Brute Force (34 page)

I loved how this guy twisted and spun. Now he'd recast himself as some kind of custodian of national treasures. It was fucking obvious he wasn't just squirrelling these objects away for posterity; he was trading them as well, and not on eBay.

I kept my eyes glued to the potholes that peppered the lumpy tarmac. 'And that's where the Russians fit in?'

'I am sorry?'

'The Russians. You decided that some of these priceless artefacts weren't quite Libyan enough, and that entitled you to do a little trading with your old mates?'

Mansour stared straight ahead, tuning me out.

I didn't want to let him off the hook. 'Let me see if I've got this right. In the eighties, Libya's foreign terrorist programme was up and running, and you were the guy who put it all together. The training, the weapons, the shipments . . .'

'If you want to put it that way, yes.'

'The market was big – PIRA, PLO, the Red Brigade, you name them. And the Soviets fell over themselves to supply you with all the kit. So there you were, top of the heap, pulling all the strings. Until the
Bahiti
op went to rat shit . . . And when you finally got out of jail, it wasn't just Gaddafi's little slice of paradise that had changed, was it?'

'No.'

Too right it wasn't. The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union didn't exist any more. But a lot of those GRU colonels Mansour used to deal with, his regular weapons suppliers, had grown rich – or, at the very least, had some extremely rich, well-connected friends.

I swerved to avoid another pothole that was deep enough to rip a wheel off. 'If there's something a wealthy Russian loves to spend his money on, apart from bling, powerboats and football clubs, I bet it's bits of old Roman bric-a-brac.'

Mansour bristled. 'The alabaster bust in my house is of Septimus Severus. It is one of a pair. The other one is at the Capitol Museum in Rome. On the black market, it would fetch millions.'

It explained a lot, not least the Q7, the briefcase of cash and the curious symbols I'd noticed on the sat nav's map display. Mansour had marked the location of these out-of-the-way archaeological sites. Nice work if you could get it. It almost made me wish I'd paid more attention at school.

Mansour turned and looked directly at Lynn. 'I was only ever prepared to sell things that didn't matter – a late classical statuette here, a bust from the Hellenistic era there. These things are two-a-penny, Al-Inn. You know that. But they always want more.'

'It's a Russian thing,' I said. 'Old habits die hard.'

He turned and watched the road. 'Some of my former contacts are still in the military and the GRU. Some now work for the FSB and Russian arms manufacturers. Many of them have a great deal of money. They also have some powerful friends.'

No surprises there. The Russian mafia were everywhere. 'What did you do that means you have to sleep with a weapon?'

Mansour sighed. 'There were certain treasures, like the Severus bust, that I am not prepared to sell. They
should
remain in Libya. But the people you speak of are putting me under a great deal of pressure. Their clients – some of them well-known public figures – these men are extremely powerful, and they want only the very best. When they set their eye on something, they will stop at nothing to get it. I have started to become . . . nervous . . . There is no one I can turn to here. I needed the advice – the help – of someone I could trust.'

'So you decided to call Lynn?'

Mansour didn't answer. Something on the dead-straight stretch of road ahead had caught his eye. It had also caught mine.

Half a mile away, shimmering in the morning sunlight, was a checkpoint.

96

As we slowed to join the queue of waiting traffic, I told Mansour to put on his shades.

I tucked the Makarov under my thigh. 'Got that .38 within reach?'

Lynn shuffled about in the back.

'Make sure you can get to it.'

The old familiar feeling was crawling through my stomach – that sickening lurch, when you know you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and, worst of all, with no one and nothing to back you up.

'Get about $400 out of the case. Then keep it closed and under your feet.'

Our passports didn't have visas or entry stamps. To a guard who was even half alert we'd stick out a mile. But a few hundred USD might help us on our way.

I watched a sentry making his way towards us, past taxis laden to capacity, the odd private car and a couple of long-distance trucks headed for Benghazi and beyond. Immediately in front of us was a Toyota pick-up stuffed with farm produce. A goat stared vacantly at us from the tailgate, alongside a stack of bamboo cages filled with emaciated chickens.

I left enough room to pull a hard right into the scrub and loop back on the road to Tripoli if it turned into a gang fuck. We'd have to find another route to Ajdabiya. I wanted this sorted; I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

The checkpoint was basic: a red-and-white-striped pole tied to a couple of sand-filled oil-drums. The sentry was picking vehicles out of the line at random and waving them through. A voice at the back of my head told me we weren't going to be one of them.

I'd normally expect guys like this, in the back of beyond, to be half asleep, bored or just pissed off. But he and his mates looked particularly switched on; they wore shades under their ball caps, crisply pressed green uniforms and carried AKs across their chest.

Mansour gave a low groan. 'Money will not help us.'

'Why not?'

'They are Kata'eb Al-Amn – Security Battalions. Gaddafi's men.'

I looked at Lynn. 'What's he talking about?'

Lynn spat something in Arabic. Mansour grunted back.

'What?' I hated being out of the loop.

'It's unfortunate.' Lynn's head appeared between the front seats. 'You don't usually find the Security Battalions at VCPs. They consider themselves above this kind of thing. Checkpoints are normally manned by the army or the People's Militia. Draftees. Eminently bribable. But not this lot.'

Unfortunate? Not quite the term I'd have used. 'Are they looking for something – us, maybe?'

Mansour sucked his teeth. 'Perhaps they had some trouble here. There have been protests over the price of bread and rice. They could be looking for troublemakers.'

