by Adam Hamdy
‘Have a seat,’ Deni said coldly. No greeting. No pretence.
Ziad took the unoccupied chair between Rasul and Abacus, and Deni fixed him with a hard stare. The silent shop seemed to press in on them.
‘What’s going on?’ Ziad asked.
‘We lost a shipment last night,’ Deni replied.
‘Lost?’ Rasul said angrily. ‘It was stolen and my driver was killed.’
‘Stolen?’ Ziad responded. He paused, playing up the moment of realization. ‘And you think I was involved?’
The suggestion was met with silence.
‘Show him,’ Deni said, and Abacus picked up an iPad that was resting on the table between them.
‘The police released this,’ the old man said as he played a video.
Ziad watched traffic camera footage of distant activity. Taken from a hundred yards away, the video showed two police cars blocking a street that ran beneath an overpass. Ziad recognized it as Horton Street, a cut-through a short distance from the port. Whatever had happened beneath the bridge was beyond the camera’s view, but after a few moments he saw three police officers get in the cars and drive away, followed by the big rig.
‘This wasn’t street gangsters,’ Abacus remarked as he set the iPad on the table.
‘It was planned,’ Deni agreed. ‘By people who knew exactly when the rig was coming out.’
All three men looked at Ziad pointedly, and he grew very aware of Osman and the other two, standing in the corner, waiting to be let off the leash.
‘Why would I do this?’ Ziad asked. ‘And how? You have blessed me by giving me my old life. Why would I endanger that? And I didn’t know when the truck would be coming,’ he protested. ‘I give Rasul the container codes, but he’s responsible for arranging pick-up. I couldn’t have known when he’d choose to move the shipment.’ But the people I’m working with, who have his depot under surveillance, would know, Ziad thought.
Deni looked at Rasul, who nodded sheepishly.
‘Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have arranged such a thing, wa Allahi al azeem,’ Ziad said, adding an oath swearing his honesty in the name of God.
‘Who knew the time of collection?’ Deni asked Rasul.
‘No one,’ Rasul replied, fixing Ziad with a suspicious look.
‘Except the port scheduler,’ Ziad observed. ‘Your driver would have to give notice of his arrival so the container and loaders would be ready. And who knows how many people that schedule gets sent to. If someone has managed to infiltrate the port . . .’ he left the suggestion hanging.
‘I want you to bring us a list of names,’ Deni said. ‘Everyone who knew about the collection.’
‘What do we do about the Italians?’ Rasul asked.
The Cresci family, headed by Ben Cresci, were among Deni’s biggest customers. This would have been a large, valuable shipment. Cagey and distrustful, Cresci didn’t take disappointment well.
Deni shifted uncomfortably. ‘They’ve given us seven days to make good.’
Abacus whistled.
‘Shit,’ Rasul said. ‘That’s not long enough to bring over another shipment. You need to get more time.’
Ziad was shocked by the suddenness and ferocity of the slap. Deni smacked his son so hard it made Abacus gasp.
‘Never tell me what to do!’ Deni yelled at his son. ‘We’re lucky we’re not already dead. This has brought a lot of police attention and made us look like fucking amateurs.’
Rasul blushed furiously and his eyes burned with murderous anger, but he had the good sense to stay quiet.
‘I know a man,’ Ziad said. ‘I met him in Al Aqarab . . .’
‘The man you’re living with?’ Deni asked.
Ziad was surprised, but he shouldn’t have been; Deni was a cunning old fox who’d built an empire by being careful. He’d have checked Ziad out, but did he have the house under constant surveillance? Had he seen Elroy? The American came and went at odd times. Ziad forced himself to remain calm. If Deni had evidence of his treachery, he’d already be dead. ‘Yes. He’s name’s Awut and he has contacts in China. He claims to be able to access product. Opiates.’
‘Synthetic?’ Deni said.
Ziad nodded.
