The Rift

by Rachel Lynch

‘Thank you.’ She smiled at him and heard the door open. Peter greeted her warmly. She entered the room and scanned it quickly. There were several high-ranking officers from the US military, all male, as well as some suits, sat at a large table, over which was positioned a huge screen. Special Agent Roy White strode over to her and extended his hand, but she saw no sign of Sir Conrad. The arrogant idiot, she thought. Better for her, though.

  Peter introduced her, and she sat down opposite the uniformed officers and suits, including Peter and Roy.

  ‘Major Scott has been piecing together the facts from the very beginning,’ Peter said, ‘and we now have solid evidence that an attack will take place directly on the members of the summit, notably the UK prime minister and the British ambassador here in Paris.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Roy White asked.

  ‘The ambassador is busy making final arrangements for the prime minister’s arrival early tomorrow morning,’ Peter answered.

  Helen took a deep breath and ran over the facts in her head. The room went silent, and all eyes were on her.

  ‘This morning, before I left Lyon, I was part of a team that recovered Hakim Dalmani from an address in Le Croix-Rousse, an area in which we long suspected he was held by associates of Fawaz bin Nabil.’ She took a breath. ‘Hakim’s stable.’ Sylvia had texted her while she was in the air to say so. ‘We have four men currently in custody and have raided over fifteen addresses so far. There is strong evidence to suggest that bin Nabil is planning an armed drone strike here in Paris. He is now confirmed as inside Europe – something that slipped past us all.

  ‘We did think that we’d apprehended contraband shipped by Fawaz on Sunday evening, but it turned out to be a dummy, and once again, we’re reminded of how complex this operation is. We have been told by Khalil Dalmani that Fawaz Nabil used his son as a pawn to leverage shipping vehicles to import contraband to Europe. We don’t know for sure, but we think it’s C4 bought in Mali, off the government, for ten million dollars.’

  She waited while this information sunk in.

  ‘C4? God damn! How in the hell did a douchebag like Fawaz get hold of ten million dollars’ worth of C4?’ a three-star general butted in, but she’d expected it.

  ‘Were there any Global Hawks up in the air over southern Morocco and Mali in the last week?’ she asked. The three-star had so many medals, it was hard to see past his chest. He looked to the man to his left, who ruffled through some notes. He nodded. ‘Yes, there were several fly-bys over the new pipeline being built in southern Morocco.’

  ‘Right, we need to search that footage for vehicles crossing the Moroccan border along the border with Mauritania and down to North Mali. Maybe a convoy, but surely busy traffic for those parts. They’ll have headed to Algiers after that. A shipment came in to Marseilles yesterday evening carrying Fawaz’s contraband, and we hope we’ve traced it to a warehouse here in Paris, close to the Gare du Nord district.’

  ‘Wait a minute, what about motive? Fawaz has never been political or a zealous nut,’ another general interjected.

  Peter nodded to her.

  ‘The transaction for the C4—’ Helen began, but was interrupted.

  ‘What you think is C4,’ said the general.

  ‘What we think is C4,’ she conceded. ‘The transaction went through a company registered in London called Rafik Mining and Minerals. Rafik was Fawaz Nabil’s eldest son. He was picked up in London five years ago on terror charges, and extradited back to Morocco, where, we believe, he was tortured to death. Sir Conrad Temple-Cray signed the order, and it came out of the then Home Secretary’s office.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Our current prime minister,’ Helen said.

  The two generals whistled.

  ‘We know he’s making drones – we now think they’re going to be armed with C4,’ she added.

  ‘You’ll never get close to Versailles with drones,’ Roy White stated.

  ‘I would have agreed with you but I did some digging. If the drones aren’t assembled until they’re on site, there’s no reason why any sniffer dogs, cardon-dioxide sensors, thermal imaging or any such technology would pick up the components.’

  The three-star laughed. ‘There’s no one on the planet who can assemble drones that fast, ready to set off at the summit tomorrow.’

