The Sanction

by Mark Sennen

  She left the postcard on the table, picked up the envelope and ripped it open. It contained the photographs of Positano she’d already seen as well as various other images: Brandon Hope with Jawad al Haddad and high-ranking Saudis at some trade conference; Karen Hope on the election trail; other members of the Hope family; some blurred pictures of Mohid Latif. There were a number of other pieces of paper including a map and an itinerary. Everything to do with Fairchild’s mad plan. That wasn’t what she was interested in, so she delved inside again. This time she pulled out some kind of dossier. Printed but with additions and amendments scribbled across it in red pen. Pieces of shorthand, editing marks, a few short sentences. The handwriting was her mother’s.

  A rush of emotion overcame her and, for a moment, with the dossier in her hand, Silva could sense her mother’s presence.

  Move on, Rebecca. Live your life.

  But she couldn’t. She knew too that in a similar situation her mother wouldn’t have been able to either. She began to read.

  * * *

  An hour later she’d finished. Little in the dossier was new – essentially it contained the same information Fairchild had told her – but seeing the amendments and comments in her mother’s own hand lent a certain veracity to the evidence. Whereas she’d been convinced Fairchild had been spinning the story, now she read the same information as the plain, unadorned truth. There was more though.

  Several pages detailed arms exports. These were above board and legal, the arrangements brokered between governments and signed off at official visits by US and UK diplomats. On one page there was a copy of a handwritten memo purportedly from a US State Department official to somebody in British intelligence. The memo was a masterful piece of obfuscation, skirting round the subject of what Brandon Hope might or might not be up to and gleefully ignoring the evidence that Jawad al Haddad could be funding various terror groups. The official advised that, all things considered, British and American interests were best served by continuing the policy of reviewing Hope’s file on an annual basis, but of taking no further action for now.

  Passing the buck, Silva thought. Both governments suspected Brandon Hope could well be a conduit between Haddad and the terrorists, but they weren’t prepared to risk the loss of the lucrative arms trade. The death of innocent civilians didn’t appear to have weighed on their consciences at all.

  Silva knew that kind of moral myopia would have incensed her mother, and she could well imagine the memo being the catalyst that had triggered the investigation into the Hopes. The problem was that her mother had miscalculated the lengths the family would go to in order to fulfil their political ambitions. In short, Francisca da Silva had been murdered so Karen Hope could become president.

  * * *

  They finished their tour of the port after speaking to Border Force officials and the port police but without telling anyone the purpose of their visit. As good as her word, Cornish took them to a truckers’ cafe just up the road. A huge mug of dark tea and a plate of sausages, eggs, hash browns and baked beans put Holm in a much better mood. He mopped up the last of his egg with a piece of bread and pushed his plate away.

  ‘This doesn’t go any further,’ he said. ‘We need to keep a lid on it to prevent anybody getting tipped off. So nothing up the ranks or down, OK?’

  Cornish nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘You suspected people smuggling, right?’ Holm couldn’t help but glance to his left where two truckers conversed in a language he couldn’t place. Cornish nodded again. ‘Well I think you’re bang on.’

  ‘Right. My preliminary hunch is this is something to do with Eastern European women sold into sex slavery.’

  ‘We’re MI5, remember? As unpleasant as your hunch sounds, that wouldn’t interest us.’ Holm turned his head to look out the window. Next door was yet another haulier’s. Dozens of containers. Truck cabs parked in a line. ‘Imagine if a couple of terrorists were hiding in the depths of a container. Their chance of being discovered would be minimal.’

  ‘Aren’t there easier ways of getting into the UK?’

  ‘Not if these people don’t have the right passport, not if they’re on a watch list, not if they want to pass undetected, not if they’re taking equipment with them. And by equipment I mean weapons and explosives. There could be people arriving at this port tonight who are on Europol’s most wanted list. They could have travelled from anywhere. All they have to do is board a cargo ship and slip into the UK unnoticed. Then…’ Holm clenched both his hands into fists and placed them together before pulling them apart and spreading his fingers. ‘Boom!’

