Operation Certain Death

by Kim Hughes

  ‘You start moving those people out of there now,’ said Riley quietly, indicating the Circus once more.

  ‘If you’ll step aside. Leave it to the professionals.’

  What a knob.

  Riley didn’t need Nick’s chippy voice coming into his head then, stirring things up. He walked away, temper held at a light simmer, aware of a cauldron of pure fury somewhere deep within him. He knew enough to keep that screwed down tight. As he paced the perimeter, his boots crunched over glass. He looked down at the debris at his feet, flung over the roofs of the shops. Not just a thick icing of glass, but twisted chairs, tables, cans of beer, coffee cups and dozens of paper items, carried on the deadly thermals. And a child’s shoe. Brand new. He hoped it had been from a store and not…

  He almost ducked as the drone came buzzing by overhead. The British Army had used them – officially they were UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – in Afghan. They could be useful, especially in scanning for any disturbed earth that might suggest a bomb or checking for secondary devices. However, as holidaymakers at Gatwick discovered over Christmas 2018, UAVs could also be a fucking nuisance. And considerably more than that in Afghan, where they would hover over you while you were trying to paint the sand and expose wires. It often made it hard to concentrate on the job in hand. Which was, simply put, not being blown to kingdom come. Also, it was a good way of pinpointing your location to any watching Taliban mortar teams.

  But who would be deploying one here? Maybe the media, but they knew the army or police had instructions to shoot them out of the sky or neutralise the UAV altogether using jamming technology if they crossed the ‘restricted airspace’ above any incident. Maybe one of the CTUs? They liked their toys, those lads and lasses.

  Riley turned and looked back at the cluster of people by the arched entrance to the Circus, at the corporal unloading the gear from the truck. Nichols and Spike were already inside. He could also see that many of the first responders were being ushered out to safety. Good, he thought.

  He took out his personal phone and pressed ‘Recent’. He could use this downtime to reassure Ruby that he was okay. She was bound to have seen the news and – not knowing about his suspension – would assume he was involved.

  But Riley didn’t get a chance to call. He never heard the second explosion as it ripped through the Circus because the blast wave hit him like a giant fist, stole the breath from his body, lifted him off his feet and dropped him into darkness.

  EIGHT

  Kate Muraski held Clifford-Brown’s gaze, refusing to be totally cowed by the old man. The atmosphere in the room was suddenly heavy on her shoulders, the smell of ancient tobacco nauseating. She tapped the photo with an authority she didn’t feel she had earned. ‘He was your asset, wasn’t he? Operation Tornado. An echo of the American’s Operation Cyclone.’

  Clifford-Brown seemed to relax a little. ‘I suppose the Home Secretary has said we security services should co-operate.’

  ‘That’s how I got to the Tornado files.’

  ‘You have them there?’ He nodded at the attaché case on her lap.

  ‘Afraid not. I had to go into the bowels of VX to read them.’ Vauxhall Cross, MI6’s less-than-secret HQ on the Thames, was very, very reluctantly letting MI5 – Kate Muraski’s outfit – go over reports that had Strap 1 and 2 clearance, that is one and two levels above Top Secret. Strap 3 – the highest security designation – could only be inspected with the blessing of the PM or Foreign Secretary. However, she didn’t want Clifford-Brown to know just how much – or little – she had accessed, so she kept quiet about the fact that she had not even been allowed to take notes while reading the Tornado files.

  There was a tap at the door and Barbara entered with a tray of coffee and some biscuits. ‘Thank you, darling,’ said the old duffer version of Clifford-Brown, deftly sliding the photograph off the table and out of sight. There were a few minutes of fussing as cups and saucers were passed out and digestives refused and Barbara withdrew with a final: ‘Roast beef sandwiches for lunch, sweetie.’

  ‘Lovely.’ He placed the photograph back in play. It showed Clifford-Brown, more youthful and slimmer of face, standing next to a bearded man in traditional Afghan dress. The young man was grinning widely. Clifford-Brown stood awkwardly, as if wishing the earth would swallow him. Spooks don’t like having their picture taken. Even when they are pretending to be diplomats.

