Terry Martin’s cart nearly crashed into his own as he came around the corner of pastas and pet food.
Both men were startled.
“Am I allowed to know you?” asked Martin with an embarrassed grin.
There was no one else in that aisle at the time.
“Why not?” said Paxman. “I’m just a humble civil servant shopping for his evening meal.”
They finished their purchases together and agreed to adjourn to an Indian restaurant for a meal rather than cook at home alone. Hilary, it seemed, was also away.
Paxman should, of course, not have done it. He should never have felt uncomfortable that Terry Martin’s elder brother was in a situation of appalling danger and that he, with others, had sent him into it. It should not have worried him that the trusting scholar should really believe that his adored sibling was safe inside Saudi Arabia. All tradecraft insists that one does not worry about that sort of thing. But he did.
There was another worry. Steve Laing was his superior at Century House, but Laing had never been to Iraq. His background was in Egypt and Jordan. Paxman knew Iraq—and Arabic. Not like Terry Martin, of course, but Martin was exceptional. Paxman knew enough, from several visits before he had been made head of the Iraq Desk, to form a sincere respect for the quality of Iraqi scientists and the ingenuity of their engineers. It was no secret that most British technical institutes considered their graduates from Iraq the best in the Arab world.
The worry that had nagged at him since he was told by his superiors that the last Jericho report could be none other than a load of nonsense was simply the fear that, despite all the odds, Iraq might actually be further ahead than the Western scientists were prepared to credit.
He waited until the two meals had arrived, surrounded by small pots of the accessories without which no Indian meal is complete, then made up his mind.
“Terry,” he said, “I am going to do something which, if it ever got out, would mean the end of my career in the Service.”
Martin was startled.
“That sounds drastic. Why?”
“Because I have been officially warned off you.”
The scholar was about to spoon some mango chutney onto his plate, then stopped.
“I am not thought to be reliable anymore? It was Steve Laing who pulled me into all this.”
“It’s not that. The view is that—you worry too much.”
Paxman was not prepared to use Laing’s word fusspot .
“Perhaps I do. It’s the training. Academics do not like puzzles that seem to have no answer. We have to go on worrying at it until the jumbled hieroglyphic makes sense. Was it that business of the phrase in the intercept?”
“Yes, that and other things.”
Paxman had chosen chicken khorma; Martin liked his hotter—vindaloo. Because he knew his eastern food, Martin drank hot black tea, not ice-cold beer, which only makes things worse. He blinked at Paxman over the edge of his mug.
“All right. So what is the great confession?”
“Will you give me your word that this goes no further?”
“Of course.”
“There’s been another intercept.”
Paxman had not the slightest intention of revealing the existence of Jericho. The group who knew of that asset in Iraq was still tiny and would stay that way.
“Can I listen to it?”
“No. It’s been suppressed. Don’t approach Sean Plummer. He’d have to deny it, and that would reveal where you got the information.”
Martin helped himself to more raita to cool down the flaming curry.
“What does it say, this new intercept?”