  ‘Bloody hell, Stephen, do you have proof of this?’

  ‘Until a few days ago we had nothing.’

  ‘But this is a priority with the security services, I guess. I imagine you’ll be in contact with my chief constable so we can pool resources?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Holm glanced at Javed. The young man gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head as if to confirm Holm’s words. ‘You see…’

  ‘What?’ Cornish looked from Holm to Javed and back again. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘Nothing,’ Holm said. He leaned forward. ‘I’d like to know more about the new operations manager of SeaPak.’

  For a moment Cornish appeared perturbed, but then she gave a half smile.

  ‘Spooks,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘The word trust simply isn’t in your vocabulary, right?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Come on, then, rather than tell you, I’ll show you. Let’s go.’

  Outside, they piled into Cornish’s car and went on a twenty-mile drive through the quiet Suffolk countryside. They left the main road and negotiated a tangle of tiny lanes which ran through prime agricultural land. Fields of corn rolled gently into the distance, bisected by occasional pockets of woodland. Heat haze rose at every crest of the road and they barely saw another vehicle. Then they rounded a corner and Cornish slowed. On one side of the lane stood a newish dwelling. There was a separate garage and out front a blue Mercedes glowed with a fresh wax sheen.

  Cornish stopped their car well before the house. She gestured through the windscreen.

  ‘The current SeaPak operations manager lives here. Paul Henderson. A couple of my lads have spent the best part of two days dissecting his life. Apparently the Merc is his wife’s new car. He’s had major work done on the house in the last couple of months – a new bathroom and kitchen for a start. There’s a paddock to the side of the house and a stable block has been erected. He’s bought his daughter a pony and—’

  ‘I get the picture. Ben Western wouldn’t cooperate or discovered something he shouldn’t have. He was threatened and left his job. Perhaps he then tried blackmail or said he’d go to the police. The ultimate result of which led to his murder. Henderson, on the other hand, was happy to take a bung.’

  ‘Yes, if the containers hold what you say they do, then all of a sudden Mr Henderson has some questions to answer.’

  ‘I told you, we don’t know for sure what’s coming in yet.’ Holm turned to the back. ‘Farakh, anything to add?’

  ‘I’m wondering how this works,’ Javed said. ‘How altering the shipping manifests helps the smugglers out. I mean it doesn’t stop the Border Force from picking out individual containers.’

  ‘You think Border Force officers could have been paid off too?’

  ‘No,’ Cornish said. ‘That’s unlikely because they’re on constant rotation. You’d have to nobble more than one of them. Plus their bank accounts and lifestyles are monitored.’

  ‘Port security?’ Javed wasn’t giving up.

  ‘We’re talking about a twenty- or forty-foot container weighing several tonnes. You can’t just pop it through a gap in the fence. Each container going in and out is recorded and there are number-plate recognition cameras to check each vehicle. Only registered truckers can get access to the port area.’

  ‘There has to be some reason this bloke is all of a sudden flush with cash.’

/>   ‘Yes.’ Cornish put the car back into gear and they cruised past the property. ‘And that’s where you come in. I need to access the manifests without causing suspicion. I need surveillance, logistical support, a way of tracking the containers. I need to get into Henderson’s bank account and I need a tap on his phone.’ Cornish shrugged. ‘I could get all that, but we’re a small force and it will take time. MI5 could do it with a simple click of the fingers.’

  ‘Sure, but we need to keep a lid on this.’ Holm turned to Cornish. He sighed, knowing his next words weren’t going to go down well. ‘And, for now at least, you need to steer the investigation in another direction. Western’s death was nothing to do with what goes on here at the port. Perhaps he had gambling debts, perhaps he had an affair and the relationship turned sour. Whatever, SeaPak is to be allowed to continue operating. Henderson needs to be left alone.’

  ‘No way!’ Cornish looked horrified. ‘I’m not letting go of this now.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to let go of it. I’ll get the manifests, the bank account details, surveillance, all that, but not a word of what we’ve discussed goes beyond your lips until this is in the bag.’

