“He cannot be coming, Mr. Gareth. My principal, I’m afraid . . . It was nothing to do with me . . . He received an offer . . .”
“What has happened to Mr. Carlsson?” Evans’s voice had lost all its good humor.
“I’m afraid he has been sold to the al-Shabaab in the south. But do not worry, Mr. Gareth. He was only the cadet.”
Gareth Evans replaced the receiver, leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. Mrs. Bulstrode put down his breakfast and left.
• • •
Agent Opal sat between Jamma and the door. The Preacher was on the far side. The technical, which did not have the suspension of the Land Cruiser, bucked, rocked and shuddered with every stone and pothole. They had been motoring for five hours; it was nearly midday, and the heat was stifling. Any air-conditioning the vehicle had once had was long for the archives.
The Preacher and Jamma were both dozing. Had it not been for the jolting, Opal might have fallen into a fitful sleep and missed it.
The Preacher awoke, leaned forward, tapped the driver on the shoulder and said something. It was in Urdu, but the meaning became clear only moments later. They had been driving in line since leaving Marka, and their vehicle was the second of four. Just after the tap on the shoulder, the driver turned off the track of the one in front and took another.
He glanced out and back. Trucks three and four were doing the same. The seating arrangements were different from the Land Cruiser. There was just the driver up front, with the Preacher, Jamma and himself along the seat behind. The three bodyguards were out in the open behind the cab with Duale the Sacad.
From above, all four technicals would look the same, and like eighty percent of other pickup trucks in Somalia. Three of the technicals were local hirelings from Marka. Opal knew about drones; they had featured large in his training at the Mossad agent school. He began to retch.
Jamma looked at him in alarm.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s the jolting,” he said. The Preacher looked across.
“If you are going to be ill, go ride outside,” he said.
Opal opened the door next to him and hauled his torso outside. The desert wind blew his hair about his face. He reached a hand toward the open bed of the truck, and a hefty Pakistani grabbed it. After a wild second dangling over the rear wheel, he was pulled into the rear. Jamma leaned across and slammed the door from the inside.
Opal smiled wanly at the three Pakistani bodyguards and the one-eyed Duale. They all ignored him. From inside his dishdash, he took out what he had been given under the casuarinas and had already used once. He pulled it on.
• • •
Which one do we follow, sir?” The question was becoming very urgent. As the Global Hawk widened its aperture, the desert moved farther away, with all four trucks at the periphery of the picture. The Tracker noticed a disturbance in one of the technicals.
“What’s that guy doing?” he asked. “Truck number two.”
“He seems to have climbed out for air,” said M.Sgt. Orde. “He’s pulling something on. A baseball cap, sir. Bright red.”
“Close in on truck two,” snapped the Tracker, “ignore the others. They are decoys. Follow truck two.”
The camera moved to truck two at the center of the frame, then closed in. The five men in the back became bigger and bigger. One had a red cap. Very faintly, the watchers could make out the insignia “New York.”
“God bless you, Opal,” breathed the Tracker.
• • •
The Tracker caught his colleague, the defense attaché, as the man came back from his morning five-mile run through the country lanes around Ickenham, where he lived. It was eight a.m. The attaché was a full colonel, drawn from the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. The Tracker’s question was brief and simple.
“Sure, I know him. He’s a good guy.”
“Do you have his private line?”
The attaché scrolled through his BlackBerry and dictated the number. Seconds later, the Tracker had the man he sought, a British major general, and asked for the meeting.
“My office. Nine o’clock.”
“I’ll be there,” said the Tracker.