‘I need proof.’
‘I can only show you my ID card, which gives me access to the MI6 building.’
Mistry nodded. Deacon slowly produced his ID.
‘How do you know each other?’
‘He was my commanding officer in the 1991 Gulf War,’ said Boxer.
Silence. Mistry gave the ID back, lowered the gun.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on the run now for a few months. I just got paranoid, that’s all.’
Mistry sat down, put the gun on the table.
‘You want to talk to me about Alyshia and Frank D’Cruz?’
Deacon produced a voice recorder, set it on a table between them. Boxer made some tea, put out a plate of biscuits.
‘You worked in the Konkan Hills steelworks,’ said Deacon. ‘Did you ever visit other companies that were going to take your steel; the car factories, for instance?’
‘Yes. I had close contacts with the various line managers to make sure that I was producing the right quality steel for them.’
‘Did that include the electric car business?’
‘I was given a tour of that facility and we had discussions.’
‘Were they producing the batteries in the same facility?’
‘Yes, but in a different building.’
‘The cars they were manufacturing for the European market, were they any different?’
‘There were some style differences, that’s all. The platform was the same.’
‘And the batteries?’
‘They were the same.’
‘Were those cars selling in the Indian market?’
‘Yes, but to an exclusive minority. They were expensive compared to the fossil fuel cars.’
Deacon and Mistry talked at some length about the recordings he’d made in the Juhu Beach house in November and December of last year. Nothing seemed to interest Deacon particularly until Mistry started talking about a meeting between Frank D’Cruz and an Afghan called Jawid Sahar.
‘Do you know how Frank had met Jawid Sahar originally?’
‘Interesting,’ said Mistry. ‘His was one of the few names that caught Chhota Tambe’s attention, too. Frank knew him through Amir Jat. He was a businessman with connections to Hamid Karzai’s family in Kabul. Frank was looking to sell his steel in Afghanistan.’
‘What did they talk about?’
‘They didn’t talk very much about steel. They spoke about Frank’s deal with the British government to set up the electric car factories in the UK,’ said Mistry. ‘There seemed to be no detail too small for him. I think Frank felt compelled to be so revealing because Jawid Sahar was a contact of Amir Jat’s. He wanted to be in there at the beginning of the rebuilding of Afghanistan, and a direct route into the Karzai family was very appealing.’
‘Did they happen to talk about the prototypes?’
‘They talked about everything,’ said Mistry. ‘Frank was very pleased with himself because he’d just got permission from the Mayor of London to install the advertising pitch for his cars in the middle of the City and out at Stratford, in front of the Olympic stadium. It gave him the opportunity to brag about all his ministerial connections.’
‘Did Jawid Sahar ever come back?’
‘Not in the following two weeks while I was still at Konkan Hills.’
‘Did you ever hear the name Mahmood Aziz mentioned in any conversation with Frank or any of the Juhu Beach house tapes?’
‘No.’
Deacon’s mobile rang, he took the call and listened for some minutes, hung up.
‘I think I’ve got all I need for the moment,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Just one last thing, Deepak. Do you know who shot the Englishman who came to see you in the Dharavi slum?’
‘I assume it was one of Anwar Masood’s men. They were looking for me and they’d shoot anybody.’
‘He was my agent and a good man.’
‘Then I’m sorry for that,’ said Mistry.
They exchanged mobile numbers in case there was a need for any further contact. Deacon left. Boxer walked him back to his car.
‘What was the significance of Jawid Sahar?’
‘He’s a known associate and supporter of Mahmood Aziz, who is Amir Jat’s main contact with the Afghan Taliban. Aziz is responsible for a number of bombing campaigns. He also has UK connections. He was born and lived here until he was twelve. And he has international ambitions on the scale of Osama bin Laden.’
‘And all those questions about the car factories?’
‘We’re still waiting to see the Indian police report about that break-in. We’ve been told that the warehouse holding the electric car prototypes for the UK market was accessed and that nothing of value had been stolen.’