  ‘You have to remember that when the Russian’s 40th Army went into Afghanistan, back in… when was it?’

  You know perfectly well, you wily old bastard. You were on the next plane to Islamabad. You threw off the desk shackles of DoP and went back into the field, one last time.

  ‘Nineteen seventy-nine,’ Muraski prompted.

  ‘Yes. That would be about right. When they went in, we were faced with the prospect of Russia’s… well, strictly speaking the USSR’s borders suddenly expanding to include Iran and a thousand miles of Pakistan.’

  Was this the time to get to the nub of the matter? That neither SIS or Clifford-Brown had clean hands when it came to the murky history of covert warfare in Afghanistan? She held her nerve for a little longer. Baby steps.

  ‘And you, SIS I mean, felt you had to do something about that?’

  ‘Well, back then we weren’t in the habit of just sitting on our hands.’

  She fired her big gun. ‘So you backed the insurgency. You supported the Mujahideen.’

  He sipped his coffee, apparently unperturbed by her statement. ‘Not me personally. The US and France were the main instigators. But we, the British government, did agree to shipping some armaments.’

  ‘Blowpipe anti-aircraft missiles.’

  ‘About six hundred of them. Then some of our people worked with Pakistan’s SSG. That’s—’

  ‘Special Services Group.’

  If he was impressed at her diligence it didn’t register. ‘Indeed. We set up training camps. We also had a dedicated non-lethal unit. My idea. Train the rebels – or as Mrs Thatcher called them, freedom fighters – how to disrupt electricity supplies, phone lines and the like, without mass casualties.’

  Non-lethal bomb-makers? It seemed ridiculously naïve now, she supposed, given the kinds of bombs set off in Kabul and Baghdad. Maybe things looked different then. After all, the IRA tried a campaign against property, not people, on the UK mainland. That didn’t always work out, though. ‘And this man was… what?’

  There was a lengthy pause, as if he was deciding whether to answer such an impertinent question from one so junior. ‘Oh, he was my eyes and ears. My Pashto was never very good. He could report back on the quality of training. You see we outsourced a lot of the training to private security firms. They had plenty of ex-Special Forces on The Circuit who could do the job. SAS, SBS. Mainly teaching demolition, sabotage.’

  Mainly.

  ‘Then you could claim clean hands.’

  ‘Clean-ish. We were footing the bill, after all. Anyway, he was good enough to become an instructor.’

  Instructor in what exactly? ‘The thing about bombs is it’s very easy to switch targets from pylons to people. To mosques and marketplaces.’

  The hardness came back into his eyes. ‘Miss Muraski, I did my job for a long time—’

  ‘I’ve read your file.’

  This didn’t seem to slow him one jot. ‘I started in Special Operations Executive. Force 136 out of Ceylon. I’d only just got there when the war ended. Bloody annoying. SOE was disbanded, but luckily SIS picked me up. I was in Berlin for the airlift, Seoul during the Korean War, Hanoi for Dien Bien Phu, Bangkok during the Vietnam War, Paris for the student riots, Washington for Watergate…’

  ‘I know all this.’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen the political landscape shift dozens of times. Moscow is our enemy, Moscow is our friend, no, hold on, it’s our enemy again. And don’t get me started on South America or the Saudis. So, yes, we did train them—’

  Muraski played her trump, hoping she had timed it
correctly. ‘Here.’

  Clifford-Brown put his head to one side. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Gotcha. ‘You trained people like the man we have tagged Bravo-900. He went by the name Yousaf Ali at this time.’ She nodded at his photograph, skipping the fact he was also called ‘Bomb Ali’ at one point. Nicknames muddied already murky waters.

  ‘Bravo-900 was trained here, in this country,’ she continued. ‘Yes, you had your privately run camps over there. But a Mujahideen like Bravo-900, a potential guerrilla commander, you would smuggle into this country as a tourist, with three or four others. And then you would train them at secret camps in Scotland. You taught the Mujahideen to make bombs in this country. Bombs that were later used against British forces in Afghanistan.’

  ‘Much later.’ He drained his coffee and sniffed. For the first time she thought she caught a flicker of concern in his expression. ‘Are you judging me, Miss Muraski?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘It sounds as if you are.’

