“Yes, Captain?”
“After the carpet seller’s where did you go?”
“The Street of Gold. I’m afraid I can’t be more specific. There was an alleyway. In the house we ended up in, everyone seemed to speak Farsi. I’m afraid I didn’t understand much.”
Suleiman nodded. So he already knew about that, too, thought Richard. They had made the right decision then. “I’m going to tell him everything,” he had told Salah. “There are no secrets in the Soukh.”
“ ‘There are no secrets in the Soukh.’ It could almost be a saying of Omar Kayyam,” Salah had said. “And so true.”
“And then, Captain Mariner?” Suleiman called him back to the present.
“The Street of Pearl. There’s a big place at the end. We talked to a blind man there. Liked Sherlock Holmes. Called himself Sinbad. Not much more I can tell you than that, I’m afraid.”
“It is something, Captain Mariner. I had no idea that…ah…Sinbad, as you call him, had such tastes.” He paused. “And then?”
“We left. Salah said something about running out of time.”
“Just so. And the guns?”
“Salah has them. He is taking himself and them off the island, I believe.”
“Alouette is being watched.”
“Of course she is.”
“Not much of an adventure for such a night.”
“Really, Captain, I don’t know. I didn’t go for adventure, but for information. And all I got was two bags I don’t like, two guns I don’t want, and a story about twins and English Muslims I don’t understand. Do you have anything more?”
“Nothing. But if Sinbad told you the story, it will be relevant. More so than anything I could tell you.”
A silence fell and the two men, apparently casually, took the measure of each other. That final, weary admission that the blind storyteller had been of more use than the police softened Richard and he let the mask slip a little.
“What I have done tonight, with Salah. Is it highly illegal? Will our activities embarrass you?”
“Not unduly so. The fact that Malik has been here, perhaps a little. It is like a joke. He comes and goes as he pleases — a man with contacts like that, it is hardly surprising. Today it is I who am the laughingstock. Tomorrow it will be another.” He paused. Sipped. Watched Richard.
“The buying of the guns is another matter. Now I could make that unpleasant for you if I chose to. You were right, by the way. They were MP-5s. Either you looked more closely than you admitted, or you know guns.”
Richard refused to be drawn on that point. “I knew they could be a problem as soon as I saw them,” he admitted. “If you chose to make them so.”
“But I do not.”
“Why?” asked Richard at once, alert to the philosophy of the East whose poor — utterly inadequate — translation was, “I’ll scratch your back…” The ubiquitous quid pro quo that ruled some people here.
“Because, as you say, you did not buy them. And if I chase the man who did, I shall be pursuing a chimera, a ghost. And if I prosecute the man who did not, everyone will know, and…”
“You will be even more of a laughingstock?”
“Perhaps.”
“So, what do you propose to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“For the time being.”
“I see. And what might we have to do in order to make you take action against us?”
“You wish me to take action against you?”
“Of course not. And I’m not being facetious, Captain. I really do not want to break your laws and upset your professional conscience.”
“I believe you, Captain Mariner. That is why we are having this conversation, and having it here. I see you — and please correct me if I am wrong in this — I see you and your wife as being law-abiding citizens, caught up in a situation where you feel you must take action.”
“Yes.”
“Because if you do not, then no one else will.”
“Yes.”
“Even if that action contravenes the law.”
“It’s more complex than that.”
“Even if you find yourselves associating with people who are outside the law.”
It was not a question. Richard did not answer it. He had nothing to say on the point.
“Even if you have to put lives at risk. Starting with your own lives.”
Richard remained silent a little while longer, watching Suleiman. “Do you know the saying,” he asked at last, “ ‘Needs must, when the devil drives’?”
Now it was the policeman’s turn to be silent. Then he tossed back the rest of the drink. “So what you are telling me is this. You and your wife are caught in a situation over which you have no control. But you are people of action, let us say, and so you try to take control. And you call upon anyone you know who can help you in this. It is understandable.”
“Given that we know the right kinds of people: murderers, terrorists…” Richard tried to keep the irony from his voice. With limited success.
“Yes. I was, perhaps a little heavy-handed yesterday.” Suleiman did not sound unduly contrite.
“Your concern is understandable, Captain. But I have no intention of doing anything on Bahrain that would cause you or the Bahraini government any embarrassment.”
“I think I believe that, Captain. And, of course, the real object of your actions is to punish the people who have already embarrassed the government. And myself. By taking Sir William from our airport. That is why I am content to remain a laughingstock. In the short term.” He put his empty glass down with a decided click on Angus’s coffee table and stood. “In the very short term.”
The other two came in at 11:30, Robin running to Richard at once, laughing with relief at seeing him safe and well. Angus left them in each other’s arms and went upstairs. In this apartment he had two spare bedrooms as well as his own. In one of them Richard and Robin were camping. In the other he had set up the radio equipment so that they could stay in contact with Katapult. They hadn’t set up a proper routine yet, but Angus, in charge of communications, reckoned that Martyr, Chris, Sam, and Doc would just have dropped anchor. If they were all asleep, he would probably get no reply, but if they were up and about, Richard would want to know before he went to bed. Well, he’d see. He glanced at his watch as he sat down. 23:45. Give it fifteen minutes. No reply by midnight and he’d turn in himself. He turned to Katapult’s frequency and pressed TRANSMIT.
“Katapult, Katapult this is base. Are you receiving me? Over…”
Robin’s kiss of welcome had changed into something else entirely and after the blunt danger of the Soukh followed by the knifepoint negotiation with Captain Suleiman, Richard was more than ready to respond.
Just as Robin’s body had felt full of fat and ugliness to her as she had walked beside her friend in the airport, now it felt full of heat and yearning. The extra curves her imagination kept adding to her still-slim frame were no longer those of sagging, stretched ugliness: now she saw her body in her mind as being full of vibrant voluptuousness, like the bodies of Indian maidens carved into the erotic friezes of pagan temples. The thought inspired her almost to a frenzy of passion. Every square inch of her skin glowed. Her right hand found the hair on the back of his neck and curled it around her fingers, raising her need almost beyond controlling. Her breath was coming in gasps as though she had been running. Her cheeks burned, her head swirled. The rest of the world withdrew very far away indeed. All that seemed important — immediate — was in her head and in her arms. She had never felt quite so full of desire before. It was glorious.