Keys to the Kingdom Read Free Page B

thinking about it since. Gallagher had disappeared into the maze of streets that was the Al Dirrah souk. Gallagher was older but it was the same man whose image had been burned into his mind during the year Worley had scoured Northern Ireland for him. Once the shock of seeing a supposedly dead man alive had worn off, Worley was faced with the million dollar question. If it was Gallagher that he had seen, what the hell was he doing in Riyadh? He continued to walk aimlessly around the edge of the crowd nodding occasionally to several Saudis and his colleagues from the other foreign delegations. He was so pre-occupied with his thoughts of Gallagher that he couldn’t face the prospect of small talk with any particular group assembled on the lawn. It was part of his job to mingle. Intelligence was an eye and ear job. If you hung around on the periphery there was little or no chance of picking up the jewel of gossip that might fall from a tongue loosened by too much Champagne or malt whisky. To-day Worley was there on sufferance. The cable he had fired off to London two days ago asking for information on any recent sightings of Patrick Joseph Gallagher had gone unanswered. Just that morning he had submitted a travel request to his Ambassador for a trip to London. If Gallagher was alive, he wanted to know about it and if he ever put his foot in Saudi Arabia again, Worley was going to make sure that he was picked up. He looked across the manicured lawns of the Residence. It was an oasis of green in a country where the dominant colour was a parched brown. The Diplomatic Quarter was a little piece of Europe in the middle of the desert waste that is Saudi Arabia. It was early evening and in a few hours time the green grass would be awash with Saudis as families from Riyadh descended on the greenery to hold their evening picnics.  His glance moved to the edge of the crowd and he stopped dead. Behind the last group standing directly in front of the Ambassador’s Residence he saw his brother Robert staring at him. He stopped dead and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, his dead brother had disappeared.  
    ‘Arthur, old boy,’ Peter Ellis, the First Secretary of the Embassy, put his arm around Worley's shoulders and led him out of earshot of the nearest chattering group. ‘What the hell's the matter with you to-day, old man? This type of gathering should be right up your alley. Lots of squiffy Saudis sounding off and dropping secrets by the ton. Sir Richard watches the staff like a hawk during these events and I rather fancy he thinks that you're falling down on the job.’ Ellis stood back. ‘You don’t look terribly well, old fellow. Summer colds can play havoc with you in a place like this. Nothing like a blast of Arctic air to clean the tubes out.’
    Worley sipped his drink. He switched his attention to Ellis and ignored the remark about the Ambassador but he did glance beyond the First Secretary and saw that Sir Richard was in deep conversation with several high ranking Saudis. There was a certain amount of rivalry between the Foreign Office and the Secret Service. Worley was nominally on the Embassy staff as a cultural attaché but in effect he was an independent operator. That fact rankled with Ellis. However, most of the Saudi establishment was well aware what he did for a living and they didn’t give a damn. Saudi Arabia was Britain’s biggest ally in the Gulf.
    ‘I suppose Sir Richard passed on this intelligence to you directly,’ Worley sipped his drink.
    ‘Not exactly but I can sense that he's getting a bit annoyed watching you skirt the crowd like a thirteen year old at his first dance.’
    Worley looked directly into the wire connected bottle tops perched on Ellis’ nose and stared into the magnified eyes. He smiled. ‘If you ever leave the Foreign Service, Peter, you could develop a mind reading act and take it on the road. I'm sure that there are plenty of ex-Ambassadors or Principal Private Secretaries