Read Fire Hawk for Free Online Page B

examination. X-rays. He should rest for twenty-four hours. And in a day or two get someone to change those dressings I put on his legs.’
    â€˜Of course. He’ll get a thorough check when he’s back in London.’
    Mowbray shook the doctor’s hand and the Arab leaned towards Sam. ‘You are most welcome in Jordan,’ he breathed formally. Then he left. They heard his feet on the stairs and the front door closing.
    They were alone now, and Sam saw the bonhomiedrain from Mowbray’s eyes as he became a single-minded Six man again.
    â€˜Okay. Now we can talk,’ Mowbray began. ‘Just needed the quack to confirm you were still alive. And I have to tell you we weren’t at all sure when we first clapped eyes on you.’
    Sam leaned back against the propped up pillow and rested his head. He felt absurdly weak.
    â€˜You’re not the only one,’ he whispered. ‘When that bloody needle went into my arm I thought I was on my way to Saint Peter.’
    â€˜Ah. So they
did
give you an injection.’ Mowbray pulled up a pink-painted nursery chair, swung it round next to the bed and straddled it, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on the back. ‘Presumably did it so you wouldn’t make trouble at the border if the thing went for a ball of chalk.’
    â€˜What thing? What happened? You’re saying there was a deal?’
    â€˜A swap happened. You for that man Salah Khalil you sent the signal about.’
    â€˜
What?
’ He’d thought Khalil a fiction. ‘But swaps are Cold War stuff. Six doesn’t work like that these days.’
    â€˜The chap had fled Baghdad,’ Mowbray explained. ‘With a load of Saddam’s money, by the sound of it. Turned up in London offering his services and asking for asylum. We didn’t like the look of him much anyway and when your warning came through that he was suspect, it sort of clinched it.’
    â€˜But London negotiated? With the Mukhabarat?’ Sam was aghast.
    â€˜Wouldn’t normally. But SIS wanted you out of there very badly. Just as badly as the Iraqis wanted Khalil back. Presumably now they’ve got him they’ll blow his brains out.’
    Sam stared at Mowbray. Was that what his arrest and torture had been about? All that horror just because the Iraqis needed a British hostage to swap for a thief? Not that simple. It couldn’t be.
    â€˜Now look, there’s not much time.’ Mowbray spoke briskly. ‘They’re waiting in London. Waiting for the report of my debrief. I’ll have to trot across to the embassy in a minute to send it. They desperately want to know what the other part of your message meant. “BW attack alert”. Biological warfare, yes?’
    â€˜Yes. Anthrax. I’d been given a tip-off that anthrax warheads had been slipped out of Iraq. To be used in an attack.’
    â€˜Christ! Used where? And when?’
    â€˜That’s the trouble. I don’t know.’ He saw Mowbray’s face fall. ‘A man came up to me in the hotel in Baghdad. An Iraqi. Scared witless. The bugger addressed me by my real name. They knew who I was, Quentin.’
    â€˜Yes. So we gathered.’ Mowbray sucked in his cheeks. ‘We’d better come back to that.’
    â€˜Not down to
me,
that one,’ Sam insisted. ‘Everything
I
did was watertight.’
    â€˜Of course,’ Mowbray replied neutrally. ‘Anyway, tell me about this man at the hotel.’
    â€˜He shoved a letter in my hand. When I opened it a few minutes later it contained the warning about Khalil, nothing else.’
    â€˜Nothing about anthrax?’
    â€˜Not in the note. The man whispered that warning.’
    â€˜What, exactly?’
    â€˜Anthrax warheads taken out of Iraq and soon to be used. Just that. Nothing more. Then he ran off.’
    Sam felt giddy all of a sudden. He put his hands to his head.
    â€˜Drink some more water,’