by Rob Sinclair
For everyone who had faith in me.
Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Rob Sinclair
Copyright
ONE
2018 – Paris, France
Faces had always stayed with him. He could walk past a thousand people in a busy market square and pick out a familiar face in an instant, even people he hadn’t seen in years.
From the threadbare sofa in that wreck of a Paris apartment, Aydin watched the still images of men’s faces flash up one by one on the flickering TV screen. The documentary was supposed to be about the youths of jihad; the young guys from Western Europe who travelled to the Middle East to fight for their religion. But so far all he’d seen were thugs who’d taken it upon themselves to pick up guns and bombs to live out some violent fantasy. Was it boredom that made them do it?
All he knew was that these men weren’t the real problem for the West. Nor was it the weak-minded individuals who were so easily swayed into strapping plastic explosives to their chests. So far the real faces of Terror hadn’t featured in the programme at all. The millions of people watching had no idea who those people were. But Aydin knew. Because they were the ones who created him, and the others like him – the ones who told him what to do.
A much more familiar face flashed on the screen. His name and ‘title’ appeared beneath the grainy photograph of his face, but the words did nothing to describe the full extent of the man’s remit. ‘Aziz al-Addad, Head of Youth Training’. To Aydin and his brothers the man was simply the Teacher.
Aydin couldn’t hear the TV any more for the sudden onrush of memories the man’s grinning face induced in him – his barked orders, spitting venom. Aydin could hear the Teacher telling him what he had to do, his eyes bulging. His was the only way Aydin knew.
Shaking, Aydin turned off the TV.
Minutes later he was outside roaming the streets. In the district of Clichy-Sous-Bois he was just a few miles from Paris’s most treasured landmarks, yet in that shithole of a neighbourhood he felt several worlds away. To Aydin, the whole district was a mess of clashing cultures. Paris was the world’s capital of romance, but he couldn’t see any of that – decay and misery were too prevalent, and violence both the cause and answer to most problems.
He kept his head down as he walked past a gang of black youths. Did they appreciate that they were no longer the centre of the white man’s ire in the city? People like Aydin had taken that mantle.
Round the next corner he reached the same car he’d walked past dozens of times on similar nights: a battered Citroën older than he was. The street was quiet. He slipped a length of wire down the side of the Citroën’s rusted window frame and released the lock. Within seconds he was sitting in the driver’s seat, his head swimming.
He’d hot-wired the car several times in the last few months, repeating the same ritualistic series of actions; sat there with the engine turning over loudly, thinking about driving off into the night. But he never had. Each time he simply shut the engine down, stuffed the wires back into place and pushed the lock back down on the door before leaving the car where it was.
He wondered who the car belonged to. Did they have any idea it had been broken into? The car was always in the same spot, a thick layer of dust covering its corroded shell. It was clear it hadn’t been moved for some time. Maybe its owner had died, or moved house and left the crappy tin can behind.
Aydin was snapped from his thoughts when he saw two men further down the street, coming his way. In the darkness, he couldn’t make out their features, though both had their heads covered with hoods. As they approached, Aydin felt his heart rate quicken. It wasn’t fear or apprehension, simply his body ready and primed for the possible threat. He pushed the gear stick into first and released the handbrake, grasping his hands tightly round the steering wheel. As the men walked beneath a streetlight their faces were caught in a flash of orange light and Aydin avoided their gazes. Did they know who they were looking at? His mind was busy trying to determine whether to thump his foot down on the accelerator and hurtle off, when the men carried on past before fading into the darkness.
After a few seconds Aydin heaved a sigh, wrenched the handbrake, killed the engine and stepped out into the night.
Twenty-four hours later Aydin was walking the same dark street. A long and tiring day of planning had left him weary both in body and mind, and the walk through the fresh Parisian night hadn’t yet rejuvenated him. Not least because he knew this night would end – just like all the others – in disappointment.
No. This night was worse. As he approached the spot, he realised the Citroën wasn’t there. He spun round, looking up and down the street. No sign of it anywhere. Just an empty space, a dark outline of tarmac around where the car had been sitting untouched for so long.
A thief? After all, the car had been unlocked for some time. Or had the owner finally reunited with the heap of junk?
Aydin’s heart sank, as though his one solace – that dream of another life – had been torn from him.
Confused, he couldn’t face going back to the safe house so soon. Instead he sat on a wall in the dark, took out his phone and dialled the number from memory.
‘Hello?’ The woman’s soft voice filled his ear, her English accent smooth in the dark. He shut his eyes and kept the patchy image of her smiling face in his mind as long as he could before it cracked and faded away.
‘Hello?’ she said again. ‘Who is this?’
He hung up. He didn’t want to spook her, just to hear her voice.
