by Ted Tayler
Farooq listened and like a sponge, he soaked up everything that the old man said. Munaf was pleased. He could tell that Farooq was a suitable candidate. Munaf had been educated privately and was capable of challenging an argument. Or at least knowing where to look for information to make a challenge. Farooq was cut from a different cloth.
None of the schools that Farooq attended had encouraged critical thinking; he could regurgitate information and was adept in the technical world of computers but he was vulnerable to extreme views. Munaf was more than willing to educate him. He thought of it as his duty. Without Islam Farooq might fall under the spell of the gang culture rife in the capital or succumbs to the thrill of drugs.
Completely independent of the two Queen Mary students, Munaf considered London 2012 an excellent opportunity to spread the message that their Society speakers had given them. Men and women competed together in many of the stadiums. The women were uncovered. It was immodest.
He would prefer that Muslim women were not competing, but the IOC had allowed them to take part, but they could not wear the hijab. This was monstrous; they had no appreciation of their religion. The final insult was the timing of the Games.
Ramadan lasted from mid-July to mid-August. The Games started on the 27th July and ran for five weeks. What more could they do to show their hatred and ignorance of Islam and its teachings?
Munaf pointed out to his colleague at The Emirates one Monday evening that large numbers of volunteers were required. They sent off their applications, and in time, heard that they had been selected. They too found themselves on training courses in the city in the months leading up to the Games.
On one of these courses, they met Abdul and Aaleyah. For Munaf it was a meeting of minds; he mistrusted Aaleyah at first because she was merely a girl. He recognised that Abdul was weak and Aaleyah’s lapdog. They met up again several times to share their radical views. They discovered that they had a common aim.
For Farooq, that first encounter had been a meeting of hearts, not minds. As soon as he saw Aaleyah, he was smitten. All the literature and lectures in the world couldn’t block the reaction of his body to the lovely young woman he saw before him. She looked into his eyes, without any fear, and smiled. As if she knew the effect she had on him.
As the last home games of the season at the Emirates Stadium drew near, Munaf and Farooq went through the same learning process as Abdul and Aaleyah. Studying was cut to a minimum, socialising too. It was only important to learn how to make the bomb and how to detonate it. Nothing else mattered.
One hundred miles away in Aston, Birmingham Khadim Salah, and Shamila Javed sat in a busy coffee shop. They were at separate tables. Khadim had graduated from Aston last summer with a first in Politics and Sociology. He was half way through what he told friends and family was his ‘gap’ year and had recently returned from Pakistan.
Khadim was twenty-seven. After he left school at eighteen, he found it difficult to find a job he truly wanted to do. His father urged him to stay on, but Khadim saw his less able friends earning money and wanted to join them. Everything he tried turned sour after a few months, sometimes weeks, as the work became repetitive and boring. There was nothing to stimulate his brain.
Khadim went to work at a call centre for a mobile phone firm. Three years later, he had climbed the ladder to a senior post within the parent company. He proved to be an efficient, ruthless ‘go-getter’. His abilities shone far brighter than the colleagues he trampled on as he made his way to towards the top of the pile.
At last, he had found something he wanted to do; yet still he felt unfulfilled. The top jobs seemed to be out of his reach. The only explanation could be his ethnicity. What other reason could there be for his being denied promotion?
All of a sudden, his firm got taken over by a rival firm. Many thousands of jobs were lost. Khadim studied his redundancy cheque and decided that his father had been right. He should have studied more. He used the money to get him into University and his results after his final exams placed him in the top one-percent of students in the country.
The students he mixed with, the Politics and Sociology course, the changing nature of the Islamic world he saw around him, shaped the mind of Khadim Salah. Things had to change. His trip to Pakistan reinforced that view.
Many young British-born Muslims return to the land of their parents and grandparents to visit relatives or to discover their roots. But, others come to learn how to destroy the West. Pakistan housed the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It was a breeding ground for terrorists.
Khadim met with family members at first, but later he was introduced to members of Jundullah, the Army of God, a violent extremist Islamic group. He spent time at a madrassa, a religious school that preached a fundamentalist form of Islam. During his stay in Pakistan, he spent most of his time in a village north of Faisalabad. An explosives specialist visited him. The man was a veteran of terrorist training camps along the remote Afghan-Pakistan frontier; he had trained the terrorists responsible for the London bombings of July 7, 2005.
When Khadim returned home to Birmingham, he was logged as a ‘person of interest’ by the British authorities. Staff cuts and inefficiencies meant that no one had followed up on their concerns since he had been home.
Khadim looked across the café to the table where Shamila sat. She dressed in the traditional attire of shalwar kameez, loose trousers, and a long embroidered shirt. Khadim noticed the high collar, not low-cut as favoured by many of the women at the university. He was impressed. He looked away quickly when he realised that the young woman had seen him staring at her, and the way she dressed.
