Run Around by Brian Freemantle Page A

had not until now – worsened Johnson’s remorse.
    â€˜These things happen, mate,’ said Charlie, sympathetically.
    â€˜I wanted to go out covered in glory and instead I leave covered in shit.’
    â€˜What you did get confirms a lot: I’m grateful,’ said Charlie, sincerely. ‘It could have happened to anyone.’
    â€˜It happened to me,’ said Johnson.
    â€˜There have been worse cock-ups already, believe me,’ said Charlie. He wondered how many more holes-in-one Witherspoon had managed.
    â€˜Any idea who he is?’
    â€˜Not a clue.’
    â€˜Or what the job is?’
    â€˜Nope.’ There’d been eight responses to his embassy requests and none of them had meant a thing. Gale had replied from Moscow, too.
    â€˜Be careful, Charlie. He’s good, bloody good.’
    â€˜That’s what frightens me,’ admitted Charlie.
    â€˜I’m giving the retirement party at the Brace of Pheasants,’ said the Watcher. ‘Any chance of your getting along?’
    â€˜Ever known me miss a piss-up?’ said Charlie.
    â€˜I am sorry,’ said Johnson, again.
    â€˜A pint of beer and we’re even,’ assured Charlie.
    â€˜I’d like to think it was as easy as that,’ said Johnson.
    As he spoke Vasili Zenin was entering Terminal Two at London airport with the driving licence and passport which identified him as Henry Smale – and which fortunately the dog had missed peeing over – snug in his inside pocket. His ticket, however, was in the name of Peter Smith: he’d been lucky with the Swissair reservation and had decided it was an omen. He saw the pregnant woman ahead stumble, just before she fainted, and managed easily to switch to another passport line, to avoid becoming involved. Lucky again, he thought.
    Because she was a member of the secretariat and therefore part of the official delegation, Sulafeh Nabulsi had a place on the platform but at the rear. The backs of those who were going to Geneva for the conference were against her but beyond she could see the faces of the hundreds of Palestinians gathered to hear what the current speaker was describing as an historic breakthrough in their demands for an independent homeland. Fools, she sneered, mentally. Worse than fools. Cowards. There was no struggle any more; no fight. Just a lot of ageing men posturing in camouflage fatigues, playing at being freedom fighters and using words like the actors they were. Most of the council at whose backs she was staring in well-concealed loathing each had a million dollars discreetly hidden in numbered Swiss bank accounts and would find it difficult to identify the muzzle of a Kalashnikov from its butt. And most definitely didn’t give a damn about the trusting idiots here whom they were deceiving at the final Tripoli assembly of the PLO with talk of a conference and a political settlement. Any more than they gave a damn about the Palestinians forgotten and rotting in the refugee camps of the Lebanon, target practice for any Shi’ite or Jew who felt like expending a bullet. None of them had even lived in a refugee camp, not like she had. At the age of nine, in the last hours of the 1973 Six Day War, Sulafeh had seen her grandfather shot in one by the Israelis, as a spy for Syria, which he had been. Four years later her mother and older brother had been blown up – accidentally said the later contemptuous report – when the Jews destroyed their house in retribution for a grenade attack upon a passing Israeli patrol. And she’d been raped in one. It had happened when she was fifteen and still a virgin. Her attacker had been one of the smirking clowns in a tiger uniform, like those smirking clowns in the audience in front of her, applauding and cheering every lie being told them. She’d fought as hard as she could, gouging at his face with her nails, and he’d punched her almost senseless and so finally she