  She wasn’t making a judgement about an operation that, in retrospect, might seem foolish or naïve. Five and Six’s archives were stuffed full of such undertakings. And hindsight could be a harsh mistress. All she wanted was some straightforward answers.

  ‘I am trying to get the full backstory. It took me a long time to find out about Camp Zero. I believe that was also your idea. And that you implemented it. You brought them back here for training.’

  She watched him carefully. Again, his expression gave little away. But she knew he had dreamt up the training scheme. His name and initials were all over the files she had examined. ‘It might have been my idea. Although it would have needed C’s approval. It was a marriage of convenience.’

  Which became very inconvenient when the Mujahideen became the Taliban and started using skills forged in SAS-run training schools to attack US and British troops. In a way, the British and Americans helped kick-start the global jihad. But she kept quiet about that. Clifford-Brown knew what the consequences of Western interference in the Afghan-Russian war had been as well as anyone.

  ‘And, yes, Yousaf later became one of the key bomb-makers for the Taliban. He was an HVT for years. But we never got him.’ HVT was High Value Target – on a government-approved kill list. ‘Mainly worked his horrible magic in US-controlled areas, so in a way he didn’t turn on those who trained him.’

  ‘That’s a very fine distinction, given the Americans were our allies.’

  ‘Granted.’ He sounded impatient now. He wanted her gone. ‘So, why are you bringing pictures of Yousaf to me?’

  Time to let the dog see the rabbit. Muraski laid out the next set of photographs. They had been harvested from grainy CCTV footage, taken at dusk. It was possibly, although not definitely, the same man as in the earlier picture, but older, greyer and dressed in tracksuit bottoms, trainers and a stained Gap hoodie rather than traditional Pashtun garb. There was still a beard, but it was neatly trimmed, close to his face.

  ‘These were taken in Caen. As you are doubtless aware, a lot of the people-smugglers have switched to the western routes across the Channel, now Calais and Dunkirk are locked down pretty tight.’

  Clifford-Brown grunted. ‘When were these taken?’

  ‘Three weeks ago. Although we only received them for facial-recognition scans four days ago.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The scans only gave us 60 per cent probability of a match at best. So we need to be certain. We need HUMINT on this.’ Human Intelligence. Not machines. ‘Is it him?’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  She said nothing.

  After a moment’s stonewalling, the old spy leaned forward and sorted through the pictures. Eventually he stopped at one that showed a clear shot of the subject’s face.

  Clifford-Brown gave a sigh and put the image down. ‘I’m sorry. I think you must be mistaken. I’m afraid I really don’t know who this man is. It certainly isn’t Yousaf Ali.’

  Muraski kept her own features impassive, but inside her head, an angry voice was shouting: If you are lying and if people die because of it, Henry Clifford-Brown, I’ll make sure you pay.

  * * *

  Barbara Clifford-Brown walked Muraski out to her Mini with a claw-like hand pressed firmly in the small of the younger woman’s back, as if escorting her off the premises. Muraski assumed she was keen to get back to preparing the roast beef sandwiches for ‘sweetie’. How much did she know about what he had been up to over the years? For some Service wives, ignorance was, if not bliss, then the preferred option. Others needled every detail out of their spouse, at least once the information was no longer operationally sensitive.

  ‘So how did a nice young lady like you get into this mucky business?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘Oh, the usual. University, someone spotted me, interview in London, weekend away in a secret location for silly games…’

  The real answer was: actually, my mother was a spy. Or rather an analyst at GCHQ’s Scottish satellite station, initially, before becoming a recruiter of likely talent at universities north of the border. Muraski had known since her teens that her mother was involved in ‘important government work’. Which was family code for something anti-Soviet.

  Her parents and extended family had never forgiven the USSR for its callous treatment of Poland and its citizens, both during and after the war. Even in the post-Wall honeymoon years, when the new Russia was the West’s latest friend, the Muraskis had remained suspicious and cynical. Then came the nobbled US election, Salisbury, the Hague… They felt vindicated and, truth be told, a little smug that their instincts had been correct.

