A number rang in a modest commuter house in Surrey, just outside London. Eight a.m. in Langley, one p.m. in London; the house was about to sit down to a roast beef lunch. A voice answered at the third ring. Steve Hill had enjoyed his golf and was about to enjoy his beef.
‘Hello?’
‘Steve? Marek.’
‘My dear chap, where are you? Over here by any chance?’
‘No, I’m at my desk. Can we go to secure?’
‘Sure. Give me two minutes . . .’ And in the background: ‘Darling, hold the roast.’ The phone went down.
At the next call the voice from England was slightly tinny but uninterceptable.
‘Am I to understand that something has hit the ventilation system close to your ear?’ asked Hill.
‘All over my nice clean shirt,’ admitted Gumienny. ‘I guess you have much the same stuff as I have out of Peshawar?’
‘I expect so. I finished reading it yesterday. I was wondering when you would call.’
‘I have something you may not have, Steve. We have a visiting professor over here from London. He made a chance remark Friday evening. I’ll cut to the chase. Do you know a man called Martin?’
‘Martin who?’
‘No, that’s his surname. His brother over here is called Dr Terry Martin. Does it ring a bell?’
Steve Hill had dropped all banter. He sat holding the phone and staring into space. Oh yes, he knew the Martin brother. Back in the first Gulf War of 1990/91 he had been one of the control team in Saudi Arabia when the academic’s brother had slipped into Baghdad and lived there as a humble gardener under the noses of Saddam’s secret police while transmitting back priceless intelligence from a source inside the dictator’s cabinet.
‘Could do,’ he conceded. ‘Why?’
‘I think we should talk,’ said the American. ‘Face to face. I could fly over. I have the Grumman.’
‘When do you want to come over?’
‘Tonight. I can sleep on the plane. Be in London for breakfast.’
‘OK. I’ll arrange it with Northolt.’
‘Oh, and Steve, while I’m flying could you get out the full file on this man Martin? I’ll explain when I see you.’
West of London, on the road to Oxford, lies the Royal Air Force base of Northolt. For a couple of years after World War II it was actually London’s civil airport as Heathrow was hastily constructed. Then it relapsed into a role as a secondary airfield and finally a field for private and executive jets. But because it remains an RAF property, flights in and out can be fixed to take place in complete security without the usual formalities.
The CIA has its own very private airfield near Langley and a small fleet of executive jets. Marek Gumienny’s all-powerful piece of authority paper secured him the Grumman V, on which he slept in perfect comfort on the flight over. Steve Hill was at Northolt to meet him.
He took his guest not to the green and sandstone ziggurat at Vauxhall Cross on the south bank of the Thames by Vauxhall Bridge, home of the SIS, but to the much quieter Cliveden Hotel, formerly a private mansion, set inside its own estate not thirty miles from the airport. He had reserved a small conference suite with room service and privacy.
There he read the analysis of the American Koran Committee, which was remarkably similar to the analysis from Cheltenham, and the transcript of the conversation in the back of the car.
‘Damn fool,’ he muttered when he reached the end. ‘The other Arabist was right. It can’t be done. It’s not just the lingo, it’s all the other tests. No stranger, no foreigner could ever pass them.’
‘So, given my orders from the All-High, what would you suggest?’
‘Pick up an AQ insider and sweat it out of him,’ sai
d Hill.
‘Steve, if we had the faintest idea of the location of anyone that high in Al-Qaeda, we’d take them as a matter of course. We don’t have any such target in our sights as of now.’
‘Wait and watch. Someone will use the phrase again.’