‘We never touched that shit,’ Deni responded testily, but Ziad sensed disagreement from Abacus and Rasul. ‘I’ve seen what it does. The Afghan spice is bad enough,’ Deni said, using his euphemism for heroin, ‘but with these synthetics, people have no chance.’
An ethical drug dealer, Ziad thought wryly, but he knew better. The man was simply afraid of innovation he didn’t understand.
‘But we have so little time,’ Abacus remarked. ‘Perhaps this once—’
‘No,’ Deni said.
‘I don’t understand,’ Ziad ventured. ‘We supply heroin,’ he noted Deni’s flash of anger at his use of the word, ‘but we won’t sell products that are almost exactly the same, but far more profitable. I think you’re being too protective of the kafir.’
The Arabic word for infidel had the desired effect. Abacus and Rasul looked puzzled and the three thugs looming in the corner leaned a little closer.
Deni scoffed. ‘Kafir? Are you a religious man now?’
Ziad nodded. ‘I met a man in Al Aqarab, a religious man, a great sheikh,’ he lied. ‘He taught me jihad isn’t just about observance and piety, or guns and bombs. It is about fighting the kafir by any means. You may not know it, but Allah smiles on what you do,’ he said, getting into the flow. He’d heard enough hypocritical, twisted pious rants in Al Aqarab to have no shortage of material. ‘You sell product that is targeted at those who do not follow the Quran. Your customers are drug addicts and criminals. Abusers of themselves and others. Debasers of all. Your product finds them and kills them. Slowly, but surely. Perhaps you’ve never seen it in this light, but you are a servant of jihad.’
Abacus nodded, and Ziad looked up to see the three men who would have gladly killed him minutes ago signalling their agreement.
‘Ha!’ Rasul remarked. ‘A philosopher.’
‘If we are to engage in jihad,’ Ziad said. ‘What is one weapon when compared to another?’
Deni had the look of a man who’d picked up a stick only to find it was a venomous snake. This was not playing out as he’d expected. ‘I am not engaged in jihad. I’m engaged in business, and my business isn’t that shit.’
Ziad sensed disappointment from everyone else in the room. He’d given them a momentary glimpse of a cause, a mission larger than anything they’d ever been part of. He knew they all professed to be men of faith, and his words would have resonated to some degree. But the glorious vision of becoming warriors in the service of God, while making even more money, had been snatched away by their unimaginative boss and his stubborn refusal to move with the times.
‘Just get me the list of people who knew when the shipment was being collected,’ Deni commanded.
‘Of course,’ Ziad said deferentially, but he knew the seed of dissent had been sown. He’d made his boss look unimaginative and small-minded. ‘Is there anything else?’
Deni shook his head and dismissed Ziad with a wave.
He hurried outside and when he was a safe distance from the bookstore, he used a disposable cell phone to make a call.
‘Hunter, it’s Ziad Malek,’ he said when the call was answered.
‘Stop bugging me. We heard what happened and we’ve made other arrangements,’ Hunter Lutz said. The fearsome man was Ben Cresci’s fixer and second-in-command.
‘I don’t care what you think you know; it isn’t going to play out that way. You have to get me in to see your boss. I need a meet with Ben Cresci.’
Hunter sighed. ‘I told you to stop bugging me.’
The line went dead.
Ziad took a calming breath and hurried to his car. If they couldn’t get in to see Ben Cresci, their plan would be in tatters.
Chapter 38
Pearce watched from across the street. There was a coffee shop, a book
store, a community centre, an Islamic bank and a travel agency. At the front of the block, seperate from the main building, was a Middle Eastern supermarket and behind it a football pitch that had been created from a cordoned-off section of the car park. This was a community hub for immigrants; Pearce had seen similar complexes all over the world.
