“No, that’s not true. Strictly speaking, it was that Dr Rose Delavine, if you remember. You need to be careful who you invite to your cabin.”
“I think you invited yourself.”
“Nah, strictly by invitation only, you said. You were waiting for the good doctor.”
“I’ll be more careful next time. What am I saying? There won’t be a next time.”
“Who knows? Never say never, but I need to work on another anagram – dear Rose needs to hang up her surgical gloves. But, hey, I just wanted to say a big thanks for finding Ramon and giving us all the heads up on the bomb plot. You were the only person I thought could find him.”
“I could have died … again.”
“I’m pretty sure you can only die once and, anyway, I sent the Australian to watch out for you.”
“She was great. She’s what’s called an ‘operative’. I’m what’s called an ‘analyst’. You seem to get them confused.”
“Nah, operatives walk about and analysts sit down, otherwise they’re the same.”
“God, you’re annoying. How does the President put up with you?”
“Because he likes people that get results. Oh, he says thanks, by the way. He and his team want me to send some money to you from the President’s special account.”
“I might use it to move house with no forwarding address.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll find you. I employ lots of operatives, or is it analysts? I can never remember.”
Mike was gripping both of her hands into fists so hard that her nails were digging into her palms. “You are a—”
“Hey, I told Tom to phone you once I heard about that French minister, didn’t I? That was classified information. You should thank me for that. I bet your client is real pleased?”
“He is, and so are his wife and daughter. We’re all flying home in an hour’s time.”
There was a pause in the conversation. Mike walked around her bedroom at the villa to relieve the ache in her left leg. “What was Ramon doing that you wanted him to stop?”
“Are all of your gizmos plugged in?”
“Yes.”
Leonard was establishing that all of the little pieces of hardware were plugged in and that the line was, therefore, secure.
“You know all about executive orders that restrict the President? The CIA has to bypass them on behalf of the President so he can then claim deniability. We’ve been using the Moroccans a lot.”
“You mean that they carry out our dirty work?” she interrupted.
“Well, that’s a cynical view.”
“That’s what we operatives – sorry, analysts – are paid to take, isn’t it?”
“The Moroccans have been doing a great job. They are a little bit ‘all guns blazing’ for my taste, but they’ve killed off the Russian-backed pipeline, PEGASUS. OK, they made the Sahrawis pissed, but they do have most of the world’s phosphates, and the US wants it big time.”
“Was the G20 the problem?”
“That and the Russia-Ukraine thing. The US finally had to choose between Morocco and Algeria. It chose Morocco, so it wants all of the Western Sahara phosphate to be under Moroccan control and for Algeria and the Russkies to be shut out.”
“And that’s going to happen?”
“Yes, blowing up those gardens was the best thing those Sahrawis could have done for the US. Nobody will talk to them now. When Morocco has resettled enough of its people into Western Sahara, there will be a UN-led referendum, and Morocco will keep ultimate control. And everything in the garden is rosy. That’s the Rose Garden at the White House, by the way.”
“Has anyone told you how smug you are?”
“I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy.”
“You’ve never seen a glass or plate half-full.”
Two hours later, there was a party atmosphere on the Gulfstream, and Mike was sitting on the leather sofa with Charles, drinking Louis Roederer champagne. Not that anyone was aware of it, but they were, at that moment, flying over Reims (near Paris) where the champagne had been produced. They were less than half an hour from London.
“You don’t seem very upset about your PEGASUS project being cancelled,” Mike suggested.
“It’s a shame, but these things happen. There are plenty more fish in the sea.”
“Will you try to use the new technology for pumping phosphates somewhere else in the world?” She was looking sideways at him with a knowing smile. She sipped the pink champagne and tilted her head so that the bright-red wig hung down at one side.
“Probably,” he said with that sheepish grin that he seemed incapable of hiding from her.
“Who thought it was funny to call the other project MEDUSA, by the way? Surely, the last thing you want when pumping phosphate down a pipeline is for it to turn to stone.”
His expression changed from sheepish to one of disbelief. “That’s not the reason that project is called MEDUSA.” He had rather unnecessarily lowered his voice on his own private plane.
