A Delicate Truth Read Online Free PDF Page B

sea.
     To his left the same pitch-black hills of Spain, bigger now, and closer. Jeb lining him
     up to look at the left-hand screen. A rolling sequence of shots from hidden cameras: the
     marina, the Chinese restaurant, the fairy-lit
Rosemaria
. Switch to a shaky
     hand-held shot inside theChinese restaurant. The camera at floor
     level. From the end of a long table in the window bay, an imperious fifty-year-old fat
     man in a nautical blazer and perfect hair gesticulates to his fellow diners. On his
     right, a sulky brunette half his age. Bare shoulders, showy breasts, diamond collar and
     a downturned mouth.
    ‘
Aladdin
’s a twitchy
     bugger, Paul,’ Shorty was confiding. ‘First he has a run-in with the head
     waiter in English because there isn’t any lobster. Now his lady friend’s
     getting it in Arabic, and him a Pole. I’m surprised he doesn’t give her a
     thick ear, the way she’s carrying on. It’s like at home, right,
     Jeb?’
    ‘Come over here a minute, Paul,
     please.’
    With Jeb’s hand on his shoulder to
     guide him, he made a wide step to the middle screen. Alternating aerial and ground
     shots. Were they courtesy of the Predator drone that was by no means beyond Mr
     Crispin’s operational budget? Or of the helicopter that he could hear idling
     overhead? A terrace of white houses, faced with weatherboarding, perched on the
     cliff’s edge. Stone staircases to the beach dividing them. The staircases leading
     down to a skimpy crescent of sand. A rock beach enclosed by jagged cliff. Orange street
     lamps. A metalled slip road leading from the terrace to the main coast road. No lights
     in the windows of the houses. No curtains.
    And through the arrow-slit, the same terrace
     in plain sight.
    ‘It’s a tear-down, see,
     Paul,’ Jeb was explaining in his ear. ‘A Kuwaiti company’s going to
     put up a casino complex and a mosque. That’s why the houses are empty.
Aladdin
, he’s a director of the Kuwaiti company. Well now, according
     to what he’s been telling his guests, he’s got a confidential meeting with
     the developer tonight. Very lucrative, it will be. Shaving off the profits for
     themselves, according to his lady friend. You wouldn’t think a man like
Aladdin
would be so leaky, like, but he is.’
    ‘Showing off,’ Shorty explained.
     ‘Typical fucking Pole.’
    ‘Is
Punter
already inside the
     house then?’ he asked.
    ‘Let’s say, if he is, we
     haven’t spotted him, Paul, put it that way,’ Jeb replied in the same steady,
     deliberately conversational tone. ‘Not from the outside, and there’s no
     coverage inside. There hasn’t been the opportunity, so we’re told. Well, you
     can’t bug twenty houses all in one go, I don’t suppose, can you, not even
     with today’s equipment? Maybe he’s lying up in one house and sneaking into
     another for his meeting. We don’t know, do we, not yet? It’s wait and see
     and don’t go down there till you know who you’re taking on, ’specially
     if you’re looking for an al-Qaeda kingpin.’
    Memories of Elliot’s clotted
     description of the same elusive figure come sweeping back to him:
    I would basically describe
Punter
as your jihadist Pimpernel par excellence, Paul, not to say your
     will-o’-the-wisp. He eschews all means of electronic communication, including
     cellphones and harmless-seeming emails. It’s word of mouth only for
Punter
,
and one courier at a time, never the same one twice
.
    ‘He could come at us from anywhere,
     Paul,’ Shorty was explaining, perhaps to wind him up. ‘Over the mountains
     there. Up the Spanish coast by small boat. Or he could walk on the water if he felt like
     it. Right, Jeb?’
    Cursory nod from Jeb. Jeb and Shorty, the
     tallest and the shortest men in the team: an attraction of opposites.
    ‘
Or
smuggle himself across
     from Morocco under the noses of the coastguards, right, Jeb?
Or
put on an
     Armani suit, and fly in Club on a Swiss passport.
Or
charter a