Chapter 7: Miles from Home

The last time I was at Hamad I had been escorted off the plane soon after landing. This was much better. For some reason we didn’t use a jetway to get into the terminal building, so I was treated to a blast of the familiar heat of Doha. It felt strangely comforting, for some reason. It’s not quite the same as the heat of Los Angeles, or Las Vegas. Maybe it was because we were so near the sea. For the first few seconds it felt a bit like a warm hug. Isn’t that odd?

An airport bus drove us to the terminal, which was nice and cool. I was in no big hurry to get past immigration so I went to the restroom first, but when I came out most of my fellow passengers had already been processed. It took less than ten minutes before a female immigration official stamped my passport and nodded that I was free to be on my way. My suitcase, a medium-sized leather case that had once belonged to Kate, was already on the belt. Soon I’d be on my way to Saudi Arabia, by car. There was still time to turn back, to stop this nonsense. But I had a job to do and a debt to pay, to the woman who saved my family.

I had no idea who would be waiting for me behind the sliding doors of the ‘nothing to declare’ lane, but I assumed it would be a relatively young person from the British embassy or even just a taxi driver. Half a dozen people were holding up either sheets of paper or iPads with names, but Carstairs was on none of them. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a voice I knew from somewhere said:

“Carstairs! How was your flight?”

I turned round and saw Miles Bamford standing there, dressed in casual slacks and an alarmingly green polo-neck shirt. His arms were tanned, as was his face. Miles was on the board of directors at Aston Martin and the only time we had seen each other was here, in Doha. I’m not sure if I’d have recognized him in any other context.

I shook his hand, but I wanted to keep this short. He was calling me Carstairs for now, but he might start calling me Martin, or King. I wondered how he’d seen through the disguise, especially from the back.

“Oh, hello Miles! Fancy meeting you here. Uhm, I’m not actually...”

“Oh, I know why you’re here. We have a date, you and I.”

Oh my Lord, did he think I was here for some promotional event? I was supposed to be the face of Aston Martin, but I had been given to understand that had been pushed back for a few months. And since I had my hands full right now, I didn’t mind.

“Yes, the thing is, you see, I won’t be able to uhm ... There’s going to be a delay,” I said, scanning the arrivals hall. “I’m not actually here to...”

“Let me get that for you,” he said, wrenching my suitcase out of my hands. He’s twenty years older than me, by the way.

“Miles, I’m not here for the brand,” I whispered. “Please, move along. I’ll contact you as soon as I have a moment, but this is not...”

He grinned, still trying to take my luggage.

“Carstairs, I’m your contact. I know why you’re here. You can wait here ‘till the cows come home, but nobody else will show up, trust me. Look, will it help if I tell you that Rupert sends his best?”

That could only be Sir Rupert Dupree. Well him or that bear Paul McCartney likes so much.

“I suppose it does,” I said, finally letting go of my suitcase.

“Good man. Now, follow me. I’ll take you to your car.”

Hamad International is a rather small airport, at least compared to massive hubs such as Frankfurt, Schiphol and Heathrow. You can actually park near the main entrance, if you’re lucky and are willing to pay for the privilege. In just a few minutes we were standing next to a sturdy 4x4 Nissan Pathfinder with a yellow Hertz sticker just behind the spare tyre, which was mounted on the rear door and fitted with a cover. It was some shade of brown, it was clean and it was exactly the sort of car to have if you’re going to be driving around in the desert. Nice and high, powerful and not bothered by a crack or two in the asphalt. Miles handed me the keys.

“There you go. This is yours.”

“Really? That’s great! I have a shitload of luggage. It’s supposed to arrive in Riyadh tomorrow and I was worried it might not all fit in a regular sedan.”

Miles just smiled, hoisted my one suitcase into the back and got in the passenger seat.

“Where to?”

“I dunno. What’s your favourite hotel?” he said, as he buckled up.

“What? I don’t ... Where are you staying?”

“Embassy housing. Just pick a hotel you like. You’ll be here for about two nights. Then you drive across the border, to Riyadh. Look, start driving. It will takes us ten minutes to get on the ring road.”

“Right. So how far is that? Riyadh?”