&n
bsp; When Aydin opened the apartment’s front door almost an hour later he heard the noise of the TV, and saw the lights were on. He’d hoped Khaled would be in bed, but he was sitting upright on the sofa, a sickly grin on his face.
‘Hey, Talatashar, come and see this.’
Talatashar: the number thirteen in Arabic. By birth he was Aydin, but among his people he was referred to only by number.
He slumped down beside Khaled, his attention turning to the BBC World news report playing on the TV: helicopter footage of the destruction caused by a suicide bomb attack at a market in Aleppo. Over twenty people were already known to have died, the report claimed.
‘Good work, eh?’ Khaled said, still smiling.
Aydin said nothing. Khaled was in his thirties – an administrator, and Aydin’s link to those who gave the orders. They weren’t friends; their relationship was one of necessity. Aydin’s ill feelings towards the man were nothing to do with their relative positions in the hierarchy, he simply hated everything about him.
The stench of sweat and tobacco stuck in Aydin’s nose as Khaled rambled excitedly about ‘infidels’ and ‘our holy war’. Khaled’s was a face Aydin would do well to forget: that large scar stretching from his right eye to his left ear; those yellowed, misshapen teeth.
‘And so it begins,’ Khaled proclaimed. He often spoke as if he knew what was really going on, the real story. His smile grew. ‘This is just the start.’
Khaled seemed to take issue with Aydin’s silence and his smirk dropped away – irked, as he often was, by Aydin’s apparent lack of enthusiasm.
‘Allah looks upon all martyrs with the same regard, Talatashar,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing special about you.’
It was true, Aydin knew. He didn’t see himself as special – none of them were.
Aydin fixed his gaze on the TV as the reporter continued. One of the known victims of the blast was a British citizen: a woman in her twenties, working in Aleppo with an international humanitarian charity. He didn’t recognise her name, but then came her picture, a small square nestled in the top corner of the screen. She was a similar age to him, her eyes squinting from the sun, a bright red lanyard dangling around her neck.
He froze.
It felt like he couldn’t move at all. For a moment he wondered if his heart had stopped beating.
After a few agonising seconds, he slowly exhaled, his eyes still fixed on the face of the young woman. Her eyes. The rest of her face could have been covered but he would still know those eyes. Faces had always stayed with him. He’d not seen hers since he was a child – since the night he was taken from his bed – but he had absolutely no doubt that the dead charity worker was Nilay. His twin sister.
TWO
Aydin was shaking again, caused by something else entirely this time. He was losing control.
‘There’ll be no place in paradise for that bitch, or any of the others,’ Khaled said.
Aydin closed his eyes tight, trying to shut out Khaled’s voice.
Soon everything was drowned out by the onset of rage, the throbbing of blood in his ears. As he struggled to control it, he saw his mother and twin sister Nilay in flashes.
By the time Khaled slapped Aydin’s head to snap him out of the trance, it was too late. Aydin released a deep, guttural yell and threw his elbow out in an arc, catching Khaled in the left eye and causing his head to jerk back. He shot up from the sofa and glared down, snarling, panting. He tried to hold back, to control the beast, to not let it conquer him – but it wasn’t working.
‘Sometimes I wish you’d just shut that ugly fucking mouth of yours for more than five seconds,’ Aydin said, fists clenched at his sides. He took a deep breath and stepped back, in two minds as to whether the situation could be diffused from there, or if it had already gone too far.
‘What the fuck is your problem anyway?’ Khaled spat, holding a hand up to his bruised face. ‘You care so much about some little Western whore?’
Aydin’s eyes remained on him. He could see Khaled was fuming, even as he glanced to the coffee table where the blunt knife he’d earlier used to peel an apple lay next to the twisted skin and discarded core.
For a moment they were both looking at the knife. Part of him willed Khaled to make the move.
Aydin lunged first, but Khaled was closer. He grabbed the blade and was up on his feet in a flash. He was a good four or five inches taller than Aydin, and a few inches thicker too. Much of the extra mass was muscle, and Aydin guessed most people would steer well clear of him under challenge.
But Aydin wasn’t most people.
He was on Khaled before the administrator could swing the blade round in an arc towards Aydin’s side, and he blocked easily and countered with a jab that split Khaled’s lip. Khaled came forward a second time, but Aydin blocked with force again, feeling a jarring in his lower arm from the impact of the blow, as if he’d smacked it against a lump of steel. But it didn’t stop him. Khaled was big and strong, but he wasn’t like Aydin.
They had made damn sure of that.
Again Khaled attacked, with everything he had left – fist and knife and feet, over and over. Aydin moved in a steady rhythm to thwart his every move, an autopilot he’d developed from childhood but had never had to utilise for real until now. Before long, a look of defeat crept across his opponent’s face.
