Operation Snowdrop

by Michelle Medhat

  “He’s Matthew Llewellyn Kinley, British Intelligence, MI6. I have no idea why he is here. He was not involved in Operation Aphrodite.”

  I try not to let anyone see that I’m holding my breath as I watch Sabena search into Dan’s eyes for any indication of a lie.

  She finds none.

  Poor Dan, he has no idea why I’m here.

  “But I can see he’s a fucking traitor!” shouts Dan.

  This time, I don’t detect the same level of hate. Maybe he’s figured it out. I’ll never know. Sabena thrusts my Sig into my hand.

  “I’m satisfied. Kill him, Mr. Kinley. He’s making a mess on the floor!”

  I stand up and walk toward Dan. He looks up at me. He wants me to release him from his suffering. He’s telling me through his eyes that it’s a mercy killing. I fortify myself with this knowledge.

  “Enjoy yourself, Mr. Kinley. He’s part of the Firm you hate.”

  I pull back the action and aim.

  God forgive me.

  Angie forgive me.

  But I know I’m beyond forgiveness.

  I feel something inside of me embrace the darkness. With a true hatred of myself and everything Six has forced me to become, I scream.

  “Fuck you all!”

  I pull the trigger and carry on firing and screaming until the mag is empty.

  I’m shaking. Sabena sees my rage and hatred. It’s all true, but it’s not aimed at Dan.

  It’s aimed at me.

  Thankfully, Sabena stands in front of Dan’s pulverized body. She takes the gun and gives it to one of the thugs. She then holds my face in her hands. There’s still Dan’s blood on them, and I can feel it touch my skin.

  I hold down the vomit that is rising within me.

  “Babes, darling, you’ve done well. You’ve shown me the truth of your words. Let’s celebrate your arrival and talk about your new rank in Al Nadir.”

  Somehow, and I still don’t know how, I smile like I’m reveling in what I’m doing, and I turn away from the hideous atrocity I have been part of. I clock the stance of the guards. It has changed dramatically. Their guns face down, not pointing at me. No one attempts to cuff or manhandle me.

  I’m regarded by Al Nadir’s thugs with the utmost respect. I find the flipping of the situation ironic; I have no respect for myself.

  Sabena snakes her hands around my waist and pulls me to her.

  “I knew I was right about you. I can’t wait to rub Salim’s face in it!”

  As Sabena says the words, I realize the worst is yet to come. Convincing Sabena of my loyalty to Al Nadir has split my soul. But convincing Salim may just destroy it completely.

  Chapter 31

  Four Months Later

  The horticulture website flickered in front of Sir Justin Maide’s eyes. The images on the screen changed and Maide finished decoding the message that had been embedded within the images of innocuous flowers and plants.

  TNA

  28 6 13

  11

  P C TUBE

  B A

  FIN

  Maide glared at the message, the vein in his temple pushing hard as his blood pressure threatened his body again. The statins weren’t helping, and God knows, Snowdrop certainly wasn’t either.

  TNA. Take No Action.

  The rest of message, he could do nothing about, as it would seriously jeopardize Snowdrop’s position. FIN at the end indicated that this was to be Al Nadir’s final test. The mother of all tests. The big one. The one he, Ashton, Sam and Kinley always knew in their dark hearts would come one day.

  Maide picked up the phone and dialed Ashton’s number.

  “Sir, it has arrived. We need to talk. River House. Now.”

  Ashton didn’t ask for further elucidation. He just said, “I’ll be there.”

  Maide rang off swiftly and made another call.

  “Sam, it has arrived. We need to talk. River House. Now.”

  By nineteen hundred hours, Sam joined Ashton and Maide in the Obsidian Cave in the bowels of River House.

  Sam picked up the message and spoke everyone’s feelings.

  “We can’t let this go.”

  “We can’t let this not go,” responded Ashton, his voice edged in granite.

  “Kinley gave us this heads-up for a reason. We have to protect the British public,” said Sam, staring down Ashton. He didn’t give a shit if Ashton was the PM, he wasn’t going to sign up to state-sanctioned murder.

