The driver was listening intently, hands resting on the enormous black steel steering wheel. 'What's he on about?' I didn't even bother looking over at him.

He powered down the small transistor. 'The whole world is going down the gurgler, as per usual.' The voice was softly spoken, the accent cut-glass.

Although the British embassy had long since closed – along with everybody else's – as part of their sanctions against the Colonel for his habit of sponsoring global terrorism, everybody, Brits included, had left a couple of spooks behind. Colonel Lynn was one of them. Gaddafi remained one of the biggest threats to world peace, and his black-leather-jacketed heavies tended to come to the UK and murder anyone speaking out against the regime, so we needed people with their ear to the ground.

Lynn wasn't a field operator. He was our man in Havana – only in Tripoli. In his late thirties, of average build, he looked and spoke like a history teacher – but his fresh-from-the-shower smell screamed officer, and his aura marked him out as a high flier. He spoke the language and knew the players. He'd probably been born here; for all I knew, his dad had been ambassador or something. Colonel Lynn – I never had found out what his first name was – ate, drank and breathed the place. He was what the Firm called an Arabist.

He was all right, I supposed – just not the sort of guy I'd phone up and ask out for a brew and a sticky bun. A bit too keen for me; a bit too full of devotion to the cause. He probably kept a picture of the Queen under his pillow. And he was also just a bit too keen to tell me how to do my job. He didn't like people like me. There was just a hint now and again of disgust at what people like me got up to. Even though he was part of it, he was from the hands-clean side of the fence and everyone on my side was not much more than a necessary evil.