Operation Certain Death

by Kim Hughes

  ‘For now. We’re getting closer.’

  ‘Dad, be careful. Please.’

  He felt himself well up a little at the concern in her words. Must be even more tired than he thought. ‘Always, darling. Always. I’ll see you soon. You take care.’

  ‘And you take double-double care. Love you.’

  She clicked off before he could reply in kind. Riley waited a few minutes before he went back and sat down with Scooby again. There were fresh coffees on the table and he took a sip of one. ‘Sorry. I’m all yours. What was it?’

  ‘The drone. I looked at your photograph of the one at the school. Good job you’re an ATO, because you’d starve as a snapper. But there was better incidental footage of the one at Nottingham. They were the same make and model, best I could tell. I was involved in buying six similar drones for the London Fire Brigade. The Met are interested too. They are JCKs, commonly called Jacks. Israeli-made. They are very robust, totally battle-hardened, with four-hour endurance and a range of well over a hundred miles. Brilliant but fuckin’ expensive.’

  ‘And they used a Jack? The bombers?’

  ‘No. I looked at the footage very closely. The Chinese, of course, make a copy. JAX, they call them. Almost indistinguishable, and not quite as good in operation, but a third of the price. I looked into getting one of those when I was sourcing the LFB Jacks. But…’

  ‘But.’

  ‘With the LFB and especially the Met you have to be sure of what you are buying. That they are fit for purpose – remember Boris’s bargain water cannons? – and that the company you buy from is above board. The fake Jacks are marketed through a company in Dubai. Halo Trading.’

  ‘Owned by…?’ Riley asked.

  ‘At first glance, a UEA conglomerate. But a major investor is a company called Mozart. It’s involved in post-war exploitation of assets as well as distributing military hardware in Syria.’

  ‘Syria?’

  ‘There’s also a Wagner operating there. A Beethoven and a Handel. They’re all Russian in one way or another. I’m just surprised there isn’t a Tchaikovsky or a Shostakovich.’

  Riley let this sink in. This fitted in with the half-formed theory that he and Muraski had about Jihadists as the front men of the apocalypse for Russian mischief-makers.

  ‘It might do. Does Halo have a distributor here?’

  ‘I called them. One man in a unit in Stevenage, it sounds like. Worth checking out, but I don’t think he’s Goldfinger. Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr Bond—’

  ‘Scooby.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Riley’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he answered it while Scooby went off for more sugar. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Muraski.’

  ‘You okay? I thought you were at a funeral.’

  ‘I am. I’ve sneaked out.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I just got a call on something. To do with you. Can you be at my office in an hour or so?’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I think I know how your DNA got into that bomb.’

  * * *

  The item was delivered by a forensic technician and laid out on a rubber mat on the table in Boardroom D. Oakham, Riley and Muraski stood and stared at the plastic-encased cloth for a good few minutes before Riley finally spoke.

  ‘It’s mine,’ he said.

  ‘How come it was sent to you?’ asked Oakham. Five’s TAP on Riley had included interception of suspicious mail. The black and white square of material before them had been sent by courier to his barracks. It had been intercepted en route from a depot in North London. There was no return address.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘And the blood?’ asked Muraski, pointing to the dark patches that disrupted the pattern. ‘Also yours?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. If I’m right, the blood isn’t mine. The scarf is. It’s from Afghan. The bomber must have sent this to me.’

  ’Why would he do that now?’ asked Oakham.

  But Riley had left the room. He was back inside Nick’s head, watching the lead-up to the command wire detonating the IED that blew his legs off.

  It was hard to tell how young Moe was, because like all interpreters in Afghan, his face was almost permanently covered by a scarf, so he couldn’t be recognised by any Taliban scanning us through binoculars or sniper scope. Recognition would mean certain death for him and his family. That very morning the Boss had given the lad his own shemagh scarf, just to make certain he was properly masked up. Now only his dark, sad eyes were visible.

  ‘Riley?’ Oakham’s insistent voice cut through the memory.

