‘Yes, Mr President,’ Whisperer said. ‘What about you, Pilgrim? Coming home?’
‘I’ll go to Gaza,’ I said.
It was Whisperer who recovered first. ‘An American alone in Gaza, without a legend? They’ll be lining up with bomb belts and baseball bats – you’ll be dead in a day.’
‘I’ve spoken to the Saudis – they’ve got some people on the ground who can help.’
‘That means the line will only be half as long.’
‘Al-Nassouri was there – it’s the only thread we’ve got.’
‘You don’t have to do it,’ the president said. ‘Not finding him is no reflection on you. On the contrary. When we first met, I asked Whisperer to stay behind – I told him you were the coolest sonofabitch I’d ever met. I didn’t realize you were also the best. You’ve done an outstanding job.’
‘Thank you,’ I said simply.
‘I won’t send you a presidential letter of commendation,’ he said, trying to lighten the tone. ‘You’ve already got one of those.’
‘And the golf balls,’ I replied.
They laughed, and it gave me a chance. ‘If I could ask one thing, Mr President?’ I said.
‘Go ahead,’ he replied.
‘There’s a hacker we pulled out of Leavenworth who did some great work. Would it be possible not to send him back?’
‘A pardon, you mean?’
‘If it could be done,’ I replied.
‘What about it, Whisperer? You know this guy?’
‘Yeah, excellent work – I’d support it.’
‘Okay – I’ll get his name from Whisperer and write the order.’
‘Thank you, Mr President’ was all I could say. I was thinking of Battleboi holding Rachel tight when he heard the news.
‘Good luck, Pilgrim,’ the president said, bringing the call to an end. ‘I hope we’ll see each other again in better circumstances.’ He didn’t sound very confident.
The line went dead, and I sat in the soundproofed silence, thinking that it would probably be the last moments of peace I would know for a long time. Maybe ever.
Gaza.
Whisperer was right – it was one of the deadliest places on earth. The only good thing about it was that there was nowhere to sail: at least there wouldn’t be any old boats with patched sails waiting for me.
Elsewhere maybe, but not in Gaza.
Chapter Nine
IT WAS GERMANY, so the trucks arrived right on time. It was just after 6 a.m., with a light rain falling, when they drove through the security gates at Chyron.
Just as the drivers had done a thousand times before, they swung past the glass-fronted administration building, ran down factory row and stopped at the loading bays in the rear. The warehouse guy – the tall Muslim whose name none of the drivers could quite remember – was already at the wheel of a forklift, waiting to help load the boxes of pharma for shipment to America. He didn’t say anything – he never talked much – but the drivers liked him: he worked fast and seemed a damn sight more intelligent than most of his colleagues.
The consignment was a large one – it included everything from pallets of vaccines to crates of antibiotics, millions of doses of different drugs – but even so, the Saracen had it loaded into the back of the trucks in under five minutes. He had all the documentation ready too, and the drivers knew that with him there was no need to check – it was always correct.
They grabbed the paperwork, ran through the rain, scrambled into their cabs and were heading back towards the A5 freeway in record time.
Had they glanced in their rear-view mirrors, which none of them did, they would have seen that the Saracen didn’t move from the forklift: he sat in quiet contemplation and watched them until they were out of sight. He knew that the rain and the roadworks on the A5 – there were always roadworks on the ’5 – would slow them down, that was why he had hurried, but not so much that they wouldn’t make their designated flights.
At last he lowered his head, rested it on his forearms and floated in some place between prayer and exhaustion. It was over, it was out of his hands, and the relief was so overwhelming he felt tears sting the back of his eyes. The crushing responsibility of the last three years, the great burden of doing Allah’s work, had been lifted. The weapon was flying free and the fate of the mission, the welfare of nations, the survival of whatever innocence remained in the world, rested on a system of border controls which the Saracen believed was so tenuous as to be virtually non-existent. But that was not within his control; he had done all he could: everything rested now in God’s hands.