Spider Shepherd 10 - True Colours

by Leather, Stephen

  His two younger brothers worked the fields but Khan’s father had always had greater ambitions for his eldest son. His dream was that Khan would one day become a mullah or imam – a leader of the faith – or a hafiz – devoting himself to memorising the entire Quran. With that in mind, his father had enrolled him in a madrassa across the border in Peshawar. But Khan was more interested fighting than studying, and when he turned nineteen he recrossed the border to join the mujahedin fighting the Russians in the dying days of the war against the Soviets. Most Afghan men were good shots, but Khan was exceptional, a lethal sniper at long range and equally deadly with an AK-47 or an RPG.

  Eventually the Soviets withdrew after their final humiliation at the hands of the mujahedin and Khan returned to the family farm and reconciled with his father. He shared the work in the poppy fields and married the wife his father had chosen for him, the young, doe-eyed daughter of a cousin, named Bahara – ‘the bringer of spring’. For a while, Khan remained aloof from the fighting that again engulfed the country as the rival mujahedin factions plunged Afghanistan into civil war.

  Time after time, rival warlords either stole his opium crop or demanded tribute for leaving it unmolested. So when Mullah Omar, ‘The Commander of the Faithful’, pledged that his new movement would eliminate corruption and the rule of the warlords, and bring peace and order to Afghanistan, Khan was one of the first to enlist in the cause – known as the Taliban.

  He rose rapidly through the ranks and was a commander by the time that the Taliban liberated Kandahar province, and was one of those who hanged the principal warlord from the barrel of one of his own tanks. Herat followed next and within two years Kabul had also fallen to the Taliban, with Mullah Omar taking power and renaming the country ‘the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’.

  Khan returned home to his wife, but although several years had passed since their marriage, still they had not been blessed with a child. He had almost despaired, believing that Bahara must be barren, but at last she told him she was pregnant, and in time she gave birth to a daughter. Born during the full moon, she was christened Lailuna – bright moonlight. Three years later came a double tragedy. Pregnant again, Bahara died in childbirth and her baby, the son they had both dreamed of, died with her.

  That was why Lailuna was everything to him now, all that he had. She was the sun, the moon, the stars in the winter sky, the blossom on the mulberry trees in spring, and when she sang, her voice was as sweet to him as the song of the mountain nightingale, whose beautiful call was always the first, long-awaited harbinger of summer.

  Khan’s father grumbled that raising children was women’s work and urged him to marry again, but Khan refused. When he was away, he left Lailuna in the care of his sister, but whenever he was at home, his daughter was at his side. Few Afghan girls were educated, least of all in the frontier territories, but Khan defied his father’s opposition to the idea and sent her to a small school in the nearest town. Funded by foreign charities, it was run by an Afghan emigrée who had returned to her native land after living abroad for twenty years. There Lailuna blossomed. If Khan’s Taliban comrades disapproved of his actions in seeking an education for his daughter, they kept their opinions to themselves, for he was a great warrior, feared and respected by all.

  When the Americans invaded the country, Khan again took up arms, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Taliban against Americans, Britons and the new Afghan army, using the same guerrilla warfare tactics with which the mujahedin had brought the Soviets to their knees.

  But the freedoms that Mullah Omar had promised never materialised. A new breed of Taliban commander emerged, hard-eyed fanatics determined to impose their own interpretation of the Prophet’s teachings on the areas they controlled. Khan watched with mounting unease as the soldier-monks of the Taliban clamped down on almost all sources of recreation and pleasure.

  Lailuna was never the same after she had been beaten by the Taliban. She would start at any sudden noise and tense at the sound of any approaching vehicle. Her ready smile no longer sprang to her lips, the songs that had gladdened both their hearts had now been silenced and she barely left the house at all. Khan longed for his daughter to change, trying to coax her out of the dark place to which she had retreated, but the old Lailuna now seemed beyond his reach.

