At Risk

by Stella Rimington

  There was evidence of none of these benefits in Dersthorpe. Dersthorpe had a Country and Western theme pub (the Lazy “W”), a coach park, a Londis mini-mart, and a wind-scoured council estate. In summer, an unlicenced burger van took up seasonal residence on the sea front.

  Beyond Dersthorpe, vanishing westwards towards the Wash, was the desolate strip of coastline known to locals as the Strand. A mile or so along its length stood five 1950s-built bungalows. At some point in their recent history, presumably in an attempt to resist nature’s relentless monotone, these had been painted in jaunty pinks and yellows and tangerines. The salt air, however, had long since leached the colour and curled the paint flakes from the weatherboards, returning them to faded homogeneity. None of them had a TV aerial or a telephone connection.

  Diane Munday had bought the Strand bungalows a year earlier as an investment. She hadn’t liked them—in truth, they gave her the creeps—but an examination of the previous owner’s returns had convinced her that they would give a handsome cash profit in return for a minimum of expenditure and effort. The bungalows usually stood empty during the late autumn and winter, but even then the occasional birdwatcher or writer showed up. A surprising number of people, strange though it seemed to Diane, craved the near nothingness that the Strand offered. The unceasing slap of tide on shingle, the wind in the salt marshes, the empty junction of sea and sky—these seemed to be more than enough.

  Hopefully they would satisfy the young woman now standing with her back to the westernmost of the bungalows. A postgraduate student apparently, completing a thesis. Dressed in a parka, jeans and walking boots, and holding the Tourist Board directory in which Diane advertised, she was staring expectantly towards the horizon as the wind blew her hair about her face and the sea dragged at the grey and white shingle in front of her.

  Like the French Lieutenant’s Woman, thought Diane, who had long harboured a tendresse for the actor Jeremy Irons, but younger, and not as pretty. How old was she? Twenty-two or three, perhaps? And could probably get herself looking quite presentable if she could be bothered to make the effort. The hair needed work—that dull walnut-brown bob was screaming for the attentions of a decent colourist—but the basic structure was there. Not that you could tell girls of that age anything; Diane had tried with Miranda and had her head bitten off for her pains.

  “It’s such a lovely spot, isn’t it?” she said, assuming a proprietorial smile. “So peaceful.”

  The woman frowned absently. “How much for the week, including deposit?”

  Diane hiked the price as high as she dared. The woman didn’t look particularly wealthy—the parka, the mud-streaked Astra—but nor did she look as if she could be bothered to continue her search. Parental money, almost certainly.

  “Can I pay cash?”

  “Certainly you can,” said Diane, and smiled. “That’s settled then. I’m Diane Munday, as you know, and you’re …”

  “Lucy. Lucy Wharmby.”

  They shook hands, and Diane noticed that the other woman’s grip was surprisingly hard. With the deal concluded, she drove off eastwards, towards Marsh Creake.

  The woman who called herself Lucy Wharmby watched thoughtfully after her. When the Cherokee had finally disappeared into Dersthorpe, she took a pair of lightweight Nikon binoculars from beneath her coat and checked the coast road. On a clear day, she calculated, an approaching vehicle would be visible almost a mile away to east or west.

  Opening the passenger door of the Astra, she reached for her holdall and rucksack and carried them through the front door of the bungalow into the white-emulsioned front room. On the table in front of the seaward window she placed her velcro-sealing wallet, her binoculars, her quartz diver’s watch, a Pfleuger clasp knife, a small NATO survival compass, and her Nokia mobile phone. She switched on the Nokia, which she had recharged in her room in the Travel Lodge on the A11 the night before. It was almost 15:00 hours GMT. Seating herself cross-legged on a low divan against the wall, half closing her eyes against the thin light, she began the steady process of voiding her mind of all that was irrelevant to her task.

  T he call reached Liz’s desk shortly after 3:30. It had come through the central switchboard, because the caller had dialled the publicly advertised MI5 number and asked for Liz by an alias she’d used a couple of years earlier when she was working in the organised crime section. The caller, who was in an Essex phone box, had been placed on hold while Liz was asked if she wanted to speak to him. He had identified himself as Zander.

