Brute Force (35 page)

He turned in his seat. 'Al-Inn, I will show you something many, many times better than Leptis Magna. I found the bust of Septimus Severus very close to where we turn off.'

'How can you possibly say that?'

'You will see for yourself. Only a handful of people know about this place. I believe it to be the emperor's winter palace.'

I found myself tuning in. I now knew the value that antiquities could command on the black market. With a couple of busts in the boot, I could afford to disappear off the face of the earth.

As a boy, Mansour had been passed down stories from nomadic traders of ruins in the desert, north of Al-Waddan territory.

The traders had described the ruins as
'Roumi'
– Roman – but there were many strange sights in the Sahara: from the relics of ancient caravanserais – stop-off points for travellers plying the trans-Sahara trade routes – to downed aircraft from the Second World War, some still with the mummified remains of their crews in their seats.

The stories were part of the myth and folklore of the desert. Nobody in Waddan paid them much attention.

But the possibility of a long-lost Roman site wouldn't release its grip on the young Mansour's imagination. He became obsessed with the idea of finding it.

Years later, he was given a helping hand – from Gaddafi, of all people.

More than ten years after graduating from the University of Tripoli, when he was an ambitious young army major, he was sent into the desert to help train the 'freedom fighters'.

Collating information on all the possible locations for the lost site, Mansour constructed a grid. Whenever he could, he took off in a jeep and worked his way across it.

One day, following a particularly violent sandstorm, he fell in with a band of Berber camel-herders who told him that they had recently passed some partially revealed ruins on the edge of a
wadi
around ten kilometres from the Misrata–Waddan road.

Following their directions, Mansour came across some half-buried columns. Then he found pieces of pottery and mosaic. For several weeks he excavated what he could, but in the wake of the US raids on Tripoli, the decision was taken to shift the 'freedom fighters' to camps further south.

Before he deployed with them, Mansour carefully triangulated the location of his find against some local landmarks, did what he could to conceal what he had uncovered, and promised himself that one day he'd be back. In the meantime, he told no one.

After his release from prison, he scrutinized archaeological notices for signs that his discovery had been compromised. It hadn't.

Recently he'd decided to return to the site and start excavating again. When he did, he realized that his discovery was even more significant than he'd first imagined.

To begin with, the complex was big. It comprised the ruins of a palace, a number of state rooms, a temple and a library. It had housed a dignitary of high rank.

I checked the sat nav. Another ten kilometres and we'd reach the petrol station. Good timing. From the rising note of excitement in Mansour's voice, I got the sense we were heading for the big reveal.

'I found inscriptions to a woman – a woman called Fulvia Pia, Al-Inn.
Fulvia Pia
. . .'

Lynn smiled. 'The mother of Septimus Severus.' He leant towards me. 'She was Roman. His father was of Berber descent . . .'

Mansour broke through into what looked like an entranceway to an underground chamber. It turned out to be the opening of a tunnel. Imperial palaces employed them so that slaves could move around the complex without being seen by the emperor and his family.

'The bust had been wrapped in a leather cloth and placed in the tunnel, I believe, to conceal it from Berber raiders. I had found the remains of the palace of Rome's African emperor, Al-Inn.'

99

Twenty minutes after we filled the Q7 with fuel, costing all of about $8, Mansour's site loomed up on the sat nav, ten kilometres from the main road.

I turned off the highway. The terrain changed from flat as a billiard-table to rocky and undulating. After just ten minutes, the ground fell away dramatically and we drove down into a
wadi.
I swerved to miss a rock the size of a basketball and didn't see the pothole waiting to swallow the nearside tyre.

The Audi lurched and I heard the axle crunch. I put my foot down and powered out of it, but, with the car rearing, gave another huge boulder a glancing blow. As we grounded again the Q7's nose dipped and slewed. I braked to a halt.

'We've blown a tyre.'

I switched off the engine and got out. Our only piece of good luck was that the edge of the
wadi
kept the Audi below the level of the horizon, in case anyone happened to be playing I-spy from the road.

I opened the boot and the doors to allow what little breeze there was to blow through the car. 'You two need to get out while I jack it up.'

I took the .38 from Lynn. I didn't want him to hand it to Mansour on a plate while I changed the tyre.

The Libyan fucked around in the boot for a moment or two and came up with a foam-filled toolkit with cut-outs for the adjustable spanner, the screwdriver, the torch . . . all the things you'd need if you were unlucky enough to break down in the middle of nowhere.

'No point us getting in your way,' he said cheerfully. 'We might as well stretch our legs . . .'

They moved further down the
wadi
towards the clearly visible foundations of a house.

100

I found the hole in the tyre as I loosened the first nut. It was small, but deep. I eased the wheel off and struggled to replace it with the spare. It took a long, hot twenty minutes. I was soaked in sweat by the time I'd finished, and gagging for a drink.

I heaved the old wheel round to the boot. Lynn had stashed the water next to a large clear plastic box of tiny scrapers and trowels and stuff that the people on
Time Team
use to dig up Viking shit. Like the Q7 tools they each had their own little moulded spaces.

Voices drifted up from the
wadi
as I ripped the top off one of the bottles and got a litre or so down my neck. I peered around the back of the 4x4 and saw the two of them sitting on what remained of a wall. Mansour was waving his arms enthusiastically, pointing out various features of the site. Even at this distance I could see that Lynn was glowing with pleasure.