Shamila Javed had risen at six o’clock that morning and knelt to pray in the bedroom of her flat in Aston. She always prayed before dawn and then four more times during the day. It was very early, so she climbed back into bed for more sleep. At half past seven, she had risen, showered, and dressed; she grabbed breakfast as she dashed out of the door to catch the bus to college for her class.
As she sat on the bus, she felt uncomfortable, it was not just her; there was a growing resentment and hostility towards Muslims, whether they had been born here or not. Shamila was in her first year at Wolverhampton University School of Media, where she took Media Studies. Her class finished just before noon. When she returned home, she prepared kofta for her lunch. She sat and ate her spicy lamb kebabs alone.
Shamila then wandered to the shops, looking for a pair of shoes, possibly a sparkly top. It had turned out it was not a good day for buying nice things. She couldn’t see anything she liked. Before returning to her flat to pray, she had popped into the coffee shop. As she left, she saw a man looking at her most intently. She blushed. As she stood up to leave, he came over and spoke.
“I hope you live nearby, I very much wish to see you again.”
Shamila took a closer look at this man. He was tall, dark and very handsome, a little old for her, perhaps, or maybe not. Her parents would approve of him, she felt sure, although they had not chosen him themselves. She wanted to have a say in who she married. Her father had made enquiries; looking for a suitable candidate. She opted for a pre-emptive strike.
“I live near here. Hi, I’m Shamila."
Khadim and Shamila left the coffee shop together. They chatted for a while, and then Shamila agreed to meet her tall, dark stranger again. She thought they might have a future together; in her innocence, she was perfect for Khadim. He felt certain that the security services would be less likely to be looking for an amorous-looking couple when the time came for his act of martyrdom.
CHAPTER 16
Spring at Larcombe Manor was always a special time. Erebus and Elizabeth had enjoyed walking around the grounds and watching the transformation in the borders and the wooded areas they were so fortunate to have on the estate.
Alone now, the old man strolled past the forsythia with a carpet of hellebores and crocuses at its feet. Elizabeth would have loved this display. The weather seemed at odds with the seasons
he remembered as a young boy. Yet nature surprised us with her resilience and capacity to adapt.
Larcombe had seen the warmest and driest March for over fifty years. As soon as April arrived, a chill set in that threatened to last for weeks on end. Then came the rain, lots of rain and any fears of a drought were banished.
Erebus now neared the edge of the lawns and borders; ahead lay the wooded areas and beyond that, the pet cemetery. The profusion of snowdrops and bluebells scattered among the crab apple trees astounded him. Here and there, the welcome sight of bees darting from plant to plant comforted him. This was a difficult time. Mornings such as this would help him get through the dark days after Elizabeth’s death.
It was time to return to the main house. He turned and began the walk back across the lawns. Over to his left stood the refurbished worker’s cottages that housed the canteen, swimming pool and other facilities to keep the Olympus agents entertained. This spring had been particularly frustrating. Day after day, the intelligence section in the icehouse reported that despite their close monitoring of internet and mobile phone traffic, they were no further forward. The Opening Ceremony was only eight weeks away. The agents in the field, and here at Olympus HQ shared a similar experience to his father in World War II. He often talked to his son about the ‘phoney war’ and the agony of anticipation.
“Knowing it is going to happen, William; knowing that something more terrible than you have ever seen is just around the corner and you may not live through it. We just wanted it to happen. We willed it even. Not because we welcomed the prospect of death. Sitting around waiting… well, it was bloody awful,” his father had said to him. It had been just here by the icehouse, where he paused for a while to think of his father and the legacy he left him.
That statement had led Erebus to use the icehouse as the secret underground heartbeat of Olympus. Inside the building, they housed the best equipment and people possible to provide Olympus with the knowledge to arm them in the struggles they faced. The interrogation suites, which the agents termed Hotel California, were a distasteful, but necessary facility to add to that knowledge.
Despite the range of tools at their disposal, his people found it particularly difficult to make progress. Identifying potential target sites were not the problem; dozens of them existed. It was linking any of the known terrorist organisations, of whatever denomination, to those sites that caused a headache.
Erebus continued to walk towards the house, as he drew level with the old stable block he saw Phoenix emerging from his quarters. The younger man slipped casually into step with him and they ambled on together.
“A beautiful morning, Phoenix,” said the old man.
“Too quiet for my liking,” replied Colin.
Erebus could tell that his trusted aide was straining at the leash. Like his father many years ago, Phoenix was desperate to be doing something positive. This hanging around, waiting drove everyone mad.
The two men ascended the steps that led up from the lawn to the patio. Colin noticed the old man glanced over to where Elizabeth would have sat with him in the old days, before the death of their only daughter. Colin wondered if he could see her sat there. Did he see her sipping a cup of coffee, reading the paper, or one of those magazines he had seen in their rooms a while back?
“Not long now, dear boy,” the old man said cryptically.
Colin was not sure what he meant. Maybe he was referring to the morning meeting. On the other hand, he might have meant that the decision on when he would step aside and hand control over to Athena was imminent. The answer was not going to come just yet; the old man was lost in his thoughts and memories.
