A Devil Is Waiting - Jack Higgins [74]
She turned and went back to Harry Miller, tucked in his blanket, then sat beside Holley, who lay back, eyes closed.
An hour later, a signal beeped and the screen flickered into life again, bringing Ferguson awake from his doze to find Henry Frankel on his screen.
“Ah, there you are, Charles.”
“So what do you want?” Ferguson asked.
“The Prime Minister would like a word.” Frankel smiled. “If you can spare him one.”
He was replaced by the PM sitting at his desk, who said, “A bad business, Charles.”
It was impossible to argue with that, and Ferguson said, “I’m afraid so.”
“How we play this with the newspapers is beyond me,” the Prime Minister said. “They’ll be wanting a statement in the House. I can see the headlines now. ‘Where Is Ali Selim?’ Lots more juicy publicity for Al Qaeda. So what’s your next move?”
“It’s difficult to say. He’s being protected by important people in Arab circles. Almost anything we do could be made to look like harassment of a holy man.”
“And he’s certain to play that card. He could even surface in London again, for all I know, and defy us to do anything about him. One would have hoped, Charles, that during this little battle of yours, a stray bullet might have gone his way, or was that expecting too much?”
To which there could be no answer. Ferguson took a deep breath and tried to be honest. “Right now, we’re in his hands, Prime Minister. We have no idea where he is, what his intentions are, or what he plans next.”
“Which is no use to me at all. Find him, Charles. Put everything else to one side and find him, and that’s an order. I’ll leave you to get on with it.”
His image faded, the screen went dark, and Ferguson contacted Roper and found him, as usual, in the computer room at Holland Park. He relayed what the Prime Minister had said.
“My head’s on the block here, Giles.”
“Nothing new in that,” Roper said cheerfully.
“Is there anything you can do to trace the sod?”
“I’m doing everything I can, Charles. There’s no instant response possible here. You’ll just have to sit it out and hope. The moment I’ve got any news at all, you’ll be the first to know.”
So the screen went dark again, leaving Charles Ferguson more embattled than he had been in years.
TWELVE
About two hours later, Harry Miller came back to life to a certain extent, groaning and trying to sit up. Sara was with him instantly, and Dillon and Holley scrambled up to see if there was anything to be done.
Harry was hot and feverish. “Where am I? What’s going on?”
Dillon got an arm round him, and Sara said, “The instructions the brigadier left with him say more morphine and penicillin if an episode like this occurs. Just hold him while I take care of it.”
After a while, he slipped back into troubled sleep, and Parry, who had come in to see what was happening, said, “Another four hours before we land, I’m afraid.”
“We’ll just have to make him as comfortable as possible,” Ferguson said. “Rosedene has been notified, and Charles Bellamy will be available for advice, Sara, if Harry’s condition gives you cause for concern.”
Roper came on screen again. “Bad news, I’m afraid. That jet for Bahrain altered destination twice, then vanished.”
“How can that be?” Ferguson demanded.
“It happens all the time. I shouldn’t need to remind you, Charles, how often we’ve done the same thing in our line of work. All the pilot has to do is stop calling in, and in this case, Arab pilots flying in Arab aircraft in Arab airspace can usually do anything they want.”
“So what now?” Ferguson asked in despair.
“Hang on, there’s more,” Roper said. “That Raptor helicopter that cleared off from Amira carrying Ali Selim?”
“What about it?”
“Its wreckage has been discovered by a Canadian special forces patrol on an old Russian airfield in a place called Herat, about fifty miles west of Amira. There was a badly burned corpse in it.”
“Are you suggesting Selim was picked up?”
“I’ve looked up Russian Army records for that place. It has a concrete runway and was originally constructed