  Khan’s burning anger at the men who had done this to his daughter remained, hardening into a cold, implacable hatred. He knew now that as long as she remained in Afghanistan there would be reminders of what had happened. As the weeks passed, he decided that he had no choice other than to seek a new life in the West. That was the only way that he and his beloved daughter had any sort of future together. So he cradled her on his lap and made his plans.

  Jimmy Sharpe called back two days later. It was early morning and still dark and Shepherd had to grope around to find his vibrating phone. It took him a few seconds to remember that he was in his bedroom in Hereford. He squinted at the screen of the Nokia. It was five o’clock in the morning. ‘Bloody hell, Razor, you’re up early.’

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ growled the Scotsman. ‘I’ve just got in and I’m knackered.’

  ‘The Romanians?’

  ‘They’re like bloody vampires, they only come out at night. They’re going to be the death of me.’

  ‘Just don’t let them bite you in the neck.’

  Sharpe chuckled. ‘Yeah, well, should be done and dusted in a few days. I met one of the godfathers last night and I’m back to see him later this week. I’ll be going in with a mic so with any luck we’ll be able to hang him out to dry.’ He began to cough and couldn’t speak for a few seconds.

  ‘Are you OK, Razor?’

  ‘They smoke like chimneys and it’s doing my lungs in,’ said Sharpe. ‘Isn’t there something about smoking being illegal in a place of work? I should sue the Met for putting my health at risk.’

  ‘You know what, the way things are you’d probably get a six-figure settlement. You should talk to your Fed rep.’

  Sharpe laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll put in a memo, see what happens. OK, so this Ahmad Khan. Turns out it’s a fairly common name, at least out in that part of the world. There’s a dozen or so on the PNC but none match the age range of the guy you’re looking at. Half of them were born here, two are in the nick and the others, like I said, just aren’t your guy.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘Yeah, well, nothing in life is ever easy, is it? Now, I’ve got a pal in the Border Force and he ran the name for me and there have only been eight Ahmad Khans who have arrived in this country in the past three years. Now two of those match the approximate age of your guy, but they both left before their visas expired.’

  ‘That’s a bugger,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Yeah, it means that if he is here he’s here as an illegal or he’s here under an assumed name. You know how it works, they get on a plane to the UK using whatever passport they can, then they destroy it en route and claim asylum when they land. He could have claimed to be an Iraqi or Iranian or a bloody Syrian. The checks are minimal once they’ve said the magic word “asylum”. And the only name and date of birth on file are the ones they give the immigration officer. My mate was telling me that every week they get grown men, clearly twenty-up, arriving at Heathrow without any paperwork claiming to be unaccompanied minors from Somalia. It’s as plain as the nose on their face that they’re not kids, but there’s nothing they can do. They know that so-called orphans get fast-tracked to a passport. Once they’ve got that they magically discover their families and they come over too. And my guy reckons that half the so-called Afghans who get asylum here are actually Pakistanis. Can you believe that? They throw away any ID they’ve got when they get here and we can’t even tell what country they’re from.’

  ‘Yeah, the system’s flawed,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Flawed? It’s broken to bits, totally unfit for purpose, as the politicians love to say. The thing is, your Ahmad Khan could have got here without any pa
perwork at all and provided he’s played the system right he could be living here with his family under a totally different name with a British passport that’s as real as yours and mine.’

  ‘Thanks for checking, anyway, Razor.’

  ‘You know what you might think of trying,’ said Sharpe. ‘Facial recognition. He’s side-on pretty much in that picture but the facial recognition systems are getting more sophisticated every year. If he did go through the system he’ll have been photographed and fingerprinted. You should be able to run his picture through their database. My mate says he can’t do it, he’s just a foot soldier, but he says it can be done. Might be worth thinking about.’

  ‘Cheers, Razor.’

  ‘And your mate the Para. Alex Harper. Not much on him, either. Drugs aren’t aware of him but he’s in the frame for a few armed robberies, 2007 and 2008, but the only case against him was dropped when a witness recanted her evidence. They did a building society in Leicester and escaped on bikes, one of them smashed into a bus and ended up doing six years, he’s only just been released. He was a Para too and they tried everything to get him to turn over his mates but he kept quiet and did his time.’

