by Rachel Lynch
‘Khalil is the only one who has been contacted by Fawaz – we need all of his cell phones, not just a handful of numbers, and addresses of warehouses and any information he gave to him,’ Peter said.
‘I’ve already explained that to his head of security. He needs reassurance from us that this will be handled well. He’s under no illusion that if we fail to find Hakim before Fawaz realises that he’s compromised, then it’s all over. However, Khalil has been convinced by his head of security that this is the only way forward. They’ve done a sterling job under their own steam, but they need our help, and we theirs. The appeal for Fawaz has already had some results – I’ve been sent four possibles that appear interesting and plausible,’ Helen said.
‘Right, let’s get on with it,’ Peter said. ‘Sylvia?’ He handed over to her.
She introduced a plan for a three-pronged attack.
‘Our priority is finding Hakim, let’s all be clear about that,’ she said. ‘There’ll be a sweep of the Le Croix-Rousse area this morning, involving two hundred officers. We’ll concentrate on addresses unregistered to real people with a formal identity footprint, as well as around the addresses we’ve searched so far. We’re no further towards finding out where Madame Bisset went, and we can only assume that Fawaz got to her via Jean-Luc somehow.’
Helen tensed. She didn’t think Peter or Sylvia noticed. Grant had confirmed to her that he had indeed been the six-foot Caucasian to move her. Helen kept this information to herself for now. Grant had shared his assessment of the old woman, and if she could be as calculating as he described, then making her a priority could jeopardise their efforts prematurely by her getting a message to Fawaz somehow; she was better off under the watchful eye of Grant’s pal.
Sylvia moved on. ‘Peter will fly to Paris,’ she said. ‘There, he’ll hold talks with Special Agent White.’
‘Sir, do I have your permission to handle Khalil’s head of security on our behalf? I’ll take care of it. I know him, he’s ex-military,’ Helen asked.
‘Do it,’ he said.
‘Get what we need. You’ll also be coordinating the hunt for Hakim here in Lyon. You’ve got twelve hours, then you’ll be expected in Paris,’ Sylvia finished.
Helen felt Sylvia’s eyes bore into her. Their conversation about Grant Tennyson was not lost on either of them.
‘Good,’ Peter said.
Helen knew that to be trusted on both counts was a massive responsibility, as well as an opportunity to prove herself to everyone involved. Peter busied himself with gathering his notes, and Helen checked her notifications on her phone.
Sylvia came towards her and lowered her head, so Peter couldn’t hear. ‘Just don’t make it personal,’ Sylvia said. Helen stared back at her. ‘I’ve got your back, for now,’ she added.
Helen turned back to her phone and pretended to read intently, but a genuine report from a member of the public caught her eye. The mighty engine of the internet had kicked in and particulars of tips from the general public from Spain to Russia had begun to trickle in. 90 per cent of such leads turn out to be insignificant, but they all needed checking for that one tiny piece of information that could turn out to be crucial. This one caught her attention.
‘Listen to this,’ she said. Peter and Sylvia stopped what they were doing.
‘A group of cyclists say they saw a man of Fawaz’s description crossing the Pyrenees three days ago. One of them fell off his bike, and they said the man stopped his truck to help them. He was face to face with him and said he’ll never forget the man who saved his life,’ Helen said.
Peter stopped what he was doing. ‘Check it out,’ he said. ‘By the time I arrive in Paris, I want to know if it was him.’
Chapter 46
‘Shall we?’ Sylvia asked. Helen nodded and got her bag. The two suspects arrested on Thursday had been transferred to Interpol HQ and were waiting for follow-up interviews downstairs. They’d been granted custody for both suspects for up to twenty-eight days by the Cour de Cassation, the highest court in France. A ton of work had gone into finding out as much about their backgrounds as they could, and Helen had read the information through several times. She needed a way in, and both she and Sylvia desperately needed the suspects to crack. This time, they’d go in hard. Without them being persuaded to give up information, the authorities faced a futile search of les traboules, which would essentially be like going down a foxhole.
