The US wants to steal the natural resources of Western Sahara and secure 100 years’ worth of phosphate supply for itself.
Russia and China also want to steal these natural resources and are supporting the illegal transportation of phosphates through Algeria to a Chinese-owned port and across the Mediterranean Sea to France by a pipeline called PEGASUS.
The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is recognised by forty-five members of the UN. At the moment, we only control twenty per cent of our land – the Liberated Territories. The US, Russia and China must reverse their policies and avoid a major international conflict by supporting …
She read on until the end.
Bizarrely, her first thought was about the word choice and grammar. Her second thought was, What’s the US thinking? and her third thought was about that spineless shit, Charles Yelland.
Was it only nine days ago that she had first heard of any of this?
The mention of spineless shits brought Leonard de Vries into her thoughts. She quickly got back to reality. What was the point of resisting? They would torture her to the point where she would make the video anyway. Resistance seemed futile. If they were going to kill her, they might as well do it in three hours’ time as in six after a lot of pain. She shuddered. If there were any chance she might be rescued, it might be worth trying to delay, but no one knew where she was.
“OK, let’s go,” declared Toumi.
With that, Gwafa came in, and he and Toumi dragged her into the next room. She was sat, bound hand and foot, at a simple table with a big flag that she didn’t recognise draped behind her. A video camera on a tripod was directly in front of her. The statement was on the table.
“OK, put your wig on straight, act normal and start reading.” Toumi was standing there with his arms folded.
Act normal? What was he talking about?
She started reading, but her mouth was dry, and she messed up her lines. “Sorry, I need some water. Let me start again.”
Without saying a word, Gwafa walked into the next room and came back carrying an iron bar. Toumi picked up his half-drunk water bottle and held it to her mouth. A photograph of the Atlas Mountains on the label came into her view. She liked mountains. She thought about Mount Washington and her childhood, but she decided this might not help.
“Thank you.” And with that, she completed reading the statement, unable to add anything that might help any rescue.
Leonard’s office may have looked like any other in London, but it concealed the latest protection against eavesdropping. For one, it was quadruple glazed: one layer was coated in a metal powder and the inner glass was half an inch thick. Air was being pumped between the outer two layers so that conversations could not be monitored from outside using surface vibrations.
The room was pale grey and white and surprisingly clean, if you ignored the marks on the wall just above the wastepaper basket. Each evening, the cleaning staff moved it back next to his desk in the vain hope that he would put his copious food wrappers and other rubbish straight in the bin as opposed to throwing them at the wall so that they could drop in – or not. The framed and signed Alabama Crimson Tide basketball shirt above the bin should have given a clue to his aspirations, if he hadn’t been five stone overweight, two feet too short, unfit and totally lacking in hand-eye coordination.
He was chewing what looked like a dried sausage in a green wrapper and sweating. The latter was from nervousness. He was head of the most important CIA station outside the USA and head of Five Eyes, to boot. The protection of the presidents and PMs at the G20 had been high on his list for a long time. With his man on the inside, he had felt he could fend off any problem – until he went silent. Leonard had believed there was ample time for Mike Kingdom to find him and report back on any threats in Marrakech. Time was running out, and now Mike had gone AWOL as well. He could sense something was wrong.
Leonard now had the President himself, together with the Secretary of State and various CIA directors, on his back. He sweated some more. With his sausage finished, he screwed the wrapper up into a ball, wrapped it in a cardboard carton and aimed it at the bin. It hit the wall, but when it fell, it missed its target.
There was a knock at the door, and Leonard asked his visitor to enter. He had told Tom to come straight across if he had any news. Time was of the essence. “Tom, give me the low-down.”
Tom had been the interface with Mike on a previous job and so he was aware that this was her mobile number even if Leonard hadn’t mentioned her name. “I have printed this out as a m-map with time p-points,” he said in a singsong voice.
Leonard looked at the printout. “This must be her hotel or Airbnb; I don’t know if they have them in Essao …” He gave up trying to pronounce Essaouira. “She was here last night and up to 1.40pm. Then she walks around and doubles back. Good girl,” he interjected in a patronising way, “Are these shops? Then she walks across this car park to … what’s this building?”
“Some h-harbour or p-port office, I think. Give me a s-second.”
“Then she stands still just before 2.00pm, presumably waiting for the meeting?”
“Yes, it’s the h-harbour office. Here.” Tom showed Leonard a series of images of the colonnade and the wider view.
“Now what?” Leonard asked. “Is she in a taxi? Is she driving? Driving in Morocco? What’s she up to?” These were rhetorical questions, and Tom wisely kept quiet. “What’s this next place? After thirty-two minutes?”
“This is the s-satellite p-picture. I can get m-more detail back at my desk, b-but it will take a few m-minutes.”
“Is it a farm? There are lots of outbuildings.” Leonard was just rambling, “Then what? After twenty minutes, she drives back to Essao … whatever, stays there twenty minutes and … what?”
“She’s on the road to Marrakech. That’s about two and a h-half hours away.”
“But not answering her phone? So, is she driving, on a bus or what? Was it all a wild goose chase?”
Leonard stood there thinking for a few beats and, finally, said, “OK, thanks, Tom. You get me the best pictures of the harbour office and this farm and make them available to me. I’ll have a team look into what is going on there, although it looks like she found nothing and is on her way back to Marrakech. Damn!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Randy?” Mike was standing, still chained to the wall, but twisted around to project her voice through the gaps created by the rotting rafters. She was speaking in a very loud whisper, which was a self-defeating exercise. Being vertical provided her only relief from the back-aching sitting position. She had lost track of time, but there had been neither sight nor sound of her two captors. Apart from a rat that had an unhealthy interest in the bucket, she had heard and seen nothing.
“Randy?” She thought she could hear some movement, but she also thought he might have tape across his mouth. Mike tapped the wall and listened.
There was a weak tapping in response.
“Randy, are you OK? It’s me, Mike.” She had made the decision that she didn’t care if she blew her cover; she might not have long left alive.
There came a very mumbled and distorted male voice, but whether this was because of tape or damage to his mouth, she couldn’t tell. She thought that she heard, “I can’t speak,” but she wasn’t sure.
“OK, one tap for ‘yes’, and two taps for ‘no’. I’ll ask the questions.”
There was one tap that sounded like a chain against the wall.
“Randy, are you all right?”
