Gray Redemption

by Alan McDermott

  Fatima had been preparing the evening meal when her husband had arrived home agitated, and broke the news that they would be taking a flight later that night. When asked how long they would be away, he’d told her that it would be a one-way trip. Her subsequent protestations had been met with anger, and she went about the task of packing with a sense of dread. She knew her husband’s work was shrouded in secrecy, and his behaviour told her this had something to do with the laboratory.

  “I was given instructions and I...disobeyed them,” he told her.

  Fatima knew Munawar was an honourable man, so whatever order he had refused must have been in stark contrast with his principles.

  “Surely the pharmaceutical company will understand,” she said, but the look she received told her this was something more than a squabble with a supervisor.

  The steps he’d taken had, he’d told himself, been for the greater good of mankind, but he knew that the driving force behind his decision had been the welfare of his family. Having driven them into hiding, the least he could do was explain why.

  “The laboratory I work for doesn’t make cold remedies,” he said, sitting her down on the bed. He explained who his ultimate boss was, and the kind of product he was tasked with manufacturing.

  “The virus they asked me to make was almost ready when a newcomer changed everything. He told me Al-Asiri had changed his mind about the agent to be delivered, but on reflection it didn’t seem probable. It was the leader’s pet project, and when we met he seemed more than happy with my projections, yet this Mansour was determined to use another, more virulent strain.

  “The only one we had was too unstable, with no cure. If it was released before we had a means to control it, ninety percent of the world’s population would be annihilated within months. Only the most remote regions of the planet would escape.”

  “So you refused to give it to him?” His wife asked.

  “Whether I gave it to him or my replacement does, it makes no difference,” Uddin told her. “What is important is that he not be allowed to use it.”

  The look Uddin gave her suggested there was more to come, and when he eventually told her the rest of the story, Fatima knew there was no way they could ever return to their homeland.

  Chapter 13

  Tuesday May 8th 2012

  Tom sat across the desk from Veronica Ellis and laid out the plan, just as he’d explained it to Harvey during their journey from Durban back to the UK.

  They’d made a brief stop at the Durban office where a doctor took a look at Gray’s arm and declared him fit to fly. He’d also given the others a once over and found no lasting damage. After Tom and Vick had their passport photos taken and emailed to the Johannesburg office, they had driven north to collect their diplomatic passports and airline tickets. During the journey, Tom had given Harvey a full rundown of the last four weeks, starting with Farrar’s unannounced visit to his Manila home and culminating in their two-week no-frills cruise.

  Harvey had reciprocated, giving his account of their successful effort to locate Campbell and Levine before Farrar could dispose of them. Gray had been concerned about his friends’ conditions, but Harvey assured him that both men were responding well at a private clinic, and the women were bearing up.

  The conversation had turned to Farrar, and Tom had shared the plan he’d been working on for the last fortnight. After Harvey explained that all the evidence they had was circumstantial backed up with hearsay, they’d agreed that Tom’s idea was the only way to make Farrar accountable for his actions.

  Ellis had been as shocked as anyone when she’d learned that Tom Gray was still alive, and what had started out as a bid to bring Farrar to task had escalated to the point where it that could bring down an entire government. There was no way she could have foreseen this a fortnight earlier, and the decision to help Gray hadn’t been an easy one to make.

  It had been a battle of conscience over pragmatism. When this broke, any trust the people had in Parliament would be destroyed. The Home Secretary would certainly be the first to fall, and it might even reach as high as the Prime Minister himself.

  If the current government fell, the opposition wouldn’t fare much better. It was they who had made the decision to lie to the world, spiriting Gray away and ordering his subsequent death. That left the fringe parties, none of whom were — in her opinion — capable of running the country.

  That said, it was either leave the country in political turmoil, or allow them to continue their dark practices and execute citizens at will, and that simplification had made the decision a lot easier.

  Ellis smiled when Tom wrapped up. She liked the way he thought, and given the planning that had gone into his last escapade, she had every confidence in him pulling this one off.

  Farsi handed Tom a piece of paper. “Here’s the number you asked for,” he said, as he left the room.

  Gray nodded towards Ellis’s desk phone. “May I?”

  “Be my guest,” she smiled.

  Gray dialled the number and asked for Paul Gross. When asked who was calling, he said: “Just tell him it’s Icarus.”

  It took a minute before he was put through, and the voice that came on the line sounded curious. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Paul. Remember me? It’s Tom Gray.”

  “I’m sorry, I haven’t got time for pranks,” Gross said.

  “Would it help if I said I once sent an email to your personal email account, and that I threatened to take the story to a rival channel when you pestered me to go on the air?”

  There was silence for a while as Gross recalled the incidents. “Say I believe you. What do you want from me?”

  Gray gave him a condensed version the events of the last year and explained what he wanted from the producer of the BBC news channel.

  “That’s a great story, Tom, but what you’re asking is far too risky. Besides, I have a DA order which prevents me featuring any story about you still being alive.”

  “Doesn’t it feel a little strange that the government doesn’t want you to let people know I survived the explosion last year? What possible motive could they have?”

