Black Ops

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Well we hope you are, at least,’ said Sturrock.

  Danny glanced at the pictures spread out on the table in front of him. Then back up at the older men. ‘Who are the remaining three targets?’ he said.

  Sturrock nodded his reluctant approval of the question. ‘Target one,’ he said, ‘is Colonel Henry Bishop. Served with distinction in Gulf War I, Scots Guards, before moving into the intelligence field in the late ’90s. Operation MISFIT was his baby. He identified Ibrahim Khan as a possible asset in the first place and sweet-talked him into the whole scheme. He retired when MISFIT went dark.’

  ‘Retired?’ Danny said. ‘Or asked to leave?’

  Sturrock blithely evaded the question. ‘He was of the age,’

  he said.

  ‘He’s a prize shit, Black,’ Attwood said. ‘Watch your step

  about him.’

  Sturrock gave Attwood a barely suppressed glare. ‘He has a country estate in Wales,’ he continued. ‘We’ve tried to persuade him to move to a more secure location but he won’t have it. He knows what a headache it will be for us if Khan pays him a visit, and that we’re obliged to provide whatever security is necessary to keep him safe. He has three men watching him, day and night. Good men.’

  ‘Armed?’

  ‘Of course. But they don’t know any specific details about the threat.’

  Danny looked at the pictures again. ‘Khan will get past them,’ he said. ‘Somehow.’

  ‘The colonel’s well protected,’ Sturrock said.

  ‘Khan will get past them,’ Danny repeated. ‘In his sleep.’

  ‘Well even if he does, the colonel’s convinced he can talk his former protégé round.’

  ‘Has he seen the picture of Moorhouse’s bollocks on the carpet?’

  Sturrock looked down his nose, as if such language was beneath him. ‘Target number two,’ he said, ‘is Bethany White. She was Khan’s case officer. She works out of Vauxhall with occasional trips abroad to meet agents. Bethany has been living and sleeping in the MI6 building for the past few nights – we have resources for that.’

  ‘She can’t stay in the MI6 building forever.’

  ‘No, she can’t. But until we find Khan, that’s where she remains. She’s a bloody good case officer, and was always very close to Khan. We think she’ll be high on his list.’

  ‘And target number three?’

  ‘Christina Somers. She’s a language specialist who was part of the training team alongside Bullock, Armitage and Moorhouse. Khan needed fluency in various Arabic dialects. Christina Somers is the best there is. She’s in a separate safe house, not a million miles away from the colonel, as it happens.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ Danny said.

  ‘Henry Bishop, Bethany White, Christina Somers.’ Sturrock ticked them off on his fingers. ‘Apart from us in this room, they’re the only people with in-depth knowledge of the MISFIT situation. And they’re the only three that Khan knows by name and sight.’

  Danny absorbed that information.

  ‘You don’t have much to go on, Black,’ the CO said. ‘Khan’s last-known whereabouts was Syria, but that lead’s gone cold.’

  Danny nodded. The world was big. Ibrahim Khan was one man and he could be anywhere in it. He remembered again the few seconds of contact he’d had with his target. He saw the young man sitting on his bed, reading, calm and patient despite Bullock’s taunting. His eyes fell on the photographs again. The spooks were right. He had to be found, and fast. It wasn’t going to be easy. Ibrahim Khan might be a butcher, but he was also a thoughtful individual. Clever. Skilled. He wouldn’t be easy to locate. The only hope Danny had of finding him, he decided, was by getting inside his head first. That meant speaking to the people who knew him.

  ‘Tell us what you need,’ Attwood said.

  She’s a bloody good case officer and was always very close to Khan. We think she’ll be high on his list.

  Danny’s first move was obvious. ‘I need to talk to Bethany White,’ he said.