  ‘National bloody security again, right?’ There was anger all of a sudden. Sarcasm. Cornish’s easy-going manner of the past few hours gone. ‘You’ve got no jurisdiction here, no power to command me to do anything. I’m answerable to my chief constable and him alone.’

  ‘Of course, Billie,’ Holm said softly. ‘But my boss happens to be Thomas Gillan, the Director General of MI5, and he has the ears of both the home secretary and the prime minister. I think your chief constable is answerable to them, don’t you?’

  * * *

  Later, after she’d finished work, Silva wandered over to the Barbican and sat in a bar at the quayside. The shadows grew long and the sun hovered low and weak in the west. She made a bottle of Corona last an hour, sucking on the lime wedge when she’d finished. The envelope was back on the saloon table alongside Sean’s card. In terms of gravity the contents of the envelope should have been uppermost in Silva’s mind, but it was Sean’s words she kept coming back to: Sorry. Can we talk? Love, Sean. He deserved better, and before long he’d undoubtedly luck out. She had a vision of him in a garden surrounded by a white picket fence. Smoke from a barbecue. Bottles of beer in a bucket of ice. Kids running amok. A woman on a veranda with a plate of cookies. She wasn’t sure if that was her. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

  She bought a cappuccino and shivered as she sipped the foam from the top. She fended off a polite offer from a hopeful young man to buy her another drink with a ‘no thank you’ and a smile and pushed herself up and walked to the Hoe.

  As she stood at the top of Madeira Drive and looked down at the sea, a car pulled alongside her. A BMW. Black. Tinted windows. The same car that had followed her on the motorway. A door clicked open and a man got out.

  ‘Ms da Silva,’ the man said. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and a sober tie. He was mid-forties and his brown hair was short and neat. A pair of rectangular, rimless glasses completed the outfit and made him look like a bank manager or an accountant. ‘Might I possibly have a word?’

  The accent was impeccable, with the pure vowels and precise consonants. She wondered if he was an associate of Fairchild’s.

  Silva bounced on the balls of her feet. ‘What is it?’

  ‘We can walk, if you’d like,’ the man said. He indicated the route up to Plymouth Hoe. ‘Or we can stop here.’

  Silva shook her head. Wondered what the heck was going on in her life to make strange middle-aged men hit on her.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you want, but you’ve got one minute and then I’m off.’

  ‘Right.’ The man nodded back into the open door of the car. There were two others in there. A man in the driver’s seat and a woman in the rear. The woman had an overcoat on her lap and her right hand lay under the coat in an odd way. ‘One minute is quite enough.’

  ‘Well?’ Silva faced the man, aware her back was to a low wall. Beyond, the sea frothed on rocks far below.

  ‘We’re with the government.’

  ‘Good for you. Can I see some identification?’

  ‘My name is Simeon Weiss. There’s no need to be alarmed, Ms da Silva, we’re just here to help you.’

  ‘Sure you are.’

  ‘I’ve come to warn you that Matthew Fairchild is mentally ill and his schemes are ill-thought out and dangerous. He snatches at threads and constructs elaborate scenarios, dreams up stories, lives in a world of make-believe.’

  ‘Make-believe?’

  ‘Yes.’ Weiss paused and smiled. ‘And that brings me on to your mother. She stumbled on a minor discrepancy to do with a multimillion-dollar arms deal. The story might have made the business pages, but your mother wanted more. She elaborated the facts, embellished the story to the point where it was unpublishable garbage. Fairchild went one better and twisted the whole thing into a tale of dark forces spreading across the globe. He’s quite mad and, for the safety of you and your family and friends, you’d really be better off not having anything to do with him.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘It’s advice. Good advice.’ Weiss sidled closer. ‘And people who ignore our advice usually come to regret doing so.’

  In a blink the distance between them vanished and Weiss was up close, his hand at Silva’s neck. As Silva’s arm went up in a block, something jabbed into her stomach. She looked down to where Weiss’s other hand held a small pistol.

