A Special Relationship [antikvár]

One About an hour after I met Tony Hobbs, he saved my life. I know^ that sounds just a little melodramatic, but it's the truth. Or, at least, as true as anything a journalist will tell you. I was in Somalia - a country I had never visited until I got a call in Cairo and suddenly found myself dispatched there. It was a Friday afternoon — the Muslim Holy Day. Like most foreign correspondents in the Egyptian capital, I was using the official day of rest to do just that. I was sunning myself beside the pool of the Gezira Club - the former haunt of British officers during the reign of King Farouk, but now the domain of the Cairene beau monde and assorted foreigners who'd been posted to the Egyptian capital. Even though the sun is a constant commodity in Egypt, it is something that most correspondents based there rarely get to see. Especially if, like me, they are bargain basement one-person operations, covering the entire Middle East and all of eastern Africa. Which is why I got that call on that Friday afternoon. 'Is this Sally Goodchild?' asked an American voice I hadn't heard before. 'That's right,' I said, sitting upright and holding the cell phone tightly to my ear in an attempt to block out a quartet of babbling Egyptian matrons sitting beside me. 'Who's this?' 'Dick Leonard from the paper.' 1