desert, hence the choice of name. He will notify the successful bidder
of its whereabouts
when
– and
only
when – he has cut the deal, in this
case with none other than
Punter
himself. Ask me what is
the purpose of the meeting between
Aladdin
and
Punter
and I will reply
that it is in order to set the parameters of the deal, the terms of payment in gold, and
the eventual inspection of goods prior to handover.’

The Toyota had left the marina and was
negotiating a grass roundabout of palm trees and pansies.

‘Boys and girls neat and tidy,
everyone in place,’ Kirsty was reporting in a monotone over her cellphone.

Boys, girls? Where? What have I missed? He
must have asked her:

‘Two parties of four watchers sitting
in the Chinese, waiting for the
Aladdin
party to show up. Two walk-by couples.
One tame taxi and two motorcyclists for when he sneaks away from the party,’ she
recited, as to a child who hasn’t been paying attention.

They shared a strained silence. She thinks
I’m surplus to requirements. She thinks I’m the Limey know-nothing
striped-pants parachuted in to make difficulties.

‘So when do I get to meet up with
Jeb?’ he insisted, not for the first time.

‘Your friend Jeb will be ready and
waiting for you at the rendezvous as per schedule, like I told you.’

‘He’s why I’m here,’
he said too loud, feeling his gall rising. ‘Jeb and his men can’t go in
without my say-so. That was the understanding from the start.’

‘We’re aware of that, thank you,
Paul, and Elliot’s aware of it. The sooner you and your friend Jeb hook up and the
two teams are talking, the sooner we can get this thing squared away and go home.
Okay?’

He needed Jeb. He needed his own.

The traffic had gone. The trees were shorter
here, the sky bigger. He counted off the landmarks. St Bernard’s Church. The
Mosque of Ibrahim-al-Ibrahim, its minaret lit white. The shrine to Our Lady of Europe.
Each of them branded on his memory thanks to mindless leafings through the greasy hotel
guidebook. Out to sea, an armada of lighted freighters at anchor.
The seaborne boys
will operate out of Ethical’s mother ship
, Elliot is saying.

The sky had vanished. This tunnel is not a
tunnel. It’s a disused mineshaft. It’s an air-raid shelter. Crooked girders,
sloppy walls of breeze block and rough-cut cliff. Neon strips flying overhead, white
road markings keeping pace with them. Festoons of black wiring. A sign saying
LOOK OUT FOR FALLING STONES
! Potholes, rivulets of brown flood water,
an iron doorway leading to God knew where. Has
Punter
passed this way today? Is
he hovering behind a doorway with one of his twenty Manpads? Punter
’s not just
high value, Paul. In the words of Mr Jay Crispin,
Punter
is
stratospheric
: Elliot again.

Pillars like the gateway to another world
coming at them as they emerge from the belly of the Rock and land on a road cut into the
cliff. A hefty wind is rattling the coachwork, a half-moon has appeared at the top of
the windscreen and the Toyota is bumping along the nearside verge. Beneath them, lights
of coastal settlements. Beyond them, the pitch-black mountains of Spain. And out to sea,
the same motionless armada of freight ships.

‘Sides only,’ Kirsty
ordered.

Hansi dowsed the headlights.

‘Cut the engine.’

To the furtive mutter of wheels on crumbling
tarmac, they rolled forward. Ahead of them, a red pin-light flashed twice, then a third
time, closer at hand.

‘Stop now.’

They stopped. Kirsty slammed back the side
door, letting in a blast of cold wind, and the steady din of engines from the sea.
Across the valley, moonlit cloud was curling up the ravines and rolling like gun smoke
along the Rock’s ridge. A car sped out of the tunnel behind them and raked the
hillside with its headlights, leaving a deeper darkness.

‘Paul, your
friend
’s
here.’

Seeing no friend, he slid across to the open
door. In front of him, Kirsty was leaning forward, pulling the back of her seat after
her as if she couldn’t wait to let him out. He started to lower his feet to the
ground and heard the scream of insomniac gulls and the zip-zip of crickets. Two gloved
hands reached out of the darkness to steady him. Behind them hunched little Jeb with his
paint-dappled face glistening inside his pushed-back balaclava, and a lamp like a
cyclopic eye stuck to his forehead.

‘Good to see you again, Paul. Try
these for size, then,’ he murmured in his gentle Welsh lilt.

‘And jolly good to see
you
,
Jeb, I must say,’ he answered fervently, accepting the goggles and grasping
Jeb’s hand in return. It was the Jeb he remembered: compact, calm, nobody’s
man but his own.

