Brute Force (33 page)

I half expected him to bring out a red, leather-bound book and tell Lynn he was on Tripoli's answer to
This Is Your Life.

'I know, Leptis, that you understand the Arab mentality. You know very well how we work, our methods, our thinking.'

He glanced at me now with the same look my school teachers used to give me. 'Not all of us are the dumb goatherds or fanatical hijackers portrayed in the Western media. There are many shades to us, just as there are many shades to you.'

He didn't seem to get that he was the one in the clingfilm. Ignoring me, he turned back to Lynn. His tone was softer as he addressed a fellow gentleman.

'Of course, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, Leptis. You know that I spent many years in custody at the pleasure of our Supreme Leader because of what happened that night. It was a stupid mistake. I should never have let it happen. Just as I should never have allowed my . . . feelings . . . to get the better of me in London when I was sent by our Great Guide as his special envoy over Lockerbie . . .'

Mansour paused to study his bindings. He raised his head to me and spoke in a voice people normally reserve for the waiter. 'Do you think I might have a glass of water? All this talking . . .'

I didn't move. It was Lynn who turned to the fridge.

A moment later, he lifted a bottle of Evian to Mansour's lips and the Libyan took a couple of gulps. He thanked Lynn, held his gaze and continued.

'I have no proof, Leptis, but I am sure that it was you who called off the dogs – or should I say the wolves – after that regrettable little incident.

'This, I believe, is what the new détente is all about. We were the best of enemies. But that is all in the past. I do not know what it is that has brought you to Libya – only that it is somehow meant. Men like you and me, Al-Inn, we live complicated lives. If you trust me, if the answers you seek are in Libya, then I can help.'

So, Lynn was the great 'Al-Inn' now. Nice touch. Flattery usually got you somewhere. But it wasn't going any further.

'A few days ago, I found an explosive device under my car. It had a very distinctive signature – the same as the devices on the
Bahiti.
Ben Lesser – that name ring a bell?'

'Of course . . .'

'That same day, someone left a phone message for me at a TV station in Dublin. Words to the effect that Leptis had the answers and I should go and see him. The only person who ever called Lynn Leptis was you. So I'm going to ask you again: did you set up that call?'

'No.'

'OK, then – who was Lesser's mentor?'

Mansour's brow furrowed. 'Mentor?'

'The person who trained him.'

'Ah!' A light went on somewhere in Mansour's head. He turned and looked at Lynn. 'After the failure of the
Bahiti
operation, so soon after the
Eksund,
there was a lot of . . . well, I guess you would call it soul-searching. People wanted to know what had gone wrong. These efforts to understand were led by the Supreme Leader himself. In the interests of self-correction – so that Libya could learn from its mistakes – I told them everything. Why shouldn't I? If it helped my country . . .'

Yeah, right. I knew all too well what they did to people like him in rat-holes like this in the interest of self-correction.

Mansour ploughed on. 'Reports were written and circulated. Your name – the name of Leptis – became well known in high circles, Al-Inn. You would expect it to. I remembered you from our encounter on the party circuit. I realized who you were – but you were careful and I could not prove why you were here.

'Afterwards, it seemed obvious. Given your connections with Libya, the time you spent here at the embassy, you must have been involved, somehow, in the
Bahiti
operation. You were even stopped at a roadblock near the docks on the night the ship sailed. And, naturally, you came to the attention of Lesser's mentor, because Lesser's mentor was also on the dock that night.'

I looked at Lynn, then at Mansour.

Mansour smiled. 'You seem surprised.'

Lynn pulled up a chair and sat beside him. 'He was there? You're sure?'

'He? Who said anything about a "he"?' Mansour was quite pleased with himself. 'Lesser's mentor was a woman.'

Despite being trussed up, he still managed to do a halfway decent impression of a cat who'd got the cream. 'During the time of struggle she ran the PLO's bomb-making school here. You'd have expected her to be on the dock that night. But she was there for altogether more personal reasons, too.' The cat's smile spread across his face again. 'Indeed, you could say she taught Lesser everything he knew.'

'How's that?' Lynn asked.

'She didn't just teach him how to make bombs, Al-Inn.'

94

Her name was Layla Hamdi. She was Palestinian, and she ran the training camp in Ajdabiya.

Lynn tilted his head in my direction. 'Eight hundred kilometres along the coast – halfway between here and Egypt.'

Mansour had more. 'In October 1985, after the PLO was attacked by Israeli planes in Tunis, the various factions that made up the PLO had decided to accept a clandestine offer from Gaddafi to relocate many of their significant activities, including weapons instruction, to Libya.

'Since Libya was already firmly on the West's radar screens for its support of foreign terrorist organizations like PIRA, the PLO's move here was picked up and tracked. But the Ajdabiya training camp and its leading proponents, including Layla, Lesser's teacher, weren't.'

He was happy to talk about it now, he said, because all of this was very firmly history; one of the many aspects of Libya's past that the country's Great Leader had freely renounced in the wake of the Lockerbie settlement.

Believe that and you'd believe anything. Mansour was waffling because he knew that the longer he talked, the more time he bought for himself. I'd have been doing the same.

Time for us, on the other hand, was ticking on. It was coming up to 5 a.m.: first light soon. Decisions were going to have to be made.

Layla Hamdi, he said, had trained as a chemist at UCLA, was incredibly gifted academically, and had shown no signs of radicalism until both her parents were killed by a stray IDF tank-shell that ripped through their quiet apartment in Gaza. The Israelis never apologized – Layla's parents were merely collateral damage in the Palestinian homelands; reason enough on its own, I thought, to turn Layla away from life as an academic and to the Cause.