  ‘Six years doesn’t seem long for armed robbery?’

  ‘He was firing blanks,’ said Sharpe. ‘To be fair, he didn’t fire at all. They didn’t have to, they went in mob-handed brandishing AK-47s and the staff and customers pissed themselves, and not in a good way. Anyway, when they examined the gun of the guy they caught they discovered there were only blanks in the clip. The judge still gave him ten years but he was as good as gold behind bars so they let him out early this year.’

  ‘And what was the story about Harper?’

  ‘Different robbery. Birmingham. About three months prior to the Leicester job. Harper was wearing a balaclava but one of the cashiers said she’d never forget his eyes. And she remembered a mole on his nose. The MO was the same as the Leicester job, motorbikes and AK-47s, so a very enterprising detective got hold of the arrested guy’s service record and ran the pictures of the guys in his unit past the cashier. She picked out Alex Harper. By then he’d scarpered. But then the cashier contacted the cops and said that she wasn’t sure after all. It was about that time that she started driving a new car and all her credit card bills were paid off. Cops couldn’t prove anything, but that was the last time Harper appeared in the system. He’s never been fingerprinted and his DNA isn’t in the system. Far as intel goes, looks like he’s in Spain now, on the Costa del Crime. But he’s not wanted. You said he was in Thailand, but that intel’s not in the system.’

  ‘Thanks, Razor. I owe you.’

  ‘Yes, you do. But you can do me a favour.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Watch yourself with this Harper character. He’s obviously not your run-of-the-mill crim, I’ll give you that, but the job you’re in now, you’ve got to be careful who you associate with.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘I can tell my advice is going in one ear and out of the other,’ said Sharpe. ‘Anyway, I’m off to bed. You got anything interesting on?’

  ‘Just my boxers.’

  ‘I meant job-wise, idiot.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s something on, Charlie has summoned me to Thames House later today.’

  ‘Give her my love.’

  ‘I’ll definitely do that,’ said Shepherd, and ended the call. He put the phone down on the bedside table before rolling over and trying unsuccessfully to get back to sleep. His mind kept racing, filled with jerky images of his time in Afghanistan: the searing heat, the foul smells, the firefights, the explosions, the mortar fire, the rattle of Kalashnikov fire, the adrenalin rush of being under fire. He tossed and turned for more than an hour, then he rolled out of bed, pulled on a tracksuit and went downstairs. His boots and his rucksack were in the cupboard under the stairs. Shepherd always ran with the rucksack, which he had filled with house bricks wrapped in newspapers. He laced up his boots, swung the rucksack on to his back and let himself out of the kitchen door.

  He ran for the best part of an hour, most of that time at full pelt, and he was bathed in sweat by the time he got back to the house. His au pair, Katra, was in the kitchen making coffee. She was wearing a grey sweatshirt a couple of sizes too big for her and jeans that seemed to be a couple of sizes too small. She had her blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the sleeves of her sweatshirt pulled up to her elbows. ‘You’re up early,’ she said.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘I’m heading to London after breakfast,’ he added, tossing the rucksack back under the stairs and slipping off his muddy boots. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be back, I think they have a job for me.’

  ‘You know Liam’s back for half term in two weeks?’ she asked, giving him a mug of coffee.

  ‘I’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘I’ll Skype him this evening. I’m going to go by train, so I’ll need a lift to the station.’

  ‘Egg and bacon? And toast?’

  ‘You read my mind,’ said Shepherd, taking his coffee with him upstairs.

  He sat on his bed and phoned Lex Harper on the Samsung phone that he’d given him. ‘Just wanted to update you on my progress,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Which is zero, right?’

  ‘How did you know?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘I can hear it in your voice. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve tried the obvious things and drawn a blank, so it looks as if he’s here under a different name.’