  As soon as Liz heard the code-name she asked for him to be put through, demanded his number, and called him back. It was a long time since she had heard from Frankie Ferris, and she was far from sure that she wanted to hear from him again. If he had sought her out after three years’ silence, however, and defied all the standard agent protocols by ringing the switchboard, it was just possible that he had something useful to tell her.

  She had first encountered Ferris when, as an agent-runner for the organised crime team, she had been part of a move against an Essex syndicate boss named Melvin Eastman who was suspected of—amongst other crimes—moving large quantities of heroin between Amsterdam and Harwich. Surveillance had identified Ferris as one of Eastman’s drivers, and when gently pressured by Essex Special Branch he had agreed to provide information on the syndicate’s activities. Essex Special Branch had passed him to MI5.

  From her earliest days with the service Liz had had an instinctive understanding of the dynamics of agent-running. At one end of the scale there were agents like Marzipan who informed on their colleagues out of patriotism or moral conviction, and at the other end there were those who worked strictly out of self-interest, or for cash. Zander was halfway between the two. With him, the issue was essentially an emotional one. He wanted Liz’s esteem. He wanted her to value him, to give him her undivided attention, to sit and listen to his catalogue of the world’s unfairnesses.

  Discerning this, Liz had made the necessary time, and gradually, like flowers laid at her feet, the information had come in. Some of this was of dubious value; like many agents avid for their handlers’ approval, Ferris had a tendency to flannel Liz with half-remembered irrelevancies. But he managed to note and pass on the landline and mobile phone numbers of several of Eastman’s associates, and to list the registration numbers of vehicles which visited the Romford works unit where Eastman then had his HQ.

  This was useful, and added substantially to MI5’s knowledge of Eastman’s operations, but Ferris was never admitted to Eastman’s inner circle, and had little or no access to hard intelligence. His days were spent as a glorified minicab driver, ferrying female croupiers from Eastman’s casinos to and from lunch with Eastman’s business associates, delivering smuggled tobacco to pubs, and distributing cases of bootleg CDs and DVDs around the markets.

  In the end, it had proved impossible to build a satisfactory case against the highly security-conscious Eastman, and as a result he had grown stronger. And probably, thought Liz, moved into the sale of worse and more profitable commodities than dodgy CDs. He was certainly responsible for the regular distribution of Ecstasy to the many nightclub dealers in his area—a hugely profitable enterprise—and the Branch were certain that several of his legitimate businesses were covers for scams of one sort or another.

  Essex Special Branch had remained on the case, and when Liz moved to Wetherby’s counter-terrorism section, the running of Zander was taken over by one of their officers, a hard-bitten Ulsterman named Bob Morrison. It was Morrison rather than Liz that Ferris should have rung.

  “Tell me, Frankie,” Liz began.

  “Big drop-off Friday, at the headland. Twenty, plus a special, from Germany.” Ferris’s voice was steady, but he was clearly nervous.

  “You’ve got to tell Bob Morrison, Frankie. I don’t know what this means, and I can’t act on it.”

  “I’m not telling Morrison any fuckin’ thing—this is for you.”

  “I don’t know what any of it means,
Frankie. I’m out of that game, and you shouldn’t be ringing me.”

  “Friday, at the headland,” repeated Frankie urgently. “Twenty plus a special. From Germany. Have you got that?”

  “I’ve written it down. What’s the source?”

  “Eastman. Took a call when I was there a couple of days ago. He was furious—really done his bollocks.”

  “You still working for him?”

  “Bits and pieces.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “You in a phone box?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Make another call before you leave. Don’t leave this as the last number dialled.”

  They hung up, and for several minutes Liz stared at the scraps of phrases on the notepad in front of her. Then she dialled the Essex Special Branch number and asked for Bob Morrison. Minutes later he called her back from a motorway payphone.

  “Did Ferris say why he called you?” the Special Branch officer asked her, his voice echoing indistinctly in her earpiece.

  “No, he didn’t,” said Liz. “But he was adamant he wasn’t talking to you.”

  There was a brief silence. Reception was poor, and amongst the static Liz could hear the whine of car horns.

