Honour Among Thieves Read Free Page A

had left the lecture theatre, Scott Bradley hurried across Grove Street
Cemetery, hoping that he might reach his apartment in St Ronan Street before
being accosted by a pursuing student. He loved them all – well, almost all -and
he was sure that in time he would allow the more serious among them to stroll
back to his rooms in the evenings for a drink and to talk long into the night.
But not until they were well into their second year.
    Scott
managed to reach the staircase before a single would-be lawyer had caught up
with him. But then, few of them knew that he had once covered four hundred
metres in 48.1 seconds when he’d anchored the Georgetown varsity relay team.
Confident he had escaped, Scott leapt up the staircase, not stopping until he
reached his apartment on the third floor.
    He
pushed open the unlocked door. It was always unlocked. There was nothing in his
apartment worth stealing – even the television didn’t work. The one file that
would have revealed that the law was not the only field in which he was an
expert had been carefully secreted on his bookshelf between Tax and Torts. He
failed to notice the books that were piled up everywhere or the fact that he
could have written his name in the dust on the sideboard.
    Scott
closed the door behind him and glanced, as he always did, at the picture of his
mother on the sideboard. He dumped the pile of notes he was carrying by her
side and retrieved the mail poking out from under the door. Scott walked across
the room and sank into an old leather chair, wondering how many of those
bright, attentive faces would still be attending his lectures in two years’
time. Forty per cent would be good – thirty per cent more likely. Those would be
the ones for whom fourteen hours’ work a day became the norm, and not just for
the last month before exams. And of them, how many would live up to the
standards of the late Dean Thomas W. Swan? Five per cent, if he was lucky.
    The
Professor of Constitutional Law turned his attention to the bundle of mail he
held in his lap. One from American Express – a bill with the inevitable hundred
free offers which would cost him even more money if he took any of them up; an
invitation from Brown to give the Charles Evans Hughes Lecture on the
Constitution; a letter from Carol reminding him she hadn’t seen him for some
time; a circular from a firm of stockbrokers who didn’t promise to double his
money but...; and finally a plain buff envelope postmarked Virginia, with a
typeface he recognised immediately.
    He
tore open the buff envelope and extracted the single sheet of paper which gave
him his latest instructions.
    Al
Obaydi strolled onto the floor of the General Assembly and slipped into a chair
directly behind his Head of Mission. The Ambassador had his earphones on and
was pretending to be deeply interested in a speech being delivered by the Head
of the Brazilian Mission. Al Obaydi’s boss always preferred to have
confidential talks on the floor of the General Assembly: he suspected it was
the only room in the United Nations building that wasn’t bugged by the CIA.
    Al
Obaydi waited patiently until the older man flicked one of the earpieces aside
and leaned slightly back.
    ‘They’ve
agreed to our terms,’ murmured Al Obaydi, as if it was he who had suggested the
figure. The Ambassador’s upper lip protruded over his lower lip, the recognised
sign among his colleagues that he required more details.
    ‘One
hundred million,’ Al Obaydi whispered. ‘Ten million to be paid immediately. The
final ninety on delivery.’
    ‘“Immediately”?’
said the Ambassador. ‘What does “immediately” mean?’
    ‘By
midday tomorrow,’ whispered Al Obaydi.
    ‘At
least Sayedi anticipated that eventuality,’ said the Ambassador thoughtfully.
    Al
Obaydi admired the way his superior could always make the term ‘my master’
sound both deferential and insolent at the same time.
    ‘I
must send a message to Baghdad to acquaint the