  ‘Actually, we think there is,’ Helen said. Peter pushed some buttons, and a photograph came up on their huge screen. They studied the man’s face; he looked amenable, gentle and harmless, like anyone’s grandad.

  ‘This is Mustafa ibn Tafila. He’s been Nabil Tradings’ structural engineer since he was in his late twenties, when Fawaz put him through college. The man’s a genius. We’ve put a tail on him, and we’re raiding his workshop at his home in Marseilles, where he’s semi-retired, in about ten minutes.’

  She had maintained their interest and now they were taking her seriously. Peter nodded to her.

  ‘We understand that the president won’t change his plans. The same goes for our PM. I’m taking charge of his close protection, but can I borrow some of your guys?’

  Roy White nodded and made some notes.

  ‘We’ve got less than twenty-four hours before sixty VIPs sit down to the welcoming dinner in the Hall of Mirrors tomorrow evening,’ Roy White said. ‘I want the place turned upside down. I haven’t even got any nets covering the airspace,’ he added.

  ‘Shoot them down,’ suggested the three-star.

  Roy White looked at Helen.

  ‘With respect’ – Helen smiled – ‘drones can’t be shot down – they’re too quick and small. Only nets deployed from aircraft or launchers can be effectively used, and then you need to see them coming.’

  ‘But if they’re being built on site, surely we’ll know?’

  ‘Let’s make sure of it,’ Roy White said.

  ‘How much damage can a small mechanical drone really cause?’

  Roy White looked at her again.

  ‘With a cigarette-packet size of C4 in it, plenty,’ Helen replied. ‘The question is, who will arm them and from where.’

  Chapter 53

  Helen hadn’t slept. The ambassador had arranged for her to have a room at the embassy, usually reserved for visiting civil servants or advisers. It was basic but had everything she needed for a short stay. She hadn’t heard from Grant, but she’d heard from the hospital that Hakim was growing stronger and that his mother and father had both spent all night there. She imagined the emotional reunion and pictured their embraces. He was going to pull through.

  Her restlessness was down to the adrenalin running through her veins, anticipating the events of the days ahead. Her rapprochement with the ambassador had been brief and functional. Nothing was mentioned about Colonel Palmer blocking her access to Sir Conrad, and he didn’t give any impression that he was anything less than delighted with her work. He’d asked her questions about the agenda at Versailles and how much faith she had in Special Agent White, and she’d reassured him. He’d been briefed separately by the Foreign Secretary, but she’d never know what conversations went on inside Downing Street about the engagement itinerary.

  She didn’t need to. Her job now was to work with Peter Knowles and Roy White in order to make sure the summit went ahead without incident. As she went to leave the embassy to make her way to the Palace of Versailles, she was issued two firearms, plus ammo, by the ambassador’s armed guard, one for close quarter and the other for longer range. She signed them out and checked their weight and barrels, as well as how they handled in her grip. Later today, she’d meet the prime minister, who would arrive at Versailles with Sir Conrad.

  Her mood was sombre. She’d been away from Paris all week, and it felt different somehow. She had a damn sight more answers than what she’d left with, but now, the mission had turned into something international, with her remit and boundaries unclear. It reminded her of a multinational collaboration, which she was familiar with, but with a twist of glaring uncertainty. She couldn’t rem
ember ever having been involved in a direct threat to so many world leaders gathering at a summit before.

  She was nervous.

  It was en route that she found out that, at around two a.m. this morning, a man meeting the description of Jean-Luc Bisset had been reported speaking to some boat owners in La Rochelle, on France’s western coastal region of the Bay of Biscay. The sighting had been reported by a member of the public who recognised him from newspaper articles, read keenly as the gentleman followed the story of the abducted young man; he was himself of Algerian descent and took a personal interest. A quick-thinking local gendarme had called Interpol HQ, and the man had been arrested. Helen looked at the mugshot, taken inside a processing room near La Rochelle. It was him.

