She laughed, then apologized. ‘I’ll make it up to you one of these days.’
‘Don’t tempt me.’
‘Promises, promises, Tom.’
They agreed a time and she rang off. Moments later, the kettle boiled. Girling wandered down the corridor, coffee in hand, and ran himself a bath.
As soon as the temperature was bearable, he lay back in the water and closed his eyes.
There had been a time when he thought he liked Sally a lot. They had had a few dinners together, but the one time she had returned with him to his apartment, the air between them thick with lust, she discovered Alia, sleeping blissfully under the watchful eyes of a babysitter, and fell promptly in love with his daughter instead. Sally’s maternal feelings destroyed any prospect of sex. He was not prepared for a relationship which smacked of commitment. Girling found himself making excuses about the busy day ahead and Sally left. They had managed to remain friends since.
Later, when he questioned his feelings, he grasped the answer. It wasn’t just that he was still in love with Mona. It was because his hatred for her killers would burn less brightly if he allowed anyone to get in its way.
The pain had returned in the night. His stomach ached even now from the memory of it. With the pain came the voice in his head, the plea — from a voice he did not recognize — for forgiveness. But his denials were so vehement that he had sat bolt upright in bed, terrified, his hand fumbling for the light switch.
He threw the flannel over his face and told himself he wasn’t going insane.
He could not shake Alia’s words from his mind. He had believed always that he had hidden his angst and grief from his daughter. But clearly he had failed.
He knew he had to confront the pain, if only for Alia’s sake. Dispatches was no place to hide for the rest of his useful life.
Thoughts of work reminded him to call in. Kelso’s secretary could tell her boss that he would be out for the morning; not that Kelso, his mind on loftier matters, would be that bothered.
He clambered out of the bath, dried himself and padded back to the kitchen.
Kelso’s secretary sounded as if she, too, had not had her requisite intake of caffeine. She perked up a little when she realized that he would be appearing on TV that night and asked what it was in connection with. He explained how the laurels belonged to Stansell, not him.
‘What time did his call come in last night?’ he asked.
‘There was no call,’ she said, puzzlement in her voice. ‘Were you expecting one?’
‘Bob agreed not to run the story until he heard from Stansell. It was a condition.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ she said defensively.
‘Maybe Stansell reached Bob at home,’ Girling said, trying to rationalize what he had heard on the radio. Or maybe there was another explanation altogether. He brought his hand up to his head. ‘Holy shit, no…’
His notes.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said indignantly.
Girling never heard the voice on the other end of the phone. He had left his fucking notes in the office. Surely to God Kelso wouldn’t have…
He managed to keep his voice steady. ‘Has Kelso gone to his meeting yet?’
Yes, she replied. And it would be in progress all day.
Girling tried to dismiss the notion while he dressed, but it clung to him like a bad odour.
Finally, he picked up the phone and dialled their office in Cairo. Egypt was three hours ahead, so Stansell should have read news of his story over the wire by now or maybe heard it on the BBC World Service. Girling tried to convince himself that had Stansell been in any way troubled he would have called.
It wasn’t Stansell, but Sharifa who answered. Sharifa Fateem, Mona’s best friend, now Stansell’s editorial assistant. Stansell had hired her a few months before because he needed help and had come to know Sharifa after Mona’s death. It suited both parties well. Sharifa had wanted for a long time to break into writing and Stansell justified the appointment to Kelso because he needed someone he could trust and rely upon. And there weren’t that many people in Cairo you could say that about.
They chatted for a while, then Girling told her about his concerns.
She hadn’t seen Stansell since the previous afternoon. He rarely checked in before lunch, but just to reassure him, she promised to phone him back at the office the moment he did or if she had any news.
‘We’ve isolated the leak and it has been dealt with,’ Shabanov said. ‘The mission remains uncompromised, of that I assure you.’ Jacobson tried to take it in his stride, but Ulm could see he was shocked. Shabanov had commenced the briefing by announcing that the Soviet Military Attache in Cairo had been caught supplying classified information about the Angels of Judgement to a British journalist. The story, naturally enough, had made the BBC’s breakfast bulletins and had spread like wildfire through the US media.
‘I thought this information was with only a very small section of your intelligence community,’ Ulm said. He tried to keep the animosity from his voice. The memory of Shabanov’s treatment of the waitress lingered.
‘That is true, Elliot. But this man was one of those who had worked closely with General Aushev in the early days. But I reiterate: it cannot happen again. He has been flown back to Moscow, where he will be punished.
‘In some ways, this leak has played into our hands. Thanks to the media, the terrorists, along with the rest of the world, believe that they have managed to escape without trace. Only a handful of people out-side these walls know the true facts. Surprise remains on our side, for the Angels of Judgement will believe that we have no idea where their hiding place is.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ Jacobson said.
‘And that it stays that way,’ Ulm added. ‘Which publication broke the news?’
‘Dispatches,’ Jacobson said. ‘They’ve been sniffing around this story from the beginning. We stopped them over the F-15E business, but this one slipped through the net. It may be we should take action to prevent further compromise.’ He jotted some notes onto a pad.
‘Whatever you’ve got in mind, the last place we need another security leak right now is in Cairo,’ Ulm said. ‘Shabanov and I have decided that we’re going to need Wadi Qena. Will TERCOM be able to fix access to Qena, Jacobson?’
Jacobson’s pencil scratched across the paper again. ‘Access will not be a problem. But why Qena?’
‘Because it’s exactly right for our purposes.’ Ulm pulled a large map of the Middle East from his attaché case and pinned it to the wall facing the table. ‘This plan will be familiar to anyone who worked on Rice Bowl. I don’t make any apologies for that, because Rice Bowl was based on sound mission planning. It just got fucked up in the execution. We’ve learned a lot since 1980. This time, we’re going to make the dice roll for us.’
His finger hovered over the Egyptian Desert for a moment, before landing on a point just north of a large bend in the River Nile, some three hundred miles south of Cairo. Wadi Qena had been the final staging post for Eagle Claw, the operational phase of Rice Bowl, itself the planning portion of the abortive rescue of their hostages in Tehran.
‘We spend around a week in training at Qena before we press the button.’ Ulm slid his finger slowly northwards, until it reached the border of Southern Lebanon. ‘And by that I mean we fly a combat rescue team into the Sword’s valley, knock out the Angels of Judgement and bring back our hostages.’
He would have liked it a whole lot better if the Pathfinders had been allowed to do it on their own. But that was impossible.
Ulm told Jacobson about Shabanov’s idea to build a replica of the terrorist camp in the desert outside Qena to maximize the realism of their training. The mountains of Egypt’s eastern desert were, apparently, similar to the terrain around the target. Mission security would not be jeopardized, because the area around Wadi Qena was deserted but for a handful of bedouin.