by Andy McNab
I spotted the wrestler’s vehicle, held in traffic, trying to cut across the road to IranEx. Majid was up front and looking very pissed off. He, too, was waffling away at warp speed into his mobile. His spare hand jabbed into space, as though he wanted to hit whoever was on the other end.
Ali closed down. ‘Qasim and Adel. They say the Dassault is back, Jim. It’s just landed.’
‘Let’s head towards the airport. Can they get any pictures?’
On second thoughts, that would be a mistake. ‘No, no, don’t ask them.’ I didn’t want to get them thinking too hard. ‘You’re all mates again, are you?’
He tucked his phone into his pocket. ‘It is good that it has come back, Jim, no?’
‘Very good, mate. They’ll call if something happens?’
We could be anything up to two hours away.
We were fighting through the southbound traffic when Top Gun kicked off again.
‘Salam?’ He listened, jabbered away for a few seconds, then turned to me. ‘The Dassault has been met by a car. A black Mercedes. It has already left.’
78
The taxi sat in the shadow of a small avenue of trees on the city outskirts. Behind us, a scrapyard was surrounded by a rusty barbed-wire fence. Piles of old cars were stacked on top of each other next to mountains of worn-out tyres. Either the place was abandoned or the people who worked there had decided to stay out of the sun. Even the dogs were lying low. The birds chirping in the branches above us were the only sign of life. A couple had taken a dump on our car’s windscreen.
Ahead of us the heat haze shimmered over the only road into Tehran from IKIA.
I sat behind the wheel, with Ali’s ball cap still on my head and his aeroplane-geek binos on my lap. My eyes were glued to the steady stream of cars heading north.
The contrast between the bright, reflected sunlight on the white desert sand and the shade beneath the trees made it almost impossible to see us from the road. It was the perfect trigger point.
Ali sat beside me, flapping but not saying so. He now knew for sure that this wasn’t anything to do with journalism.
‘It’s not just about taking pictures of planes. It’s about finding out what people are doing with them.’
He nodded, but I could see last night’s dreams fading and fear taking their place. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll show you the ropes. My editor already knows I couldn’t crack this story without you.’ I studied another blob of black coming our way.
The less he knew the better, for his own good. He was staying with me for now anyway, whether he liked it or not. I needed him and his car. If he sparked up and said he didn’t like it, he was going to spend the next few hours in the boot.
Gold, Altun, M3C, dark flares and now something, or more likely someone, arriving from Pakistan. I didn’t know what these fuckers were up to yet, but it looked increasingly like it had to do with Brit, US and even German blood staining the Afghan desert.
I adjusted the focus. The black blob had become a Merc. Its side windows were blacked out. ‘Here we go, mate. I got a possible.’
I fired up the engine. The Merc was two up in front, both with gigs on. I couldn’t make out who they were, just the silhouettes and shades.
As it drove past the trees, I prepared to follow. ‘Got it. That’s ours.’
I slid my sun-gigs on and pulled out.
The Paykan’s wheels hit the tarmac and I pushed my foot down as far as the fifteen-year-old pedal would let me. There was no reason to talk to Ali. I had more important things to do now.
The traffic slowed and thickened as we entered the city. I could see the Merc four vehicles in front. Its green curtains and bent mobile antenna were as clearly in view as they had been in the binos.
We juddered up the road. Traffic-lights somewhere up ahead were letting no more than three cars through at a time. Mopeds whizzed in and out through the smallest of gaps.
With vehicles between us and his rear-view blocked by the chintzy green curtains, we were hidden. We’d have a problem if he turned and I was held, but that’s just how it goes. I was more concerned right now about keeping my head down to help the ball cap and gigs do their job – hiding my face.
We edged forward. The jam wasn’t a problem for me. Out on the open road with just four gears and an old Paykan engine would have been far worse.
Up ahead, the traffic went from bunched to more or less gridlocked. Horns honking, engines revving, it moved forward a few feet, then ground to a halt again for minutes on end. Cars peeled off left and right to try their luck down side roads. I gradually ended up right behind the Merc.
I eased forward until I was just about kissing his boot. If I couldn’t see his wing mirrors, then the driver couldn’t see me.
Ali strained forward in his seat. ‘Bobby Sands must be a very important man in the UK, yes?’
‘Bobby Sands?’
‘My father said the Supreme Leader changed the name of this street in his honour.’
‘What did it used to be called?’
‘Winston Churchill.’
79
‘Death to America’ and ‘Burn the US Den of Espionage’ were scrawled across the only stretch of wall that hadn’t been covered by Mousavi’s green revolution posters.
About a hundred beyond the long-abandoned US embassy, the Merc took a sudden left, no indicators. I couldn’t go with him. It would be too obvious. They would ping me immediately.
‘Jim, he has turned…’
‘Can I get down the next left?’ It was approaching fast. ‘Hurry up, Ali, think – can I go down? Is it a dead end?’
Too late; I turned.
I kept checking the junction about seventy ahead and pressed the pedal to the metal. No Merc had crossed it left to right by the time I got up there.
‘Jim, it is lost. I think I should drive now and-’
‘Shut up.’