  Even before the poisonings and penetrations by Russia’s security services, by the time she was seventeen, Muraski had known she wanted to be involved in the Defence of the Realm. Her older brother Miles had decided on life as a journalist and writer, like her father, but she wanted to follow the maternal career line. Sadly, Muraski lacked her mother’s mathematical brain. To compensate, she was much sportier than her – netball, horse riding, hockey, and, it turned out, a crack shot. Not that she had ever fired a gun in genuine action. In fact, she had only drawn one from the armoury once. It had never left the holster. Still, she did monthly sessions at the range to keep up her Firearm Proficient status.

  Her mother had – after feigning reluctance – made enquiries about having Muraski interviewed. Get a degree, they said, so she did – Slavonic Studies at Cambridge, which was when she reverted to the family’s original Polish surname – and was then fast-tracked through to MI5. Right from the start she knew it was GRU and its various shadowy tentacles that she wanted to hunt. She saw it as carrying on a family tradition. But getting into the Russian section was not easy, even though she had a decent, if rusty, command of the language. She needed a ‘spectacular’, a coup that would send her star into the ascendency. Which is why she was bothering to interview these two old lovebirds.

  ‘Doesn’t give you much time for boyfriends though, eh?’ Barbara said.

  ‘Not really.’ They reached the Mini and Muraski pressed the fob to unlock it. ‘Thank you for the coffee.’

  Muraski opened the door, keen to be on her way now. Not wanting to dwell on the fact the old bat was right. It was only a day or so since she had opened her book of Break-up Clichés 101 with Toby: ‘It’s not you. It’s me.’ It was, in fact, the Service’s fault. It didn’t like nosy partners and Toby had become very interested in her ‘office job’. The upshot was one dumped boyfriend and a spy who needed to find somewhere else to live.

  She reached in and placed the attaché case on the passenger seat, straightened up and held out her hand. It wasn’t taken.

  ‘You know, I’m rather alarmed, Miss Muraski, that Henry seemed a little upset at the end of your meeting…’

  Her hand went to Muraski’s wrist and a jolt of electricity seemed to travel up it to her shoulder. She yelped and snatched her hand away. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘The thing is, Miss Muraski, if y
ou dare come here and do anything to make my husband unhappy ever again, I shall break your fucking neck.’ For a second Barbara’s face was a mask of sheer malice before her features relaxed back into benign civility. ‘Have a nice drive back to London.’

  Barbara Clifford-Brown turned on her heel and crunched back over the gravel.

  Muraski watched the door close and rubbed her wrist. Then she burst out laughing. Had she really just been threatened – and possibly assaulted – by someone with the body weight of a canary? She realised she had underestimated the wife. She, too, must have been in the ‘firm’ and Muraski had missed it in the files. She cursed herself. She had to do better than that.

  As she climbed in behind the wheel a phone buzzed in the case. The office one. She quickly slid the locks and grabbed it. The device was encrypted, but even so, the message from Thames House comms could only be interpreted by someone who knew a swathe of the code words. As she did.

  Grenadier.

  Terrorist bomb on UK mainland. Casualties.

  Then: Coldstream.

  Her heart gave a little judder in her chest as she mentally decoded the text.

  All hands on deck.

  NINE

  Riley came back to consciousness seconds after he had hit the deck. He had put his arms out to break his fall. The cracked screen on his phone was evidence of that. He rolled onto his side and got to his feet. He took it slow, aware that he could be concussed or worse, and did a quick body check. No major limb loss or even wounds he could find. Angry flies buzzing in his ears, which was normal in the aftermath of a detonation. Blood in his mouth, but his tongue located the tear in his lip where he had bitten through the skin. Christ, even the secondary had packed a punch.

  Riley scanned the sky, looking for the drone, wondering if it was hovering like visual carrion, picking images from the carnage. But he couldn’t see it and, given the state of his ears and the racket around him, certainly couldn’t hear it.

  Only then did Riley look over at the Circus, at the fresh plume of dark smoke dispersing over the area, carrying with it the smell of more death. He began to face up to what he was seeing, assessing each fact in turn, so as not to overwhelm himself. There had been a secondary. Spike must be dead. Nichols, most likely dead. Other First Responders, too.