‘You met him, didn’t you? When you were in Afghanistan?’
Wafeeq’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who told you that?’
Kamil shrugged. ‘People talk.’
‘And people who talk die,’ said Wafeeq.
‘It was nothing,’ said Kamil. ‘Rahman said that you had met, that’s all.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ said Wafeeq. ‘Before nine/eleven. Before everything.’
‘What was he like?’
‘He is a great man,’ said Wafeeq. ‘A great man and a great Muslim. He has given up a lot to be where he is.’
‘I would give anything to meet him,’ said Kamil.
‘It will not happen,’ said Wafeeq. ‘He can meet no one now. He can talk to no one. The infidels are watching and waiting.’ He glanced at the ceiling. ‘They have satellites searching for him, they monitor all telephone calls, listening for his voice. They have a bounty on his head.’
Kamil stood up and stretched. ‘I shall take Colin some food,’ he said.
‘You should not use his name,’ said Wafeeq.
‘It means nothing.’
‘It means you think of him as human,’ said Wafeeq. ‘He is not human. He is an infidel. He is here to trade on the suffering of Muslims and he deserves to die.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with making his last days comfortable,’ said Kamil.
‘You are soft, Kamil.’
Kamil sat down again and watched as Wafeeq reassembled the AK-47. ‘You know that’s not true,’ he said. ‘I have killed many people. You know that.’
‘It is not how many you kill, my friend,’ said Wafeeq. ‘It is the way you do it.’ He grinned. ‘But you are learning.’
The Major was waiting for Shepherd at the entrance to the departure terminal. ‘Hell’s bells, Spider, you’re cutting it close,’ he said.
‘Sorry, boss,’ said Shepherd.
‘The rest of the guys have already gone through. Get your skates on.’
The Major headed for the departure gates as Shepherd hurried to the check-in. He had only hand luggage and a business-class ticket so he was soon boarding the plane. They were all sitting separately on the Emirates Boeing 777. Muller flew frequently and was upgraded to first class. The Major and Shepherd sat on opposite sides of the forward section in business class, Armstrong, O’Brien and Shortt behind them. When they arrived in Dubai, after an eight-hour flight, a dark-skinned man with a thick moustache and a tan safari suit was waiting for them, holding up a card with Muller’s name on it. Muller introduced him to Gannon and Shepherd. ‘This is Halim,’ said Muller. ‘He’ll get us through Immigration. Give him your passports.’
The Major and Shepherd did as he had said. Ahead they could see long queues in front of bored immigration officials, many of whom were women in black headscarves.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll be fast-tracked,’ said Muller. He waved for Armstrong, O’Brien and Shortt to join them, then they followed Halim to a much shorter line. Five minutes later they were waiting for their bags.
Halim took them through Customs, then outside the terminal building. He asked them to wait and hurried off to the car park. A group of Arab men walked by wearing gleaming white dishdasha s with white ghutra headdresses held in place with black ropes. They were pushing trolleys loaded with Louis Vuitton suitcases and Harrods carrier-bags. Shepherd had seen them go to the first-class cabin of the plane. They had boarded in jeans and designer jackets but as the jet had begun its descent into Dubai they had hurried to the lavatories to change.
‘They’re locals, right?’ Shepherd asked Muller.
‘Could be,’ said Muller. ‘Or they might be from Jordan. The Saudis generally have red and white ghutra s. And Saudi men insist that their women wear the full burkhas so that they’re covered from head to foot in black.’
‘Seems a bit cruel, that,’ said O’Brien. ‘White would reflect the sun, wouldn’t it? Black absorbs it.’
Muller chuckled. ‘The men get to wear white,’ he said. ‘It’s a man’s world out here.’
‘But the women can work, right?’ said Shepherd. ‘There were women in Immigration.’
‘Sure. They can work, drive cars, wear pretty much what they want – even bikinis on the beaches. At times you can forget you’re in an Islamic country.’
Two white Toyota Land Cruisers pulled up. Halim was at the wheel of the first, and a man who looked like his younger brother was driving the second. Halim parked, then got out to open the rear door. ‘Spider and I’ll take the first one with John, you guys take the other,’ said the Major.
O’Brien, Armstrong and Shortt carried their luggage to the second vehicle while Halim helped Shepherd load his own and the Major’s bags. There were already two metal suitcases there, slightly bigger than the one the Major usually carried.
‘Can we run by the house first?’ the Major asked Muller.
‘Sure,’ said Muller. ‘It’s not on the way but at this time of night there’s hardly any traffic.’
The Major told Armstrong, O’Brien and Shortt to go straight to the hotel, then he and Shepherd got into the back of the SUV while Muller climbed into the front. As Halim drove away from the airport, the Major flashed O’Brien a thumbs-up.
Shepherd sighed and ran his hands over his face. The business-class seat had been comfortable enough but several small children close by had spent most of the flight bickering and squabbling so he had barely slept.
‘You okay?’ asked the Major.
‘I’m fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘We’ll do a quick recce now, then John can brief us at the hotel.’ The Major checked his watch. ‘It’s two a.m. so we can sleep after the briefing, then hit the house tonight. When’s nightfall, John?’
‘Between seven and eight,’ said Muller.
The SUV powered down a modern road towards a cluster of futuristic tower blocks in the distance, glass and steel towers that glinted in the moonlight. Closer by, huge construction sites sprouted from the fawn-coloured earth. Everywhere that Shepherd looked buildings were going up and roads being widened. ‘It’s like one massive building site,’ he said.
‘Yeah, it’s a boom town at the moment,’ said Muller. ‘They reckon that a third of the world’s cranes are here. A couple of years ago the ruling sheikh allowed foreigners to buy places and the money has poured in. They plan to double the population over the next decade, and want to make themselves the financial and technological hub of Asia.’ He grinned. ‘The shopping’s good, too. Plus there’s booze and hookers. We send our guys here on R and R mainly because they flatly refuse to go anywhere else in the region.’
‘But Dubai is Muslim, right?’ said Shepherd.
‘Sure, but they’re pretty tolerant of other religions, and of Western ways generally. You can drink here though alcohol licences are always tied to hotels. This is as liberal as it gets in the Middle East. Westerners are queuing up to buy property, but there’s a lot of Arab investment money coming in, too.’
‘It’s got to be a risk, though, hasn’t it?’ asked Shepherd. ‘Infidels living in a Muslim country? I thought that was what the jihad was about.’
‘I wouldn’t buy here,’ agreed Muller. ‘Allowing foreigners to buy land was a whim, and they could just as easily change their minds.’
‘I was thinking terrorism,’ said Shepherd. He indicated a line of crane-festooned tower blocks to their left. ‘I can’t see the likes of Iran and Syria wanting hordes of Europeans and Americans setting up here. The shopping malls and hotels would be perfect for suicide-bombers.’
Muller twisted around in his seat. ‘Exactly my thoughts,’ he said. ‘Although there are rumours that serious money is being paid to keep the place terrorist-free.’
‘They’d do that?’
‘Why not? Dubai’s all about business. Besides, the Brits had an unspoken arrangement with the fundamentalists for years, you know that. They were allowed to pass through London, even to live there, so long as they didn’t shit on their own doorstep. It used to drive our State Department up the wall. It was only after the bombings on the Tube that your lot clamped down. What they’re doing here is no different. No one wants to rock the boat because they’re too busy making money.’