I stopped at the junction and checked left. No sign of it moving away from me or parked. It must have gone straight on. Swinging the car left, I hit the gas. I needed to make distance before turning into the target’s road.
‘Jim, please. My father’s car! Please, Jim, we will get into a lot of trouble. I want to go home.’
I slowed to turn right. I had to take it calmly on the corner in case the Merc had parked up just past it.
No sign of it.
‘Jim, please – I really, really want to go home.’
I carried on down the road, avoiding the swarm of wheel-barrow-pushing construction workers buzzing around the concrete skeleton to my right. I checked each junction. The Merc must have parked. It had to have done, unless he’d pinged me. Why else would it come down here?
‘Jim-’
‘Shut up and check down the roads your side.’
At the far end, about two hundred further on, we emerged into a square. Stalinesque concrete office buildings were ranged round a patch of dusty ground with a couple of park benches and a moth-eaten palm tree in the middle.
The Merc nosed into view on the far side.
I watched the green curtain and bent antenna pull up at a set of iron gates set into an archway. The driver lowered his window and stuck out his ink-covered arm to punch some numbers into an entry-pad.
I carried on around the square as the gates swung closed behind the target. I took the first road out of sight and pulled over. I leant across and opened his door for him. ‘Go and see if the Merc comes out again. Walk around the square, just act normal. Don’t look directly at the house, or the Merc, the driver, anything, anyone. Just walk…’
‘Jim, I don’t think…’
‘Just do it, Ali!’
He climbed out reluctantly onto the pavement.
‘Walk slowly past. Tell me what you see. Does the building have a name, a number, anything? I need to know if the Merc stays or leaves. I’ll meet you further down this road. Now go!’
I drove off, watching him walk back towards the square, shoulders down and scared. Fuck it, I’d had no
choice. There’s no time for debate when this stuff happens. All you can do is grip the body and make it do what you want. Only afterwards can you give it a hug and make up.
I was able to turn back towards the square at the next junction and park up – a tactical bound, which meant the Paykan was out of line-of-sight from the square. I kept my head down and sun-gigs on.
I glanced at the construction site two hundred further down. A cloud of dust billowed around the base of some rickety scaffolding that framed a couple of minarets. They looked for a moment like a couple of missiles taking off.
Ten minutes later Ali slumped his way towards me. He couldn’t even look me in the eye as he got back in. ‘The car has gone. It was coming out as I got to the square. The building has no number or name.’
He collapsed into his seat, close to tears, as I hit the ignition. I needed to get a trigger on the target. I still had to find out who was inside that building, and why. ‘It’s all right, mate. You’ll get the car back and everything will be OK. Not long now.’
I knew he didn’t believe a word of it.
80
1905 hrs
Last light would be with us in less than an hour.
With the brown PVC seat of the Paykan tilted back, I could see straight through the windscreen towards the target. It was a two-floor, drab concrete cube, an office building, much like the rest around the patch of dirt and dust, surrounded by high walls. CCTV covered the gate, walls and even the building itself.
No one else had left or entered it since I’d stagged on. But there was at least one body inside. A couple of minutes after we’d moved into position, a ceiling fan had started to turn in a first-floor room. I’d scanned the place through Ali’s binos but couldn’t see who’d switched it on. With the wall so high and me so low, my perspective was limited.
There had been a great deal of coming and going. Trucks piled high with rubble had pulled out of the construction site every few minutes. The last one had left more than an hour ago. About fifteen others loaded with steel reinforcing rods were now parked up in the square. An old guy in a leather jerkin and flat Afghan-style hat had done his best to direct them but the drivers totally ignored him and did their own thing. Even Ali managed a smile as we watched them moving through the gate, oblivious to the old boy’s complaints, with their rolled-up blankets tucked beneath their arms.
Young women had paraded constantly through the square all afternoon. Some were in Western dress, some a mixture, some totally covered. Those in burqas had trainers and jeans on underneath.
The construction site had already achieved iconic significance for the local population. It was an extension of the campus for what the mullahs intended to become the Islamic world’s foremost seat of learning. Aisha studied medicine here; there were more mosques and classrooms on the far side of the plot.
The cicadas were going ape above the distant drone of traffic. A slight breeze rustled the dry leaves of the near-dead palms. I glanced across at Ali. He was feeling more of a prisoner now than a friend. He was scared of leaving his dad’s car with me, but even more scared of staying.
It was time to let him off the hook. ‘Listen, mate, you can go soon – and with the car. OK?’
He sat up slowly, eyes straight ahead, hardly daring to believe what I’d just said. ‘Thank you, Jim, thank you. I will not say anything to-’
‘It’s all right, mate. Listen, I need you to know something. I’m not going to bullshit you. I’ll do my best with the job. But it’s a long shot…’
He turned very slowly towards me. His eyes bored into me. ‘You are not a journalist, are you, Jim?’
‘No, mate. But you’ve helped me do something important. I’m not exactly sure where it’s going to lead yet, but we’re doing our best to stop what happened to your dad happening to a whole lot of others.’
He nodded, but I knew he was far from convinced.
‘I’m sorry, Ali.’
