The Secret Pilgrim Read Online Free PDF Page A

informed Monty in my calmest voice, using the approved watchers’ jargon to describe a mysterious follower. “Five five, black curly hair, heavy moustache, aged forty, black overcoat, rubber-soled black shoes, Arab appearance. He was at the airport when Fat Boy’s plane came in. I remember him. It’s the same man.”
    â€œStay on him” came Monty’s laconic reply. “Paul and Nancy stick with the Panda, you stick with the monkey. Which floor?”
    â€œOne.”
    â€œStay on him wherever he goes, keep talking to me.”
    â€œHe could be carrying,” I said as my eyes again fixed surreptitiously on the subject of my call.
    â€œYou mean he’s pregnant?”
    I didn’t think that very funny.
    Let me set the scene precisely, for it was more complicated than you may suppose. Our trio was not alone in following the Panda’s retinue on its snail-paced shopping expedition. Wealthy Arab princesses do not arrive unannounced at great Knightsbridge stores. In addition to a pair of floorwalkers in black jackets and striped trousers, two very obvious house detectives had placed themselves at either archway with their feet apart and their hands curled at their sides, ready at any moment to grapple with whirling dervishes. As if that were not enough, Scotland Yard had that morning taken upon itself to provide its own brand of protection in the form of an iron-faced man in a belted raincoat who insisted onplacing himself beside the Panda and glowering at anyone who came near. And finally, you must see Paul and Nancy in their Sunday best, their backs turned to everyone while they affected to study trays of negligés, and watched our quarry in the mirrors.
    And all of this again, you understand, set in the hushed and scented privacy of the harem; in a world of flimsy undergarments, deep-pile carpets and languorous half-naked dummies—not to mention those kindly grey-haired lady attendants in black crêpe who, at a certain age, are deemed to have achieved a sufficiently unthreatening demeanour to reside over shrines of female intimacy.
    Other men, I noticed, preferred not to enter the lingerie department at all, or hurried through it with averted gaze. My instinct would have been the same, had it not been for my recognition of this melancholy little man with his black moustache and passionate brown eyes, who unswervingly trailed the Panda’s retinue at fifteen paces. If Monty had not appointed me sweep, I might not have seen him at all—or not then. But it was quickly clear that both he and I, by virtue of our different trades, were obliged to keep the same distance from our target—I with nonchalance, he with a kind of intense and mystical dependence. For his gaze never wavered from her. Even when he was unsighted by a pillar or a customer, he still contrived to crane his dark head this way or that until he had locked her once more in his zealous and—I was now convinced—fanatical gaze.
    I had first sensed this fervour in him when I had spotted him in the arrivals hall at the airport, pressing himself on tiptoe against the long window as he wriggled to get a better view of the royal couple’s approach. I had made nothing so special of him then. I was subjecting everyone to the same critical examination. He had seemed to be just another of the gaggle of diplomats, retainers and hangers-on who formed the royal welcome party. Nevertheless his intensity had struck a chord in me: So this is the Middle East, I had mused as I watched him squeeze his hollowed face against the glass. These are the heathen passions my Service must contain if weare to drive our cars and heat our houses and sell our weaponry in peace.
    The monkey had taken a couple of steps forward and was peering at a cabinet of ribbons. His gait—exactly like that of is namesake—was wide but stealthy; he seemed to move entirely from the knees, in conspiratorial strides. I selected a