Peace on Earth. Gordon Stevens

United States, partly due to industrial trouble at home, increasingly due to its position as a petro-currency. For several months the world’s oil surplus had led to a gradual reduction in the price of oil, for those months the world’s leading producers, both inside and outside OPEC, had been talking about a new price and quota structure. So far they had failed to agree.

      He saw the lights of the city below and thought again of the man he would meet the following afternoon, and what he would ask him to do.

      The Hotel Majestic overlooks the Paseo de Gracia, in the heart of Barcelona; one hour’s drive to the south, off the highway to Tarragona, is the village of Comarruga. On the outskirts of the village is a complex of holiday villas known as Las Piñas. At three in the afternoon on the fifth Sunday before Christmas, Issam Sharaf, military advisor to Abu Nabil, checked into the Hotel Majestic. The passport he was using, like that which Nabil was himself using, had been issued in Kuwait. He informed the receptionist that he would be staying three or four days, depending on business, and that he would probably wish to conduct a meeting in the hotel on the afternoon of the third day, confirming that the hotel would be able to provide a buffet lunch for his guests, with both wine and beer.

      Sharaf appeared to spend the remainder of the day sightseeing, despite the edges of winter that were touching the city, beginning the second day in the same manner, walking to Gaudi’s Church of the Holy Family and taking coffee in a café off the Ramblas. At nine forty-five precisely he left the café, took a cab to el Corte Ingles, walking through the ground floor of the department store to the street on the other side, and taking a second cab to a restaurant near the Plaza de Cataluña which he had visited the previous afternoon. He walked through, left by the back door, and was driven away in the Seat that had been waiting in the narrow alley behind the building. At eleven fifteen he arrived at the villa in the centre of the holiday complex of Las Piñas near the village of Comarruga; he had stopped only once on the drive from Barcelona, to shake hands with the man and woman who had been waiting for him in the parking lot on the outskirts of the city.

      The meeting, round the reproduction mahogany table in the lounge of the villa, began on schedule at eleven thirty. Those present represented the groups already discussed by Nabil and Sharaf in Damascus, the terrorist organisations whose actions would dominate Europe in the following months, plus, from Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA and the INLA. Sharaf himself opened the meeting, thanking those present for attending and outlining the range of topics it had been agreed they would discuss. The first exchange was dominated by the representatives of the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades; given their background, the move was both expected and accepted by the other delegates. In turn, however, both groups were influenced by the presence of the two people who accompanied Sharaf – the man and woman he had met in the parking lot outside Barcelona, both of whom had been involved in the campaigns of killings and kidnappings of the late seventies and early eighties, both of whom were still sought by the various security organisations of a number of countries.

      The agenda was straightforward. Item One: the launching of a campaign of terror in Europe. Item Two: the coordination of targets during that campaign. Item Three: cooperation between groups, including the issuing of joint communiqués and the inter-exchange of weapons and materials.

      With minor exceptions the discussion which followed was free of political rhetoric, the delegates welcoming the opening of a new front, and accepting Sharaf’s offer of a range of facilities, both logistical and financial. The only conditions, suggested by the West Germans and seconded by the Italians, were that such support would not impinge on the autonomy of each group in its own country, and that it should be the Palestinians themselves who would carry out the first action of the campaign. Both conditions had been anticipated and were agreed to immediately.

      The meeting lasted six hours and ten minutes. It ended seventeen hours and ten minutes before it was due to begin, if the security forces had shadowed the Palestinian to Barcelona and taken his request for a room and refreshments at the Hotel Majestic to indicate the time and location of the meeting.

      In fact, they had not.

      Twelve hours later Sharaf left Spain for West Germany.

      The meeting which Abu Nabil had arranged in London was at two forty-five.

      Security in the West End that day was strict: the extra police vans on the street corners, the number of uniformed men in the area, the outlines of the marksmen on the roofs above them, the urgency with which the maroon patrol cars of the Diplomatic Protection Group and the white transits of the Special Patrol Group seemed to be moving.

      Nabil did not allow it to concern him, knowing it was to do neither with himself nor any of his plans, assuming, correctly, that it was connected with the meeting of international oil ministers which was taking place in London that day.

      At ten minutes past two he took a cab to the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, allowing himself extra time for what he knew would be the inevitable traffic delays and the equally inevitable security blanket round the hotel, arriving at twenty-five minutes to three, ten minutes before his appointment.

      There were three police cars outside, uniformed officers at the entrance to the foyer and, again he correctly assumed, armed plain-clothes men inside. The receptionist did not appear to be affected by the intrusion. He introduced himself by the name in the Kuwaiti passport which he carried and asked her to inform Mr Yussef of his arrival. The receptionist had been efficient and polite, now she was even more so. Adnan Yussef was a regular guest, known by the staff to treat them well when he left; he was also the head of the political staff of Sheikh Saeed Khaled and it was the presence of those among whom Sheikh Saeed Khaled held such influence, the oil ministers in London for the OPEC talks, that was the prime reason for the massive security screens both inside and outside the Hilton and other hotels where the delegates were secluded with their staffs.

      Five minutes later the appointment had been checked and Nabil had been escorted to the eighth floor, past the discreet security line, to the suite occupied not by Yussef but by the sheikh himself. He was shown in, offered coffee, which he declined, and left alone. There was no way that he could check the room for the quantity of eavesdropping equipment which it could have concealed, he knew, and no point; such was his host’s position that no one but Khaled would have even considered installing such devices, partly because of the technical difficulties involved, mainly because of the political repercussions were such devices to be discovered in the regular electronic sweeps which the sheikh’s personal security advisors were known to conduct. And if the sheikh had introduced his own devices, which Nabil considered more probable, then he would also have arranged for them to be switched off during the meeting that was to follow.

      Three minutes later, exactly on time, Sheikh Saeed Khaled entered the room.

      He was older than the occasional photograph which appeared in the international press suggested, only the slight yellowing in the whites of his eyes betraying the toll of the lifestyle he had chosen to inflict upon himself.

      Saeed Al-Haitham Bin Khaled had been born the fourth son of one of the extended families which comprised the oil cartel of the Middle East. Partly because of the changing nature of international politics following the Second World War, partly because of the interpretation of a dream which his father had had whilst he himself was still in his mother’s womb, he had been educated in France, Britain and the United States. He had also, because of both his father’s influence and his own inclinations, turned aside from the limitations of national politics and the opulence and privilege which his birthright afforded him, and begun to steer his path through the web of manipulation and intrigue which emanated from the Middle Eastern oil wealth, spreading his power base through the financial and political worlds which became increasingly linked to it, to the extent that his sway and influence, though little known to the general public, matched that of the Saudi oil minister Sheikh Yamani in the conference halls where the formal decisions were taken.

      ‘Khalidi,’ he said, using his visitor’s correct name and embracing him. ‘It is good to see you again.’ He ignored the coffee and opened the cocktail cabinet fitted along one wall of the lounge. ‘What would you like?’ Though their religion barred alcohol and Nabil drank little, he knew what his host expected. ‘Black Label,’ he said. Khaled