He raised his hands and slowly massaged his temples. It was some time before he spoke. ‘Can I go home now?’
‘Yes, mate.’ I paused. ‘But I need one last favour.’
81
This area didn’t have streetlighting. I wasn’t complaining – I always felt safer in the dark. I stood against the fence, trying to get some pitta bread down my neck. There was no curtain across the target window, and the fan kept going. Somebody had turned the light on but I still hadn’t been able to see who.
Another light came on, somewhere on the ground floor this time. Weak light spilled over the wall.
I now understood how difficult it must have been for the women in the Emirates food hall to hoover up their Big Macs. Getting anything through the hole in Ali’s mum’s old burqa was proving very difficult indeed. Most of it seemed to miss and tumble down the black material.
No way could I have got away with what I wanted to do tonight without some sort of cover. Burqa’d up, I passed for a very chunky university girl. If Arab men could cover up and get through airport security on their sisters’ passports, I should be able to mince about at night in this kit to my heart’s content. If not, I’d soon find out.
Snatches of waffle and banter filtered through from the far side of the tall plywood sheets that encircled the building site. I looked through the gap where two sheets didn’t quite meet. Blankets were spread out round a fire, with pots and pans rigged over the flickering flames. The wood spat and split, completing the western campfire effect. It could have been a scene from a John Wayne movie – except that these boys, truck drivers, I guessed, were in dishdashes and had a TV perched on top of a pile of concrete blocks, next to a fat extension reel. The other end of the lead disappeared in the direction of a genny I could hear ticking away in the distance.
A couple of students walked hand in hand across the far side of the square, giving the odd giggle along the way. I stayed in the shadows and thought about Ali. I wondered what he was going to do. Tell the police? Tell his sister, and she’d tell the police? She was going to be really pissed off with me. I didn’t know, and I tried not to care. Whatever, it was out of my hands. All I could do was what I was doing now – keeping eyes on the target and trying to identify whoever was in there.
I’d had no choice in my treatment of Ali, but that didn’t stop me feeling sorry for him. First his dad’s illness had screwed up his university plans, and now I’d done the same with his dreams of a journalistic career.
Fuck it, there was nothing I could do but cut away from all that and get on with the job.
I needed to get a trigger on the target and find out who was in there. Altun had to be somewhere with the Pakistan delivery. Whether he was sitting under that ceiling fan or not, I still needed to find a way of making entry on target tonight. Short of bursting straight into M3C’s airport HQ, I had nowhere else to go.
I needed to find a good OP, ideally high up in an unoccupied building that was still under construction and looked right down on the target. The closer of the two minarets fitted the bill. My only problem would be getting into it. I couldn’t just sashay past the lads round the campfire – it wasn’t that kind of party. Nor could I get over the fence. I’d checked. It wouldn’t happen. The only way was to head for the uni and see how I could make my way from there.
Before I did anything, I had to finish getting some more bread and water down my neck – instead of down my burqa. I didn’t know how long I was going to have to be up there, or the next time I’d get a chance to eat or drink.
I was finally done. I brushed the crumbs off the black material and moved onto the pavement, day-sack over one shoulder. I blended in pretty well, I thought, apart from being a foot taller than the rest of the girls. I just hoped my size-ten Timberlands wouldn’t stick out too much, and that nobody stopped me to sympathize about how badly the diet was going.
I went back into the square and followed the other students down to the right of the target, trying to avoid taking long paces or looking like I was about to enter a boxing rin
g. Paralleling the road that led to the university via the construction site, I lost eyes on target. I wouldn’t have it again until I got into my OP, but it was worth the risk. If I stayed at ground level I wouldn’t see jack.
A hundred metres or so past the square, the students were starting to bunch. By two hundred, they were crossing the road and coming in from all directions, bottlenecking at what I assumed must be the entrance. I joined the mob.
We surged through the gates into a big, brightly lit open space with marble flooring. A mosque reared up on the far side, another couple of hundred metres away. Its huge square facade and minarets towered above us, floodlit from the ground like something from Cape Canaveral. The spotlights were harsh enough to make God blink.
The square was humming with chat and ring tones. The girls laughed, glanced at their homework and munched peanuts or other stuff out of bags. It could have been almost any university campus, almost anywhere in the world.
I worked my way to the right of the mosque, where a tree-lined border had been planted to give the square some shade. I kept moving, making sure I didn’t bump into anybody or anything and draw attention to myself. It was easier said than done, when the hole I had to look through was smaller than a Warrior’s letterbox. I wanted to move through this lot like oil, not giving a single person cause to stop, stare and wonder what class the big bird was in.
I headed beyond the trees and into the stretch of shadow where the floodlights between the old and the new part of the campus didn’t meet. I picked my way over mounds of earth and rubble for about twenty metres until I was in total darkness. I took off the burqa, folded it up and shoved it into my day-sack. I’d need it again to get out.
82
As my eyes adjusted to the ambient light, blurred shapes slowly took on recognizable outlines. I picked my way past a cement mixer, and piles of wood, concrete blocks and steel. Soon I could see the bubble of orange light from the campfire and hear the mush of the TV they were shouting at.
