Exit wound

‘You, too.’ His eyes flicked from my face to my head. The scabs had gone and the skin was starting to lose its redness, but there was still a rather obvious lack of hair on one side.

I bent down so he could have a good look. ‘Came off a motorbike.’ I showed off the little stubby hairs trying to push through. ‘But I can see the green shoots of recovery.’ I stood up again, feeling quite pleased with my joke.

He didn’t get it.

We were supposed to meet in the cafe – the airport being a handy halfway house between my place and his. He looked at his watch. ‘I’m sorry. Have you been here long?’

I shook my head. ‘No drama, mate. Settling in OK?’

‘Yes, thank you. The weather is not like they told me it would be.’

‘Better or worse?’

‘Better!’ He raised his eyes. It was another of those cloudless days that convinced us for a moment that we might have a really good summer this year. The papers had been full of phew-what-a-scorcher headlines.

Ali had been at summer school at the University of East London for the past month – on a lead-in English course before he kicked off his degree in journalism in September.

‘How’s Aisha?’

‘She’s well. I owe her so much. If it hadn’t been for her…’ He didn’t need to say any more.

As far as Ali was concerned, it was Aisha, researching online, who’d found the course as well as the bursary that had paid his tuition fees and living expenses. It was how she and I had agreed it.

Coming up with the cash had been the easy bit. Julian had played his part by pulling strings at the UK Border Agency to ensure that the fast-track student visa went through, no questions asked – not easy, when the subject in question was an Iranian with an encyclopedic knowledge of the world’s aerospace and defence industry.

‘And the old man, how is he?’

‘Better. He has – how do you say? – turned the bend.’

I already knew because Aisha had told me but, Oscars all round, I had to look surprised.

‘It was like you said. My father has been living with a pain in his heart for many years. But he is leaving the past behind…’

‘And Aisha? Things calming down after the election?’

He shrugged. ‘It happened just like I said, Jim, yes?’

Ahmadinejad had won. But he was never going to be allowed to lose.

‘Aisha still believes in the green revolution. She still struggles.’

People like Aisha were the cinders under the ashes. This time it looked like it was going to turn into a baby Tiananmen Square. But next time maybe it would be an action replay of the Berlin Wall.

Ali stood there beaming at me like an idiot, but I could see he was itching to get back to some more plane-spotting. He had my email address.

We shook hands.

‘I just wanted to make sure you’re all right, mate.’

We both smiled and I made to leave.

‘Jim?’

I turned back.

‘What I helped you with… It was a good thing we did, yes?’

‘Not just a good thing, Ali. The best thing.’

This time I kept walking.

SA-16s would still reach Afghanistan, of course. They’d just take a while longer. Heroin would continue to flood the Iranian market. Another Ollie North lookalike was probably already making cash that Obama didn’t know about to spend on a war he wouldn’t want to know about.

I pulled my keys from my pocket and pressed the fob. Twenty metres away, the rear hazards of a gun-metal Porsche 911 flashed into life.

I clambered in and shut the door. I hadn’t had it long enough yet to stop appreciating the sound of that reassuringly expensive clunk or the smell of new seat-leather.

As I eased the car out of the airport onto the North Woolwich Road, sunlight glinted off the gold ring on my left pinky.

I’d found the sixth crate exactly where Red Ken had left it. The tricky bit had been finding a patch of desert where I wouldn’t be overlooked melting down Saddam’s face, but it’s amazing what you can do with a few uninterrupted hours and a propane burner if you put your mind to it.

If the guy in the souk had had any inkling of where the gold had come from, he didn’t show it. He’d got a good deal, so why rock the boat?

As for the CIA’s muddy dollars, Anna had most of them. Getting them ready for circulation must have given a whole new meaning to money laundering. I’d only kept enough to buy me a beanie to cover my head, to clean and feed myself up, and to get on the train with her to St Petersburg, then on to Narva, on the border with Estonia. The river that separated the former Soviet satellite from Russia was a piece of piss to deal with. Then it was on to Dubai.