  4

  The briefing was over. Sturrock stood up and walked round to Danny’s side of the table. Danny noticed that he wore blue socks that matched his blue tie and that he smelled slightly floral. Probably the hand moisturiser. He handed Danny a card. ‘My direct line,’ he said. The card had no name on it. Just a mobile number. ‘You seem like a good chap,’ he said. ‘Call me if you need anything.’ Danny knew how unusual it was for the head of MI6 to give an ordinary SAS soldier direct access, but he wasn’t fooled by Sturrock’s sudden smarminess. He pocketed the card, nodded, and watched the chief leave.

  As soon as the door was shut, the CO scraped back his chair and stood up. ‘Let’s be clear, Black,’ he said. ‘You report straight back to us, not to him. Is that understood?’

  ‘Roger that,’ Danny said. He didn’t want to get caught in the tension between Hereford and Vauxhall, but he preferred to be in contact with military guys like Williamson and Attwood, rather than some oily creep in a suit like Sturrock.

  He travelled alone to London that same morning. Word had leaked that he’d been pulled in by the head shed. Roscoe was already hovering, but Danny managed to keep his distance. He checked out of the armoury a Sig P38 9mm – a good compact handgun for concealed carry around London – and shoulder holster, then hit the road.

  Just after midday, having left his vehicle in the personnel car park in the basement of the MI6 building by the Thames, he found himself in the reception area being frisked by two armed security men. They felt every last fold of his leather jacket and stonewashed jeans. They examined his belt buckle and asked him to remove his shoes. They found nothing – Danny had stowed his Sig in his car. They let him proceed to an internal barrier where a young woman in a neat trouser suit was waiting for him. She had an ID card on a lanyard around her neck. ‘Follow me, please,’ she said. She scanned her ID card to open the barriers and Danny followed her into the MI6 building.

  The building comprised a complex network of corridors illuminated by strip lighting. Although the exterior architecture of the building was modern, inside it was rather dated. Thin, worn carpet tiles on the floor. Scuffed paintwork and an out-of-order sign on one of the toilets they passed. It was also strangely silent. The men and women they passed carrying files or coffee cups paid them no attention and barely seemed to talk to each other. There was nothing to indicate that this was the beating heart of the security services. It could have been any other anonymous office block.

  They passed an area where rows of people sat at computers analysing data, before going through two sets of doors that Danny’s escort had to unlock with an ID card. They stopped outside a plain door. ‘You can go straight in,’ she said. ‘She’s expecting you.’

  Bethany White’s office was simple but comfortable, with a trace of perfume in the air. There was a small desk with a laptop, an Anglepoise lamp and a photograph in a silver frame. There was a three-seater sofa. No windows. A wall-mounted air-conditioning unit hummed noisily. By the desk was a small suitcase. Danny guessed the woman sitting behind the desk reading some papers had been living out of that for the past few days. The woman herself was tall – almost as tall as Danny himself – with blonde hair and golden freckles on her nose and cheeks. She looked up from her papers.

  ‘Air-conditioning?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  She pointed behind her. ‘It’s been playing up for days, I don’t know why they haven’t sent someone sooner.’ She was well spoken, her posh accent tempered by a slight West Country burr. She went back to reading her papers.

  Danny walked past her desk and up to the air-conditioning. He thumped it heavily with a clenched fist. The noise stopped for a few seconds, then returned, even louder.

  ‘I’d say it’s fucked,’ Danny said. He walked back to her desk. ‘Maybe you could ask Ibrahim Khan to fix it when he rocks up.’

  He knew immediately he shouldn’t have said it. The woman lowered her head and inhaled deeply. Something in that mo
vement expressed all the tension and fear she was feeling. But she recovered quickly. ‘You’re not the maintenance guy?’ she said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Danny Black? From Hereford?’ Danny nodded. ‘I suppose you’d better sit down.’

  ‘I’ll stand.’

  ‘As you please.’ She neatened her papers. ‘I’m Bethany White, senior operations officer responsible for the Middle East. Sturrock told me you were on your way. I understand you want to ask me some questions?’ She said it with a hint of scorn. No doubt, as an MI6 case officer, she would have had contact with SAS men before, but she would have been used to calling the shots. She clearly didn’t relish the idea of being questioned by a military grunt.