  ‘Mate, I bet he’s here as an illegal. Probably got asylum under that different name.’ Harper cursed. ‘So near and so bloody far,’ he said. ‘Looks like I’ll just have to keep pounding the streets of West London looking for him. Not much of a plan, is it?’

  ‘I’m in the office later today,’ said Shepherd. ‘There’s a guy there I can ask, he’ll do some digging for me on the QT. What about you, are you OK hanging around?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Harper. ‘I’m staying right here until we get this bastard.’

  Thames House had been the home of MI5 since 1994. It was an imposing grey Portland stone edifice on the south side of Horseferry Road, with statues of St George and Britannia on the frontage glaring across the road at Nobel House, the former headquarters of ICI, which was built at the same time and to virtually the same design. A flag fluttered on the roof of the building with MI5’s crest and motto – Regnum Defende, Defend the Realm. As well as being home to the Security Service, Thames House also contained the Northern Ireland Office and the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. Because of the undercover nature of his work, Shepherd rarely visited the building, but Charlotte Button had asked him in for a meeting first thing on Monday morning. Security was tight and Shepherd had to show his MI5 ID, press his right thumb against a fingerprint detector and pass through a metal detector before he was allowed to use the lift to the fourth floor.

  Button was waiting for him in a windowless meeting room. There was a pine table with six high-backed leather chairs around it, and the wall opposite the door was filled with a whiteboard. There were a dozen or so photographs and notes written in black and red ink on the whiteboard and a pale green file and a large manila envelope on the table.

  ‘Spider, punctual as always,’ said Button. She was wearing a dark blue linen jacket over a cream dress and had her chestnut hair clipped up at the back. She air-kissed him and patted him on the left arm, just above the elbow. He caught the fragrance of her perfume, floral with a hint of orange. ‘I’ve got you a coffee,’ she said, pointing at a white mug next to a plate of chocolate biscuits.

  Shepherd grinned. ‘Good to see that the cutbacks haven’t hit the catering budget,’ he said, sitting down.

  ‘A few years ago I would have been able to offer you Kit Kats,’ she said. She sat down opposite him and reached for a cup and saucer. She stirred her tea and smiled at him. ‘No lasting effects from the taser?’ she asked.

  ‘A couple of burn marks,’ he said. ‘But i
t could have been a lot worse. I could have gone up like a Roman candle.’

  ‘Ready to get back in the saddle?’

  Shepherd looked over at the whiteboard, wondering what she had planned for him. ‘Sure.’

  Button opened the file and took out a photograph of a large, heavy-set man in a dark suit. He was in his late fifties with a squarish, unsmiling face and receding hair cut close to the scalp. ‘Peter Grechko,’ she said. ‘One of the Russian oligarchs who now makes London his home. He’s one of the world’s richest men, up there with Roman Abramovich, Boris Berezovsky and Abram Reznikov.’

  Shepherd nodded and took the photograph from her. ‘I’ve heard of him. He tried to buy Liverpool but missed out and now he’s hoping to buy Manchester City, right?’

  ‘Among other things,’ said Button. ‘Did you hear about the attempt on his life? A sniper took a shot at him two days ago as he was leaving Stamford Bridge. He’d been watching Chelsea play. A bodyguard was wounded but Grechko was unscathed.’

  Shepherd frowned. ‘That’s news to me.’

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ said Button. ‘He owns a chain of provincial newspapers and several news magazines and is close to the owners of several national newspapers. Skis with the younger Murdochs and lives down the road from the owner of the Daily Express.’

  ‘Who needs a D notice when you’ve got friends in high places?’ said Shepherd, handing back the photograph.

  ‘His friends go higher than that,’ said Button. ‘He’s very close to the prime minister. He’s been on Grechko’s yacht, several times. As have several members of the cabinet and half a dozen peers, Labour and Conservative. Mr Grechko is on the board of several charities patronised by the PM’s wife and made a substantial donation to his old college.’