  Riley struggled to keep his voice steady. ‘I had a friend, Nick, another ATO. He was killed trying to defuse an IED in Afghan. I remember everything about that day. Including that I gave this scarf to a terp, an interpreter we called Moe. All the terps covered their faces when out in the field. It helped protect them from being identified by the Taliban. For some reason, his had become too small, ripped, shrunk in the wash, I don’t remember. So, I gave him mine.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Muraski.

  ‘After Nick triggered the IED we came under fire. A stray bullet bounced off a hull and went through Moe’s head.’

  ‘It killed him?’ asked Oakham.

  ‘Yes. Well…’ Riley’s words stalled into silence.

  ‘What?’ Muraski prompted.

  ‘Well, I always assumed so. We never saw him again. AK round through the head, you just assume…’ Riley felt the two cups of milky coffee he had drunk with Scooby congeal in his stomach. ‘I was so fucked up about Nick, I didn’t even… We had a whip round and sent money to the family. Asked how he was. We never heard anything. Assumed they were grief-stricken and angry and that he must be dead. But after that, we had a new terp and… you move on. You don’t look back.’ He was sounding defensive and he knew it. But people who hadn’t been there would never understand what Ms Carver would doubtless call coping mechanisms. You had to ask people like Battle of Britain pilots or Bomber Command crews how to cope when you lost colleagues day in, day out. They knew what a toll it took.

  ‘It seems someone has been looking back,’ said Oakham.

  ‘It doesn’t mean Moe isn’t dead,’ said Riley. ‘It could be family out for revenge, blaming the British Army.’

  ‘But it might be why your DNA was on one of the bomb circuits in Nottingham. Deliberately. Look.’ Muraski pointed to a clean corner where a small square had been clipped off.

  ‘It’s been about me this whole time?’ Riley asked, trying not to feel the weight of responsibility for the dead and maimed of Sillitoe Circus.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Muraski. ‘But weren’t the interpreters allowed to settle here? Once the war was over.’

  Over? Try telling that to the Afghans, Riley thought. The war never ended, it just changed direction.

  It was Oakham who answered. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some,’ corrected Riley. ‘Not all. You had to have served twelve months with ISAF and be considered to be in danger if you remained over there. Originally, they got five-year visas for themselves and close relatives. I think they extended that. Gave them the right to remain indefinitely.’

  ‘And allowed an extra four hundred in,’ Oakham said. ‘Which was a security headache for us.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Why send this to you now?’

  ‘A warning?’ suggested Muraski.

  Oakham huffed his disagreement. ‘I think Nottingham and the car bomb were sufficient warning.’ He scratched the side of his face, worrying at a small crop of bristles he had missed while shaving that morning. ‘The Home Office insisted on DNA testing for all the Afghan nationals when they resettled here. Remember? It was deemed illegal a while back. An infringement of their human rights.’ The slight sneer in the final sentence was almost undetectable.

  Riley saw where he was going. ‘Would the Home Office still have the samples?’

  ‘Possibly. In the way of all bureaucracies, eit
her they destroyed the samples with indecent haste, or the wheels are still grinding and they are languishing in some storage facility somewhere.’

  ‘Can we check?’ asked Riley, aware that he had just said ‘we’. Was he thinking like a spook now?

  ‘I’ll get Deepika on it,’ said Muraski with some relish. ‘But if he has sent us this, which must be awash with the forensics… You know what that means?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Riley. ‘Our man wants to be found.’

  * * *

  The bomb-maker fed his son a spoonful of the thick soup. The boy slurped at it, a good third of it splashing down his front onto the towel that had been arranged around his neck. ‘There. Good?’

  The boy managed a smile. He said something that sounded like the word for soup. ‘I made it myself. Your mother’s recipe. I never thought I would be cook and carer. I miss her, you know. Do you?’

  The boy let out a small mewl of pain. He knew, he understood.

