Libya Story by James Ward

Author:James Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: espionage novels set partly in Britain, spy thriller, MI5 and MI6 spy novels, Spy thrillers concerning Islamism and Islamic State, British Intelligence novels, Action and adventure, Action hero
Publisher: Cool Millennium
Published: 2017-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13: Day Tripper

After the Oliver-style visit to see how humanely the migrants were treated, Mordred went home in company with his new acquaintances. He fed his dogs then handed 500,000 dinar to al-Iddrissy with a recap of the instructions for mapping militias in and around the town. Afterwards, when he was alone, he sat thinking about Alec and Edna, specifically why they were here.

He should devise some pretext to go back and speak to them. But what? Without al-Iddrissy and his companions, it’d look like he was doing some kind of spot-check on the people-smugglers, like he hadn’t believed the evidence of his eyes first time round. Guaranteed to raise hackles. No, if he returned there at all, it would have to be in the Libyans’ company.

But that was also a non-starter. Obviously. What kind of conversation could he have with Alec and Edna under those circumstances? About the same as the one he’d already had: a silent one. Which probably didn’t qualify as a conversation.

He wasn’t thinking, though. Whatever those two were doing here, they wouldn’t stay put in the warehouse all day long. The way it worked, you paid your money, you got accommodation in a supposedly safe place. A lot of the time, the advertised ‘safety’ didn’t exist: you might be raped, beaten, robbed, or all three. But there was a sense, encouraged by the smugglers, that, however hazardous your confinement, it was at least preferable to the world outside.

If you chose to leave, however, they probably wouldn’t try to stop you. Doing so would undermine the fiction that they were supplying a service. True, you’d have to be pretty tough: enough to know you could come back several hours later and still have your cot vacant; enough to brave it outside; enough to hold the smugglers to their promises even after they discovered you’d been awol. But that wouldn’t be a problem for Edna or Alec. There were undoubtedly a lot of hard nuts in the human trafficking fraternity, but none trained like them.

Which begged the question, what were they doing with their days? At first sight, there were two alternatives: they were either looking for Mabel, or for him. But then other possibilities appeared: they’d found Mabel and they were preparing to rescue her; they were here to stop terrorists boarding boats for Europe, or perhaps a specific terrorist.

He got the vague impression he was missing something crucial, but tiredness was keeping it just out of view, like one of those stars you can only see through the corner of your eye. The more he dwelt on their presence in Tanarej, the more depressed he became. Presumably, the Egyptians had let slip that he was here, deliberately or otherwise. What else had they divulged? And now they knew his location for certain, what next? He looked outside into the grounds. No sign of the dogs, but that didn’t mean they weren’t on guard. A pair of citrus trees, three olive bushes and a bougainvillea; in the distance, dense pines and junipers.

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