“About 360 miles. That’s what ... just under 600 kilometres? Should take you a day, if you take it easy. Crossing the border isn’t as easy here as it is in Europe, but we’re working on the paperwork and the vehicle export license. Which hotel were you in last time you were here?”

“Four Seasons. And as I’m footing the bill this time, I won’t go back. Cheap and cheerful will do me. A Marriott Courtyard, that sort of thing. Would you mind Googling that for me?”

I’ve driven all sorts of cars in my life, but I do like a nice, big 4x4. They’re ridiculous in most cases, certainly in and around London, but in this country, or Saudi for that matter, they were a completely sensible choice. Great AC, high ground clearance, powerful engine: what’s not to like?

“Don’t be ridiculous. Treat yourself, man! It’ll be the last time you have to spend your own money. Go to the Torch. You liked the view, as I recall.”

“You’re right, I’ll do that.”

And I didn’t even have to consult the navigation system for that. The checkpoint tour I had taken last time had made me quite familiar with the lay-out of Doha, and besides, the Torch is visible from miles away. I focussed on the road for a few minutes, familiarizing myself with the car. I have no real fondness for Doha, but driving into town on a pleasantly warm day and in a great car made me feel good. It beats the hell out of arriving at Heathrow in the pouring rain and bustling into a taxicab, I can tell you that. Or indeed in a car driven by Ali, who has been saving up his stories and good ideas for a few days... ‘Ere, mista King. I been thinking, like, what if you an’ Kells do a sitcom? I got a mate of mine, he’s got a blindin’ sense of humour.’

That will sap the life out of you, let me tell you.

“So what’s life like with a beard?” asked Miles, after we had left the airport.

“Getting used to it. I’ve only started growing it two weeks ago.”

“Yeah, I can tell. You should dye your hair again, to make it fuller. Back of your head, too. It’s still a bit grey there.”

As we were now on the ring road and doing eighty kilometres per hour in a straight line, I had time to give him a disparaging look.

“Car designer, spy AND stylist, are we?”

He shrugged.

“Hey, I forgot I’m dealing with an experienced field agent! You’ve been doing this for what, half an hour now?”

“Ten, if you count the flight.”

“Heh ... And how’s your Arabic?”

“Uhm... ‘Sharoon’, I’m afraid.”

“What?!”

“Sharoon? Bad?”

“Oh, sharun! That means evil. You mean ‘sayiya’. Or in your case, ‘raihib’. Terrible.”

“Thanks. So how did you end up with MI6?”

“I didn’t. I’m a contractor. Technical advisor. But I volunteered to come and pick you up. I needed a break, anyway. I’ve been working on a car for the past ten days and it’s doing my back in.”

“Another circuit race?”

“Take a right here. There’s construction near the hospital. Look, I’m not supposed to discuss your mission with you, so I won’t. But don’t you think you’re in over your head? You don’t speak Arabic, you’re going undercover even though you have a bloody IMDB page and you’re going to spy on some of the richest and therefore best protected people in the world. In a country that has the death penalty. I don’t mean to scare you off, but ... Okay, maybe I do mean to scare you off. You have a wife and a kid, man. Go home. Seriously.”

“Miles? I’m here because some asshole killed a friend and then raised his sword to my wife and son.”

“Didn’t you stick him in a meat grinder?”

“I did no such thing, your honour,” I said, pretending to speak into a microphone concealed behind the sun visor. He took it as a yes.

“So? Isn’t that enough? What are you going to do, go after his family now?”

“I’m going to find out who sent him.”

“Right. Right ... No, turn right! I meant it both ways. As in: ‘riiiiiight’.”

“Your poorly timed sarcasm is noted,” I said, as we took an exit.

“You know that the desire for revenge can turn smart men into fools, right?”

“What’s that, Shakespeare? I was educated in The Netherlands. Shakespeare was dealt with over the course of two English classes when I was fifteen. And I will thank you to...”

“Actually that’s a quote from an episode of ‘Elementary’. And they drive on the right here, just like in The Netherlands.”

I had to swerve and was honked at quite deservedly when I turned onto a trunk road and chose the wrong lane. Or at least I was about to.

“Hey, I don’t want to wind you up. I’m sorry if I did. It’s just a genuine expression of concern. We’ll make sure you get the best possible start for your mission, even if you could have used a lot more training and ah ... a much bigger beard. And that’s all I’ll say about it.”