  ‘I take it you know what your friend Khan’s been up to?’ Danny said.

  ‘Sturrock showed me the pictures. I wish he hadn’t.’

  ‘Did it look to you like his handiwork?’

  ‘Of course. He was forever cutting people’s testicles off. That’s why I liked him so much. Forgive me for saying it, Mr Black, but if this conversation is going to go anywhere, you’ll have to stop asking stupid questions like that.’

  ‘You liked him?’ Danny asked, unruffled.

  ‘Sure,’ Bethany said. ‘We worked together for a long time. Regular meetings.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Beirut, of course. Look, I’m busy. Didn’t Sturrock tell you all this?’

  ‘I want to hear it from you.’

  ‘Will you bloody well sit down? You’re putting me on edge, hovering over me like that.’ She pinched the bridge of her nose.

  Bethany had made a good attempt at appearing calm and confident when Danny walked in, but it was already unravelling. She was clearly very scared. Danny inclined his head, then took a seat on the sofa. ‘When did you last sleep?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘Fine. How often did you meet him?’

  ‘Khan? Every two months.’

  ‘Why Beirut?’ Danny asked.

  ‘He was operating in Syria. It shares a border with Lebanon. Beirut’s the capital.’

  ‘Thanks for the geography lesson. I’m guessing he didn’t tell his IS handlers he was holidaying in Beirut every two months. So what did they think he was doing there?’

  Danny had the impression that Bethany White was unaccustomed to revealing information about her agent. After years of protecting his identity and his movements, it must feel unnatural to open up about him. ‘That’s classified,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ Danny said. He pulled out his phone. ‘We’ll call Sturrock now and get clearance.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake put your phone away,’ she said waspishly. ‘There’s a businessman there. Lebanese. He runs a successful shipping company around the Mediterranean. But he’s got Islamist sympathies and he’s a regular IS donor. His donations come in cash, every two months. One of Ibrahim’s jobs was to cross the border into Lebanon, drive to Beirut, pick up the currency and take it back into Syria, avoiding all the border crossings and checkpoints on the way. I’d stay in the British Embassy and we’d meet for a couple of hours during each visit.’

  ‘Not in the embassy itself?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘Hotel rooms. Never the same one twice.’

  ‘How did he know where to meet you?’

  ‘You sound like you don’t believe me?’

  Danny stood up. ‘There was this guy,’ he said. ‘He had some information I needed, but he didn’t want to give it up. I took off the little finger of his left hand. I was a bit worried he’d pass out with the pain, but I didn’t have to take any more off before he started talking.’ Bethany was staring at him without expression. ‘Ibrahim took all ten of Armitage’s fingers, and out of the three SAS men he’s killed, I reckon Armitage got off lightest. Bunking down in the MI6 building isn’t a good long-term solution to stop Ibrahim Khan from getting to you and doing the same thing. The only way to stop him is to catch him. If I’m going to do that, you need to tell me everything I ask. Let’s try again: how did he know where to meet you?’

  Bethany did a good – but not entirely successful – job of hiding her nerves. She was hesitant and stumbled over her words, but she did reply. ‘His meetings occurred roughly every two months at the businessman’s offices in Beirut. There was a cafe nearby where I would have a coffee. If Ibrahim’s shoulder bag was on his right shoulder as he was walking up to the offices, it meant it was safe to meet later. If it was over his left, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Did that ever happen?’

  ‘Never. Once I had the signal, I would send a WhatsApp message to a phone he kept in Beirut solely for this purpose. Don’t ask me where he kept it, because I don’t know. The message would include the lat and long of the hotel where we were to meet, along with the room number. The message itself was encrypted according to a one-time pad we shared. Plus the WhatsApp encryption, of course.’

  Danny nodded approvingly. Bethany’s tradecraft told him nothing about Khan’s whereabouts, but it told him plenty about Bethany: she was experienced, careful, and knew how to operate securely and in secret. It crossed his mind that they’d make a good team: her tradecraft and local knowledge, his readiness to apply extreme violence when the situation required it.