Grant agreed that the chances of Hakim still being in Lyon were great. There was no point moving him; it would be too much of a risk getting caught now, when he was nearing the end of his usefulness.
The two men had been continuously disturbed during their two nights in custody. They’d be tired, confused and disorientated. They decided that Sylvia would go in hard with the Reid technique, which was to go in all guns blazing, telling the accused with determined certainty that they did commit the crime. Helen was to use a softer emotional approach to render the suspect disarmed and vulnerable, by concentrating on facts about their lives. She’d read that the one called Farid had lost his little sister under tragic circumstances. At the age of six, she’d been playing in a field near her home and had been talked in to going with two young men. Helen read the file and her stomach knotted. The girl had been subjected to hours of sexual abuse before her body gave in. The two men were hunted down and killed vigilante style, but even such swift justice wasn’t enough for the family, and her brother was left haunted.
Helen and Sylvia took the elevator and chatted about the case.
‘This source of yours, how did you talk him round?’ Sylvia referred to Grant.
‘Like I said, he’s an old army colleague, I noticed his name on the flight manifest when Khalil flew to Marseilles. I presumed that he was Khalil’s head of security.’
‘And you were right. He’s put a lot of trust in you – did you serve together?’ Sylvia asked.
Helen nodded, but said no more, as Sylvia’s gaze burned into her cheek.
‘I presume you know where he is now?’ Sylvia asked.
‘At my flat,’ Helen said.
‘Marvellous, always keep a man either near your kitchen or your bed,’ she said, winking. Helen returned the scrutinised stare but said nothing.
‘Easy to gather the intel from his boss, then?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Yup,’ Helen replied. Sylvia was telling her that as long as she got the job done, she wasn’t going to examine her methods too closely.
They parted company and entered the two suites.
Helen smiled broadly to the man slumped over in the chair. The lawyer next to him read his documents and appeared bored. She’d had a brief telephone conversation with him where he’d confirmed that his client was close to caving in to the pressure of incarceration. The sleep disruption was doing its work. It could be a cleaner’s hoover outside the door, a faulty light going on at two a.m., a barking police dog or a new bottle of water delivered at three a.m.: they were all common tactics.
Helen sat down and he raised his head. Farid looked exhausted. She took a can of Coke and a pain au chocolat out of her bag and put them down on the table. He stared at the items and Helen smiled again.
‘How are you doing, Farid?’ she asked.
He looked confused.
‘Here, I thought you could do with the sugar.’ She spoke in French as she pushed the Coke and pain au chocolat over to him.
The lawyer glanced at her and blinked his acknowledgement of what she was doing. He settled back to watch the show. They both knew it was a slam dunk, anyway; his client was guilty as hell, and the quicker he confessed, the quicker they could all get on with other things. Farid looked at his lawyer, who nodded his approval that he could take what was being offered. His cuffed hands shook as he struggled with the can’s lid.
‘Let me help,’ said Helen. Farid let his hands drop, and Helen could see that his eyes were full of emotion. Poor bastard. It was young men like this who were groomed and radicalised all over the world,
and easily so because they usually felt they had nothing to live for. Images of his little sister screaming for her mother, no doubt, brutalised and in agony at the penetration, must haunt his every waking moment. He ate the pain au chocolat greedily and Helen watched as the sugar made him feel slightly human. He sat up and glugged the Coke.
‘Better?’ she asked. He nodded.
‘Farid, I absolutely respect your loyalty. There’s no question of that. My priority, and all I care about, is getting a young man, about your age, back to his little brothers.’
Farid swallowed hard.
She placed a photograph of Hakim on the table. In it, he was flanked by two boys, each beaming into the camera. His arms were flung around them in protection and sheer love.
‘This is Hakim, isn’t it? The man you were holding? These are his brothers. They’re devastated. I want you to try to imagine their pain. For whatever reason you chose to follow your orders – and I do believe they were orders – all I want you to do is understand the damage and trauma caused by a son, a brother or an uncle going missing, potentially harmed, and as time goes on, perhaps never coming home.’