  ‘Steady,’ Weiss said. ‘We wouldn’t want a silly accident.’

  Silva choked as Weiss forced her onto tiptoes, his fingers tightening round her throat. The stone wall pressed into the back of her thighs. One push and she’d tumble over and fall.

  ‘It’s a long way down.’ Weiss made a play of glancing behind her. ‘What do you reckon? Fifteen metres? Twenty? And nobody would ever suspect a thing. You’d be just another sad statistic.’

  She tried to speak as Weiss pushed her backwards. For a moment she was weightless, the horizon spinning as her vision blurred. In a desperate attempt to free herself she kicked out, but her foot met with nothing but air as Weiss released his grip and stepped sideways. She fell and grasped the wall, slumping down on the pavement as he walked away.

  ‘I hope you’ve got the message,’ Weiss said as he opened the car door and climbed in. He shut the door and the window slid down. ‘Because there’s more where that came from if you didn’t, understand?’

  The car slipped off almost silently as Silva pushed herself up from the ground. She walked up to the Hoe and sat on the bench in the exact same spot as before. In the fading light she looked out across the water to where a warship lay in Plymouth Sound, anchored to a huge buoy. At this distance the figures milling on the bow were the size of ants. Men and women just like herself, Silva thought. Willing to put their lives on the line for their country, to risk everything while doing their duty. Not like the politicians and the shadowy figures in London. Not like the people in the black car. They were playing with people, squishing them underfoot as if they were ants. She remembered back to Afghanistan and all the soldiers who’d been lost out there. For what? Like each and every one of them she’d signed up willingly, obeyed orders, but when the shit hit the fan she’d been dropped quicker than a live grenade.

  A long, low horn echoed across the water. The warship had cast off from the buoy and was easing round, heading for the open sea and whatever dangers lay at its destination. Silva took a few moments to get her breath back and then she stood. The threat from Weiss had backfired. Rather than dissuade her, it had instead confirmed her mother’s story as true and flipped her intentions one hundred and eighty degrees. Her mind was made up. Tomorrow she’d phone Fairchild and tell him she would travel to Italy. And on the fifteenth of August she was going to kill Karen Hope.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Taher was at the window again. Morning. A rush of humanity struggling
through gridlock to slave at jobs nobody wanted doing, to earn money to spend on things nobody needed. Except there was nothing human about the rush. These people were animals, never meeting each other’s gaze, living in a bubble. When their government bombed civilians, they chose to read headlines about celebrities dancing or eating slugs. While their government paid for hundreds of thousands of refugees to be corralled in vast camps where they had to fetch water from a standpipe, they complained about the cost of a cup of substandard coffee.

  If only they knew true hardship.

  After his family had been wiped out in the missile strike, Taher’s uncle had rescued him and taken him in. Cared for him. And each year on the day of Taher’s birth they’d prayed together. Asked that Taher could have a long life so that he might fully avenge the deaths of his parents and his siblings.

  Taher’s family was Bedouin, and while many of the tribe had moved to the cities, his father had preferred the simple life.

  ‘Hard, but honest,’ Taher remembered him saying. ‘We scrape in the earth and are rewarded with bounty.’

  So it proved. The barren acres his family owned turned out to have rich deposits of monazite, a mineral containing rare-earth metals. The deposits had only come to light after the missile strike, when the cliff behind the house had collapsed and the ore had been exposed. At first the ore had been near worthless, but the rise and ubiquity of the smartphone sent the prices of the rare-earth metals soaring. His uncle might, Taher supposed, have claimed the land for his own. Nobody would have cared: after all Taher had been only twelve years old when his parents had died. But his uncle wasn’t like that. Greed didn’t motivate him. Even now, when Taher had a tidy sum in the bank, his uncle still lived out in the desert with his wife and a few goats. Life, he said, was about worshipping Allah, serving Allah, doing Allah’s will. The fire from the sky had taken Taher’s family, but the fire from the sky had also revealed the treasure that would help Taher avenge their deaths. Infinite wisdom. Infinite justice.