‘Hotel okay then, Paul?’

‘The absolute bloody pits. How’s
yours?’

‘Come and have a see, man. All mod
cons. Tread where I tread. Slow and easy. And if you see a falling stone, be sure and
duck, now.’

Was that a joke? He grinned anyway. The
Toyota was driving down the hill, job done and goodnight. He put on the goggles and the
world turned green. Raindrops, driven on the wind, smashed themselves like insects in
front of his eyes. Jeb was wading ahead of him up the hillside, the miner’s torch
on his forehead lighting the way. There was no track except
where he
trod. I’m on the grouse moor with my father, scrambling through gorse ten feet
high, except that this hillside had no gorse, just stubborn tufts of sand grass that
kept dragging at his ankles. Some men you lead, and some men you follow, his father, a
retired general, used to say. Well, with Jeb, you follow.

The ground evened out. The wind eased and
rose again, the ground with it. He heard the putter of a helicopter overhead.
Mr
Crispin will be providing the full American-style coverage
, Elliot had
proclaimed, on a note of corporate pride.
Fuller than you will ever be required to
know, Paul. Highly sophisticated equipment will be standard for all, plus a Predator
drone for observation purposes is by no means beyond his operational
budget
.

The climb steeper now, the earth part fallen
rock, part windblown sand. Now his foot struck a bolt, a bit of steel rod, a
sheet-anchor. Once – but Jeb’s hand was waiting to point it out to him – a stretch
of metal catch-net that he had to clamber over.

‘You’re going a treat, Paul. And
the lizards don’t bite you, not in Gib. They call them skinks here, don’t
ask me why. You’re a family man, right?’ – and getting a spontaneous
‘yes’ – ‘Who’ve you got then, Paul? No disrespect.’

‘One wife, one daughter,’ he
replied breathlessly. ‘Girl’s a medical doctor’ – thinking, oh Christ,
forgot I was Paul and single, but what the hell? – ‘How about you, Jeb?’

‘One great wife, one boy, five years
old next week. Cracker-jack, same as yours, I expect.’

A car emerged from the tunnel behind them.
He made to drop into a crouch, but Jeb was holding him upright with a grip so tight he
gasped.

‘Nobody can spot us unless we move,
see,’ he explained in his same comfortable Welsh undertone. ‘It’s a
hundred metres up and pretty steep now, but not a bother for you, I’m sure. A bit
of
a traverse, then we’re home. It’s only the three boys
and me’ – as if there were nothing to be shy of.

And steep it was, with thickets and slipping
sand, and another catch-net to negotiate, and Jeb’s gloved hand waiting if he
stumbled, but he didn’t. Suddenly they had arrived. Three men in combat gear and
headsets, one of them taller than the rest, were lounging on a tarpaulin, drinking from
tin mugs and watching computer screens as if they were watching Saturday-afternoon
football.

The hide was built into the steel frame of a
catch-net. Its walls were of matted foliage and shrub. Even from a few feet away, and
without Jeb to guide him, he might have walked clean past it. The computer screens were
fixed at the end of pipe casings. You had to squint into the pipes to see them. A few
misty stars glowed in the matted roof. A few strands of moonlight glinted on weaponry of
a kind he’d never seen. Four packs of gear were lined up along one wall.

‘So this is Paul, lads. Our man from
the ministry,’ said Jeb beneath the rattle of the wind.

One by one, each man turned, drew off a
leather glove, shook his hand too hard and introduced himself.

‘Don. Welcome to the Ritz,
Paul.’

‘Andy.’

‘Shorty. Hullo, Paul. Make the climb
all right, then?’

Shorty
because he’s a foot
taller than the rest of them: why else? Jeb handing him a mug of tea. Sweet with
condensed milk. A lateral arrow-slit was fringed by foliage. The computer pipes were
fixed below it, allowing a clear view down the hillside to the coastline and out to sea.
To his left the same pitch-black hills of Spain, bigger now, and closer. Jeb lining him
up to look at the left-hand screen. A rolling sequence of shots from hidden cameras: the
marina, the Chinese restaurant, the fairy-lit
Rosemaria
. Switch to a shaky
hand-held shot inside the
Chinese restaurant. The camera at floor
level. From the end of a long table in the window bay, an imperious fifty-year-old fat
man in a nautical blazer and perfect hair gesticulates to his fellow diners. On his
right, a sulky brunette half his age. Bare shoulders, showy breasts, diamond collar and
a downturned mouth.