He stared at her and to his lawyer, who whispered into his ear. Farid looked back at Helen.
‘This one’s called Farid, can you believe it?’ She pointed at one of Hakim’s brother’s. ‘It means “unique”, doesn’t it? It’s a beautiful name. Was it your father who named you?’ Helen had also read in his notes that another family tragedy had befallen this man. His father had been killed in a mining accident, which was how he’d come to be taken under Fawaz’s wing.
Farid looked down and nodded. The tears came suddenly, and Helen handed him tissues. He let go a groan and bits of pain au chocolat flew out of his mouth.
‘It’s okay, I understand. You’ve done something because someone else asked you, and you felt loyal to them. It’s not you we’re after for this, Farid. We know that you work for Fawaz bin Nabil.’
Farid looked up and stopped crying.
‘He’s on the run in Europe and planning to hurt many, many people, just like Hakim is being hurt and many more families will be too. Can you imagine the pain those boys will go through if we don’t find him in time?’
Farid nodded and buried his head in his cuffed hands. His shoulders shook.
‘Drink some more Coke, Farid. This can all be over if you want it to be. If you choose to save that young man’s life, then we can look after you. Fawaz has got what he wanted. He’s managed to bribe someone very powerful into giving him what he wants: container ships. That journey is over for Fawaz, but don’t you think it’s time Hakim went home to his family? There is no longer a need for him.’
Farid took another gulp of Coke and looked at his lawyer. More whispers followed and more nods from the lawyer. Helen guessed that he was checking if he was being tricked.
‘We have very specific boundaries when we interview people in this country, Farid. We can’t interrogate you, we can’t hurt you and we can’t lie to you.’
This in itself was a little white lie, because in the pursuit of justice, a certain type of deception was legal. The lawyer shifted in his seat. However, Helen was relying upon the common distaste amongst lawyers for representing potential terrorists. It wasn’t worth risking his good name for. He let it go.
Farid rubbed his temples, and Helen saw that his wrists were raw under the cuffs.
‘If you could talk to your father right now, what do you think he would tell you to do? Have you got brothers and sisters, Farid? Like Hakim has?’
He buried his head again. He whispered under his breath and Helen realised that he was praying.
‘Is it comforting?’ she asked. He stopped and nodded.
‘Did Hakim pray in captivity?’
A nod.
She was in.
‘Did you talk to him?’
A nod.
‘Do you think he’s still alive?’
Another nod.
‘Do you want his little brother to see him again?’
A nod. A tear spilt down his cheek. His eyes were droopy, and they lacked any kind of sparkle or love.
‘Fawaz has what he wants, thanks to you, now let Hakim go home,’ she said.
‘I don’t know where he is,’ Farid spoke, in French, for the first time directly to her.
‘But you know where he might be?’
‘Oui.’
Helen passed him a piece of paper, knowing from his education history that he couldn’t read or write.
‘Can you write it down for me?’
‘I’ll do it,’ the lawyer said. He took a pen and the piece of paper. Farid looked at him and took a deep breath.
Helen watched as Farid gave four addresses to his lawyer. Her whole body wanted to jump up and down, but she had to control herself. All four addresses were in Le Croix-Rousse. The lawyer passed her the paper, and she took it.
‘I’ll make sure you get some sleep, Farid,’ she said. She felt a pang of guilt, knowing that he’d probably spend a good stretch of time in prison for his role in the abduction and incarceration of Hakim.
‘One more thing, can you identify this man?’ she asked.
He stared at the photograph held up by Helen. ‘Is this Sand Cat?’ she asked.
He stared at her, swallowed and nodded.
‘Ahmad Azzine?’ she asked.
Another nod.
‘Who was in charge of the arrangements? Was it Ahmad Azzine or Jean-Luc?’ she asked, not expecting anything else out of him.
‘Both. They’re cousins.’