He’d picked up the signal of the tracking device on Ziad’s car and followed him across town, arriving just in time to see him enter the Haqeeq Bookstore. Pearce had pulled a pair of surveillance glasses from his pocket. Fitted with plain lenses, they allowed the wearer to record audio and video surreptitiously. Pearce had pressed the touch-sensitive switch that activated the device’s recording function, and he’d walked the block, capturing everything he could; the names of businesses, registrations in the large car park, faces in the coffee shop, but the one thing he couldn’t see was what was happening in the bookshop. The interior was hidden by bookshelves that reached to the ceiling. He’d considered going in, but the shop was empty and he’d have risked blundering into an unknown situation.
Pearce had returned to his motorbike and watched with frustration, waiting to see who came out of the bookstore. This was when the resources of an organization like Six would have helped. In minutes, he could have had the details of who owned the property, his support team could have started working on the intel he’d already acquired and he would have been a step closer to discovering the truth. He could have called in a full surveillance unit, complete with infrared cameras and directional mics that might have been able to pick up what was happening inside the building. But hardship bred strength, and since he didn’t have the resources, he’d have to rely on the ingenuity of his team. Leila had told him about the sharp response she’d received from Evan Hill, the detective investigating Richie Cutter’s death, but they needed to build a rapport with someone like him. An experienced cop would be able to provide more intel on local players than any MI6 database. Pearce also considered putting himself in play. The beautiful thing about a community centre like this was that people were usually welcoming of anyone from the Muslim diaspora, making infiltration a realistic prospect.
Ziad Malek emerged fifteen minutes after he’d entered. He made what looked like a fraught phone call, and seemed full of purpose as he got into his old Buick. He drove east along 140th Street, but Pearce didn’t follow. Without a field team, he had to make choices and he opted to let the tracker do its work. He would stay and focus on learning who Ziad had gone to see.
Ten minutes later, six men emerged. The three in front looked like street thugs, clearing a safe path for their principals: an old man with a long beard who wore a full-length coat, a heavyset middle-aged man in a suit, and a younger man who bore a family resemblance and might have been the middle-aged man’s son. Pearce captured their faces using the high-definition camera built into his glasses and recorded the licence plates of the four cars the men got into. The old man had a 1980s Mercedes SEL, and the middle-aged man who had the confidence of a boss drove a G-Wagen, which was followed by the three heavies in an old Ford Taurus. The youngest of the group left in a Porsche 911. Following any of them wouldn’t have been productive without more information about who they were, but Pearce consoled himself with the knowledge he’d captured footage that could be used to identify them.
He pulled a small tablet computer from his pocket and saw Ziad’s marker travelling through the city, away from the little green house on Kenyon Street and the port. Pearce pulled on his helmet and set off to intercept him.
Chapter 39
The camera didn’t pick up the two junkies passed out on the porch of the house across the street. Leila had parked on the corner, near where she’d met Pearce the previous day, and had climbed into the back of the Yukon to fill the pockets of her army surplus jacket with the gear she needed. She hadn’t noticed the two men until she was almost opposite Ziad Malek’s house. They were both scrawny and their skin was filthy with the kind of ground-in dirt Leila associated with a hard life on the street. Their house was even more run-down than the small green one opposite and their yard was filled with empty cans, food wrappers and what looked like used toilet paper. A couple of blankets were spread across the porch and the two men were curled on them in the foetal position. Between them lay the detritus of a drugs binge; foil, a burned spoon, a collection of plastic lighters and a glass pipe. Leila guessed they’d been freebasing, and they looked as though they were out cold. But she couldn’t afford to gamble, nor could she afford to wait. She had no way of knowing how long Angsakul would be out, so to assess whether the junkies posed a threat, she went to the start of their crooked path and stood among the ragged weeds that sprouted from the cracks. She caught the pungent stench of urine and excrement, and gagged.
‘Hey!’ she said when she’d got her breath back. She rapped on the rotten fencepost. ‘Hey, are you guys OK?’ she asked.
There was no response, so she shuffled along the path, ignoring the growing stench, and prodded the nearest man with her cane. His body was limp and heavy, and if it hadn’t been for the slow but steady rise and fall of his chest, she’d have thought he was dead.
