Page 162 of Never

She prayed the General would not drive out of the palace in the next few minutes.

She changed her instructions to the driver, and they reached the café in a couple of minutes. She hurried inside and saw, with great relief, that Karim was still there. She was only just in time: he was putting on his jacket preparatory to leaving. She had the irrelevant thought that he was getting fatter.

‘I’m so glad I caught you,’ she said. ‘The phones have been cut off by ISGS.’

‘Really?’ Shrugging on his jacket, he fished in the pocket for his phone and looked at the screen. ‘You’re right. I didn’t know they could do that.’

‘I just talked to an informant. They’re planning to assassinate the General.’

His mouth dropped open in shock. ‘Now?’

‘I thought you were the best person to raise the alarm.’

‘Of course. How do they plan to do it?’

‘Three suicide bombers outside the palace gates, waiting for his car.’

‘Clever. A route he must use, a moment when the vehicle must move slowly – he’s at his most vulnerable.’ He hesitated. ‘How reliable is the information?’

‘Karim, no informant is totally trustworthy – they’re all deceivers at heart – but I think this tip might be true. The General should certainly take special precautions.’

Karim nodded. ‘You’re right. Such a warning must not be ignored. I’ll go at once. My car is out the back.’

‘Good.’

He turned away to leave, then turned back. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Tamara left by the front door and got back into her car.

Again she thought about going to the embassy; again she decided there was nothing to be done there. The operations manual did not have a protocol for a combined assassination attempt and telephone breakdown. She briefly entertained the idea of getting Susan Marcus to lead a squad to the neighbourhood of the palace to hunt down the bombers. But the US army could not act independently of the local army and police – the confusion would be disastrous. And by the time they got the chain of command sorted out it would be too late.

She decided to go there herself. At least she could reconnoitre the street and try to identify the jihadis.

She directed the driver south on the freeway and right onto the Avenue Charles de Gaulle. There was no stopping outside the palace, so she got out of the cab a couple of hundred yards short of the entrance and told the driver to wait.

She checked her phone again. There was still no signal.

She looked along the broad boulevard ahead. The big iron gates of the palace were on the right-hand side of the road, guarded by rifle-toting soldiers of the National Guard in their uniforms of green, black and tan desert camouflage. Opposite were a monument park and the cathedral. The no-parking rule was enforced strictly here, so the jihadis would be on foot.

A black Mercedes squealed to a halt in front of the gates and was admitted immediately. She hoped that was Karim.

She thought for the first time about how dangerous this was for her. Any time soon, anywhere along this street, a bomb could explode; and if she was nearby it would kill her.

She did not want to die, not when she had just found Tab.

Death was not the worst thing that could happen. She could be maimed, blinded, paralysed.

She tied her scarf more firmly under her chin. She murmured to herself: ‘What the hell am I doing?’ Then she walked briskly towards the palace.

On the palace side of the street there was no one but the guards: everyone steered clear of men with rifles. On her side a hundred or so people were in the monument park, tourists looking at the grandiose sculptures and locals enjoying the space, eating their lunch or just hanging out. I must try to identify the bombers, she thought, and I don’t have much time!

A contingent of armed police, led by a moustached sergeant, watched the crowd. The cops were dressed in a camouflage pattern slightly different from that of the National Guard. Tamara knew from experience that their main job was to enforce a rule against photographing the palace, and she doubted that they would be quick to spot a real terrorist.

Making herself calm, she carefully scanned the people in the park. She ignored middle-aged and elderly men and women: jihadis were always young. She also dismissed anyone wearing close-fitting modern clothing such as shirts and jeans, because they had nowhere to hide a suicide vest. She concentrated on men and women in their late teens or twenties wearing traditional robes, and on women in the hijab.

She made a mental note of each of the remaining possibilities. A young man in white robes and a white cap was sitting on the edge of a plinth reading the newspaperAl Wihda; he looked too relaxed to be a terrorist, but Tamara could not be sure. A woman of uncertain age had lumps under her black hijab, but that might just have been her figure. A teenage boy in orange robes and a turban was squatting at the roadside mending his Vespa motor scooter, the front wheel detached and lying on the dusty ground amid a scatter of nuts and bolts.