  Gross was silent again as he considered the question. Ellis looked at Gray and offered to take over the conversation, but he shook his head, confident he could wear the man down.

  “You make a compelling case, Tom, but the DA notice —”

  “Is an advisory notice, or so I’ve been informed. If you ignore one, you cannot be prosecuted.”

  “Perhaps not,” Gross agreed, “but it could be career-defining.”

  Gray wasn’t convinced. “Only if your superiors came out and said they disagreed with your actions. The Director General would have to go on record as saying the BBC fully supports the government’s practice of killing innocent civilians.”

  Both men knew it would never happen, but Gross still needed more.

  “What if I do as you ask, but there’s no confession?”

  Gray once more explained the plan, and while not as confident as Ellis had been, Gross did think it workable.

  “When is this going to happen?” He asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Gray told him. “There are a few technical aspects to work out, so you’ll be getting a call from someone called Gerald Small in a few minutes.”

  He thanked the producer and hung up. “Can I tag along with Gerald?” He asked Ellis. “I’d like to try out the equipment once it’s in place.”

  “Sure,” She said. “Andrew can take you —”

  Hamad Farsi knocked on the door and walked in without waiting for an invitation. “Something you should take a look at,” he said, handing a file to his boss. She read quickly, her expression giving nothing away, before she put the papers down and turned to Gray.

  “Sorry, Tom, but you’ll have to excuse us,” she said, holding up the file. “Business as usual.” She showed Gray to Small’s office, then led Harvey and Farsi to the conference room and asked when the news had come in.

  �
�Just a couple of minutes ago,” Hamad said.

  Ellis read it through again, this time aloud for Harvey’s benefit.

  “Abdul Mansour will be travelling to England via Heathrow airport in the next few days with the intention of releasing a malevolent variant of the Ebola virus. His target has biological defences against an external attack and he is hoping to use this to contain the virus within the building itself. There is currently no known cure for this particular variant.”

  “Short and sweet,” Harvey noted. “Origin?”

  “The British High Commission in Islamabad. A kid delivered it along with those images.”

  Ellis looked through them but couldn’t make head nor tail of the information. It appeared that someone had taken pictures of documents explaining the genetic make-up of the virus, through the hieroglyphs meant nothing to her.

  “Is anyone verifying this?” she asked Hamad, who told her that copies were on their way to the Health Protection Agency.

  Small knocked and entered the room, explaining that he’d spoken to the BBC technical controller and there would be no problems setting up for the next morning.

  “Thanks, Gerald,” she said. To Hamad: “The facial recognition at Heathrow should pick him up when he tries to get through immigration. Check through the logs to see if there are any near hits.”

  “Yeah, right,” small murmured, catching Ellis’s attention.

  “Something wrong with my instructions, Gerald?” She asked, wearing her most indignant face.

  “No, it’s just...”

  Ellis urged him to continue, knowing how little he thought of the technology.

  “If I was to go through immigration wearing the most basic theatrical prosthetic, such as a fake nose, it would throw the system off by at least forty percent.”

  “Possibly,” Hamad agreed, “but make-up would easily be spotted by the border guard. Besides, you said yourself that it was the eyes that gave the biggest indicator.”

  “Exactly, and eyes can be covered up with glasses, eye patches, veils, anything that you would see if you walk down any high street. These things don’t raise suspicion and can easily be overlooked.

  “Check the logs by all means, but I’m just saying, don’t be too reliant on them.”

  Ellis thanked him for his input and Gerald left them to discuss the latest events.

  “Bear that in mind,” Ellis told Hamad. “I want people watching all of his old haunts, plus a team at Heathrow in case he hasn’t arrived yet. Also, get onto every informer we have and see what they’ve heard.”

  She turned to Harvey. “Dig around and see which buildings have the bio-defence mentioned in the note. There can’t be that many, but start with high-profile targets.”

  “The US Embassy has one,” Harvey told her. “Perhaps we should give them the heads-up.”

  Ellis nodded. “I’ll let them know,” she said, standing and tacitly ending the meeting. “Hopefully they’ll share any chatter they’ve had in the last forty-eight hours.”

  They split up to take care of their respective tasks, with Harvey doing a search for bio-defence installations over the last fifty years. The list that came back was not substantial, but it did include some high-profile targets. He was prioritising them when Ellis came over to their desks, her face like thunder.

  “Cancel the Heathrow team,” she told Hamad, “he’s already here.”

  “We’ve got him?” Harvey asked, but her look told him otherwise.

  “It seems our American friends have a new policy: You scratch our backs, we’ll piss on your chips and call it vinegar.”

  Both men were confused, but let her continue in her own time. “It seems they received a card handwritten by Mansour himself, delivered to their embassy this morning. Fingerprints confirm it was handled by him, and ink analysis shows it was written only a few hours earlier.”

  “Did they tell you what the message said?”

  “They told me they couldn’t share that information until they’d followed up on it, but we’d hear about it soon enough.”

  Farsi was suitably unimpressed. “They know that the world’s most wanted man is in the UK, but they don’t feel the need to share that with us? That’s bullshit.”

