“Jeez, we might as well have met in Afghanistan.”
They were in a large room with pink walls and arched recesses full of gravity-defying flower displays. The air smelt of rich spices.
“The Secretary of State visited Algeria back in the spring to see if we could start weaning them off of Russia, but, unfortunately, there was nothing doing,” Conrad explained.
“You and I both want the Algerian gas to get to Europe, otherwise they’re competing with us on the world market. Russia would rub its hands with glee if those pipelines were shut down. Actually, the Algerians have shut down the one via Morocco and a little explosion seems to have temporarily shut down another. It’s very hard to defend long pipelines.”
“Looks like, while I’m here, I have to say nice things about semi-autonomy for Western Sahara under ultimate Moroccan control while not slamming the door on the Algerians, who want it wholly independent. That should be a barrel of laughs.”
“I’m told that the only fun on this trip is a visit to Yves Saint Laurent’s villa nearby.”
“Jeez, they showed me a picture. Did you see the garden? If I wanted to see a tall cactus, I could have gone to Arizona.”
Patrick was back on the phone to Ben Cox, giving him an update on Walter.
“I finally managed to talk to Walter with the prosecutor. He was still rambling a bit.”
“What did he say happened?” the commander asked.
“Walter said he took the memory card back to his room after Johnny Musselwhite’s body was found. When he eventually looked at it, he found some emails, porn and detailed specifications of the PEGASUS pipeline – but not just the planned gas pipeline and power cable. PEGASUS also includes a phosphate pipeline. The card included a detailed specification, but Walter was beginning to waffle at this point.”
“Does he remember being shot?”
“Yes and no, he remembered Brendan, whom he said he had phoned on Thursday afternoon when he had looked at the contents on the card. This must have been not long before he was shot, and Brendan was already in the auberge. Walter wanted his superiors to know what Johnny was up to. He wiped the contents to protect Johnny. Brendan must have been searching the auberge that day and must have decided that Walter knew too much. If he had thought that taking Walter’s laptop and this memory card would solve everything, then he would have been very disappointed.”
“I don’t think that this has anything to do with porn or blackmail, otherwise they would have kept Johnny alive. No, this is to do with PEGASUS and possibly the phosphate-pipeline element, which I haven’t heard anything about, and I don’t think is public knowledge. I’ll get all this checked out at my end. Charles Yelland at Petronello must be involved and know all about this phosphate stuff. It’s probably why Brendan is after him and his family,” Ben concluded.
“But who’s Brendan working for? Who cares about a phosphate pipeline enough to kill, or attempt to kill, twice and to kidnap and blackmail? It’s quite a coincidence that Johnny Musselwhite and Yves Dubuisson, his French counterpart, were meeting in Colmar at a potash mine. Potash is phosphate, isn’t it?”
“I have no idea, but I don’t like coincidences. I’ll get all this checked out. How was your friend, the prosecutor?”
“She was fine. The French are busy tracking Brendan’s flights in and out of France over the last seven years. I didn’t mention the potash/phosphate connection, but she’ll probably have thought of it herself.”
“Does Walter still have an armed guard at the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“When he comes around a bit more, chat to him again. You could take the prosecutor for lunch again. What do you think?”
“Great idea.”
Ben Cox walked along a corridor, knocked and entered a room in which there were five people, including Dennis from the FCO and Lorna from MI6, who were busy looking at screens. While the technology looked cutting edge, the furniture and room decoration were standard UK government issue circa 1965. There was even a wooden coat stand and wicker wastepaper basket. He updated everyone on Walter’s ramblings. Someone called Vanessa took on the task of producing a briefing note on phosphates, potash and the relevant transportation methods. Someone else began the task of checking key words, such as ‘phosphate’, in the communication traffic of Johnny Musselwhite, Brendan Dowell and others.
It was Lorna’s turn to update Ben on the events at Charles Yelland’s villa in Spain. “Look who turned up at the villa with some serious protection.”
Ben didn’t bother to ask who had put in a surveillance camera watching the Yelland villa. Instead, he looked at a monitor and saw a white Mercedes approach the gates only to be met by a one-eyed man dressed like Lawrence of Arabia, who walked out to the car. Before he could speak to the driver, the gates opened and a thick-set man with a crewcut orchestrated the car’s entrance.
“Who’s that?” Ben asked.
“Yves Dubuisson, the French Minister of Energy,” Dennis answered, “He came from Paris and is now on his way to his home in Cannes.”
“Strange route … via Málaga?” Ben was beginning to make a series of connections that he could never have made a few hours before.
“We thought initially that he was hopping across to Marrakech, but that wasn’t what happened. The French President is already there, of course.” Lorna picked up a phone, looked at some message and put it down on the table again.
It took a few minutes to put on the handcuffs before releasing the chain from the iron ring on the wall. The prisoner didn’t bother struggling; the odds of escape weren’t worth thinking about, and he was feeling weak from the lack of food and water. His back was aching despite standing or half-standing as often as he could to relieve the pain and stress.
“Vamos,” one of his jailers said in a heavy North African accent, “Let’s go.”
The prisoner looked at the bucket that he had used as a toilet for a week and hoped that this wouldn’t be one of the last images of his short life.
He had tried to think of all the reasons that they might chain him up, but most importantly, keep him alive; he was about to find out.
The few paces across the room to the three stone steps were only achieved with the support of the two men who were wrapped almost head to foot in brown cloth. They manhandled him up through the doorway, despite his inability and, perhaps, his lack of enthusiasm to move nearer to his death.
The adjoining room was also whitewashed and was probably a storeroom for fruit or winter feed for the animals. There were some boxes in the corner, but not much else. What he did see was a flag draped over two sawn-off branches that was acting as a backdrop and the video camera on a tripod.
It was time to film the video.
The bottom of his stomach had fallen out, and he craved his private access to his bucket – something he couldn’t have contemplated thinking a few weeks before.
They propped him in a chair with the black, white, green and red flag of the Western Sahara as the backdrop and left him alone with his thoughts – the one place a hostage does not want to be.