Chapter 47
Ahmad Azzine pulled in to a garage close to Gare du Nord, Paris. The journey from Marseilles had been long, but he was quite happy that the goods were now on their way here. At the port last night, he’d witnessed the unpacking of the cartons himself and, as instructed by Fawaz, the first pallets had been unpacked and loaded onto a decoy lorry. He’d watched it leave, followed by their driver. The lorry contained rugs and oranges, bound for Lyon. It was just another safety measure in case anyone had been tipped off to greet them. The pallets containing the C4 were successfully loaded onto another lorry and he’d followed it all the way to Paris. It was parked in the warehouse mere metres away.
The building was overly warm, but he didn’t mind; he was used to more heat than a Paris summer threatened. He greeted the three men working quietly at desks. The final design was ready to fly, and there was an excited charge to the atmosphere. Ahmad approached the desk of the man who was adjusting some final touches to a quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It was the size of a football and weighed three kilos. It had four arms, each with three tiny rotor blades. The technology had been in wide circulation for years, but it had been ISIS that first used them as weapons in Syria, to attack Russian forces successfully. Russia, in return, was scrambling to create their own force of armed UAVs to tackle the growing threat. All it involved was taking a small UAV that any hobbyist could order from the internet, and arming it. However, this quadcopter went one step further.
Mustafa, who hadn’t been invited to the warehouse, had invented facial recognition software to be incorporated into the little machines via an on-board computer. It had taken two years for the designs to become a reality, and finally, they’d get to see one fly and perform. They were using Ahmad’s facial features to fire up the final demonstration, and the men poked fun at him, asking if he was ready to be a guinea pig.
‘As long as it isn’t armed,’ he joked. He picked up the contraption to admire it. He couldn’t believe how light it was and asked if they were sure it could do the job. The men, who each had a specific skill set, acted offended and gathered around to show Ahmad their pride and joy, pointing to the kit fitted to the device that they’d each contributed.
‘This is a DJI Mavic 2 Pro – only the best! It has a thirty-five-millimetre lens – they sell for fifteen hundred dollars.’
‘I think they’re worth a bit more now,’ said Ahmad. The men laughed.
‘How does it avoid things we don’t want it to bump into?’ Ahmad asked.
‘Here, these are the sensors. It can detect shrubbery, birds, power cables and other drones. It’s highly sensitive – let’s fly it.’
Ahmad stood with his hands on his hips. The quadcopter was placed in the middle of the floor and one of the men held a remote control.
‘What’s the range of that thing?’ Ahmad asked.
‘This is a handset, but it can be controlled via computer, and, like mobile phones, it has unlimited range when it finds a satellite.’
Ahmad raised his eyebrows and whistled. He wanted to see it in action for himself before he filmed it to send to Fawaz and his cousin.
‘Come on, then.’
The copter rose off the ground gently, and the blades made no sound at all. The tiny landing gear retracted, and it flew up to the ceiling but stopped suddenly.
‘Was that you?’ Ahmad asked.
‘No, it registered the ceiling.’
It flew around easily, and Ahmad gazed in wonder at the grace of it. There was a mixture of expressions and gestures, all appropriate and expected from a group of men playing with a toy, except this plaything happened to be deadly.
‘I’m activating the facial recognition now,’ the controller said. It was a solemn announcement, and everybody hushed. Ahmad looked at the flying device and waited. There was a pause as the aircraft hovered in the air. Its movement caught them by surprise and it made its way around the room over their heads. Within seconds it had moved towards Ahmad, and he stepped back. It kept coming and stopped about a foot from his face. He felt the wind whip from the propellers and smiled. Only now could he hear a slight rumbling buzz from the motor. A red light appeared on the front of its main body.
‘It’s armed.’
‘What happens now?’ asked Ahmad.
‘It will be programmed to explode when the red light goes on after facial recognition is confirmed.’
‘How much explosive is needed and can it carry it?’ Ahmad asked.
‘About the size of half a pack of butter and we’re loading nails in there too.’