  Ellis agreed. “Andrew, you know someone over there who can speak off the record. Any chance they’d know anything about this?”

  “I can try,” Harvey said. “What did they make of the news you gave them?”

  “I didn’t tell them,” she said. “I got as far as saying Mansour was on his way when they dropped their bomb. If that’s the game they want to play, they’ll find it works both ways.”

  It made sense to Harvey, at least from a bargaining point of view. He pulled out his mobile and moved to a quiet corner of the office. Doug Wallis answered on the second ring.

  “Andrew, how’s things?”

  “I’m good, Doug. Can you make lunch today?”

  Wallis sensed the urgency in his voice and agreed to meet up within the hour. Harvey thanked him and hung up, then told Ellis about the upcoming meeting.

  “I don’t know how helpful he’ll be,” Harvey admitted. “Our arrangement does have its limits.”

  Ellis was glad to hear it. She wanted to press him on the information they’d previously shared, but decided to save that conversation for later.

  Harvey printed off the list of possible targets and gave it to Ellis before helping Farsi with his workload. While Hamad went through the list of informers and undercover operatives, he started on the facial recognition logs.

  After uploading the most recent image of Mansour and setting it as the search parameter, he waited for the system to go through all entries for the last seventy-two hours. With over ninety-five thousand passengers arriving each day, the system would have to compare the image with well over a quarter of a million faces. Harvey decided to filter the list to disregard planes arriving from the West, which cut the number in half but still left a huge amount to go through. After setting the match threshold to sixty percent, he hit the Search button and left it running while he went to meet up with Wallis.

  He arrived at the sandwich shop five minutes early and ordered an egg and cress baguette to take away. When Doug arrived he waited until his CIA counterpart chose a bacon, stilton and cranberry on wholemeal before they headed towards the river.

  “My boss is a bit pissed with you guys,” Harvey opened the conversation when they found an empty bench. “She doesn’t like the fact that you kept Abdul Mansour’s arrival to yourselves.”

  “Thought it might have something to do with him,” Wallis said, before taking a bite of his sandwich and taking his time chewing it. Harvey realised he was asking a lot from his friend, perhaps even stretching the relationship, but he had to at least try.

  “Not really much I can give you, I’m afraid,” Wallis eventually said, to Harvey’s obvious disappointment.

  “Can you at least pinpoint his arrival time?” Harvey pressed. “We know how he got in, why he’s here, and his probable target. If we knew when he got here we’d have a better chance of tracing him.”

  Wallis was taken aback. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Deadly serious, Doug. We even have the genetic make-up of the virus and a good idea of which bio-defence he plans to circumvent, but, as you say, maybe this stuff is above our pay grade.”

  He had Wallis’s attention. The American looked at his watch and did a quick calculation.

  “I suppose it will be on the news soon enough,” he said. “Mansour gave us the co-ordinates to Azhar Al-Asiri’s current home. We have a drone en route to take him out.”

  It was Harvey’s turn to be shocked. “You get a note claiming to be from a known terrorist and you send in the bombers, no questions asked?”

  “Don’t be facetious, Andy, it doesn’t suit you.”

  “I’m not trying to be, Doug, but if you’d shared this with us you could have got the whole picture. Doesn’t it seem strange that Mansour is handing you Al-
Asiri on a plate, and shortly afterwards we’re given a tipoff that could help take Mansour out?”

  Wallis had to agree that it was too much of a coincidence. “Can I share that with my people?” He asked, and Harvey said it would be better if it came through official channels. “Tell your people to contact Ellis and give her everything you have, and she’ll share the details we received.”

  He could have told Wallis that he’d effectively given him every morsel they had, but in order to get the agencies talking to each other he knew he would have to keep that to himself. It meant jeopardising their friendship as well as their professional relationship, but Harvey knew the time would come when he would have a chance to rebuild that bridge.

  They parted company, Wallis dumping his half-eaten sandwich in a bin before walking away with his phone to his ear.

  * * *

  The BBC news channel opened with an announcement that the Bank of England planned to inject another forty billion into the economy in an attempt to kick-start the recovery, but still no reports of an air strike in Quetta.

  Mansour wasn’t particularly concerned as he knew it would take some time for the US government to sanction the hit on Al-Asiri’s home. In his note, he’d said that Al-Qaeda’s leader would only be at the location for a short period, hoping that the idea of a forty-eight hour window of opportunity would force their hand.

  Apparently not.

  The sound of laughter floated upstairs, heralding the return of the men from their morning’s testing. He went to join them and found the four of them in the living room, surrounded by their new toys. After a quick greeting he asked how their morning had gone.

  “It was fun,” the younger one said, but his levity wasn’t well received by Mansour.

  “I didn’t send you out to have fun,” he said, wiping the smile off the teenager’s face. “Are you able to control them using the phone app?”

  “It was tricky at first, but we have the hang of it now,” another said, as Mansour picked up one of the remote-controlled helicopters. The machine was twenty-four inches long and sturdily built, with a purported range of over five hundred yards, but they told him it was only really effective at four hundred.