Then a straight fist flew towards him – a final, futile attempt. Aydin shimmied to the left, caught the arm and swivelled. Bringing his other arm around Khaled’s neck, Aydin sent him spinning over his knee and crashing to the ground. He grabbed Khaled’s knife hand, twisted it around and pushed the wrist back until it cracked. Khaled screamed in pain and dropped the blade. Aydin twisted the arm further and smacked just below the shoulder, hearing the pop as the arm dislocated. He picked up the knife and stood over Khaled, who panted and wheezed.
‘I was right to keep my eye on you,’ Khaled spluttered through pained breaths. ‘I knew you were too weak to see this through.’
Aydin said nothing.
Khaled turned over and crawled away. Aydin watched him struggle, but another snapshot of his sister’s face burned suddenly in his eyes and he had to press his palms to his temples.
Would she have wanted him to finish this?
He snapped out of it to discover Khaled reaching up for the laptop, which sat atop the battered Formica dining table across the room. The injured administrator mashed the keyboard with a broken hand, and a second later a long tone signalled the software’s attempt to connect the call.
Aydin couldn’t let that happen.
He darted forward, lurched at Khaled. He lifted his foot and hurled it under Khaled’s chin. His head whipped back at such an angle Aydin wondered if he’d broken his neck. His head bounced forward again, his face smacked sickly against the lino floor. Aydin plunged the knife into the side of Khaled’s neck and yanked it out the front, tearing a gaping hole in the flesh from which the man’s blood sprayed out.
Spinning round, Aydin reached out to kill the call on the laptop . . . but the dial tone had already stopped.
He hoped – prayed – that the call hadn’t gone through, that it had simply timed out. Then he saw the all too familiar browser window open up. Just a plain black screen, the same as always. He knew on the other end of the line his face would be clearly visible.
His face, dripping with Khaled’s blood.
Breathing hissed through the laptop’s speakers; slow, deliberate and calm breaths. Aydin stared at the blank screen, unable to move, as though it was a black hole sucking every ounce of energy from him.
‘Why?’ was all he could think to say. No answer. ‘Why her!’ His voice was hoarse as the well of emotion overflowed. Anger, sorrow, regret – he wasn’t sure which was in control.
Still no answer.
A short bleep sounded and the call disconnected, the black screen replaced by generic Microsoft wallpaper. Aydin knew exactly what that meant.
Hurriedly he grabbed the only possessio
ns he needed – the stash of money in a hole in the wall behind the bathroom cabinet, the pistol and his pocket multi-tool. He left the several fake passports behind. Despite their undoubted quality, he couldn’t use them now.
Outside, he walked quickly down the street and took out his phone. He stopped to turn it on and thought about calling her again. After a few moments he stuck the phone back in his pocket and continued walking.
He headed on past the spot where the Citroën used to be, ignoring the nagging in his mind – why hadn’t he just gone when he’d had the chance?
For once he was at least glad he lived in such a desperate neighbourhood, and it wasn’t long before he found an old Fiat in a similar state to the recently departed Citroën.
After checking the dark street was clear, he took out the multi-tool and used the flathead screwdriver and a bit of muscle to pop the lock and the door open. Less than a minute later he had the engine running. For a few moments he just sat there as the engine grumbled in his ear.
This time he really didn’t have any choice.
With a look over his shoulder, he pulled out into the night, no clear destination in mind. Only one thing was clear: he was on his own.
THREE
Aleppo, Syria
Rachel Cox stared out of the window of the seventh-floor apartment, gazing across the twinkling nightscape of the city. In the near distance she could make out what remained of the Al-Madina Souq, treasured buildings that had once formed part of the original ancient city that had seen continuous habitation for over eight millennia. Yet look what had become of it. Even at night the thin orange illumination was enough to highlight the destruction of the still raging civil war. On top of the monumental human loss, many treasured buildings were now nothing more than piles of sandy rubble. Cox would never cease to feel sadness to see a city she had grown to know so well look so vulnerable and decrepit and seemingly beyond repair – and not just its buildings, but its inhabitants too.
The sound of her vibrating phone stole Cox’s attention from the window and the misery outside it. She moved over to the scratched and stained wooden side table and picked up the phone. A text message:
White line, five minutes.
Cox put the phone back down and went over to the crumpled sofa covered in a faded sheet, where her high-spec laptop sat. The city may be in ruins, but Cox wasn’t without budget, and if you had the resources you could still get all the mod cons in Aleppo one way or another – electronics, mobile phone signal and even Wi-Fi. Up in the safe house, operated by the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, Cox had all that and more.
