Page 146 of Never

Tab said: ‘On our first date you wore a striped dress, navy-blue and white, with a little blue jacket and blue leather shoes.’

‘Wow, you really noticed.’

‘You looked wonderful.’

‘It made me seem demure, but you saw through the disguise pretty quickly.’

‘It would be a great outfit to wear on Tuesday.’

She was taken aback. He had never before told her what to wear. It was not like him to be controlling. She guessed it was only trepidation, but all the same she was irked that he should worry about the impression she was going to make on his mother. ‘Have faith, Tabdar,’ she said. She used his full name only when she was teasing him. ‘I probably won’t embarrass you at all. These days I hardly ever get drunk and grab the waiter’s ass.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Papa is laid-back, but Maman can be critical.’

‘I sympathize. Wait until you meet my mother, the schoolteacher. If you annoy her she’ll make you stand in the corner.’

‘Thank you for understanding.’

She pecked his cheek and got into the waiting car.

She thought about Tab’snot yet. He was assuming the time would come when she called his parents ‘Papa’ and ‘Maman’, which meant she and Tab would be married. She already knew she wanted to spend her life with him, but the wedding was not high on her to-do list. She had married twice already, both times with unsatisfactory results. She was not in a hurry to do it again.

In five minutes she was back in the leafy grounds of the US embassy. At her desk she wrote a note of the meeting for Dexter, then she went to the canteen and got a Cobb salad and a diet soda for lunch.

Susan Marcus joined her, putting her tray on the table and taking off her uniform cap, shaking her short hair to restore its natural bounce. She sat down, but she did not begin to eat her steak. ‘Abdul’s intelligence is priceless,’ she said. ‘I hope he gets a medal.’

‘If he does, we may never know. CIA honours are usually secret. They’re called jock-strap medals.’

Susan grinned. ‘Because they’re not visible, and they’re not necessary for women.’

‘Got it in one.’

Susan became serious again. ‘Listen, there’s something I want to ask you about.’

Tamara swallowed a mouthful and put down her fork. ‘Go ahead.’

‘You know that training the National Army of Chad is a big part of our mission here.’

‘Of course.’

‘You probably don’t know that we’ve been teaching some of their best people how to use drones.’

‘I did not know that.’

‘Of course this is under tight control, and the local boys aren’t allowed to operate drones without American supervision.’

‘Good.’

‘Sometimes the aircraft are destroyed in exercises. One that had a warhead blew up when it struck its target, which is what’s supposed to happen. Another was downed – shooting them down is part of the training. Naturally, we keep a meticulous tally of how many we have.’

‘Of course.’

‘But one has gone missing.’

Tamara was surprised. ‘How could that happen?’

‘A lot of drones crash: this is new technology. The official story is “guidance system malfunction”.’

‘And you can’t find it? How big is it?’