  “What’s wrong with you, Sam?” snapped Ashton. “You and Kinley always knew it would come down to this. God, we even spoke about it in this very room a few months ago.”

  Sam recalled that meeting. Some of the bullets in Dan matched Kinley’s Sig. He didn’t know what had happened between Sabena and Kinley, but it had been enough for Kinley to get in quick. But Sam had always known that, whatever way Sabena tested Kinley, it would never be enough for Al Douri. He’d want one definitive show of loyalty that was unquestionable.

  “If we take action and send sniffer dogs and bomb detection systems into Piccadilly Circus underground, Al Nadir will know Kinley hasn’t really turned. Snowdrop will be burned, and we’ll have lost the best chance we’ve had to break Al Douri.”

  Maide delivered the state of play address in his ice cold, calculating way. Ashton nodded, agreeing to every word. Both men looked at Sam.

  He hated it. He hated what he knew they had to do.

  After Florence, as per Operation Snowdrop’s mission brief, Kinley returned a week later to Washington DC and back to his cover job in STEE. Kinley also slipped back into MI6, and continued as a high-ranking field operative, as before, with full top-level security clearance.

  Nothing had changed.

  No word passed between the four of them about Florence.

  They never spoke of Operation Snowdrop. All four knew Al Nadir had eyes everywhere, even in Six, and most certainly in the British Embassy in Washington.

  It was as though Florence never happened.

  Sabena stayed very much alive.

  Summanus ended up in Al Nadir’s hands. The box Sam had snatched had been a high-end 3D printed model. Whilst the auction had commenced, followed by the deadly firefight, Al Nadir operatives stormed the Presidential Suite, killing all of Ilya’s backup guards. They stole the laptops and a metal case in which the real Summanus was housed.

  Al Nadir claimed responsibility for taking out his team. In Sam’s mind, he could still see Greg, Jim and Dan falling as bullets ripped them apart.

  And he’d done nothing.

  He’d saved himself and a piece of junk.

  But Sam knew that if he’d gone back in, he’d have been wiped out with his colleagues. It would have been futile and meaningless to mission objectives. Survival had been the only play open to him.

  Sam lurched back to reality with a jolt as he heard Ashton snarling, “Sam, are you in on this? Let’s show those Al Nadir motherfuckers that we have balls.”

  Sam couldn’t quite see how not doing anything whilst Al Nadir willfully destroyed members of the public on a tube demonstrated that the UK had balls. Looking at Ashton’s face, his eyes glaring and wild, Sam decided not to dwell on the matter.

  “So are you in?”

  “Okay,” said Sam, hanging his head low. A feeling of utter shame had taken him.

  “Okay what?” pressed Ashton.

  “We’ll do nothing to stop this,” said Sam finally.

  Ashton looked back at Maide.

  “From this day, we agree never to speak of Operation Snowdrop, Kinley or this thing.” Ashton pointed to the message.

  “What is the potential CDE?” asked Sam.

  “We’ve just agreed not to speak about it,” snapped Ashton, fixing Sam with a murderous glare.

  “I know, but I’m just getting an understanding on what our liability is, if this was to ever come out. What would the collateral damage be?”

  “Late June. Tourists. Shoppers. Workers. Eleven in the morning. Best case, two hu
ndred and fifty. Worst case, three thousand.” Maide gave it to Sam straight, and Sam blanched at the numbers.

  “The public would lynch us,” muttered Sam, still trying to process the scale.

  “Sam, the public wouldn’t just lynch us, there would be complete fucking anarchy. They’d storm Parliament. It wouldn’t just bring down the Government, it would destroy us completely.” Ashton, like Maide, didn’t hold back. “That’s why we must never mention this again.”

  “Right, so we agree. This meeting never happened,” said Maide sharply.

  “Agreed,” stated Ashton hurriedly. Sam could see he wanted to leave.

  “Agreed,” said Sam.

  They had no choice.

  They’d gotten so far with Snowdrop. They couldn’t turn back now. They had to go the rest of the way.