As I heaved the wheel aboard, I glanced again at Mansour's
Time Team
kit. Something wasn't quite right. A little voice started screaming in my head. I lifted the lid and took a closer look.

There was an empty 3cm by 10cm recess in the top right-hand corner. A Nokia car-charger sat snugly in the space alongside it.

Fuck
. . .

He had a back-up mobile for emergencies. I didn't want him to know that I knew – not yet, anyway. I called Lynn up from the
wadi.
He joined me, still looking like his head was somewhere in ancient Rome.

'Has he been on his own at all while you've been down there?'

'Why?'

'Has he?'

'Yes . . . He needed to relieve himself. He went round the corner, but not for long.'

I showed him the empty space next to the charger. 'Did he have long enough to make a call?'

'Maybe, but I would have heard him.'

'A text, maybe?'

'There can't be a signal out here.'

'Wrong, mate.'

I showed him the phone I'd taken from Mansour's bedroom. Three bars registered on the left-hand side of the screen – a nice, fat signal.

'You can pick up a signal in the depths of fucking Afghanistan. Polar bears can get a fucking signal . . .'

'Well, maybe . . .'

Confronted by some old bricks, a few pillars, some shattered pieces of pottery and a two-thousand-year-old mystery, Lynn had abandoned any idea that Mansour might represent a threat – and had taken his eye off the ball.

'He's giving us the fucking run-around. That business about him trying to call you is bullshit. He's bullshitting about the Russians, too, and all this antiquities trading. And as for all his old enemies being his new best friends . . .'

Lynn's face flushed a deep shade of red. 'You know what, Nick? All your suspicions of Mansour are born of
your
myriad prejudices. They have a term for it; they call it paranoid projection. Any half-decent psychologist will tell you all about it if ever you have the good sense to go and see one.'

He paused for a moment, checking that Mansour was still out of earshot. 'There is no mobile phone, Nick. If Mansour had been bullshitting, there would have been nothing to see out here – no ruins, no imperial palace. We passed through that checkpoint because he bluffed it with the Kata'eb Al-Amn. I know. I listened to every word. What he told us about the Russians exactly matched what he told the officer at the checkpoint. He is trying to help us and I'm damned if I'm going to let you ruin everything with your paranoid delusions.'

He strode off downhill to collect his mate.

I closed the tailgate and jumped back behind the wheel. I signalled I was ready to leave by firing up the engine.

When Mansour appeared, he beamed at me like a cat that had swallowed not just the cream, but a whole fucking dairy farm.

He opened the door, ready to hoist himself into the passenger seat. I was tempted to grab him, spin him round and frisk him to within an inch of his life. But he wouldn't still have it on him. He was too clever for that. And besides, I knew I couldn't risk alienating him any more than I had already; he was the only one who could identify the Palestinian's house.

I put my foot down and we accelerated away in a shower of grit. Paranoid projection, my arse. I wasn't the one who needed the shrink here.

101

As the Audi bounced back onto tarmac I checked the sat nav. Ajdabiya was a little under 300 kilometres away – less than two hours.

I had no idea what we'd find when we got there. I had to hope that Mansour's line about Layla and Lesser wasn't just another king-size helping of bullshit.

All along, I'd operated on the assumption that the Chinese pigtails had been Lesser's signature, but if Layla had taught him, then Layla was the connection to the bomb under my car. Ghosts didn't make bombs. If Layla was real, she'd either be the bomb-maker, or know where I could find him. Then I'd keep following the trail until I knew who'd set us up.

If, if and when.

I checked the fuel gauge as another filling station loomed out of the desert. Masses; no need to stop. A BMW 4x4 sat by the pumps. We weren't the only gas-guzzler in this neck of the woods.

Mansour eyed the vehicle. He was probably reassuring himself he'd made the right choice in the Q7. He shifted in his seat and turned to face Lynn. 'Al-Inn, I would like you to share something with me . . . in the spirit of cooperation and friendship that exists between us.'

Lynn nodded.
'Shukran, ya siddiqi.'

'Afwan, y'effendi.'

In the spirit of cooperation and friendship that existed between me and Mansour, I offered my own little contribution.

'No fucking Arabic!'

They both shrugged.

Then Mansour kicked off again. 'There are certain things I would like to clarify to enable us, you and me, to move forward, Al-Inn . . .'

I glanced at the Libyan, distrusting him more by the minute.

'Prison gives you a lot of time to think. The
Bahiti
operation was watertight. I know: I set up the whole thing. After the
Eksund
compromise, we were especially careful. I say we – but in truth there was no "we"; it was all down to me. In the
Istikhbarat al-Askaria,
we did things very differently. Security came first for me – always. The Soviets taught me the value of compartmentalization – people knowing only what they needed to know. MI6, the CIA, the GRU . . . I had studied them all. Gaddafi expected the very best; he put his trust in me, and I swore I would not let him down. So many things in life come down to trust, wouldn't you say, Al-Inn?'

I looked in the mirror. Lynn shifted uncomfortably. 'Yes, I suppose so, Mansour.'

The old alarm bell started to ring somewhere in my head.

Mansour pressed on. 'For the
Bahiti
operation, I was the only person in Libya who possessed all the pieces of the puzzle: the contents of the shipment, the date of sailing, the identity of the crew, the route – everything. We knew you'd have our transmissions and codes covered. But there are advantages to working in a country that the West considers backward. Sometimes, simplest is best. No word of the operation was ever transmitted by any form of electronic medium.