  “As a source,” said Morrison, “Frankie Ferris is a total write-off. Ninety per cent of the money Eastman pays him goes straight over the betting shop counter, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s using, too. He’s probably made the whole thing up.”

  “That’s possible,” said Liz carefully.

  There was a long moment of crackle.

  “… going to get anything useful while Eastman’s putting money his way.”

  “And if he isn’t any more?” asked Liz.

  “If he isn’t, I wouldn’t give much for his …”

  “You think Eastman would get rid of him?”

  “I think he’d consider it. Frankie knows enough to bury him. But I don’t think it would come to that. Melvin Eastman’s a businessman. Easier to see him as a business overhead, throw a bit of cash …”

  More car horns. “You’re …”

  “… useful work out of him. They’re joined at the waist, basically.”

  “OK. Do you want me to send you what Frankie told me?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  They rang off. Liz had covered herself; as for the information being acted on, that was something else.

  Once again she stared at the fragmentary phrases. A drop-off of what? Drugs? Weapons? People? A drop-off from Germany? Where would that have originated? If it was a sea landing, and the word “headland” suggested that it was, then perhaps she should have a look at the northern ports.

  Just to be on the safe side—and it could be hours before Morrison got back to his office—she decided to have a word with a contact in Customs and Excise. Where was the nearest UK landfall from the German ports? Had to be East Anglia, which was Eastman’s patch. No small craft bringing dodgy cargo from the northeast was going to run the gauntlet of the Channel; they’d go for the hundred-odd miles of unguarded coastline between Felixstowe and the Wash.

  T he Susanne Hanke was a twenty-two-metre Krabbenkutter stern-trawler, and after more than thirty hours at sea Faraj Mansoor loathed every rust-streaked inch of her. He was a proud man, but he did not look like one as he crouched in the vomit-slicked fish-hold with his twenty fellow passengers. Most of these, like Faraj, were Afghans, but there were also Pakistanis, Iranians, a couple of Iraqi Kurds and a mute, suffering Somali.

  All were identically dressed in used blue mechanics’ overalls. In a warehouse near the Bremerhaven docks they had been stripped of the rancid garments in which they had travelled from their various countries of origin, permitted to shave and shower, and fitted out with second-hand jeans, sweaters and windcheaters from the city’s charity shops. They were also handed the overalls, and by the time the twenty-one of them were gathered around the bonfire of their old clothing they looked, to the casual eye, like a team of guest workers. Before embarking on the sea crossing they had been given bread rolls, coffee, and individual servings of hot mutton stew in foil cartons—a meal which, over the course of the eighteen months that the Caravan had been up and running, had proved acceptable to the bulk of its clients.

  The Caravan had been set up to provide what its organisers described as “Grade 1 covert trans-shipment” of economic migrants from Asia to Northern Europe and the United Kingdom. The passage was not luxurious, but a concerted attempt had been made to provide a humane and functional service. For twenty thousand US dollars, customers were promised safe travel, appropriate EU documentation (including passports), and twenty-four hours of hostel accommodation on arrival.

  This was in marked contrast to previous people-smuggling endeavours. In the past, in return for hefty cash sums at the point of departure, migrants had been delivered filthy, traumatised and half starved to motorway lay-bys on the UK’s south coast, and abandoned without currency or documents to fend for themselves. Many had died en route, usually of suffocation in sealed containers or trucks.

  The organisers of the Caravan, however, knew that in an age of split-second communications their long-term interests were best served by a reputation for efficiency. Hence the overalls, whose grim purpose became clear the moment the Susanne Hanke cleared the port of Bremerhaven. The cutter’s draught was shallow, perhaps a metre and a half, and while the vessel was equal in terms of stability to anything the North Sea might throw at it, it pitched and rolled like a pig in bad weather. And the weather, from the moment the Susanne Hanke made open sea, was very bad, blowing an unremitting December gale. On top of this the Caterpillar power plant, pushing out a steady 375 horse-power, swiftly filled the converted fish-hold with the queasy stink of diesel.

