Part 35 (2/2)

9

23.28 hrs

Jules drove us up the M5 to junction eleven, and then the A40 towards Cheltenham. Just before the town he turned off at the roundabout and got onto Hubble Road. We were in a company Prius from Thames House. Jules didn't have a car of his own and we weren't going back to get mine.

We'd been quiet all the way. It was only a little over a week since we'd last made this journey. A lot had happened since then. We were both taking stock.

Jules had called Tresillian and explained that I had Lilian and wanted to meet him.

I knew that Tresillian would take the meeting. What choice did he have?

Jules had some nice scabs forming on his neck. His nose was much the same and some bruising was just starting to show around his eyes. It would be weeks before he was box fresh again and back to catwalk perfection.

I thought back to the al-Kibar raid. I guess I'd always known that was the key. The rumours had run riot since the day of the attack. There were no hard facts out there at all. n.o.body agreed about who knew what, or what people in the city had or hadn't seen.

The following day, after I'd spent the most boring few hours of my life admiring ancient water wells, Damascus-based Syrian news, the voice of the government, reported that Israeli fighter jets had violated Syrian air s.p.a.ce in the early hours of the morning, but Syria's courageous defenders had triumphed. Two aircraft, they said, had been shot down. The others had been forced to leave, shedding their payloads in the desert without causing any damage whatsoever.

Nothing else was ever said. The Israelis denied the incident had occurred. The US State Department said they had only heard second-hand reports, contradictory at best. To this day, both Syria and Israel, two countries that had technically been at war with each other since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, played down the raid, even though it had been an act of war.

The reality was much more interesting. Immediately Cody Zero One reported the target destroyed, I'd closed down the gear, sorted myself out, and gone down for a nightcap with Diane.

While I was doing that, the Israeli prime minister called the Turkish prime minister and explained the facts of life. He told him about the ten Israeli F-15s they must have tracked going out into the Med, and asked him to give President a.s.sad of Syria a call. 'f.u.c.k you, a.s.sad,' was the message. 'We will not tolerate a nuclear plant. But no other hostile action is planned.'

Olmert said he was going to play down the incident, and was still interested in making peace with Damascus. If a.s.sad didn't draw attention to the Israeli strike either, those talks could go ahead. The Americans wouldn't say a word - apart from relaying the message that they didn't want them cosying up to the North Koreans, or the Iranians. 'So, basically, a.s.sad, wind your neck in. No one will say anything, and let's leave it at that.'

It was a final warning. The Iranians' reaction had been to entrench themselves. Literally. Since the attack, many of the centrifuges in which they enriched uranium were relocated deep underground. Not even one of the bunker-busting super bombs the Pentagon was trying to get hold of, but was being denied on the grounds of cost, was capable of fully destroying the facilities that the Iranians had at Natanz. And that wasn't the only one. There were more than a dozen known nuclear facilities in Iran. The Americans and Israelis, and probably the UK too if we got dragged into a war with Iran, were going to be conducting air strikes for weeks.

Al-Kibar was protected by the same Russian-built Tor-M1 air defence system used to protect Iranian facilities. I'd often wondered if Israel's strike had been a test run to find flaws in Iran's air defences.

I leant over to check the dashboard clock.

Julian read my mind. 'He said he'd be there. You know for sure that Lilian's safe?'

'Totally.'

There was a barrier across the road ahead. Jules flashed his pa.s.s and we were waved on towards the Doughnut.

We pulled in alongside the black BMW again. The driver was on his own this time, in a sweats.h.i.+rt, still behind the wheel, engine running. He said f.u.c.k-all. He just looked over at us and turned back to his DVD, probably p.i.s.sed off that he'd had to work two weekends running.

We went into the building. A different woman was at the desk, but she treated Julian to the same smile. He handed over his ID and she swiped it through a reader.

'Good evening, Mr Drogba.' She tried but couldn't keep her eyes off Jules's wounds. 'A rough game this afternoon?'

She pa.s.sed him a form to sign.

I was handed my red badge.

'Could you hand it back in when you leave, Mr Lampard?'

We went through the electronic version of a body search and came out onto the Street. We pa.s.sed the night s.h.i.+ft of Tefalheads, doing whatever they did. They were probably still trying to find out what the f.u.c.k I'd been up to.

I followed Jules along the bright fluorescent-lit corridor and into the same room as before. This time there was no glow from the plasma screens on the walnut veneer above Tresillian's head. It was dark and gloomy. The air-conditioning hummed as I closed the door behind us. We crossed the deep pile carpet towards the big oval table.

Tresillian was watching us. He wasn't a happy bunny. But he soon cheered up when he saw the state of Jules.

'Mr Stone, I now see why Julian was so eager for us to meet this evening.' He sat back in his leather swivel chair, elbows on the arms, fingers steepled beneath his chin. He was in a scruffy jumper and trousers. Maybe he had his pyjamas on underneath. 'Sit.'

Jules and I took the same chairs as last time.

Tresillian didn't look worried or concerned. Not even angry or anxious. I liked that. I wanted to hate him, but couldn't.

'Let's not f.u.c.k around, Mr Stone. How do I know that you really do have Lilian, and that she is still alive?'

'When I'm ready, I'll throw her up on Facebook. She'll be called Lillian Vampire-Girl. I'll make sure there's proof of life up there at the same time. But that's not going to happen until we have a deal, I get a pa.s.s, and you answer some questions.'

He leant back again. 'Go on.' He was almost smiling.

'It was the Vietnamese food, wasn't it? That was what f.u.c.ked me up. The fake scan, the fake drugs?'

'Of course.' He was surprised I'd even had to ask.

'Why go to all the f.u.c.king effort of getting me to believe I was dying? I took the job because of it, but you could have got someone else with far less effort.'

'You were a test, Mr Stone. A simple exercise to find out how good our technology is. We collected your DNA, and we carried out a field trial. And it was a f.u.c.king good one, don't you think? No one else who ate in that restaurant was contaminated. It was designed to target just your DNA. Now, if we'd wanted to kill you, we would simply have used a different compound.

'At first you weren't even being considered for the task. Since the Russians killed Litvinenko by garnis.h.i.+ng his sus.h.i.+ with polonium-210, we thought we'd see how well our concoctions would work in the field.'

He was feeling very pleased with himself.

'I think we can safely say our activities in that department put us among the leaders in the field.'

Jules wasn't happy. 'Why wasn't I informed?'

Tresillian turned to face him. 'Because you would have disagreed.'

'The scan, the drugs?'

'The scan was faked, and the drugs, very s.h.i.+ny red placebos. A chalk compound, I believe.'

'So you decided to f.u.c.k me over with a plate of rice, then send me on a job and kill me afterwards?'

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