Satisfied, Leila turned and crossed the street. It was a humid autumn day and the sky brooded with the promise of a storm. She wondered how wasted a person had to be to sleep outside in shorts and a T-shirt and not care about how exposed and vulnerable they were. Never mind the weather, she could have killed them and they wouldn’t have known anything about it.
But she didn’t have to. Their oblivion was their good fortune, and she walked up the little green house’s empty driveway towards the ramshackle fence that marked the start of the garden. She tried the gate and was relieved when it opened. It creaked loudly, and she glanced back at the house across the street, but the junkies didn’t stir. Leila went through and shut the gate behind her. The garden was an overgrown mess of weeds, bushes and trees, all wild and out of control. There was the faint smell of sewage and rot, and if there had ever been a path, it was now lost to thick grasses. She pushed her way through the jungle and came to the back door. A picture window offered a view of the kitchen, a room that was one level of prosperity above the porch across the street.
She produced a set of lock-picking tools and defeated the basic tumbler in moments. When she stepped inside, she was hit with the powerful smell of lemongrass and galangal, and beneath that was the musty scent of decay. Everything in the place, from the mouldy walls to the rotting kitchen chairs, was long past its prime. The house was silent and still. All Leila could hear was her breathing, which was rapid and shallow. She hated creeping around hostile places where she was vulnerable and exposed, and wanted to be out as quickly as possible.
She fished in her breast pocket for two listening devices and placed one down the side of an ancient cupboard and the other in a small hole in the skirting board beneath the old cabinets. She was about to rig a camera on top of the door frame when she heard a noise coming from outside. She pulled her tablet computer from her pocket and switched it on to see the image broadcast by the buttonhole camera on the telegraph pole across the street. Her heart skipped as she saw the two junkies moving towards the house. One was almost at the front door and the other was slipping through the side gate. Leila felt sick. They weren’t moving like addicts, they were prowling with the deliberate care of soldiers. She glanced at the back door, but she was too late. If she went that way, she’d encounter the man coming through the garden. She hurried into the shadowy hallway and went up the stairs as quickly as her pained legs could manage. She heard the front door open as she crested the last step, and moved out of sight.
Four doors led off the landing. Two were closed, and one of the open ones revealed a tiny, fetid bathroom. She went through the fourth, which took her into a bedroom. Clothes covered the floor and the bed was unmade. She picked her way through the mess, went to the window and peered at the overgrown garden. She heard movement downstairs, the shift of floorboards settling and the steps of
two men creeping through the building.
‘Don’t make this hard on yourself,’ one of the men said. He had a deep, gravelly Seattle accent. ‘We just want to know who you work for.’
Leila wondered how her legs would cope with the jump and tried to convince herself the window wasn’t really that high. She opened it and it creaked loudly. The sound prompted hurried footsteps up the stairs and the two men burst into the room before Leila even had the chance to haul herself onto the sill. Trapped, with the foul men closing on her, Leila realized there was to be no quiet escape. She would have to take drastic steps to protect herself and the investigation.
‘Who are you?’ Leila asked. ‘Who are you working for?’
‘You got the wrong idea, lady,’ the man nearest to her said. ‘We’re not here to answer questions.’
He reached out a grubby hand and grabbed her left arm. Her reaction was instant and deliberate, and was tinged with a visceral anger. Too many men had treated her body as their possession, and she’d vowed to punish anyone who ever did so again. The fingers of her right hand tightened around the grip of the Glock she had in her pocket; she angled the gun up and shot the man. The bullet tore through her jacket and hit him in the gut. The fitted suppressor transformed the gunshot into the pop of a champagne cork and the startled man heard another as a second bullet sent him staggering back, hunched over, clutching his stomach. He cried out and raised his hand to fend off the third shot, which lopped off two of his fingers before it drilled a hole in his skull and silenced him. The dead man’s companion watched in shock, but when the body toppled over and hit the floor, he came to his senses and tried to reach behind his back.