“Good.”

Ten seconds later:

“Those glasses ... Are they real? I mean, prescription? Doesn’t your neck hurt?”

A car was waiting for Miles when he and I arrived at the main entrance of the hotel. He went inside to hear my room number and said:

“Okay, 1222. We’ll be in touch tomorrow. My ride is waiting, so...”

“Hang on: ‘We will be in touch?’ Could you be a tad more specific?”

“I expect you’ll get a note delivered to your room, or we’ll send a text message.”

“And how will I know it’s from you?”

“Why, do you think you’re compromised?”

“No! But ... Shouldn’t there be a code word or something?”

“Okay. If you like. I’ll tell them to add a code word.”

“Which iiiiis?”

“Oh, you’ll know it. Now, must dash! Oh, one more thing: it’s Ramadan. Nearly over, thank God, but restaurants are closed during the day. You might want to order room service, or wait until after dark to go out for dinner. Cheerio.”

And so I found myself in junior suite 1222, somewhere halfway up the Torch tower. The view was nice, even though most of it was the roof of the expansive Villaggio Mall. Junior suites don’t face towards the nice part of Doha, obviously. I got out my laptop, a lovely Asus Zenbook that was unfortunately deeply crippled by having Windows 10 installed on it, and spent the next few hours setting it up and writing my journal, having nothing better to do. As soon as it got dark and the call to prayer rang through the city below me I went out to have dinner at the Cheesecake Factory inside Villaggio. It’s not pleasant to have dinner by yourself, but the alternative is to eat in a food court or a fast food restaurant and I wasn’t up for that. I used to think the way American waiters approached me was extremely annoying, but right now even a fake smile was welcome. And I must say the Filipino lady who served me did her best. Oh, I didn’t have any cheesecake, if you’re wondering. It’s like 99% butterfat! They have a very good selection of salads, actually. I didn’t have one because I love their orange chicken, but they do. And if Mel or Kate had been here, I’d probably have ordered one.

I then walked around the mall, saw all sorts of gifts for my girls I couldn’t buy them because I’d only be dragging them around for the next few weeks, went back to my hotel room and wrote my journal to this precise point. That hardly ever happens, by the way. I’m always behind, sometimes by several weeks. But now I’m here, in room 1222, overlooking the outskirts of Doha and a whole lot of brown, dusty nothing beyond.

Doha is considerably less fun without Caroline by my side. I have no idea what I’m getting myself into, but I figure the worst case scenario is that I’ll be serving Prince Asim breakfast for a few weeks, only to learn he isn’t as close with his cousin as he claims to be. That’s my major concern. And that’s if Omar actually has something to do with it all, which is far from certain.

Still, If I feel I can’t get anything done, for instance because my Arabic is piss poor, at least I will be able to say that I’ve tried. And then I’ll find some other way to honour Diana’s sacrifice for my family. Because I always pay my debts. Always.

Tuesday, July 14^th. Torch Hotel, Doha. (cares.standard.donor.)

Oh, this is so weird! I woke up at four in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I took out my Zenbook, found this document open and spent some time editing it. God knows why, because I’m the only one who will ever read it. It’s always the past tense, isn’t it? I went there and there, met so and so, this is what they said, this is how I felt, bla bla bla. But now I’m here, in the dead of night, and I’m completely up to date. I’m only typing this because I feel more than a bit lonely, truth be told. But I can’t call Kate or Melody, because for one thing it’s the middle of the night for them as well and for another, absolutely nothing about Carstairs should lead back to them. Presumably I could delete their number after my call, but then they’d have my number and before you know it Facebook makes a connection or I’m suggested as a buddy on WhatsUp (or whatever it’s called) and Kelly starts a chat with me while I’m planting a bug in someone’s office. By the way, I am aware keeping journals is also frowned upon in the intelligence community, but I am a bit of a dab hand at InfoSec and if I encrypt something, you’ll need a quantum computer the size of Jupiter to crack it.

Note to self: get proper sheets back home. I know a duvet is much more convenient, but dammit, sheets are nice! And I should have bought a bottle of water at the mall. There’s a minibar, but like hell am I paying five bucks for Evian. I don’t care I’m still a millionaire, if only just: I intend to stay one. The tap water is fine, at least for brushing teeth and a quick sip.

