'I saw him. The flight was called and he went to the gate. Only one flight was boarding. The flight was the Dutch airline, and was for Amsterdam. I do not lie, brother, and I know my nephew's walk.'
'It is impossible.'
'It is what I saw.'
Doubt crept now into the mind of Omar Hussein. Eleven days before he had been told by his son, Ibrahim, of a journey to Sana'a, the principal city of Yemen, to visit cousins from the family of Omar's beloved and missed wife. Now, his brother who had a sharp mind that was not dulled with age, as his own was, declared with certainty that the boy had lied to his father and sisters and had travelled to Riyadh, then caught an aeroplane to Europe.
'I shall telephone him,' Omar Hussein said, attempting a decisive response.
In the living room of that prosperous home were the fruits of his labours: a wide-screen television with cinema-standard speakers, video and D\TD attachments, electric fans that purred softly to shift the day's heat, and a state-of-the-art cordless phone. He picked it up from its cradle, punched into its gargantuan memory, waited and listened, then asked. An answer, in Sana'a, was given him. His lips pursed. 'They have not seen him. They have not been told to expect him.'
'I can only tell you what I saw, brother.'
Again, Omar Hussein delved into the memory of his telephone, and rang his son's personal mobile. He was told that its owner was unavailable and was requested to leave a recorded message. The days of the last week had flown past with stock checks at the shop and with representatives calling on him to sell new models. A father realized now how long it had been since he had spoken to a son, and how there had been no phone calls. He led his brother up the wide stairs of the villa.
He found the door to his son's bedroom locked, put his shoulder to it and could not break it open. He felt tears of frustration welling. But his brother was stronger, fitter, and crashed his weight into the door. It swung open, and his brother half fell through it. Omar came past him, steadied him, and looked round the room.
It was so tidy. The room was that of a twenty-one-year-old boy and normally shoes, clothes, books for studying and magazines littered the floor. Everything had been left so neat. He saw the two photographs on the wall, the glass of the frames gleaming, of his elder sons, both dead. The loss of them was a misery of which he rarely spoke but always felt. There was a vase of flowers on a table under the photographs, but the water had been sucked out in the room's heat and the blooms had withered. His son's mobile phone was on the bedside table, switched off. Now Omar Hussein believed what his brother, who had the eyesight of a hunting Lariner falcon, had told him — and he understood. The weight of it crushed him.
'What should I do?'
'To protect him, and to safeguard your daughters and yourself, there is only one choice open to you.'
'1b,11 me.'
'It is just possible that he can be intercepted and stopped…I think more of you and of your daughters. Times, Omar, have changed. They are no longer martyrs, they are terrorists. When his name is released and when the television shows what he has done, you will be hounded by the police, by every agency. You will be seen — . because you reported nothing and because you are from Asir Province, which they say is a 'hotbed' of terrorism — as an accomplice to an atrocity. The families of those who flew into the Towers, and most of them were from Asir, are now disgraced, ruined. You may endure it, you probably can, but do you wish that on your daughters? I think you know what you should do.'
Omar Hussein, his head hung, said, 'If I did nothing my wife, if she were able, would curse me.'
An hour after his brother had left the villa, and in response to Omar Hussein's telephone call to the Ministry of the Interior police, whose compound was around the walls of the Ottoman fort in Jizan, an unmarked Chevrolet car drove up to his front door.
Two men of the mabaheth sipped coffee with a frightened father and took notes of what he said concerning a missing son who was far away and lost.
'A nice little runner, Miss.'
She walked a fourth or fifth time round the Ford Fiesta. She had left the yard at its wheel and they had done a short circuit round the side-roads off the main route to the motorway, and Avril Harris had not found fault. It was her finances that caused her to hesitate at this last hurdle. She was twenty-five years old, a nurse in A and E at Luton's main hospital where she earned a pittance for the responsibilities heaped on her, and her last car — with a hundred and fifty-one thousand on the clock — had died on her. No young woman in her right mind would come off night duty and rely on finding a taxi or getting a late bus across the town. The town at night was a battlefield of violence, and she did not need the local paper to tell her so: in A and E, on night duty, she fielded the victims. She had seen, from different dealers, four other cars but this Fiesta — seventy thousand miles done — priced at nine hundred pounds seemed the best value. It shone, the seats were clean, and she did not have her father there to check the tyres and pose better questions. She asked for a discount and saw the pain on the dealer's face as he offered it for eight fifty, 'final price — a give-away'. She rooted in her handbag for that amount in cash, and a half-full tank was thrown in. She signed the papers, got in and turned the ignition.
At the lights blocking the Dunstable Road, at the hospital turn-off, she had to pull up, and her new joy echoed with the report of the Fiesta's backfire. For a moment she was dazed by the intensity of the noise. Then there was an impatient hoot behind her because the lights had changed, and Avril Harris drove on, swung to the right and headed for A and E's staff parking area.
The team was in place and it waited, like a hunting pack for prey at a waterhole, for the business of court eighteen to be finished for the day.
With the collusion of Nathaniel Wilson, criminal solicitor, who had slipped away in the lunch adjournment with a description of the clothing worn by a single juror — as requested before the day's proceedings were under way — the prey was identified.
Three men on foot and the drivers of two mass-produced, unremarkable cars made up the strength of the team. The target was described as bearded, a little over average height, with longish, brown hair, grey flashes at the temples, wearing a green anorak, designer jeans that were probably imitation, bought off a market stall, and heavyweight leather sandals; he would have a navy blue rucksack carried on one shoulder. A piece of cake, couldn't be missed.
The Nobbler himself, Benny Edwards, was not with them. He would come on to the scene when a dossier of the target's identity had been fashioned, not before. He could rely on these men to fulfil the preparatory work because they were the best in this field. The services they provided, through Benny Edwards, were much sought after. He only employed the best, and his own reputation was supreme over his rivals'. The five men, whether on foot or at a car's wheel, had skills in the arts of surveillance that kept them on a par with any unit that might have been put on to the roads or pavements by the Serious Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police; those skills had been refreshed by the recruitment the previous year — a source of considerable pride to the Nobbler — of a detective sergeant from the SCD who had suffered problems with his claims, written down and signed for, on overtime sheets. The prime difference between Benny Edwards's men and the Directorate's was in communications. He used pay-as-you-go mobile phones that were ditched and changed usually after two days' use, three maximum, and they used complex networks of digitally enhanced radios that could not be broken into, but the difference in effectiveness was minimal. Where they were equals — the Nobbler's people and the Directorate's — was in street craft. His men could follow and track; they could put a target in a 'box', a 'trigger man' having initially identified him or her, and not be 'burned'. Never, not once, had men paid by Benny Edwards been spotted while walking or driving as a tail.