‘You need to get your bomb squads back on the job,’ said Boxer.
‘The positive thing is that if any devices have been planted, they haven’t been detonated, which probably means they’re on a timer and they’re waiting for a specific moment,’ said Deacon. ‘And if there’s an override, they haven’t exercised it because they don’t know what we know.’
‘What do you think Frank knows about any of this?’
‘Everything and nothing. He obviously knows who he’s been speaking to but not necessarily their connections. He probably knows about the break-in to his car plant but not what it was about. I’m sure he doesn’t know detail because it would be too risky to have him out there knowing anything specific. I think he’s just been told to keep his mouth shut in a general way about anything potentially sensitive and if he’s lucky, they’ll release his daughter.’
‘I’m off her case now, but Alyshia still feels like my responsibility,’ said Boxer. ‘And I’m aware that eight million Londoners are more important than one young woman.’
Mercy went to the interview room door, knocked, sat back down. A few seconds later, the desk sergeant opened it. Xan Palmer and the girl were standing there, looking even paler and more panic-struck, having just been shown MK’s body.
‘Is this the man you saw last night in MK’s flat?’ asked Mercy.
They both nodded.
‘I can’t hear you,’ said Mercy.
‘Yes,’ they said.
‘Thank you, that will be all,’ said Mercy, and shut the door in their faces.
‘I’m not interested in sending you down for your drug dealing, Hakim. All I want to know is where the girl is. You don’t tell me that and, now that we have MK’s body, you’ll be sent down for the max. You’ll never meet Amir Khan in the ring and you’ll be boxing for the veterans by the time you get out.’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘That’s progress,’ said Mercy. ‘Not, I won’t tell you, but I can’t tell you. Why can’t you tell me? Against your religion?’
‘You could say that.’
The door opened, the desk sergeant came in again, timed it so that four members of Hakim Tarar’s gang walked past and looked in, eyes connecting. He put a piece of paper down in front of Mercy, backed out. She read it, smiled.
‘Know what this is, Hakim?’ she said. ‘This is the report on the footage from the Rosemary Works CCTV camera at the end of Branch Place.’
‘What do I care?’
‘It shows the registration number of the VW Transporter you were using last night. It belongs to Ali Wattu of the Pride of Indus restaurant on Green Street. Now that’s a Page One mistake. You’ve got to know that every inch of London is scanned by CCTV these days, even somewhere as insignificant as Branch Place. Whoever planned that action last night wasn’t thinking straight. You got anything you want to add now? Anything that might mitigate your horrible circumstances?’
‘What are my chances of success here, do you think?’ asked Mistry, sharing a takeaway curry and a bottle of beer with Boxer in the Chiswick flat.
‘Probably better with Alyshia than they are with Frank,’ said Boxer. ‘At least Alyshia knows Frank for what he is: a corruptor of men, and women. As you sai
d, that scene with Amir Jat, Sharmila and the very young girls is not one she will ever forget. You’ve betrayed Frank, but you had no option but to comply with Chhota Tambe’s demands. I think even Isabel is well-disposed towards you, and she’s someone who’s grown to understand the dark side of Frank D’Cruz. No, your main difficulty is with Frank. Unless you get his support, he will find ways to make your life difficult, if he doesn’t manage to terminate it.’
‘He seems to trust you,’ said Mistry. ‘Can you talk to him?’
‘I can try,’ said Boxer, ‘but don’t expect Frank’s forgiveness to come for free. There’ll always be a price to pay, and it won’t be in cash.’
‘He’ll want to have a hold over me.’
‘And you’ll have to decide whether Alyshia is worth it,’ said Boxer, looking at his watch. ‘I’ve got to go and check on Isabel. You going to be all right now?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, picking up the gun.
‘Where did you get that from?’ asked Boxer.
‘Yash arranged it for me from one of the Southall gangs. I picked it up this morning.’
‘Used one before?’
‘Once.’
‘Be careful then.’