  Sam had only one hope. He hoped the future lives saved would outweigh the lives they’d just agreed, in unison, to sacrifice.

  Chapter 32

  I feel her body next to me. She’s snoring like a curled up little puppy. She’s in REM sleep.

  I’m doing that spooning position she loves. Her body is soft and warm. I reach forward and touch her. I look at my hands as they move, gentle against her face. Hands that have done unspeakable things.

  By the very action of touching something so innocent, have I poisoned the purity within?

  I try to kiss her, but I pull back. I know where these lips have been, and, like my hands, they have no business falling upon something so virtuous.

  She moves back into me and snuggles beneath my body. I turn and fold my arms around her. She opens an eye and half smiles, but not completely; her consciousness hasn’t taken over and she’s partially in a dream state.

  “Darling, I love you,” she says, her green eyes full of rapture for me. It was the same response I’d had when I met her back in Athens all those years ago, and although I have changed irreparably, she hasn’t.

  But would it change if she knew what I did?

  Being a field operative for Six, even on dark missions, still inferred within me a sense of right and wrong. I was still working for the good guys, and as devastating as those missions had been, I’d had that confirmation reinforcing my actions, and somehow, I could take it.

  This time, the lines aren’t blurred, they are nonexistent.

  I’ve leapt off the precipice into the unknown.

  Becoming a global senior lieutenant in Al Nadir has demanded me to go through and act out the most horrendous things. Things I never believed I was capable of.

  But I did them.

  I pushed against my own moral boundaries until they collapsed. Leave your humanity at the door, Sam had told me. With what I’ve done over the past four months, I’ve had to forget I am human at all.

  I know all of it was to bring down Al Nadir but I still haven’t got any further with that goal. All it seems I’ve done so far is for the benefit of Al Nadir. I’ve given intel, revealing, torturing and killing my fellow agents, provided EmTech and shown the location of hidden black accounts. But all this just gave those bastards more leverage to destroy my country.

  You’ll never believe it, but I am fiercely patriotic. That’s why I know this mission has to work. I can’t sit back and watch my country go to hell.

  My activities have scored well with Sabena, who accelerated my position within the terrorist collective, but I’m still not completely in with Al Douri. He regards me with lingering suspicion. Sabena has tried to work on him to change his mind, but he’s in waiting mode, waiting for me to mess up my sincerity and loyalty to Al Nadir and show my true self.

  That reason has driven my decision.

  ‘Accelerate your buy-in to Al Nadir. Get to Al Douri faster’.

  Those were my instructions from Maide, embedded and heavily encoded in the innocuous plant images on the encrypted horticulture website that Maide had set up for my communication channel.

  I recall, with a shiver, lying in bed with Sabena. It was only a few days ago. We were in her private suite of the Palace Residence on her Al Nadir-owned private island known as Sanctum in the Caribbean.

  I had just shared my concern about Al Douri still not accepting me. Sabena propped herself up on her elbow, and using the tip of her forefinger nail, she traced the line of my chest over my taut, hard stomach, and down, down. Then gripped me tight.

  “You’ve got to show him you’ve got the balls to go the distance, darling. Give him the something that makes your loyalty to Al Nadir completely irrefutable.”

  Thrown by the fact Sabena knew what I needed to do, I struggled to keep my voice measured.

  “But what is that?”

  “Your silence.”

  I stared at Sabena, unable to see into her chaotic mind. She grinned like a child who has been given a secret and their urge to tell it is impossible to resist.

  “On June 28, Piccadilly Circus Tube Station will face an unprecedented attack. Multiple bombs everywhere. The method, oh you’ll love this…”

  I felt sick. I prayed nothing showed in my face. Sabena’s lightning fast at reading people’s nuances. She almost smells a liar.

  She was still excited, wittering on, and I knew I was safe. For now.

  “It’s an explosive adhesive connected to nano RFIDs embedded within the adhesive mix. Right now, we’ve got maintenance guys in there replacing the posters on the carriages, and we’re fixing the new posters with our adhesive explosive. We’re equipping both lines in both directions. It’ll be fucking carnage. It’ll cripple central London. Five, Six, Special Branch, the Met, they won’t know what’s hit them!”