  If only she could get over her clearly ingrained notion that in a relationship between an MI6 case officer and an SAS grunt, she should be the one calling the shots.

  ‘This businessman,’ Danny said. ‘How did he receive instructions about when the RVs were to occur?’

  ‘We never found out. Our working theory was always that it was from somebody in his network of business associates.’

  ‘It wasn’t from Ibrahim himself?’

  ‘No. They never had any contact apart from the face-to-face meetings and they only lasted a couple of minutes: hello, hand over the money, goodbye.’

  ‘Did this businessman know Ibrahim’s real name?’

  ‘Of course not. He simply knew him as Ahmed.’

  ‘Ibrahim must have given you other leads, too? IS contacts that he made. People we can track down to see if we have any idea where he is.’

  ‘He gave me lots of names. But IS positions in Syria have taken a pounding. Everyone we knew who had contact with Ibrahim has been killed in air strikes or ground troop movements. To be honest with you, I thought that was what happened to Ibrahim himself. There was an IS pocket in southern Syria called Tulul al-Safa which the Syrian government forces pretty much wiped from the face of the earth – thanks to intelligence from Ibrahim himself, I should say. A few IS fighters managed to escape to other locations, but there was never any word from Ibrahim. I thought perhaps he’d been on the ground there at the time of the air strikes, and was a casualty of them, until his DNA showed up at a crime scene in Palm Beach.’

  Danny pointed at the picture frame on her desk. He could only see the back. ‘Who’s in the photo?’ he asked, abruptly changing the subject.

  ‘My son,’ she said.

  Danny tried not to appear surprised. Sturrock had never mentioned that Bethany had a kid. ‘How old?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘They didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘He’s with Christina. Christina Somers.’

  Danny couldn’t help registering his astonishment. Christina Somers was the third target, currently ensconced in a safe house under armed protection. ‘How’s that supposed to be safe? Can’t he be with his dad?’

  Bethany gave him a cool look. ‘I don’t know who his father is,’ she said. ‘It could be one of several men, none of whom I want to see again.’ She gave him a mischievous little smile. ‘Maybe that shocks you?’ she said.

  ‘What shocks me,’ Danny said, ‘is that he’s being looked after by somebody else on Khan’s hit list.’

  ‘It’s either that, or he stays with me.’ She indicated the building in ge
neral. ‘I can’t keep him here. Christina’s an old friend of mine. We go way back and she looks after Danny when I’m out of the country anyway. He’s comfortable with her.’

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘You’re not the only one in the world.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I know it might sound reckless,’ she said. ‘But the truth is, Danny’s also at risk. Christina’s location is completely secret. I know where she is, and so does the chief. They’ve got a couple of close-protection guys, but they don’t know the full story about Ibrahim. There’s no way for him to find them. I’m an easier prospect. I don’t intend to put my life on hold. Danny’s safest with her.’ Her eyes flashed as she said this. Danny found himself respecting her a little more.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I get it.’ He thought momentarily. ‘This Lebanese businessman. What’s his name?’

  ‘Mohammad Al-Farouk.’

  ‘Is he still in Beirut.’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge.’

  ‘Have you ever met him?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Bethany said. ‘If he knew what I looked like, and then by chance saw me with Ibrahim, we’d be blown.’

  ‘But he’s been under surveillance?’

  ‘From time to time. We know his general movements, where he lives, where his kids go to school, all the usual stuff. I keep my handling notes in my personal safe at the embassy in Beirut. The MISFIT intel is too sensitive to trust to the MI6 servers or the diplomatic bag. I keep it all analogue, in-country.’

  Danny processed that for a minute. ‘How well do you know Beirut?’ he asked.

  ‘Like the back of my hand. I must have visited it thirty or forty times, and when you’re handling an agent, you need local knowledge.’

  ‘You speak Arabic?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then that decides it,’ Danny said.

  ‘Decides what?’

  ‘I need to talk to Al-Farouk. You’re the best person to help me do that. We’re going to Beirut.’