‘Yash told me I shouldn’t get caught with it,’ said Mistry. ‘This was the gun they used when they tried to kill Frank three days ago.’
Saleem Cheema sat in the basement room with Rahim. He was looking at Alyshia, with her head still wrapped in a sweater. She now seemed comfortable, whereas he was in a state of extreme tension. An SMS arrived on his phone with a loud beep that, in his highly anxious state, brought him out of his chair. Rahim stared straight ahead, unmoved. Cheema had no idea what was going through his mind. The coded SMS told him to call the UK command from a fixed line. He went upstairs. His hands were sweating and shaky. Every time he’d called UK command, the orders they’d given him had pushed him further beyond his moral boundaries. He made the call, gave his code name.
‘You are to kill the girl.’
‘What?’
‘I think you heard me.’
‘But why?’ said Cheema desperately. ‘She’s served her purpose. Why do we have to—’
‘It is seen by the high command in Pakistan as an appropriate punishment for Frank D’Cruz and that’s all you need to know.’
‘I don’t know whether I can do that.’
‘There is also the danger that she may compromise your network if she’s released at a later date,’ said the voice. ‘Where was she when you dealt with our friend?’
Silence from Cheema.
‘I think you see my point now,’ said the voice. ‘The decision has been taken that this is the best course of action.’
More silence from Cheema as he struggled with himself.
‘I am surprised at you. I would have thought your earlier task far more difficult.’
‘Is there a deadline?’ asked Cheema.
‘Before midnight tonight.’
33
3.00 P.M., WEDNESDAY 14TH MARCH 2012
Whitehall, London SW1
‘The purpose of this meeting is to devise a strategy for dealing with a potential terrorist attack on the City of London,’ said Natasha Radcliffe, the Home Secretary, as chair of the COBRA emergency meeting. ‘Now that we’ve all seen this report about the D’Cruz cars, does anybody have any suggestions on how to approach the matter?’
‘The first thing we should try is a remote inspection of the two cars in Stratford,’ said Joyce Hunter of MI5. ‘Those cars are under a canopy in front of the stadium in the south of the Olympic park, which is closed at night. They’re not visible from the outside. The EOD Ammunition Technicians can send in a remote controlled vehicle, which will tell them if they’ve got anything to worry about. If there’s anything unusual, they can remove the batteries to a safe place and dismantle them.’
‘And if you do find something ugly out at Stratford, what are you going to do in Bank and St Mary Axe?’ asked Mervin Stanley, the Mayor of London. ‘If we have army bomb disposal units out on the streets of the City, it’s not going to look good. Markets could crash. This could have global consequences.’
‘We’d have to have a media black-out, for a start,’ said Barbara Richmond, the Minister for Counter Terrorism. ‘An evacuation procedure in place.’
‘We’re concerned about the batteries only, aren’t we?’ said Natasha Radcliffe. ‘I understand from the report that the cars themselves were given the all-clear. What sort of devices would we be talking about if they were contained in the batteries?’
‘Given that they didn’t show up on the earlier EOD inspection, which checks a whole range of device attributes, they would be small, contrived to look like the cells of an electric car battery, odourless and with no obvious energy supply,’ said Simon Deacon. ‘What particularly concerns MI6 is that we’ve now been able to establish an information chain about these cars, from Frank D’Cruz to a known terrorist operative called Mahmood Aziz, who used to be a UK citizen and now wants to be the next Osama bin Laden.
‘As you all know, there have been hundreds of breaches in security with radioactive material since the breakdown of the old Soviet Union. The one that particularly concerns us was found on an arms smuggling mule train, going from Tajikistan to northern Afghanistan in January this year. Fortunately the Americans were able to get the material on a flight to Kabul before an insurgency attack on their post, which killed all of the smugglers they’d just captured. These arms were destined for Mahmood Aziz in his stronghold of North Waziristan. The CIA confirmed that the phial taken from the arms smugglers contained radioactive material.’
