‘Sorry I connived in that set-up yesterday,’ Davies apologised as they sat down with a beer each. ‘Has she explained the operation to you?’
‘No, she said that she’d brief me on the way.’
‘Yes perhaps that’s best,’ he agreed. He took a drink and then asked ‘So what did you think of Emily, then?’
‘I thought she must be a bit off the wall. I would never have taken her for a Jasmine Bond character when we first met her in the bar.’
The embassy man was quiet for a moment and Dan thought that his quip might have come over as a slur on British Intelligence and he was rather surprised by Richard’s reply.
‘Yes, well I’ve checked up on her and notwithstanding any impression she might have made upon you, you have to understand that she’s a ruthless executive operations agent. Anyway I expect, I hope, she’ll make you fully aware of the risks. You’ll have to watch out for yourself, because I’m not sure that she will.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be careful,’ Dan replied, somewhat put out by the implication that a serving officer of the US Marines should take care not to get in above his head with a woman, whatever her qualifications.
They set off the following day just before dawn. Emily was driving a four wheel drive Toyota with their personal luggage; a tool box that she described as containing ‘useful stuff’; a set of heavy duty wire cutters; personal weapons and a five foot long metal case containing a British Starstreak surface to air missile. These last items were the reason they were driving away from the city of Muscat towards the mountains inland instead of using the border crossing point on the coast road.
‘There’s a dhow named Tarrada which flies the Pakistani flag coming into Fujairah,’ said Emily, which you may or may not know is one of the United Arab Emirates but it’s located just to the north of Oman on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula.’
‘Yeah I know about it in general terms, but I’ve not been there,’ Dan replied. ‘No oil, so it’s not awash with money.’
‘That’s right, but really nice people. Anyway ships putting in there come under less scrutiny than those that sail into the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. Tarrada has come from the port of Gwadar, in Pakistan close to the border with Iran and it’s picked up a cargo of twenty-five Stinger hand-held surface-to-air missiles.’
‘Where the hell have they come from?’ he asked.
‘One of your country’s less fortunate foreign policy decisions. They were supplied to the Afghan Mujahidin in about 1986. They’ve remained in the mountainside arms cache of a former Mujahidin leader for the last seventeen years so I imagine they fell into a sad state of repair. A Pakistani arms merchant traded them for some serviceable AK47s and shipped them across the border and on to Gwadar. That’s where an ex-army weapons expert has established a clandestine arms repair facility, using parts stolen from your storage facilities on Mazirah Island.’
‘Godammit, those Stingers are still a lethal piece of hardware! Who’s stealing those parts?’
‘That’s what I hope we’ll find out. We want to close down that source and also get hold of the arms trader who set up the deal and find out where he intends to send on the missiles, so we want him alive.’
‘Do we know who he is then?’
‘He’s Barry Mulholland, formerly of the IRA but now in private business. He’s travelling under the name of Francois Duroc, Belgian passport of course.’
‘Why of course?’
‘Oh, several thousand blank Belgian passports were stolen a few years back, and they’re a pain in our collective arse. Mulholland’s been using one to travel on business, but a few weeks back he was spotted by an observant off-duty Special Branch officer leaving Heathrow for Dubai. His name wasn’t on the passenger manifest and to cut a long story short it turns out he’s made many clandestine journeys to the Gulf. Also he seems to have a surprisingly high standard of living for a second hand car dealer.
‘So I want to find out who his contacts are and bring him out. He operates from a hotel in Fujairah. A team from the Sultan’s er… police force has been monitoring his activities but they’ll not become involved in his abduction as they’re under strict orders not to operate outside their own territory. This is what I plan to do…’
Emily explained the operation while Dan inspected various photographs and documents that were assembled into a file folder. When he had absorbed all the details Emily asked him to drive while she frowned over a road map which she compared with a satellite photograph of the area. ‘This is it; turn right here,’ she instructed him.
The tarmac road came to an end after another mile and the Toyota lurched over a rough desert track. Hills rose either side until they were in a wadi where the flaking dried mud surface indicated that rain had fallen sometime last winter. After three kilometres they arrived at a heavy metal link border fence woven with barbed wire, in which was set a gate secured by a chain with a heavy padlock. Dan drove up to it and turned off the engine. Emily clambered out the car and inspected the lock. ‘I’ll see if I can pick it. It‘ll be much easier than cutting a car-sized hole in the fence.’
She went to the back of the car and opened the tailgate and pulled out a small toolbox. She selected a slender metal device and inserted it into the keyhole and began to feel about.
The sound of a powerful diesel echoed through the wadi. Dan swung round and about half a kilometre back he saw a plume of mud and dust churned up by a military half-track. ‘Now would be a good time…’ he began, but just then he heard a metallic clattering and thud as the chain fell clear of the gate. He ran up and helped Emily push the gate open and then jumped back into their vehicle and they drove through into Fujairah. Dan glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the border guard truck pull up beside the open gate. ‘They’re not going to follow us are they?’ he asked, ‘under hot pursuit rules, or something.’
Emily looked back through the rear window. She saw one of the soldiers gazing at them through a set of binoculars. A heavy calibre machine gun was mounted on the back of the truck but nobody swivelled it round to aim in their direction. A few seconds later the wadi curved to the right and the border post was lost from view. ‘No, I expect they’re just going to re-secure the gate. They’ll probably report this vehicle plate number to the people this side.’
‘We should probably change vehicles then,’ Dan suggested.
‘No, we’ll just change the plates,’ Emily replied. ‘There’re two sets of Fujairah plates and another set of Omani in the big tool box. Just drive a bit further and then we’ll switch to Fujairah plates. Another two kilometres and we should hit the road.’
They drove towards the city in a silence that Dan found oppressive. ‘So how long have you been doing this job then?’ he asked.
She looked at him for a moment, inscrutable behind mirrored sunglasses. ‘I’ve been on it for three weeks or so,’ she replied.
‘No, I meant how long have you been working for SIS, or MI6, or whoever you call yourselves these days?’
‘I call myself a freelance journalist, or I say I work for the Ministry of Overseas Development, ili ya perevodchik arabskogo yazyka, menya zovut Yekaterina…’
‘Ok! So enough of the personal questions… I get it!’
They drove on for a few more minutes. ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow,’ Dan announced.
‘I know.’
‘Oh… so you know all about me then?’
‘Your full name is Daniel Edward Hall, date of birth 11th May 1973, in Lowell near Boston. Your father is an estate agent or realtor I should say, and your mother is a dentist. You went to school in Lowell and then to Carnegie Mellon university where you studied electrical engineering and graduated magna cum laude. After university you lived with your fellow graduate Hayley Denison who left you when you abandoned working for Cavendish Engineering and went to Quantico for officer training in…’