He reached the stable, pulled the door open and looked inside. One glance was all it took. Shaf was gone.
Richter retrieved his passport, walked into the Arrivals hall and looked round. He spotted an attractive, dark-haired woman standing at the edge of the crowd, holding up a sheet of A4 paper bearing the name ‘EVANS’. He strode forward and stopped directly in front of her.
‘Are you waiting for me? Paul Richter?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘I’m Carole-Anne Jackson.’
‘Not Evans, then? I take it you’re American?’
‘Well spotted. You’re right, I’m not Evans. Something came up at the office and he got delayed. Come on, I’ve got a car outside.’
The heat outside the building hit Richter like a punch in the face — he’d never been terribly comfortable in hot climates. Jackson led the way to a white BMW saloon. Richter opened the boot and put his case and computer bag inside, then sat down in the passenger seat. The heat from the black leather upholstery seared instantly through his light jacket, and he jerked forward involuntarily.
‘Christ, that’s hot.’
Carole-Anne Jackson gave a chuckle. ‘You don’t need to tell me. Next time I buy a vehicle I’ll tell them to stuff the executive leather interior and give me some good old-fashioned cloth.’
‘I hope this heap of German tin is air-conditioned.’
‘You don’t like Beemers, then?’
‘Not much, no. In Britain they always seem to be driven around by arrogant pricks who think owning one gives them the absolute right to cut everyone up. It could be worse, though.’
‘Really?’ Carole-Anne Jackson gave a slight smile as she started the engine, and a welcome rush of ice-cold air blasted out of the dashboard vents. ‘How?’
‘It could be a Mercedes.’
Jackson had her hand on the gear lever, but removed it to look straight at Richter. Most people didn’t criticize her choice of car the moment they met her, and she found his outspoken comments rather irritating. Irritating, but also somehow intriguing. ‘What’s wrong with Mercedes?’ she asked. ‘They’re beautifully engineered cars.’
‘So I’m told. Personally I think they’re over-engineered, overweight, underpowered, really expensive to maintain, vulgar, ugly, unreliable and grotesquely overpriced. And I’ve never found one yet with comfortable seats. Apart from that, I’m sure they’re really good.’
Jackson stared at him for a few moments, then slid the gear lever into first and eased the car forward. ‘You’re what I think my mother would have called contrary. Is there anything else you don’t like, so I can try to avoid the subject?’
‘Sorry,’ Richter muttered, ‘I’m not in the best of tempers today. I’m still jetlagged, so my body clock is running about four hours behind — or maybe ahead of, I’m never really sure — what my watch is telling me. Added to that, I’m permanently at the top of my boss’s shit list, and he’s just sent me out to Dubai on what I absolutely know is a wild goose chase.’
‘Ah.’
‘And what does that mean?’
Jackson glanced at him. ‘You could find yourself chasing rather more than one wild goose out here, I’m afraid.’
‘You want to explain that?’
‘This car’s clean, so I suppose it’s as good a place as any to give you an initial briefing. First, I take my orders from Langley, not from Vauxhall Cross, and I’ve been working here as an exchange officer with the local SIS people for about eighteen months. Somebody, somewhere, obviously must have thought it was a good idea.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘It’s a job, I guess, but I’m not too wild about the Middle East, and Arabs aren’t my favourite people.’
‘Nor mine, but don’t tell anyone that.’
‘OK, that’s me. Now, one of our contacts in the Special Intelligence Service — that’s more or less Bahrain’s secret police force — has an informer who believes Osama bin Laden is currently a patient in a local hospital.’
It was a few moments before Richter managed to reply. ‘Is this somebody’s idea of a bad joke?’
Jackson shook her head. ‘Not as far as I’m aware. To the best of our knowledge, the sighting was genuine. We passed the information back to Vauxhall Cross, and they presumably decided you were the ideal man to investigate it.’
‘I’ll bloody kill Simpson,’ Richter muttered. ‘Every credible report that’s crossed my desk for the last six months has suggested that bin Laden is either dead or still skulking around the Pakistani — Afghan border region. How the hell is he supposed to have checked himself into a hospital here?’
Jackson explained what they knew about ‘Sheikh Rashid’ and his arrival in Bahrain by private jet.
When she’d finished, Richter shook his head. ‘I don’t doubt this Filipino cleaner is genuine in what he thought he saw, but it must be a misidentification. He saw this man for a matter of a few seconds, and not even full-face.’
‘You’re probably right,’ she sighed. ‘So what do you intend to do?’
‘I’ll talk to my section, not that it’ll do any good. Then I’ll check it out, I guess. I mean, there probably is about a one in a million chance bin Laden might have slipped through the net.’
Jackson eyed him curiously before returning her attention to the road. ‘OK, now I’ve got a question. You just said “your section”, but I assumed you were from Vauxhall Cross?’
Richter shook his head. ‘No, I don’t work at Legoland, I’m pleased to say. My employer is a short, balding, bad-tempered ex-mandarin who heads a small unit tucked away in the backstreets of Hammersmith. Officially, it’s a research and investigation section affiliated to the SIS. In reality, we get given the dirty little jobs that the people at Six don’t want to risk soiling their aristocratic hands with.’
‘Like this one, you mean?’
‘Exactly like this one.’
‘OK, I see. Well, the first step is for you to meet Evans, as this is his operation, not mine. We’ve checked you into the Sheraton Hotel. I presume that’ll be OK?’
Richter had a sudden mental picture of the expression he was likely to see on the cashier’s face when he presented his credit card vouchers for this particular excursion, and smiled at her.
‘Yes, that’s fine. Right, Evans — when can I meet him?’
Jackson glanced at the dashboard clock. ‘He should be at the hotel by now.’
A couple of minutes later she stopped the car outside the Sheraton, expertly manoeuvring it into a parking space. Richter picked up his cases and followed her into the lobby, a large open space adorned with ornate columns, chandeliers and a wild profusion of plants. She headed straight for the reception desk, then turned and saw Evans sitting in an easy chair, reading a two-day-old copy of The Times.
‘Bill,’ she said, ‘this is Paul Richter from London. Paul, Bill Evans.’
Evans stood up, shook hands and then subsided back into his seat.
‘Paul thinks this is a complete waste of time,’ Carole-Anne Jackson began.
‘And I agree.’ Evans grinned boyishly at him. ‘I still don’t think our Saudi friend would have a chance of getting here without somebody spotting him.’
‘Even if he’s still alive.’
‘Exactly. My guess is that his corpse is rotting in a cave somewhere, and his camp followers aren’t going to tell the world until they think the time is right. But London wants us to check, just in case.’