‘So we’re talking about the makings of a dirty bomb,’ said Mervin Stanley.
‘That’s our concern, at the moment,’ said Deacon.
Silence.
‘The devices, if they exist,’ said Joyce Hunter, trying to strike a positive note, ‘will probably have timers and, in the event of those being discovered, also mobile phone triggers.’
‘So someone would have to have to be able to see the cars in order to establish that they were being tampered with by police or army, and then trigger the bomb with a mobile?’ said Stanley.
‘That’s correct,’ said Hunter. ‘Electronic jammers will be installed around the Stratford podiums before the EOD Ammunition Technicians start work. If the EOD squad detect anything unusual, I would advise closing down the mobile phone network before they go into their render safe procedure.’
‘That might not mean much out in somewhere like Stratford, although I’m sure the contractors who are still working, night and day, wouldn’t be too happy about it,’ said Stanley. ‘But if that was done in the City, I think it could set off a panic and we might see a catastrophic market reaction. The one thing the City of London could do without, after all its been through in the last three years, is a run on the market.’
‘If a dirty bomb goes off in Bank, St Mary Axe or Stratford,’ said Natasha Radcliffe, ‘there will be no City of London, no Olympic Games. That will be the end of the market and the end of billions of pounds of revenue for London and the UK, which is why, Mervin, we’ll learn as much as we can from the Stratford cars first and only move in on the City cars if the EOD technicians express their concern.’
‘This may sound like a stupid question but, if there is a timer, will they be able to determine the date and time that the device is supposed to explode?’ asked Stanley.
‘Bombs in the real world don’t come equipped with Hollywood timers with big visible red numbers counting down,’ said Hunter. ‘The EOD Techs would have to locate the timer and take it from there.’
‘I would imagine that the timers for the Stratford cars would be set for the same time as the City cars, for simultaneous explosions,’ said the Met Police Commmissioner. ‘If we knew what time they were set for in Stratford, that would tell us how long we’ve got to deal with the City vehicles. In the meantime, we should establish which rooms in all the buildings in the area
of Bank and St Mary Axe have a line of sight to the cars. We should also put plain clothes officers on the ground to see if there are any obvious interested observers within range of the cars.’
‘At the beginning of this report, we’re told that Alyshia D’Cruz is now in the hands of an Asian drug gang, which Counter Terrorism tells us could possibly have links to al-Qaeda,’ said Mervin Stanley. ‘But you don’t tell us whether there’s any link between her being held and these bombs going off in the City.’
‘That’s because we don’t know, which is why we have to be very careful,’ said Barbara Richmond. ‘If they do have links and they get wind of a rescue attempt on Alyshia D’Cruz, they could alert the bombers and the devices may be triggered.’
Boxer went back to Isabel’s house. The overcast day was beginning to get darker as Rick Barnes opened the door for him.
‘Any news?’
‘Nothing from the kidnappers.’
‘How’s the investigation going?’ asked Boxer. ‘I’ve heard they picked up some suspects. You must have some leads by now? CCTV footage?’
Barnes said nothing. Blanked him.
‘Where’s Isabel?’
‘In the kitchen,’ said Barnes. ‘You’re not going to tell her anything, are you? It’ll just make her even more anxious.’
‘You’re getting that close?’
Barnes nodded. Boxer brushed past him. Isabel was in the kitchen, staring into the table, nothing in front of her. She looked up, dazed.
‘It’s you,’ she said, the hope gone from her face.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ said Boxer.
‘I don’t know how you can say that after what we’ve been through.’
‘It’s the rollercoaster, but we’re going to get to the end of the ride and it’s all going to work out fine.’
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Putting intelligence sources together,’ said Boxer. ‘Do you know where Frank’s gone?’
‘He’s at the Savoy now. Their Royal Suite was given a makeover a couple of years ago and, at three hundred and twenty-five square metres, and ten thousand pounds a night, he prefers it to the Ritz,’ she said drily. ‘You’ve been with Deepak?’
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