Colin held the door open for his leader, and they entered the manor house. Once inside, the spell was broken and Erebus resumed his usual demeanour. There was a meeting to be chaired; matters of national importance to talk about, personal feelings had to be put aside at these times.
The agenda for the meeting was brief. Several items were completed with little more than an acknowledgement that nothing new had been reported since yesterday. Minos had one new item to discuss.
“We have been contacted by the Charity Commission. On this occasion, the financials aren’t what they need to look at, but instead, it will be a day’s advisory visit.”
“Bloody hell,” said Erebus, exasperated, “why can’t these people just leave us alone? What do they think we need advice on now, for goodness sake?”
“They are checking on how we look after the personal information we hold. Historically, we have informed them we have ex-service personnel on site, suffering from PTSD following their experiences abroad in a theatre of war. This visit is to make sure we comply with the Data Protection Act. After their review, they report their findings and offer practical advice where required.”
Erebus was not impressed.
“When are they coming, and how will this visit be conducted?”
“They have sent us an information sheet and a questionnaire to complete. That will be reviewed when they visit. They have given no date for their arrival I’m afraid. They need a list of names of members of staff who will be available for them to interview too. Evidently, these days we should tell people what we are doing with their data, supplying adequate training to new staff, and other things.”
Erebus took a long breath and at last he said, “Let me see this questionnaire when it’s been completed; and the list of names you suggest we parade for these people when they decide to descend upon us.”
Little more remained to be done that morning. As soon as the meeting broke up Colin went to leave the room; he was due another delightful day whiling away the hours, praying for direct action mission to materialise.
Athena scurried after him.
“I don’t suppose you’re busy for a while? Shall we go for a swim?”
Colin welcomed of the opportunity for the exercise; a little company would not go amiss either. They met up at the pool ten minutes later and Colin watched as Athena strode out from the female changing rooms. She wore that grey costume again, that he remembered from last autumn. With her long, powerful legs and toned body, she was all woman. He was a lucky devil!
They spent the rest of the day together, and the night.
“Just like an old married couple,” said Colin in the morning, as they got ready for the day ahead.
“I wish we could be like this always,” said Athena as she brushed her long mane of hair.
Colin knew he was expected to say something here, but he could not bring himself to commit to anything permanent. They still had the summer to get through yet.
“If we don’t get a move on, Erebus will be down on us like a ton of bricks,” he replied.
They made their way separately over to the main house. It was another day at the office. Except that today was different, the Information Commissioner’s Office people had arrived without fanfare. Their advisory visit was today!
Larcombe Manor held many secrets. The way in which they protected those secrets was to keep the public and various government officials well away from the property. The transport section collected any letters and parcels from the city post office, and any newspapers; they also brought in any magazines requested and so forth.
The organisation had gone to great expense to make sure that the utility people could read their meters by the front gate. Everything was done to reduce the number of strangers who came up the long winding driveway to the house.
The presence of a handful of officials, with access to paperwork, computerised records, and members of staff was a nightmare. Minos tried his best to keep calm. Erebus was apoplectic. Athena poured oil on troubled waters.
“What do you want to take a look at first?” she asked, thrusting her ample bosom towards one of the would-be inspectors. He seemed at a loss to choose.
“We… we definitely need to see the completed questionnaire,” he managed to blurt out, running his finger around the inside of his collar.
Minos search
ed frantically, through the paperwork he carried, files scattering across the table.
“Ah, here we are,” he said, “all present and correct.”
“I think we’ll be the judge of that,” one of the elder inspectors snapped.
Erebus excused himself and left the room. Athena was glad. If he stayed, she feared he might either say something rude or worse still, punch the pompous oaf.
Erebus left because he wanted to warn the icehouse of the snap inspection. They went into a ‘lockdown’ situation on visits such as this. There would be no surveillance, no interrogation, no target practice, definitely no burial in the pet cemetery.
Henry Case was still in the manor house. His name appeared on the list of people to be interviewed. Erebus deemed it safest to include the chief interrogator’s name, along with a few of the stewards and gardeners.
Inside the meeting room, Athena attempted to get the ICO people on their side; the last thing they needed was for these people to leave in a few hours with an idea that the Olympus Project had something to hide at Larcombe Manor.
“Can we get you something to drink, gentlemen; tea or coffee?”
Slowly, the tide turned and systematically Minos and Athena stepped carefully through the data. They demonstrated that the registered charity had a firm grip on the paperwork, the digital records, and the training of their staff. A fictitious grip of course, but it sounded convincing.
“That appears in order,” said the pompous oaf, on his second cup of coffee, and third chocolate digestive biscuit. “I think we’re ready to talk to a few of your staff now.”
Henry Case and the others were ushered into the room and trotted out their well-rehearsed back-stories.
“I was wounded in Helmand…”
“Ever since Goose Green…”
“I wake up in the night and I am back below decks, the Exocet punctures the hull and everything changes…”