  She’d previously briefed the ambassador’s head of security about the coming days, and it had gone smoothly. She’d worked closely with him during the Embassy security review two weeks ago. Was it only two weeks? It felt like six months. It was crazy, now she thought about it: she’d taken the Eurostar from St Pancras and read the log of the ambassador’s private security team during the time it took to get to Paris. Now she was hunting an international crook and facing responsibility for the life of the Prime Minister. And she’d seen Grant.

  She needed a stiff gin.

  She tried to relax and keep a clear head. She faced nothing she wasn’t professionally prepared for. The consensus so far between Peter Knowles and Roy White was that if the summit was to be hit, the best opportunity was travelling to and from the venue, and so everybody’s itinerary had been changed. All VIPs were to arrive separately with sizeable gaps between them. Also, each route had been altered and would be further changed mid-journey. Only Helen, Peter and Roy knew this for now.

  It would take time and might cause inconvenience, but they could take no chances, and each government had approved the changes to the arrangements. Each entourage would be led by gendarmes on motorbikes and would be given live updates on which route to take. Only the two men on motorcycles would hear the instructions. Each pair of gendarmes had been handpicked by the office of the director general of the Police Nationale, with the approval of the French president’s personal-protection team. The highest security clearance vetting had been supplied on the gendarmes by the director general’s office to Roy White, who’d briefed the US president by video link as he crossed the Atlantic on Air Force One.

  The hours before such an event, especially knowing that an incident was very likely to occur, was like waiting for the green light to deploy on an operation to lift a high-value target. The jumpiness in the pit of the stomach, the sweaty palms, the constricted throat, and the bare, naked, unmistakeable dazzling flashes of fear.

  No one knew where Fawaz was. None of the intelligence services from any of the attendee countries had a clue where he’d gone to ground. Yes, they thought he was in France, but, according to what they’d revealed so far, this was a complex plot with many moving parts and many players. After the sighting by the cyclists, there’d been nothing. Rien.

  Mustafa ibn Tafila was in custody in Marseilles. The raid on his workshop revealed kit perfect to make drones, but also capable of making a coffee machine or a model dog. The guy was obsessed with invention, like Maurice in Beauty and the Beast or Geppetto in Pinocchio. His workshop was a chaotic mess of stuff. So far, his interrogation had garnered a few titbits about what engineering projects he’d worked on with Fawaz over the years, but he did not admit to making drones.

  Helen watched some of the interview footage via email as her driver neared the outskirts of Paris. She leant forward and studied the man who’d been loyal to Fawaz for over forty years. She wondered who else had displayed such allegiance and faith: Jean-Luc? According to Grant, Marie Bisset had said her son came to her disorientated, scared for his life and confused, and had staggered off to go into hiding. It was an unlikely story, but all they had. Only his interrogation, due to start any minute in La Rochelle, would give them the answers they needed, but they might not have time to wait. Mustafa was turning out to be a wily old foot soldier, unwilling to give anything away. She had no idea what sort of interviewee Jean-Luc would turn out to be.

  She rewound footage of Mustafa being asked directly about drones and watched his body language. Over and over again, he remained true to his lines, but his body told a different story. Basic deception causes disruption in the brain, which displays as discomfort in the body. End of. Mustafa looked awkward when he answered certain questions about what he thought Fawaz was building, if he’d been asked to help and where he thought the goods were being used. Mustafa was clearly no liar: the more distress lying caused a person, the more honest they were. In other words, the more relaxed a person was with lying, the more likely it was that they’d learned to become expert liars as children.

  Mustafa was a decent man. And that’s why he was struggling.

  She turned to the inventory of his workshop and shook her head. It was like reading ancient Greek. She’d never understood science that much at school, and the equations, gadgetry, circuits and scribbled numbers on bits of paper frazzled her brain. But one thing caught her eye. It was a newspaper. A French newspaper dated yesterday and it was open on a page which ran an article on the upcoming summit. Three colour photographs adorned the article: three beaming statesmen, wearing similar suits, sporting thinning hairstyles and identical paunches. The president of France, the president of the United States and the UK prime minister. To a forensic officer not familiar with the intricacies of the case, it was another item to be bagged and tagged and sent to Interpol. To Helen, it struck her as interesting, especially when she zoomed in and spotted the doodles.

