“When?”
“Um…” – Walter temporarily lost his train of thought – “after Johnny was killed, when I was in my room.”
“Thursday?”
“I don’t know.” Waves started to crash on the beach, and he needed time to pick up his thread again. “The afternoon after he was poisoned. Just before I was shot. I was in my room.”
“Why did you phone Brendan?” Patrick was using the most gentle and encouraging voice.
“I found a memory card in Johnny’s room and took it back to mine. I put it in my laptop to have a look.”
The others sat quietly, letting him continue.
“It had some dodgy photographs – you know, porn; some emails; and a load of stuff about PEGASUS.”
“The planned gas pipeline?”
“It’s not just a gas pipeline. It’s also an electricity cable and a pipeline for phosphates.”
Patrick and Jacqueline looked at each other to see if this made any sense, but there was no recognition on either of their faces.
“There was a big specification describing the phosphate pumping process.” Walter was now almost rambling.
“And you told Brendan all about this in a phone call on Thursday?”
“Yes, I was worried. I was worried about my position, you know? I rang him to tell him that I had picked up the card and what I had seen. He said not to worry and that he knew all about it. He kept saying not to worry about what was on the card, but I was to keep what I had seen to myself.”
“What did you do with the card?”
“I wiped it straight away. I was worried that …” – he paused and tried to turn his head towards the prosecutor – “the French police would find it. It incriminated a British minister. Some of the stuff, some of the stuff … I couldn’t leave it around.”
“No, no, I understand. Had you downloaded it on to your laptop?”
“No, of course not.” He sounded exhausted.
“Did Brendan say he would come down from Paris?”
“Was he in Paris? I don’t know. He couldn’t have been in Paris. It was only minutes until he turned up.”
“What happened next?”
“What?” Walter was fading and lost his thread. “No, I didn’t expect to see him at my bedroom door. It wasn’t until he turned up that it came back to me that I had seen him in Algiers at the British Embassy. Small world, eh?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Conrad.”
“Victor.”
They sounded relaxed. The President and the British PM were now alone for twenty minutes – a rare luxury for people in their positions, which was perhaps something that’s hard for the rest of the world to understand.
“I am so sorry. No, really, I’m so sorry. It’s, well, so sad. Do you have to fly straight back home?” Conrad asked.
“Thank you and, no, not at the moment. I was going to be back on Sunday, anyway.”
“Seventy years. It was seventy years, wasn’t it? You and I are lucky if we get four.”
“A hard act to follow and, may I say, the most internationally accepted world figure ever. She was queen to 2.5 billion people.”
“So, you don’t need to get back home?”
“It’s possible, but I would like to stay until Sunday. She understood how the world of diplomacy works. She had met thirteen US presidents, I think. She would want the system to go on as before, and this G20 is pretty important.”
“Let me know if things change and you need to disappear.”
“Conrad, thank you and I know that, however much we all plan, nothing in life runs along rails.”
“Victor, you’re right, and may God bless her and the new king.” He paused. “On to more mundane items, are your security guys as jumpy as mine? They almost pulled the goddamn trip an hour before departure. One of our agents in Morocco has gone missing, and everyone’s waiting for the video to be posted.”
“I’m getting the same; they had a meeting just before I left, but they couldn’t give me any concrete reason not to come. I understand that they’ve cancelled one trip into the desert for all of us because it’s too close to Algeria.”
“Who picked Morocco? It was before my time.”
“Before mine, as well.”
“And it was before Poot’n invaded Ukraine, and things are a bit different now. From my perspective, apart from the neutrals in the G20, we have the US, the Brits and Spain behind Morocco, and the Russians, China and the French behind Algeria. Does that sum it up?”
“Yes, and the EU gets a big chunk of its gas by pipeline from Algeria … oh, and the UN has its longest-standing peacekeeping force in Western Sahara.”
