Scorpia Rising

in the room. He hung up.
    The door opened and a young woman came in with two cups of coffee and a plate of cookies. She set them down and left again.
    “You know, Alex, I can’t believe you’re out here,” Byrne began. “Don’t tell me Alan Blunt persuaded you to work for him again!”
    Alex didn’t answer. He trusted Byrne, but he also felt uneasy being trapped between two intelligence services. He would have to be careful what he said.
    “So why are you here, Alex?”
    “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re up to?” Alex replied. “Why were your men watching the House of Gold? And who is Habib?”
    “Did you meet with him?”
    “No. One of your men asked me about him. But by the time I saw him, he was already dead.”
    “You didn’t shoot him?” It was impossible to say if Byrne was joking or not.
    “Of course I didn’t.”
    Byrne nodded. “I believe you. This whole thing is a mess. It’s just a miracle that no one from that paddle ship was killed. Apart from Habib, that is.” He paused. “All right, Alex. I’ll tell you what’s going on. I guess I owe you that much. But if you’re involved—you and MI6—I want to know. Is that a deal?”
    “Sure.” Alex helped himself to a coffee.
    “Okay. We’re out here because the secretary of state is arriving this weekend. I don’t know how acquainted you are with American politics, but our secretary of state is like your foreign secretary. You could say she’s number two after the president . . . In fact, there are a lot of people who say she could be the next president. She’s outspoken and she’s hard-line but she’s also very popular. And she’s about to give a speech in Cairo.”
    Byrne took his own coffee. He looked uncomfortable about what he was about to say, unsure whether he should give away his secrets, but then he made up his mind and went on. “This is all being hushed up at the moment, but the speech is all about power. Who are the big hitters in the world right now? When it comes to talking about the big issues—nuclear weapons, war, terrorism—who should be sitting at the top table? Up to now, it’s always been the Americans, you British, the Europeans, and so on. But there are new powers in the world. The Chinese. India. She thinks it’s time to make a few changes. And—you’re not going to like this, Alex—she doesn’t think the Brits have a place anymore.”
    “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other,” Alex said.
    “No, of course not. Why should it? But it’s going to make a lot of your politicians very angry. If you ask me, the secretary of state is playing politics. It’s coming up to election time and there’s a lot of anti-British feeling in the States right now. You remember that big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? And then there was that secret deal with Libya. A speech like this is going to make all the right headlines . . . for her. She’s way out of line. Even the president has tried to draw her in. But she’s going ahead anyway.”
    “How does Habib fit into this?”
    “I’m coming to him. Our job is to protect the secretary of state while she’s in Cairo. It doesn’t matter what she’s doing or saying. That’s got nothing to do with us. We’re just here—we’ve been here for two weeks now—to look after her. And a few days ago we got a tip-off that somebody might take a shot at her, to prevent her from making the speech.”
    “Habib?”
    “That was just one of the names he used. Mostly he was just known as the Engineer. He sold weapons, Alex. Very precise, high-caliber weapons such as sniper rifles. Actually, he’d provide you with anything from a samurai sword to a hand grenade. But he was a craftsman. Everything he supplied was deadly accurate. Now do you begin to get the picture? We get a tip-off. We know that the Engineer is in town, so we start to watch him. And then, four days before our secretary of state is about to make a big anti-British speech, a British secret agent turns up and—boom—there’s an explosion and Habib is dead.”
    Byrne slumped in his chair. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe he was feeling his age.
    “I’m not saying that Blake Lewinsky was right, but perhaps it explains what he almost did to you. Habib was dead and he needed to know why.”
    Alex’s mind was in a whirl. There was so much he had to take on board. The main question was—how much should he tell Joe Byrne?
    First, Erik Gunter. When he’d left the boat, he’d been