  The bomb-maker felt tears sting his eyes. ‘They couldn’t have saved her, you know. One thing I can’t blame the British for. It is wicked, cancer. Almost as wicked as what happened to you, my son.’ He fed him some more soup. Most of it went into his mouth this time. ‘I do blame them for that, though.’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Yes, they’ll be dead. The ones responsible for this. They’ll be coming for us soon.’

  ‘Nooo.’

  ‘Yes, they will. Do not worry, it won’t be too bad. Not compared to this.’

  He spooned more soup in then sipped his dark, bitter coffee. He knew the British weren’t entirely to blame for Mohammed’s injuries. He had used his son. Used him as a spy, to report back every day on where the soldiers went, what they did. He would then design the appropriate bomb, to be placed by Mohammed or, more often, one of his friends. He was always one step ahead of the British because of the interpreter they called Moe. And a freak accident took his son from him. It was a Taliban bullet, that much was true. But if the British and the Americans and the others had stayed away, had never come to his country, it would never have happened.

  Because of his son’s condition, it wasn’t difficult to get settlement papers for Great Britain for the family – a young man and his parents. But even here, they could do nothing for his brain. And then his mother got cancer, caused by the suffering of her son, he was sure. This so-called great country couldn’t save either of them.

  Eventually, in his grief, the Russians came, offering him a chance for revenge. They had their own agenda too. But one that he could fit around. They told him they could supply everything he needed to make a bomb, including Semtex and gas, if needed. The offer was too good to refuse. With his wife gone and his son slipping away, what else did he have to live for?

  ‘Come on, two more mouthfuls.’

  The lad shook his head. The bomb-maker tried to slide the food into his mouth, but his lips had clamped shut. ‘Just one more then.’ The lad shook his head and the spoonful tipped down his front.

  ‘Bad, bad,’ the lad shouted.

  ‘No, not bad.’ He had learned to supress the anger and frustration he felt at such times. It was not the boy’s fault. ‘We’ll have some more soup later. Yes?’

  He looked at his phone. Soon, he supposed, the British would come for him. He would be ready, of course, and so would Mohammed.

  ‘Shall I tell you about what the Viper will do?’ he asked the boy. ‘And then we will watch some television.’

  The lad made a sound in his throat he just about caught. He reached over and ruffled his hair.

  ‘Yes, I’ll try and find you some football.’

  * * *

  Riley and Muraski went for a coffee while the files were checked for the contact details of Mohammed Safi, Moe the terp’s full name. They found a Costa Coffee and sat towards the rear. Muraski insisted on facing the door. Riley fetched a pair of macchiatos and sat, careful not to block her line of sight.

  Spies, eh?

  ‘Staff Sergeant Riley, I owe you an apology,’ she said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘It was Jamal who flagged up the DNA on the bomb. Later, he tried to persuade me that it might have been contamination after all. I didn’t listen. I convinced myself that, you know…’

  ‘I was a mad bomber?’

  She smiled. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You were right though, weren’t you?’

  ‘What, you are a mad bomber?’

  ‘No, my DNA being there was significant. Just in a way you couldn’t have guessed. It was the bomber’s first calling card, the first clue that he was after me. Or, at least, that I was on the agenda.’

  ‘As I said, that was Jamal…’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘It was his funeral I went to. Jamal picked up on it.’ She began to cry, despite every effort to stop the flow of tears. A few other customers shot them furtive glances. He checked his pockets, but he was all out of handkerchiefs. He fetched a fistful of paper napkins from the counter and passed them over. She gave a Dumbo-sized blow of her nose and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t even cry at the funeral. Sorry.’

  ‘Stop saying that. Surely being a spy means never having to say you’re sorry.’

  She gave a half-choked laugh and blew her nose again. ‘If only. Oh, God, what a mess. Are your family okay?’ she said, seemingly to try and change the subject.

  ‘They are.’ He gave a quick run-down of what Scooby had told him.

  ‘And the Clifford-Browns? You seem very close.’