When she returned from the USA she signed up with Force 17, another PLO spin-off, and soon discovered she had a natural skill as a bomb-maker.

Pulling in disparate techniques in the art of explosive-charge construction from right across the Middle East – including those taught by the British to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan – Layla rose through the ranks of the PLO to become its bomb-maker supreme. 'In the never-ending game of new countermeasures by us and then counter-countermeasures by you that characterized the bomb-maker's world, Layla was the person who kept the PLO and its fellow travellers state-of-the-art.'

She started out as Lesser's mentor and became his lover. Not long after that, she became his wife. 'When she first met him, Layla was already in her mid-thirties. Lesser was still in his late twenties, the tall muscled Irish boy with the unkempt hair.'

I pictured him in bomb class. He must have stuck out a mile in the company of his fellow students: Latinos from the Shining Path, Muj from Afghanistan, Arabs, and the odd Red Brigade Italian. Fuck knows what he and Layla had had in common, beyond bomb-making and sticking it to imperialist, bourgeois, capitalist regimes.

According to Mansour, it had been love at first sight. The Palestinian and the Irishman. It sounded like a bad joke . . . When Gaddafi did his deal with the West, one of the conditions was that he gave up his support of terrorism. The bomb-making school was shut down and Layla suddenly found herself out of a job.

Now in her mid-fifties, and not in the best of health, she had decided to stay in Libya rather than go back to the West Bank. I couldn't say I blamed her. Ajdabiya, whatever that was like, couldn't be any worse than the Gaza Strip. Well, we were about to find out.

'How long to get there?'

'By car? If you take the coast road, maybe eight hours. But for you, that would not be an option. It runs through the oil fields and there are many checkpoints. Without papers, you would not get through.'

'Is there another way?'

'There is the desert road, but it will add another four hours to the journey. There are still checkpoints, but fewer. And the guards are more likely to accept baksheesh. The road, however, is still dangerous.'

'How so?'

'There are potholes – deep ones; deep enough to shatter an axle. And after a storm, the sand can bury several kilometres of tarmac, forcing you off-road. You would need a four-by-four, at the very least.'

Mansour must have realized, the second he'd opened his mouth, that he'd walked straight into that one. He added almost immediately: 'Of course, Al-Inn, you are at liberty to take my car. In fact, it would be an honour . . .'

I turned to Lynn. 'Grab whatever you think might help us on the road: a map, even if Mansour's Q7 has sat nav; water – lots of it; and food – as much as you can find, so we can eat on the move.'

I packed the revolver in my day sack and pocketed the Makarov along with Mansour's mobile phone.

Mansour told me where in his study he kept his spare mags and ammo. I went and took all I could fit into the day sack.

It was there that I also found his money – just as Lynn had predicted: a briefcase full of dollars – roughly ten grand's worth. Ten grand would go a long way in the
baksheesh
stakes – all the way between here and Johannesburg, if need be.

Lynn was still emptying the fridge of water bottles when I got back. I ripped at the clingfilm to release Mansour.

He rubbed his wrists. 'What are you going to do with me?'

I tapped my watch. 'You've got five minutes to get dressed. Then you're coming with us.'

PART EIGHT

95

We drove out of Tripoli into the rising sun.

I was at the wheel. Lynn was in the back, and Mansour was beside me, ready to take on any checkpoints. Nobody spoke much. Nobody needed to. All I'd had to do was reset the sat nav's voice commands from Arabic to English and load in Ajdabiya. According to Mansour, the house we wanted was located on the beach. His memory wasn't great. He'd have to point out the actual building once we got there.

We got past the city limits. I'd given Lynn the .38 and told him to keep behind Mansour's seat. On the coast road, with the sea on our left, the desert stretching away on our right, there weren't many opportunities for the Libyan to cut and run, but there was no telling what he might try.

I glanced across at him. 'What's with the Russian?'

'Excuse me?'

'You started to talk to me first in Arabic, then in Russian. Why?'

'I didn't know who you were. I
still
don't know who you are – only that you are British. When you were in my room, you could have been anyone. And a man like me has many enemies.'

Lynn leant forward. 'Why would the Russians be after you?'

Mansour kept his eyes on the road. 'I have always been a survivor, Al-Inn. But how could a man like me, with my background, survive in the new Libya? Our Great Leader had publicly renounced terrorism. He'd informed the world that Libya was ridding itself of its ballistic missiles, its weapons of mass destruction. I had emerged from prison with nothing. Nobody was interested in a disgraced former spy. What was I to do?'

'What did you do?' Lynn asked.

'All I had were my connections – contacts built up over many years – and my interests . . .
our
interest, Al-Inn. In the desert, there are treasures beyond your wildest imaginings – you know this – many of them still waiting to be discovered. From prehistory to the time of the Romans – the desert is full of these priceless remnants of my country's past. And there is only so much room in the Al-Jamaheri Museum . . .

'Now, many people come to Libya to look for these artefacts. I know what is out there, Al-Inn. I have spent years in the desert. The desert is my home. There are places I know that nobody else does. Why should some archaeology student from an American, Italian, British or French university be allowed to make these discoveries – to take these antiquities back home with them, supposedly for study? They are Libya's heritage and they should stay here.'

I couldn't see the problem. If some geek with a metal-detector discovered Septimus Severus's money box, he should be allowed to hang on to it. Finders, keepers.

But Mansour was getting sparked up. 'It is we who should decide what is to be bought and sold, what is to stay or leave my country.'