  But they weren’t doodles, they were dots. Dots arranged in a pattern.

  Chapter 54

  She found Roy and Peter poring over the electronic map of the estate in the control room. They both stopped what they were doing and greeted her.

  ‘Look,’ she said. She showed them the photograph of the newspaper, taken by forensics inside the workshop of Mustafa ibn Tafila.

  ‘Facial recognition,’ she said.

  ‘Blow me,’ Peter said. Roy looked at him curiously. Helen didn’t bother explaining the nuances between American and British English.

  ‘He won’t break – I’m telling you that now,’ she added.

  ‘Tafila?’ Peter asked.

  She nodded. ‘We need to work on Jean-Luc. I was curious as to why he was so easily caught leaving the country. Clumsy? Stupid, or double-crossed perhaps. Either way, he knows where Fawaz is,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if his ticket out of here was Jean-Luc’s reward for his part in the abduction of Hakim, which enabled Fawaz to ship the C4 here in the first place.’

  ‘If it’s C4,’ Peter reminded her.

  ‘Sir, I think the lady’s right. If you’re going to arm a facial-recognition-enabled drone, arming it with anything other than C4 would be stupid and inefficient. That’s what I’d do,’ Roy said.

  ‘But where is it?’ he asked. Peter explained that the industrial estate where the van had been stopped was being searched thoroughly, but nothing had been found yet. There were twenty-two depots to search, and the place had to be emptied first due to the threat to life, should explosives be used in any capacity against them.

  Helen received a text and looked at her phone.

  I’m in Paris, it read. It was from Grant.

  JL arrested. La Rochelle. B of Biscay.

  Interviewed?

  Not yet. You hanging around?

  Prince de Galles Hotel – perks of the job.

  They’d stayed there together for an anniversary.

  Room 525.

  She looked up as the debate between Peter and Roy raged on about how possible it was to fly drones into the estate of Versailles.

  ‘I still can’t fathom how anyone could get drones close to the palace,’ Roy said.

  ‘Unless they’re already here,’ Helen said. It was a theory she’d flagged up yesterday at the
US embassy, and one that had garnered cynicism from the military men present.

  They walked to the window as information came through to Peter that the first VIPs were entering the estate. Helen looked at her watch: the dinner was in eight hours. The heads of state would assemble in the Hall of Mirrors and the US president, the president of France and the UK prime minister would arrive last.

  ‘Do we have exit routes secured?’ Helen asked.

  Roy nodded his head and read through the plans submitted by each member state.

  ‘Final walk-through?’ Peter suggested.

  The next couple of hours were pivotal in affecting potential outcome. They had time for one more run-through of their systems. An unmanned aerial vehicle was checking the perimeter for abandoned or parked vehicles near the boundary. Final checks were to be done on the backgrounds of auxiliary staff such as drivers, catering staff and bodyguards. ETAs of VIPs were to be finalised and entrance points double-checked. Sniper positions and any reports of unusual activity on the surrounding horizon were expected every fifteen minutes. The VPNs of all vehicles expected to enter the estate were checked and double-checked.

  Anxiety affected all three of them, regardless of their combined experience. Roy White had served the US president’s office directly for ten years; Helen had given fourteen years to her country; and Peter Knowles had racked up twenty-two, most of that in Counter Terrorism.

  They’d each drunk three coffees, and counting.

  ‘ETA of the US president?’ Peter asked Roy.

  ‘Two p.m. sharp.’

  ‘Right, let’s get moving. The UK PM is having lunch with Sir Conrad, and they will travel here together. Helen, you take a walk through the catering facilities. I’ll stay here with Roy and collate information from the perimeter,’ Peter said.

  ‘Has anyone explained to Sir Conrad and the PM about the link to Rafik Nabil? I mentioned his name regarding Nabil Tradings when I updated him, and he reacted oddly,’ she said.