This is ridiculous. Now I’m only typing to stop myself from having a wank. And I can’t, because you can’t access sites like Pornhub in Qatar and I need that because the wrong images keep cropping up when I use my imagination. I do have a VPN set up, but the hotel is wise to that and it has closed the firewall ports needed to initiate a connection. Ordinarily I’d take that as a challenge, but not at five a.m. on a Windows machine I’m only just getting to grips with. Fucking hell, it’s awful! How can they make every Windows version WORSE? Windows 2000 was fine. They should have stuck with that. Fucking tiles ... And this Start Menu is horrible, too.

I’m saving this and then I’ll get back to it when I have something new to report. But, and forgive me for being sentimental here, just in case this is the last entry I ever make and Kelly finds the instructions to decrypt my journals: I’m sorry. This was stupid. I love you all, more than I can ever hope to express. I’m sorry that Edwin has to grow up without a father and I’m sorry that mum and dad have to bury their own son (assuming my body gets handed over at all), but I have a debt to pay. Diana saved my little boy and my fantastic wife. I just can’t go on with my life as if nothing happened, especially while so many others mourn today and will mourn in the future. And Kate? Thank you. Thanks for every second since you were born.

It’s a few days later now. I’m in Asim’s apartment. The previous paragraph is a bit saccharine and I’m actually doing okay, so I was going to delete it. But then, this is just a journal. I’m writing this as a personal record for when I’m older. My memory is quite good, actually, but I do get half my genes from my dad and he’s daft as a brush. Not actually demented, but not right in the head either. So I’ll let it stand, just to remind the future me (Hi! Wearing suspenders, are we? The ass is the first to go, I’m told) that I once did something incredibly stupid, even though some very smart people advised against it. But right now, life is pretty sweet! At least as long as I can stop myself from thinking about home.

So let’s pick this up from where I left off: the Torch hotel in Doha. I was awake in the middle of the night, but fell asleep again and then woke up at around ten in the morning, which is like getting a whole extra night for a young parent. Edwin tends to wake up at around six, six thirty. I had a sore throat from snoring, so I gave in and opened that bottle of Evian, figuring I’d just get a new one to replace it. That’s not theft, is it? There’s nothing wrong with Qatar tap water, actually, but it is made from desalinated seawater and it has a not very subtle chlorine smell to it.

Anyway, just when I was wondering if it was safe to leave the hotel room, the front desk called to tell me a letter had been delivered for me. I went downstairs and read it in the lobby, making sure nobody could look over my shoulder because that’s probably what George Smiley would do. It was a handwritten note from Miles:

‘Carstairs! We’re ready for you. Please find your way to Film City. Location is marked as such in your navigation system. No need to check out. Any time after lunch. Codeword.’

Well, that was very clearly a coded message! That kind of thing is right up my alley. First I counted all the words. There were 31. That number is the sum of the first two prime numbers, raised to themselves. And it’s also the only number where the sum of the divisors of two distinct numbers, namely 16 and 25, is the same prime quantity. In other words, 1+2+4+8+16 = 31 and 1+5+25 = 31. That wasn’t much to go on, as clues go. But then, 31 is also the international country dialling code for The Netherlands. Was he telling me to go home again?

I suppose I could do a frequency analysis, to find out which letter appeared most often. That letter would likely correspond to the letter e, which is the most commonly used letter in English. Working from that, it would be possible to work out what the likeliest substitute cypher was. But then, this was already plain English, so the cypher was quite likely to be E=E, T=T, A=A, O=O, I=I, and so on. So I used that cypher and found a message directing me to go to a place called Film City. Which I did, after lunch: the supermarket was open and despite it being Ramadan quite happily sold me some Kaiser rolls and cream cheese, which I ate in my room.

I wasn’t in the best of moods when I set off for Film City, because I hadn’t been able to find a half-litre bottle of Evian. I also had no idea Doha had a film industry but a studio seemed a very unlikely place to have secret agent type meetings. There wasn’t much on the radio that suited my tastes, either. And nobody comes to Qatar for the views.

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Carstairs of Arabia

Ron Dudderie

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