The Network - Jason Elliot [85]
There are no mountains around Khartoum, but the city is blessed by the presence of the two Niles that converge there. The water is nearly half a mile wide and more powerful and serene than I imagined. I walk much further than planned. As evening falls I’m sapped by the heat and retreat to my room. I shower again and position myself back under the ceiling fan, wondering how long it will take me to get used to the heat, trying in vain not to think about the future and whether it is really written or not.
My meeting is at midday. I take a taxi halfway to the embassy and walk the rest, stopping to sample fruit juices at cupboard-sized shops along the sand-covered streets until I’m satisfied that no one is following me. I turn left from Sharia al-Baladiya between the Turkish and German embassies into a smaller street, and a little further on catch sight of the Union Jack fluttering on a rooftop. At the reception desk I introduce myself to an English-speaking Sudanese member of staff, asking as agreed for a Mr Halliday. He asks me to repeat the name, then speaks for a few moments on the phone while I sit wiping the sweat from my eyebrows.
There’s a door a few yards away to my left, which opens suddenly and takes me by surprise. I turn and see the head and shoulders of a man wearing a white shirt and tie studying me with a severe look of enquiry like a professor who’s been disturbed at his papers. The impression is strengthened by the thin circular gold frames of his glasses, behind which he blinks a few times before speaking.
‘Ah,’ he says, as if he’s making a mental calculation that seeing me has interfered with. ‘You’d better come with me.’
I follow him through the door, which he closes behind us, then shakes my hand.
‘Welcome to the Dark Continent. I’m afraid it is a bit hot,’ he says. He has an unctuous voice which sounds faintly comic to me, as if he’s trying out an impression of Noël Coward. He doesn’t introduce himself. I guess he’s no more than thirty, but he has the boffin-like mannerisms of a much older man, and looks as though he belongs on a university campus in the vicinity of some high, perhaps ivory, Gothic towers and carefully tended lawns. He’s tall and unnaturally thin and I can see the bones of his shoulders outlined under his shirt. We cross what looks like an interview room, where a photographic portrait of the Queen hangs above a wall of filing cabinets, and on the far side enter a smaller windowless room secured by an electronic lock. There’s the hum of an air-conditioning unit, and it’s mercifully cooler. We sit at a large wooden table.
‘Oh dear,’ says Halliday, or whatever his name really is, ‘I seem to have forgotten the map.’
‘I’ve got one, if it helps.’
I take the tourist map of the city from my small backpack and hand it to him.
‘Bravo. That’s actually the same one we use,’ he says with a comic expression of mischief. ‘Shall we have a look at where you’re going to walk the dog?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Walk the dog. The term applied to the chance meeting of an acquaintance, most often achieved while innocently exercising one’s pooch.’
‘Right,’ I say.
We open the map and he points to Jabal Awliya and the road that links it to the city. Halliday steadies his glasses and blinks as he sweeps back a mop of dark hair from his forehead.
‘The target vehicle will be returning on this road at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. It’s a white Daihatsu. Your helpers will be looking out for it at the halfway point and you’ll be waiting a little further along. In the event of a successful interception I won’t expect to hear from you, but if anything goes wrong I