  I pushed a smile and rubbed serpent Sabena’s back.

  “Why tell me this?” I asked, more than a little wary of what this intelligence meant to my future in Al Nadir.

  “You’ve only been on the give line, telling us about intel, agents, tech, accounts. But this is different. This is the first time we’ve told you about one of our big operations. It puts you on the take line. The ultimate test of your loyalty. It isn’t about killing a few agents and getting intel to bring down MI6. This, my darling, is a show of strength from us, telling the weak and shallow UK Government they can’t even protect their own citizens from the power that is Al Nadir.”

  Sabena kissed my neck, pinching my skin with her teeth like a wild animal. I closed my eyes, indicating my enjoyment.

  But I wanted to hide the relief in my eyes.

  This was it. What I’d been waiting for. Their trust to allow me into one of their operations.

  Sabena climbed on top of me and leaned forward, her full but firm breasts brushing against my cheek.

  “Are you ok with that, Mr. Kinley?” Sabena’s softly questioning tone caused alarm, so I overcompensated. Laughing loudly, I gripped hold of Sabena’s hips, exhilarated.

  “Fuck yes! This is what I want. This is always what I’ve wanted!”

  Sabena stared into me with her black, soul-penetrating eyes and smiled. She moved up onto me and sank down, sighing with pleasure.

  “Babes, I know that’s what you want.”

  She clamped with vicious tightness around me and grabbed my shoulders. Her lips descended onto mine, her tongue invading me with savage thoroughness. I responded as per expected for my role.

  Sabena pulled back from my mouth, still riding me fast, and I sensed something in her sinister smile. She touched my cheek.

  “If, however, we find out it isn’t what you want, if we hear that Six takes measures to counter the bombing, and believe me, we have back channels to find that out, your beautiful wife, Angie, and that adorable addition to the family, lovely Lotte, will be taken and we’ll return them back to you over the course of a week.”

  Sabena held my eye.

  I didn’t swallow nor show fear. Such reactions would have indicated that there was reason for me to be fearful. Again, my mind preparation before the mission had conditioned my response.

  I knew Sabena would eventually use my family as a target. I wa
s actually surprised it had taken her four months to do so. As abhorrent as her words were, it wasn’t anything like the other shit I’d had to wallow in and endure.

  It was now about keeping focus, maintaining Sabena’s happiness, and delivering on a promise to stay silent. Heed those rules, and Angie and Lotte were safe. As part of the compartmentalization process and a need to bury my true self, I rarely thought about my family. Just thinking about them invested in me too much humanity.

  I wasn’t the man Angie had married when I was Al Nadir.

  I wasn’t the man who held his daughter, Lotte, in his arms when I was Al Nadir

  I was the man who could laugh about the possibility of his family being massacred and mutilated whilst in the arms of a sadistic, psychopathic sex slut who was deputy commander of a terrorist organisation.

  Sabena tussled with my hair and whispered in my ear.

  “But I know with you that will never happen. I see it in you. That dark hatred for those in power in the UK. Don’t worry, babes. We’ll feed the media suggestions that the security forces had intel that could have prevented the attack, had they followed up properly. You know, the usual line. We’ll let the populist culture and social media do the rest. By June 29, with the death toll in thousands, the government will be struggling to survive.”

  Back in the present, I forcibly expunge that memory from my mind and look at Angie curled around my chest. My arm lies over her, protective, defying everything that I have now become. But I know that everything I do is to build a future where Al Nadir no longer ravage this planet at will.

  Chapter 33

  Five Months Later

  Ellie Noor left the meeting in the Strand. She’d been hot and stuffy in her client’s claustrophobic meeting. It had been held in one of those inner rooms that modern offices have where there is no natural daylight, and all the workers within are at the mercy of energy-sucking fluorescent lights.

  Ellie strolled down The Strand in the direction of Trafalgar Square. She walked over to Pall Mall and then on to St James Street, and finally to Piccadilly.