With the conventional explosive: with the teddy bear.

'Fair enough. I wouldn't want any last-minute complications – this is quite an important deal for me.'

He watched me for a moment, his eyes bright, and I wondered if he knew what the orders were that Klaus had given Muhammad Ibrahimi: that I was not to survive the rendezvous. Maitland would probably know, yes, had possibly advised it, even insisted on it, for the sake of absolute security, and some of the unholy light in his eyes could be there because he knew he was talking to a dead man. I'd seen a degree of fascination in Klaus's look when he'd been watching the two Iranians.

'Dieter Klaus,' Maitland said slowly, 'hasn't planned this operation to include the risk of last-minute complications.'

He didn't know I was English, this man, as English as he was. It'd be funny if we'd been to prep school together – he looked about my age. Not that it would have made any difference to our relationship. KGB Colonel Kim Philby had been an Englishman too.

'I'm reassured,' I said, and then Klaus came into the courtyard with his four bodyguards and an Arab in a jump-suit and a military-style jacket, compact and black-bearded.

'I don't think you've been formally introduced,' Klaus said in French, 'have you? Muhammad Ibrahimi – Hans Mittag. I know you'll get on very well. You'll be going to the airport with a driver and three guards for your own protection.' He was in a black flying-jacket with a fur collar, had a pair of military field-glasses slung round his neck. 'I'm sure your associate has taken every precaution' -his black eyes were locked on mine – 'and that he too has protected the rendezvous from unwanted attention. Or am I perhaps over-confident?' His French was stilted but I got the message.

'The counter-terrorist people,' I said in a moment, 'are quick off the mark these days. You know that. It wouldn't be the first time an arms dealer's come unstuck.'

Telephone.

It was all I wanted: a telephone.

Klaus said at once – 'You think there's the chance of a security leak?'

'Not really. I run a tight show, like you. But nothing in this life's ever certain, is it? I think you're right: I ought to phone my contact.'

He became very still. I was running things terribly close, but it was so tempting, because if I could get London direct on the dial and use speech-code and warn them off the rendezvous they'd have time to signal whatever forces they'd sent into Dar-el-Beida and clear them out before I got there with Ibrahimi. I'd have a clear field with no one to mess me up if I could do anything useful.

'There's no time,' Klaus said, 'to phone anyone now.' He checked his watch. 'You're leaving here in fifteen minutes, and if your associate has left the rendezvous open to exposure it won't be my fault if you get shot. You understand me?'

'I don't need fifteen minutes to -'

'Do you understand?'

He was standing in front of me with the look on his face I'd seen when he'd killed the dog and when he'd killed the Arab boy, and I was ready for him to blow, had the angles worked out as a matter of routine, the synapses flashing throughout the system and devouring data and sifting it and presenting the analysis for the motor nerves, and if Klaus had made any kind of move I would have gone straight into the killing area and he would have started choking on his own blood as the bullets went into me from the guards.

I don't know if he knew I was ready for him, but I don't think so, because it would have been a challenge and he would have accepted it and come for me, just as a dog will do if you stare it down.

Adrenalin running in the veins like strong red wine: I could taste it in my mouth. He went on staring at me. 'Yes,' I said, 'I understand.'

'I want that warhead.'

'Of course. And I simply hate to sound tactless, but does Monsieur Ibrahimi have the funds?' I looked at the Arab.

'I have the funds,' he said, 'in cash.'

'In hundred-dollar bills?

'That is correct.'

Klaus stood back, and Maitland joined him. 'I hope all goes well,' I said, 'with the operation. It'll give me a certain sense of satisfaction in the morning when I read the headlines, to think I played a minor part.'

Klaus left his eyes on me for a moment and then swung away, didn't answer, knew I wouldn't see any headlines in the morning. Maitland went with him through the archway that led to the forecourt, where chrome glinted under the first faint light of the moon. Two of the guards followed them; two stayed behind. They were both men, both European, probably German; they were flat-faced, crew-cut and had eyes with the indifference in them that we see in animals, but I made them change, moving my hand suddenly to tug the zip of my jacket higher, and they became the eyes of the animal that sees the prey.

'We shall make our way, then,' Muhammad Ibrahimi said.

He walked beside me, the guards behind. No one else was in the courtyard now, and as our feet rustled through the fallen eucalyptus leaves and we reached the archway I had the feeling that a curtain would come down behind us.

Exhaust gas was on the air as we reached the forecourt; the tail lights of a car showed among the trees where the driveway curved towards the road. Above the minarets of the palace the last of the daylight had gone from the sky, and with the coming down of the Sahara night a three-quarter moon was already silvering the chrome and cellulose of the 560 SEL Mercedes limousine that was waiting for us. An Arab driver and another European guard were standing beside it.

Ibrahim! gestured for me to get into the back of the car, then followed. Two of the guards got in and pulled down the jump seats facing us; the third sat next to the Arab driver. The last door was slammed and the hydraulic locks clicked home. I felt for the seat-belt and buckled it. Ibrahimi folded his hands, leaving providence to Allah.

'The funds,' I asked him, 'are in the boot?'

It was just to keep the polish on my cover. Two thousand five hundred bills would need a suitcase, and I didn't see one here.

'Yes,' he said.

He would have a knife, Ibrahimi, a knife rather than a gun. The European clothes he'd changed into hadn't altered his image very much: with his beard and his hawk-beaked nose and his silences he was intensely Arabian, and would have been brought up with an affinity for the blade in time of need. It would be the same for the driver. The others would have guns.

Be not sanguine, my good friend, upon this inauspicious night, 'tis hardly meet. We are not super-ferrets, we the ferrets in the field, we are but ferrets, and subject to the laws of nature, red in tooth and claw.

Chapter 19: LIMOUSINE

South along the rue Khelifa Boukhalfa and across the Plateau Sauliere district, with the scents of the evening coming through the ventilation system: the smell of broiling lamb mechoui from the Berbers' open-air kitchens, of jasmine arid donkeys and incense and bruised oranges and the acrid reek of the leather tanneries in the souks. Our driver knew his job, made detours around the congested areas where merchants lined the streets with their loaded carts and their rickety makeshift stalls.

'What is his name,' I asked Ibrahimi, the driver's?'

'I do not know.'

We spoke in French, Ibrahimi and I, when we spoke at all. I would have liked to know the name of the driver as a matter of routine tradecraft: if you call a man by his name you establish immediate intimacy by however small a degree – you are no longer a complete stranger. And in a scene of confusion when other sounds are pervasive, call a man's name and you'll get his immediate attention.

I didn't expect there to be any scenes of confusion on this cool Saharan night. Klaus had things running with the precision of a Swiss watch. But habit was ingrained in me and I let it work. It could save Solitaire at a pinch, given the advent of a miracle to help things along.