Prime Target by Hugh Miller Page B

panelled in dark shiny wood. The fourth was a ceiling-to-floor window looking out on the East River. The centrepiece of the room was a long polished table with three chairs at each side and one at the end near the window. On the table were notepads, pencils, glasses and two water pitchers. A long ebony sideboard against the right-hand wall had a steel tray with coffee, tea and a Thermos jug of chilled Coke.
    Philpott was already there when Mike Graham and C.W. Whitlock walked in. He stood by the window reading a fax. Lucy Dow sat at the end of the table nearest the door. Lucy was a tall, solemn-faced young woman, an authority on Arab affairs with three years experience in Lebanon as a field operative. Sabrina was there too, pouring coffee.
    â€˜Welcome home,’ Mike said. ‘How was England?’
    â€˜Strenuous.’
    â€˜Did you remember my Bath Olivers?’ Whitlock said. ‘Or did they get forgotten in the whirl of events?’
    Sabrina pointed to a Fortnum and Mason’s bagon the sideboard. ‘Six packets. Enough to turn up the flame of nostalgia till it hurts.’
    â€˜Bless you.’ Whitlock pecked Sabrina’s cheek. ‘Those biscuits are all I really miss about my student days.’
    â€˜You must have really lived it up,’ Mike said. ‘What did you do - crumble them into a chillum and smoke them?’
    â€˜Right.’ Philpott looked up from his fax and pointed at the table. ‘Sit down, will you? I’ve a busy day so we must keep this brief.’
    Whitlock and Mike brought coffee to the table and sat opposite each other as they always did. Sabrina sat somewhere different every time. She did that in case anyone imagined there was significance in the way the only permanent female member of the unit sat in relation to the other two operatives and to the chief. Today she sat at the top of the table on the same side as Whitlock, adjacent to Philpott.
    â€˜You’re all familiar with the superficial details of the Emily Selby shooting,’ Philpott said, opening a folder in front of him. ‘Lucy is here this morning to add anything that might help in formulating at least the nucleus of a procedure. I can add to what you all know about the case by telling you that early on Saturday, a call was received here at the UN from Colonel Wolrich of Security Liaison, working out of the US Embassy in London. He talked about the case with the Deputy Secretary General of the Security Council. As a result oftheir discussion, the Selby inquiry has been made our business.’
    â€˜So my weekend wasn’t a complete waste,’ Whitlock said.
    â€˜Why did they pass it straight to UNACO?’ Lucy asked.
    â€˜Well, there’s the hard evidence the gunman was a trained assassin, and a high-profile one at that. There’s the fact that he travelled West to kill an American who happened to be a Jew, and who happened to be working for the government, right inside the White House. That bare-bones synopsis alone makes this our kind of case. We have a strong enough indication of international crime, with the attendant danger of escalation, to warrant UNACO intervention.’
    â€˜I can vouch for the killer’s prominent profile,’ Lucy said, crossing and uncrossing her long legs as she spoke. ‘They were very proud of Yaqub Hisham in the Lebanon.’
    â€˜Ever meet him?’ Sabrina said.
    â€˜He wasn’t a social animal, but yes, I was in the same big tent as him one time, along with maybe fifty others, while I was doing a hill-gypsy routine for cover. He was nothing unusual as terrorists go, except he was maybe luckier than most, or more foolhardy. Until he got too hot a target for the Israelis, he was really the main man. Scourge of the Jews, they called him. When things warmed up and Mossad started closing in, it was a top Arab surgeon that volunteered to changeYaqub’s face. A big freebie, carried out in one of the finest hospitals