Page 86 of Never

‘Oh, it’s way past that. They’ve been having an affair for months. I thought it was over, but apparently not.’

Tamara felt as if she had been punched. I’m not going to cry, she told herself. She changed the subject quickly. ‘I was looking for Karim Aziz, but I guess he’s not here.’

‘I haven’t seen him.’

They left the hotel together. Susan got into an army vehicle and Tamara found her driver. ‘Take me to Le Grand Marché,’ she said, ‘but drop me a couple of blocks away and wait, please.’

Then she sat back and tried not to cry. How could Tab do this? Had he been two-timing her all along? It was hardly believable, but there was no mistaking the intimate body language. That woman felt she had the right to touch him, and he did not push her away.

The market was at the western end of the long Avenue Charles de Gaulle, in the district where most of the embassies were found. The driver parked and Tamara tied the blue-and-orange scarf around her head. She retrieved her plastic bag, lumpy with groceries, from the trunk of the car. Now she looked like an ordinary housewife doing her shopping.

At this point she should have been eager and hopeful, looking forward to meeting Haroun and finding out what he had to say, optimistic that it might be important intelligence useful to the military. But all she could think about was Tab and that woman, their heads close together, her hand covering his on the table, their voices low, in a conversation that was evidently emotional.

She kept reminding herself that there might be an innocent explanation. But she and Tab were now sharing a bed more often than not, and they had learned a lot about one another – Tamara even knew the name of Tab’s parents’ Great Dane, Flâneur, meaning Lazybones – but he had never mentioned Léonie.

‘I thought it was the real thing,’ she said sadly, talking to herself as she walked along the street. ‘I thought it was love.’

She reached the market and forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. There was one conventional supermarket and at least a hundred stalls. The alleys between them were packed with brightly dressed Chadians plus a sprinkling of tourists in baseball caps and comfortable walking shoes. Vendors with trays or just a single item to sell mingled with the crowd, pouncing on likely customers, and Tamara half expected to see Abdul selling Cleopatra cigarettes.

Somewhere here was a man who wanted to betray a terrorist group.

She could not seek him out. She did not know what he looked like. She just had to remain alert and wait for him to make contact.

The displays of fresh fruit and vegetables looked gorgeous. Pre-owned electrical equipment seemed to be big business: cables, plugs, connectors and switches. She smiled at a stall selling the shirts of European soccer teams: Manchester United, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Olympique de Marseille.

A man stepped in front of her with a length of brightly printed cotton. He held it up to her face and said in English: ‘This is perfect for you.’

‘No, thanks,’ she said.

He switched to Arabic. ‘I am Haroun.’

Tamara looked hard at him, sizing him up. Under his headscarf, dark eyes stared candidly at her out of a narrow Arab face. By his wispy moustache and beard she guessed him to be about twenty years of age. He was draped in traditional robes, but under them was a lean and wide-shouldered body.

She took a fold of the cloth between her thumb and forefinger and pretended to feel the quality. ‘What can you tell me?’ she said quietly in Arabic.

‘Are you alone?’

‘Of course.’

He unrolled the cotton more, so that she could see a larger expanse of the print. It was vivid lemon and fuchsia. ‘ISGS is very happy about what happened at the N’Gueli Bridge,’ he said.

‘Happy?’ she said in surprise. ‘But they lost the fight.’

‘Two of their men died. But the dead are in Paradise. And they killed an American.’

This was the weird but familiar logic of the enemy. A dead American represented a triumph, a dead terrorist was a martyr. Win-win. Tamara knew all this already. She said: ‘What has happened since?’

‘A man came to congratulate us. A hero of the struggle in many countries, we were told. He stayed five days then went away again.’

Tamara continued to examine the cloth while they talked, giving the impression they were discussing the fabric. ‘What was his name?’

‘They called him the Afghan.’

Tamara was suddenly on full alert. There might be many Afghan men in North Africa, but the CIA had an interest in one in particular. ‘Describe him.’

‘Tall, with grey hair and a black beard.’

‘Anything special? Any visible wounds, for example?’ She did not want to lead Haroun, but there was one crucial detail she needed to hear.