The Secret

When Faisal emerged from the cave complex to watch the sun come up, his conclusion that life was good was to be short-lived. He had underestimated the CIA man Brady who, unsure of whom or whom not to trust in Pakistani intelligence, had attached a tiny GPS transmitter to Faisal’s clothing, thus ensuring that the CIA would know exactly where he was within a one-metre range of any spot on the planet. If for any reason Brady did not report back within an agreed period of time, a train of events would swing into operation. Brady was dead, but from beyond the grave he was responsible for a little black speck’s appearing in the morning sky as Faisal drew deeply on his first cigarette of the day. The speck was an unmanned drone that had locked on to Faisal’s GPS signal.

The calm gaze with which Faisal watched the speck get bigger had barely time to change in response to the awful dawn of realisation before the drone unleashed its fiery equivalent of hell on earth and Faisal, together with his friends and accomplices, were all but vaporised in the firestorm that swept through the caves. The CIA wasn’t to know that the information they wanted most to destroy wasn’t actually there.

One

Dr Steven Dunbar parked the Porsche Boxster and got out to clamber over steep dunes to reach the beach, with the soft, dry sand and tufted grass begrudging him every step of the way. He needed to escape the travails of everyday life, to get his head straight, to think things through, and, as always, it was a beach he came to when milestones loomed large in his life. The location of the beach didn’t really matter as long as it was deserted and afforded him views to the horizon with a big expanse of sky above, the bigger the better.

Today’s beach was on the north shore of the Solway Firth in south-west Scotland — the part tourists rushed past on their way north to Loch Lomond in their haste to embrace the Walter Scott-manufactured myths of the Scottish highlands. Many of those who knew and loved the wild, romantic shores of the Solway were in no hurry to let the cat out of the bag and were aided in their desire for continuing anonymity by uneven sand banks, fast-flowing tides and quicksand lying in wait for the unwary.

Steven’s milestones were the usual mix of sad and happy common to most folk — a time when a life-changing decision had to be made, the death of a parent, an impending marriage, the birth of a child and, in his case, the tragic loss of a wife through the ravages of a brain tumour. Today he’d learned of the death of a friend and needed to be alone. He’d been on leave up in Scotland visiting his daughter Jenny when the news had reached him. Sir John Macmillan, his boss and head of the Sci-Med Inspectorate in London, had phoned to tell him that Dr Simone Ricard of the French-based but international charity Médecins Sans Frontières had been found dead. Macmillan had remembered that she’d been a friend of Steven’s and thought it significant enough to interrupt his long weekend with the news. Currently he had no further information but would keep him informed if and when details came in.

Steven reached the water’s edge and drew a line in the sand with his toe for no particular reason. It was clear enough today to see where the sky fell into the sea and this pleased him. It conferred a sense of order on the scene, unlike days when the heavens disappeared into the water in a miasma of grey nothingness. He thought about Simone and wondered, as he had so often in the past, how they had become friends in the first place. True, they were both doctors, but they could hardly have been more different in outlook.

Simone was French, the only child of professional parents — both university lecturers — who’d been born and brought up in Marseilles but had moved to Paris to complete her education and attend medical school. She had wanted to become a doctor from an early age and had never wavered in her determination. For her, medicine was a true vocation while for him it had been the course he’d followed at university, the one he had pursued largely in order to please parents and teachers who’d sought the kudos of having a doctor in the family or on the school records.

He had gone all the way through medical school before maturing enough and achieving the self-confidence necessary to admit to himself and everyone else that he had no great wish to board the medical career train: his heart simply wasn’t in it. When the arguments were over and the dust had settled he had gone on to complete his studies and qualify as a doctor, even working his obligatory registration year in hospitals before veering off to join the army and pursue a career more suited to his love of the outdoors and a yen for adventure.