But while my body’s been immobile, my mind’s been careering back and forth over the events of the previous twenty-four hours. The mind hungers naturally for certainty, but I can’t be as sure as I want to be about any of the things that are troubling me. All that is possible is an interpretation, and the one I’ve come up with has a dark side and a light side. The dark side is that, as the Baroness indicated, someone is attempting to sabotage the operation and wants us to fail. I have accepted the cynical possibility that, somewhere along the line, there’s an agenda in favour of the survival of the Stingers. I must accept, possibly, that the Talib who accosted me yesterday was perhaps expecting me, and had been paid or persuaded to disable or kill me. Perhaps he wasn’t really a Talib at all. Perhaps Sattar, on whom my suspicion has largely fallen, has been watching the house, seen me leaving on Mondays and Tuesdays, and arranged for the Talib to intercept me on my return. The planning and effort involved in this, as well as the fact that a much simpler method could have been found to make me disappear, render it unlikely.