  To his surprise, Riley gave her chapter and verse on what they would probably now call his ‘blended’ upbringing. For some reason he couldn’t quite grasp, she was easy to talk to. Perhaps she should have been a therapist rather than a spy. Or maybe that’s what made her a decent spook.

  ‘That’s quite a story. You must love them very much.’

  ‘I do. They think I don’t know that neither my mother nor father wanted me when they split up. They’ve kept it from me all these years. But a boy at school took great delight in telling me that he had heard it from his parents.’

  ‘What a little shit.’

  ‘Kids are. Or can be.’

  Just then her phone beeped and she looked at the message. She started hurriedly gathering her things. ‘They’ve got an address for the terp and his family.’

  * * *

  Barbara Clifford-Brown was worried about her husband. Since the ordeal with Yousaf he had seemed distant and detached, as if his mind was permanently elsewhere. There was a haunted look in his eyes. She had seen it once before, in Beirut, when he became convinced that a Bulgarian assassin had targeted her. It had annoyed her at the time. Worrying about his new wife had taken the edge off his ability to do his job. His fieldcraft, as she forthrightly told him, was shot to shit.

  In the end, she had sought out and killed the Bulgarian, if only to put Henry’s mind at rest.

  The BMW had been picked up from the spot where Yousaf had dumped it and delivered back to Dunston by the local garage. So they were at least mobile again. Barbara thought she might take Henry out to The Stag, his favourite local pub, that evening, see if that cheered him any. But first, Barbara made a light lunch from what was left in the fridge and ordered an online delivery from Waitrose. After they had eaten, she left Henry reading a book by James Holland on the Normandy campaign in 1944, the sort of thing he loved. She had given him another nicotine patch, so he wouldn’t bang on about having a pipe again. Then she went back to business as usual.

  Yousaf had disabled the whole of the cellar computer/camera complex by taking out a fuse from the box in the hallway. It had been rather conspicuously labelled, she supposed. She replaced the fuse and pulled open the door Dominic had blown. She would have to get a locksmith in. There was a time when she could have trusted Henry to do it – he had been remarkably dextrous, considering the size of his hands – but he could no longer be relied on. It would involve a lot of fuss, preparation, tool-buying, procrastination,
cursing and then she would still have to call in a locksmith.

  As she made her way gingerly down the stone steps and past the acoustic door – which she dutifully locked behind her – she mused on how pleasant it had been to spend time with Dominic, despite the circumstances. He, too, had changed from the sad-eyed boy they looked after during Rachel’s ‘episodes’. The word covered a multitude of sins – a new lover, a new drug or a dark spiral into depression when one or the other let her down.

  It had been difficult giving the boy all their attention, given their other commitments. It was easier when they decided that Barbara should not accompany Henry on all his trips. Barbara thought, quite rightly, that she might prove a distraction. Certainly, a weakness a canny opponent could exploit.

  She wondered how much Dominic really knew about his parents. When they divorced there was a custody battle, of sorts. However, rather than the conventional argument that they deserved the child, each party argued that the other person should be responsible for his upbringing. How must it feel to know that neither parent really wanted you? That you would be an encumbrance on their chosen lifestyles. Young and in the way. She hoped, especially now, that he never discovered the truth.

  After putting on Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, Barbara fired up the screens and rebooted the computer. She checked for alerts that the motion-sensors had been triggered. She watched the footage of Yousaf taking Henry, the arrival of the bodyguards with, presumably, Izzy and Ruby in the rear and, finally, Dominic himself. All the activity had been at their east wing. The house next door had been and remained empty, which wasn’t unusual for a rich Russian with homes across the globe.

  Dominic had hinted at Russian involvement in the recent bombing campaign. Of course, he should have done no such thing. But he was new to operating in their world, hadn’t yet discovered that you never drop hints. Still, his supposition didn’t surprise her. The Russians were acting with brass-balled impunity. They needed taking down a peg or two. And, as Dominic had said, they probably hadn’t seen the back of them yet.