‘You were a boy when I met you,’ he says. ‘Now I see a man.’
‘I did not expect to meet you again in a church,’ I say, for lack of a better reply.
‘Our Prophet recommends that if you cannot find a mosque to pray in, then you should go to a church.’
‘Better than a prison, I think.’
‘For some, even a church can be a prison.’ He smiles. ‘But for me the churches of Rome are the most beautiful in the world. This is the best city in which to take the Prophet’s advice.’
He knows I have an important reason for calling a secret meeting but is happy to delay the moment of asking until we have caught up. We talk a little of our lives and are led back to the fateful events of his capture by the Israelis, ten years earlier.
‘I do not forget what you did,’ he says. ‘I am still in your debt.’
‘There is no debt,’ I tell him. ‘What I did was my duty.’
‘To protect me, you killed a man.’
‘I failed to protect you.’
‘There is honour even in failure,’ he says, and smiles again.
It’s strange, but at this simple statement I feel a burden lifted from me. It’s as if he’s exorcised an old and troublesome ghost that’s been haunting me for years, and I feel suddenly grateful towards him.
‘Ask anything of me, and it will be repaid,’ he says.
‘Insha’allah, the opportunity for that will come. Now I have other news.’
I tell the truth, as much as I’m able. He will never know the full story: that his violent release from prison was a favour to the Israelis for providing the cover for Manny’s infiltration. That he was sold, in effect. But the rest is true. I explain I’ve come not only as a friend but as a representative of my government, and that we are seeking his people’s help in Sudan for any word of the Stinger purchases. If bin Laden is involved, we need to know. He listens attentively and nods in agreement at the request. He can guarantee no result, he says, but will alert me to any news as to whether Sheikh Osama, as he calls bin Laden, is connected or not. He reminds me that his own organisation wholly rejects the killing of civilians and has no policy of contact with any of the groups calling themselves al-Qaeda. But he will ask his people to listen.
I thank him and then tell him about the plot we have discovered against him. He says nothing but shifts his position a little and grips the bridge of his nose between his thumb and first finger.
‘First they want to save me, then they want to kill me.’ He lets out a heavy sigh. ‘But God knows best. There are details?’
I tell him what I know. Then I give him a phone number and instruct him to notify me, using a code, if our intelligence proves to be correct. He agrees again, knowing that we also need to verify the reliability of our own source.
‘Remember, our friendship is outside all of this,’ he says, and stands up. ‘We have work to do.’ His guards come to their feet as we cross the open space, and then he pauses, as if he’s remembered something.
‘You will go to Khartoum?’ he asks. ‘Perhaps there is a better way to search for such knowledge while you are there. There is a woman who has been in contact with the people in my office, to speak about our charitable work. She works with the mellal al-mottahed – the United Nations.’
I’m puzzled, because a woman with the UN isn’t much of a lead. Then Gemayel speaks again, and it’s as if he’s put gold dust in my hand.
‘She belongs to the family of the Sheikh, and she knows many things that will interest you. Her name is Jameela. I believe she is very beautiful, as her name suggests. If you become her friend…’ A vague wave of his hand suggests both uncertainty and promise. ‘You are young and handsome. You know how these things are done.’
I don’t. But it occurs to me I’ll be interested to find out.
‘Not exactly house style,’ says Seethrough, tapping the nail of his index finger against a pink file which I’m guessing is the contact report I’ve written up for my meeting with Gemayel, ‘but you get the message across. Have a seat.’
I’ve been escorted to another anonymous-looking room at Vauxhall Cross to talk things over with Seethrough, who’s there to meet me with another man who epitomises the description grey man. He’s about sixty, wears glasses and a shabby grey suit, mumbles a greeting, avoids eye contact and says nothing else while Seethrough turns the pages in the file.
‘This isn’t bad for your first approach,’ he says. ‘Now we have to make it fly. At least she exists.’
‘Who exists?’
‘Your Sudanese floozy exists,’ he says, opening the file towards me. I haven’t forgotten about the woman Gemayel mentioned, but haven’t expected a file to be put together on her so quickly. She’s even been assigned a code name: Hibiscus.
‘She wasn’t in the CCI,’ he says, referring to the giant database that the Firm maintains on every operational contact. ‘So we asked Santa’s little helpers for some details. Titbits from CX KHARTOUM and our friends at the Mokhabarat. Good-looking girl.’
He’s used this phrase before, and he’s right. There’s a photograph of her, taken only two days earlier by the Sudanese security service, whose members Seethrough is pleased to call the elves. She’s standing outside a shop talking to a passer-by or friend. One arm is half-raised as if in the process of giving directions. I can’t tell if she’s tall or not, but her face is slender and intelligent-looking, and her features suggest seriousness. Her eyes are large and expressive. Over her head she wears a long and loose white scarf, which accentuates the smooth dark brow it encloses, and the impression of youthfulness is at odds with the intensity of the gaze that the photograph has captured.
‘Clever too,’ he says. ‘Parents moved to Paris when she was a teenager and she ended up with a doctorate from the Sorbonne. Married into the bin Laden family six years ago after she moved back to Sudan, but we don’t have any details. She’s worked for UNICEF for the past two years. We think she’s worth cultivating.’
‘Cultivating?’ Spy-speak, I now remember, for winning a target’s trust.
‘All you have to do,’ says Seethrough, ‘is be there when she drops her shopping. Play the game. Get to know her. And find out everything she knows about bin Laden and his best friends in the Sudan.’
‘What if she doesn’t know anything?’
‘If she doesn’t know anything, you can take lots of pictures of Khartoum for us instead. Enjoy the local food. Spread goodwill, that sort of thing.’ Then the other side of him surfaces. ‘But she does know. And as long as she knows more than we do, she’s an asset and a potential source.’
‘How close,’ I ask, ‘are you expecting me to get to her?’
‘As close as the situation on the ground permits,’ he says with a leer. ‘If you think she’ll have you, I don’t care if you sleep with her and all her sisters. But do be careful about her brothers.’ He gives a signature bounce of his eyebrows. ‘We don’t want to unleash the Mahdi’s revenge. Just judge the situation as it develops. I need gradable CX that we can’t get anywhere else.’
‘When?’
‘Saturday alright for you? We’ll put you in a nice guest house in a quiet part of town. Shouldn’t be too many cruise missiles this time of year.’
It’s over two years since the retaliatory American strike reduced Sudan’s showcase pharmaceutical factory in north Khartoum to a pile of rubble, and it seems unlikely there’ll be any more. The US needs all the help it can get from the Sudanese intelligence services, and cruise missiles have proven a poor way to win friends.
There’s a satellite picture of the city on which a number of key points are marked, to which now Seethrough points.
‘On Mondays our target drives on her own to a refugee camp called El Salam in Jabal Awliya, about forty klicks south of the city. Your best place for a first meet will be on the road, out of the city and where nobody’ll be watching.’
‘So what do we do, give her a puncture?’ I’m half-joking, but he’s already considered the scenario and his seriousness comes to the surface again.