'What are you going to tell them?'

'Quiet; I will deal with it.'

The guard reached the Toyota and started talking to the driver. Even the goat was starting to look uncomfortable. Mansour's time was up and I wasn't liking this one bit.

I turned to Lynn. 'Weapon?'

The strain was registering on his face too. 'On my lap.'

I checked. It was concealed by his jacket.

I nodded towards Mansour. The sweat was starting to trickle down his face. 'A word out of place, shout and I'll put my foot down. Then shoot him through the back of the seat.'

The guard handed back a fistful of papers to the driver of the Toyota. The goat celebrated by trying to bite the head off a chicken that chose that moment to stick its neck through the bars of its cage.

The guard turned his attention to us.

Our fate rested in the hands of a man who'd have slit his own mother's throat twenty years ago on the say-so of the Great Leader with the big lapels.

97

I kept my hands on the wheel so the guard could see them and so I could turn the wheel as soon as this went noisy. The automatic gearbox would do the work for me. All I had to do was shift my foot off the brake and onto the gas. The Makarov was still where I needed it – cold comfort in a rapidly worsening situation.

The guard swaggered up to the Audi and tapped the glass with the muzzle of his AK.

Mansour powered down his window. Warm, dust-laden air blew into the car as he beckoned the guard to his side of the wagon.

The guard bent down to give us a good look and I saw the pips on his shoulders. I wasn't hot on Libyan rank insignia, but I reckoned he was a captain or a major. His face was heavily pockmarked. A layer of black stubble showed beneath the ball cap. He stared at us over the top of his Aviators before finally addressing Mansour.

'Taruh fein?'
Not a hint of deference; just a whole lot of suspicion.

I caught the word Ajdabiya in Mansour's reply.

There was another burst of questioning and I glanced in the mirror at Lynn. I didn't like the way this was going. By the look on his face, he didn't much either.

I ran my right hand down the side of the wheel so it was nearer the weapon.

The guard barked again and Mansour reached slowly into his inside pocket.

The guard's head moved a fraction; I was pretty sure the eyes behind the Aviators were looking straight at me. I smiled back.

Mansour handed over a small green carnet. More questions, more suspicion. The guard looked from me to Lynn, then switched his attention to Mansour's little green identity card.

I swore I heard the tick of the electronic clock on the Q7's dashboard as the officer scrutinized each line of Mansour's ID.

He glanced at the card, then at Mansour's face. Suddenly he barked at us, using a different tone altogether:
'Yallah, yallah, yallah.'

The officer stepped back. I had no idea what was going on. Was he going for his weapon?

My hand moved towards the Makarov. I'd drop the guard before he could fire and then get my foot down.

Mansour realized what was going through my mind. He held his hand flat below the level of the window, where the guard couldn't see what he was doing. He was signalling for me to cool it. 'They're letting us through.'

The guard pressed Mansour's identity card back into his outstretched hand.

'Drive.'

I didn't need to be told twice. I edged past the vehicle in front.

More shouting. Lots of excitement. The sentry on the barrier snapped a smartish-looking salute as we passed beneath it.

Mansour hit the button and his window slid upwards.

I blipped the accelerator and the Audi's big engine purred as we headed back out onto the open road.

I checked the mirror, glancing back every so often as the checkpoint receded into the distance. Nobody was following us. It soon disappeared in a cloud of dust.

I turned to Mansour. 'What happened?'

The big, satisfied grin had found its way back onto the cat's face. 'Gaddafi still uses many Russian advisers. There are Russians everywhere in this country. If there is one thing that terrifies the Kata'eb Al-Amn as much as the Great Guide himself, it's the Russians he surrounds himself with. I got the idea from our conversation earlier.'

The relief in the car was so great I could taste it.

I told Mansour I'd heard him mention our destination: Ajdabiya.

'There's an oil terminal in Ajdabiya that's run by a big Russian petroleum company. I told the officer we were going there. Why else would I have two white faces with me?'

Lynn placed his hand on the Libyan's shoulder. He spoke softly – and with a degree of approval that left me feeling uncomfortable. 'Stroke of genius, Mansour. Well done.'

We drove on in silence. As we passed the town of Al-Khoms, I noticed a sign in English, pointing the way to Leptis just a few kilometres to our left. I watched Lynn's reaction in the mirror. Needless to say, he knew exactly where we were. I studied his eyes as the sign slid past; he was like a kid catching sight of a disappearing ice-cream van.

At Misrata, we followed the road south for fifty kilometres, then took a right-hand fork and headed out into the Sahara. As we left the coast behind, the scrub became patchier and all traces of civilization gradually disappeared, leaving us with an endless flat landscape and a horizon that merged with the heat haze. The dark strip of tarmac stretched endlessly ahead of us, uninterrupted except for the odd rusting truck hurtling past in the opposite direction.

I'd crossed a lot of deserts, but nothing quite matched the desolation and loneliness of this particular stretch of the Sahara.

98

Several hours later we were down to a quarter of a tank. According to the sat nav there was a petrol station thirty-nine Ks ahead.

Mansour announced that our problems were going to start soon after it. The last time he'd driven this way, he'd encountered several roadblocks along one twenty-kilometre stretch. Rumours were rife of Russians buying huge tracts of coastline on which to build holiday homes. The police had been brought in to safeguard construction traffic and staff.

Mansour knew a way around the roadblocks. 'We can leave the road about ten kilometres after the filling station and use the old nomads' tracks. The vehicle can handle it.'