  Neither of these factors worried the Susanne Hanke’s bearded German master or his two-man crew, as they held a steady westwards course in the heated wheelhouse. But they had a disastrous effect on the passengers. Cheerfully exchanged cigarettes and optimistic bursts of Hindi film song swiftly gave way to retching and misery. The men tried to remain seated on their benches, but the motion of the boat alternately pitched them backwards against the bulwarks or forwards into the ice-cold bilge at their feet. The overalls were soon streaked with bile and vomit—and, in a couple of cases, blood from cracked noses. Above their heads the men’s suitcases and haversacks swung crazily in the netting carrier.

  And the weather, as the hours passed, had got steadily worse. The seas, although invisible to the men crouched beneath the foredeck, were mountainous. The men clutched each other as the hull reared and fell, but were thrown, hour after hour, around the steel-ribbed hold. Their bodies battered and bruised, their feet frozen, their throats raw from heaving, they had given up any pretence of dignity.

  Faraj Mansoor concentrated on survival. The cold he could deal with; he was a mountain man. With the exception of the Somali, who was groaning tearfully to his left, they could all deal with the cold. But this nausea was something else, and he worried that it would weaken him beyond the point where he could defend himself.

  The migrants hadn’t been prepared for the rigours of the four-hundred-mile voyage. The crossing of Iran in the stifling heat of the container had been uncomfortable, but from Turkey onwards—through Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Hungary—their progress had been relatively painless. There had been fearful moments, but the Caravan drivers knew which were the most porous borders, and which the easiest-bribed border guards.

  Most, but not all, of the border crossings had been effected at night. At Esztergom, in northwest Hungary, they had found a deserted playing field and an old football and enjoyed a kick-around and a smoke before trooping back into the truck for the Morava river crossing into the Slovak Republic. The final crossing, into Germany, had taken place at Liberec, fifty miles north of Prague, and a day later they were stretching their legs in Bremerhaven. There, they had dossed down amongst the warehouse’s disused lathes and workbenches. The pho
tographer had come, and twelve hours later they had received their passports, and in the case of Faraj, his UK driving licence. Along with his other documents, this was now zipped into the inside pocket of the windcheater which he was wearing beneath the filthy overalls.

  Bracing himself in his seat, Faraj rode out the Susanne Hanke’s rise and fall. Was it his imagination, or were those hellish peaks and troughs finally beginning to subside? He pressed the Indiglo light button on his watch. It was a little past 2 a.m., UK time. In the watch’s tiny glow he could see the pale, fearful faces of his fellow travellers, huddled like ghosts. To rally them, he suggested prayers.

  At 2:30 a.m., Ray Gunter finally saw it. The light that the Susanne Hanke was showing was too muted to register to the naked eye, but through the image-intensifiers it showed up as a clear green bloom near the horizon.

  “Gotcha,” he muttered, flipping the butt of his cigarette to the shingle. His hands were frozen but tension, as always, kept the cold at bay.

  “We on?” asked Kieran Mitchell.

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  Together they pushed the boats into the water, felt the spray at their faces and the icy water at their calves. As the more experienced seaman, Gunter took the lead vessel. Cracking a lightstick so that it glowed a fluorescent blue, he placed it in a holder on the stern; it was essential that the two boats did not get separated.

  Yards apart, the two men began to row through the choppy offshore swell, correcting against the hard eastern blow. Both of them were wearing heavyweight waterproofs and lifejackets. A hundred yards out they shipped their oars and pull-started the Evinrude outboards. These burbled into life, their sound carried away on the wind. Locking into Gunter’s wake, his eyes fixed on the lightstick, Mitchell followed the other man out to sea.

  Ten minutes later they were alongside the Susanne Hanke. Clutching their meagre baggage items, and divested of the fouled overalls (which would be washed in preparation for the next consignment of illegals), the passengers exited the hold one by one, and were helped down a ladder to the boats. This was a slow and dangerous process to undertake in near darkness and high seas, but half an hour later all twenty-one of them were seated with their baggage stowed at their feet. All except one, that is. One of them, a courteous but determined figure, insisted on carrying his heavy rucksack on his back. And if you go over the side, mate, thought Mitchell, it’s your bloody lookout.