Page 11 of Never

Abdul had been in the capital city, Bissau. He was in an apartment with a room overlooking the docks. There was no air-conditioning, and his shirt clung to his sweaty skin.

His companion was Phil Doyle, twenty years older, a senior officer of the CIA, a bald guy in a baseball cap. Doyle was based at the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and was in charge of Abdul’s mission.

Both men were using binoculars. The room was in darkness. If they were spotted they would be tortured and killed. By the light coming in from outside Abdul could just about make out the furniture around him: a sofa, a coffee table, a TV set.

Their glasses were focussed on a waterfront scene. Three stevedores were working hard and sweating copiously, stripped to the waist under arc lights. They were unloading a container, lifting big sacks made of heavy-duty polythene and transferring them to a panel van.

Abdul spoke in a low voice even though there was no one other than Doyle to hear him. ‘How much do those sacks weigh?’

‘Twenty kilos,’ said Doyle. He spoke with a clipped Boston accent. ‘Forty-five pounds, near as dammit.’

‘Hard work in this weather.’

‘In any weather.’

Abdul frowned. ‘I can’t read what’s printed on the sacks.’

‘It says: “Caution – dangerous chemicals”, in several languages.’

‘You’ve seen those sacks before.’

Doyle nodded. ‘I watched them being loaded into that container by the gang that controls the Colombian port of Buenaventura. I tracked them across the Atlantic. From here on, they’re yours.’

‘I guess the label’s not wrong: pure cocaine is a very dangerous chemical.’

‘Bet your ass.’

The van was not large enough to take all the contents of a full-size container, but Abdul guessed that the cocaine had been a part-load, perhaps concealed within a hidden compartment.

The work was being supervised by a big man in a dress shirt who kept counting and recounting the sacks. There were also three black-clad guards carrying assault rifles. A limousine waited nearby, its engine idling. Every few minutes the stevedores stopped to drink from giant plastic bottles of soda pop. Abdul wondered whether they had any conception of the value of the cargo they were handling. He guessed not. The man who kept counting did, though. And so did whoever was in the limo.

Doyle said: ‘Inside three of those sacks are miniature radio transmitters – three, just in case one or two sacks get stolen or otherwise removed from the consignment.’ He took from his pocket a small black device. ‘You switch them on remotely with this gizmo. The screen tells you how far away they are and in what direction. Don’t forget to switch off, to save the batteries in the transmitters. You could do all that with a phone, but you’re going to places where there’s no connectivity, so it has to be a radio signal.’

‘Got it.’

‘You can follow at a distance, but you’ll have to get close sometimes. Your mission is to identify the people who handle the consignment and the places it goes. Those people are terrorists, and the places are their hideouts. We need to know how many jihadis are in a place and how well armed they are, so that our forces know what to expect when they go in there to wipe the bastards out.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll get close enough.’

They were silent for a minute or two, then Doyle said: ‘I guess your family don’t really know what you do.’

‘I have no family,’ Abdul said. ‘Both my parents are dead, and my sister.’ He pointed at the waterfront scene. ‘They’ve finished.’

The stevedores closed up the container and the truck, banging the metal doors cheerfully, clearly seeing no reason to be surreptitious, having no fear of the police who were undoubtedly well bribed. They lit cigarettes and stood around, talking and laughing. The guards shouldered their weapons and joined in the conversation.

The driver of the limo got out and opened the passenger door. The man who emerged from the back seat was dressed as if to go to a nightclub, with a T-shirt under a tuxedo jacket that had a gold design on the back. He spoke to the man in the dress shirt, then they both took out their phones.

Doyle said: ‘Right now the money’s being transferred from one Swiss bank account to another.’

‘How much?’

‘Something like twenty million dollars.’

Abdul was surprised. ‘Even more than I thought.’

‘It will be worth double that when it gets to Tripoli, double again in Europe, and double again on the street.’

The phone calls ended and the two men shook hands. The one in the tux reached back into his car and drew out a plastic bag marked ‘Dubai Duty Free’ in English and Arabic. It appeared to be full of banknotes packed in banded bricks. He handed a brick to each of the three stevedores and three guards. The men were all smiles: clearly they were being paid well. Finally, he opened the trunk of his car and gave each of them a carton of Cleopatra cigarettes – a kind of bonus, Abdul supposed.