So at any given time Ibrahimi could be sitting beside me with a smashed larynx and the blood flowing into his lungs: this is a death, oddly enough, by drowning. But the two hit men would also be fast. Their hands were resting on their thighs, a matter of inches from their guns, and I'd have to reach their eyes to blind them and inflict diversionary pain before they could fire, and that would take time, perhaps a full second, a second and a half, while my arms rebounded from the strike to Ibrahimi and I turned my hands into a four-finger eye shot as I drove them forward. It wouldn't be difficult: these men were facing me and even if they saw my hands coming and flinched or moved their heads I could change the eye shot into a claw hand with their eyes still the target and if they had time to reach their guns at all they'd have to fire blind and I'd be into a double outward rake to drive their hands away.
But there was a risk. He was the man up front with the driver.
The big jet was flattening out for the approach, floating above the black frieze of the date palms to the south.
'Have you known Monsieur Klaus,' I asked Ibrahimi, 'For very long?'
I didn't expect him to tell me. I wanted to know how far he was simply prepared to talk, because soon I was going to talk to him and it would involve London. He wouldn't know that.
'I have known him,' Ibrahimi said, 'some time.'
Meant nothing.
The jet melted into the palm trees, vanished. The speedometer stood at a steady 100 kilometres per hour, the speed limit on this stretch. At 100 kph a lot of things would happen if the driver lost control. He was no obstacle to me, the Arab at the wheeclass="underline" his hands were tied and he must watch the road. But even supposing I could control the two hit men in the back of the limousine there was the third man sitting in front and he was a real hazard because I'd have to hit the seat-belt buckle release before I could reach him and in a car this size it was a long way from the back seat to the front and any initial momentum I could get from the upholstery wouldn't be enough to pitch me forward with the necessary speed to do anything effective: there wasn't the leverage. The third man would hear the action going on behind him the moment I started work and I wouldn't be halfway through what I needed to do with the other two before he span round with his gun drawn and fired at the skull to drop me with a single shot. The timing, as it concerned that man in the front there, was brutal, impossible.
Rule out the idea, then, of pre-empting the flashpoint. There was nothing I could do before we reached the airport at Dar-el-Beida, before we reached the rendezvous.
I could feel the adrenalin flowing into the bloodstream again, the resonance along the nerves as the digital clock flicked to 6:58 at seventeen minutes to the flashpoint. There wasn't a lot of time and I didn't see a single chance of doing anything even when we got there, anything effective. The most I could do would be to take Ibrahimi with me, Ibrahimi and the two men in the rear of the car, simply as a matter of principle. But if I could do anything at all it would have to be in a clear field with no disturbance: it was the only way I could work at the brink. So I'd better phone London, tell them to leave me alone, get their CT units out of Dar-el-Beida before we arrived.
'I've only known Monsieur Klaus,' I told Ibrahimi, 'a few hours.'
I shifted on the seat a little, half-turning to look at him, and the hands of the two men jerked.
'Relax,' I told them in German. 'I'm not going to hurt you.'
They'd hate that, did it for a giggle.
'What did you tell them?' Ibrahimi asked straight away.
'I told them to relax. They're fidgety.' His face was turned towards me, his black beard jutting, his eyes on mine in the shadows, a shimmer of black in the pale olive skin. 'Only a few hours,' I said. 'I met him only last night, as a matter of fact, about this time. But I know he's difficult to deal with, as I'm sure you've discovered yourself.'
He turned his face away from me, stared through the windscreen again, a glint coming into his eyes as headlights brightened from ahead of us in the opposite lane.
I wasn't waiting for an answer; it hadn't really been a question. I said, 'You remember, probably, the difficulty I was having with Monsieur Klaus a little time ago, at the palace.'
You think there's a chance of a security leak? Klaus, speaking in French. Ibrahimi had been there: we'd just been introduced.
Not really. I run a tight show, like you. But nothing in this life's ever certain, is it? I think you're right: I ought to phone my contact.
'I expect you remember,' I told Ibrahimi, that all I was suggesting to Monsieur Klaus was that I should get on the telephone and make quite certain the rendezvous at Dar-el-Beida was uncompromised.'
He would know the particular meaning of the word, in this context. I waited now, but he said nothing.
'Do you in fact remember, Monsieur Ibrahimi?'
In a moment he said quietly, 'Yes.'
Of course he did. Monsieur Klaus had been quite forthright. There's no time to phone anyone now. You're leaving here in fifteen minutes, and if your associate has left the rendezvous open to exposure it won't be my fault if you get shot.
'I'm afraid,' I told Ibrahimi, 'that Monsieur Klaus was perhaps a little over-confident, when he refused to let me use a telephone. But then he's like that, isn't he? I admire confidence in people, but in this case he should have given a little more thought to what I told him.' I waited, didn't expect an answer, received none. 'Do you remember what I told him, Monsieur Ibrahimi? I told him that we can never be quite certain there hasn't been a security leak, during the process of an illegal arms deal. And I suggested I should telephone my contact. You were there, I remember, Monsieur Ibrahimi.'
I waited again, just to give him time, sat watching him, the glint of headlights reflected in his eyes from the oncoming traffic. 'I rather feel,' I said, that you're a more patient man than Monsieur Klaus, a more careful man. I hope so, because if there has indeed been a security leak since the Miniver warhead left Britain, and if I can't telephone to find out, this car could be surrounded by armed counter-terrorist commandos the moment we reach the rendezvous, and we shan't have the fire power to shoot our way out.'
I looked away from him, swinging a glance past the flat expressionless faces of the two hit men to take in the clock on the dashboard behind them. I had fourteen minutes left, which didn't worry me because I could do all I needed to do on the telephone in that time. But it worried me that London might not be able to call off whatever forces they'd sent in before we got to the rendezvous.
I looked back at Muhammad Ibrahimi and found his eyes on me. 'But there's time,' I told him, for me to make quite sure we're not heading straight into an ambush, you and I. All I need is to use the telephone.'
It would have been nice if I could have pressed him harder, told him he'd be a bloody fool if he didn't let me use the phone, so forth – it would have saved time. But that wouldn't be the right approach for a man like Ibrahimi; he was infinitely more refined, more subtle than Dieter Klaus, and he was involved with Nemesis, perhaps, not because he was in essence a violent man but because he had a violent antipathy, like most Arabs, to the West, and in this operation the West was probably the target.'