by Henry Porter
Now he rolled into a ball and stuck his fingers in his ears, expecting to be buffeted by explosions. He waited, scarcely breathing, but nothing happened. Then he began to think that the helicopter was too low to drop bombs without blowing itself up. He waited some more and parted the reeds to look out. The helicopter was hovering about five hundred metres above the path. Instead of running with him to take cover in the reed bed, his companions had stayed rooted to the spot, gawping at the machine with good-natured smiles. One or two of them actually waved. They began to move up the hill. The helicopter drifted to the right, dipped its nose and roared off to the north.
He scrambled out of the reeds, wondering where Lashkar had gone, looked around for the stick he’d thrown away in his confusion and, glancing up the track, brushed himself down. Worried that he would not catch the others by nightfall, he set off at a lick, but as he reached the hill his legs began to give out and his arms just flopped by his side. He stopped and took some water. The idea of walking through these mountains seemed truly crazy, but he slapped his cheek and told himself that if he were to be defeated by this little hill, he would never bring his family to safety. He braced himself and summoned the image of his dear sisters and the new girl in his life, Hayat, who had looked at him with so much concern in her eyes. He’d show her! Gritting his teeth and forcing one foot in front of the other, Naji trudged on and reached the crest of the hill.
He looked down on the river, about a hundred metres below him on his left. Then he saw two men sprinting up the hill towards him. The first was Lashkar, the other was a Moroccan whose name he didn’t know. Their fear and the effort of running uphill distorted their faces. Further down the slope, about three hundred metres away, he saw army trucks pulling up on the track in a cloud of dust. Sitting in the dirt beside a truck were at least thirty young men, while another group, which include one or two of his companions, were being prodded at gunpoint towards them. He took all this in before Lashkar grabbed his arm, whirled him round and dragged him down the hill. Several followed, including Aziz, the Libyan who’d made the fuss over the photograph, two other Afghans, two more Moroccans, a Gambian and an Algerian. At the bottom of the hill they ran to the reed beds, where they hid for the next hour. Only when it was dark did they venture out to find a piece of dry ground, away from the roar of the river, where they could make a fire and share out what they had to eat.
Naji’s self-confidence was restored by Lashkar’s praise for his astuteness over the helicopter. He said it was obvious the chopper was part of the operation to herd the illegal migrants coming up the river path into the trap; only Naji took notice of the military markings on the aircraft and thought to ask himself why the crew was showing such interest in them. Naji smiled modestly and told them the truth about his fear of helicopters, but they still insisted on hailing him the hero, and that made him feel pretty good about himself. And something else cheered him. As the evening wore on and they prepared to bed down, they spotted a few fireflies blinking in a field of maize, which he took to be a good omen. He reminded himself, as he dozed off, that Joseph had been among those rounded up with the others. ‘I am with good people now,’ he told himself, ‘I can make this journey, God willing.’
*
Samson spent a frustrating day following up sightings of young boys in the mass of migrants walking the 180 kilometres to the Serbian border. Twice Vuk’s spotters were sure that they had identified him through binoculars trekking through the countryside, but on both occasions they were wrong.
He’d slogged up the rail track in the pursuit of a boy about Naji’s age, who had been seen by Aco from his trail bike, but caught up with the group to find the boy was travelling with his father and uncle. However, he learned a lot during those few kilometres, chiefly that the stone in which the track was set, known as the ballast, was exceptionally hard on the feet and ankles, so the only way to walk was to use the concrete sleepers between the two rails. But that meant you stood in the path of an oncoming train and, as Samson discovered, trains came out of nowhere and made very little sound as they approached. Many had been killed on bridges and in narrow cuttings where there was no escape. His other insight was that no person could carry all the water they needed for the punishing heat on the rail track. Every walker would have to leave the rail line at least once a day to find water.
He retraced his steps to a gate where he was due to meet Vuk. It was a beautiful afternoon. He smoked a cigarette and briefly watched a helicopter circling over a hill to the south-east of him, on the other side of the river. His personal phone went – it was Macy Harp.
‘I wanted to remind you that Kazinsky Red is running in Dubai at the weekend,’ he said. ‘And I’d have thought you’d want to be on that.’
‘Think I’m going to pass this time – he could easily be beaten by that gelding Beauty Tip.’
‘You’re not going to take a small interest?’ Macy asked.
‘Nope,’ said Samson. ‘I’m looking at Ascot next week.’
‘But you won’t tell me the name of the horse?’
‘Not on it yet,’ said Samson, smiling into the phone.
‘Look, the reason I called is I wanted to know how things are going. They’re not telling me much.’
‘No joy yet – it’s going to be tough.’
‘Well, keep in touch and good luck.’
Samson checked the Office phone and saw an email with an attachment. The subject line read, Taken last evening. Sent this morning. He opened the attachment. It was a photograph of a group of migrants with bags slung over their shoulders. They looked like a soccer team on an away fixture, and right in the middle of the group was their mascot, a boy wearing an enormous grin on his face – Naji.
Seconds later the communications man at SIS, Jamie O’Neill, was on the phone. ‘Thought you’d like that.’
‘You’ve traced the phone. Who’d he send the picture to?’
‘His sister Munira in Turkey.’
‘Great news! So you’ve got his location?’
‘We knew where he was when he took the photograph, from the data embedded in the image – twenty kilometres north of the town you were in, the name of which I cannot pronounce, and half a kilometre east of the Vardar River.’
‘Right, so he’s on the other side of the river to me – that’s helpful. Have you got a position for him now?’
‘No. He keeps the phone switched off. He hasn’t had it on since we picked this up. We intercepted a couple of other messages and three photos: a selfie taken exactly where you predicted – by the UNCHR trailer; a weird study of some bananas; and a photo of lights in the forest, which are apparently fireflies. Actually, it is a rather good photo, so we’ve given him the codename Firefly.’
All the photos were sent to the same messaging account, belonging to Muzpah02, his sister Munira.’
‘So you have the number and you’ve got what’s on the phone?’
‘Yeah, we have the number – obviously – but we need him to switch it on in order to get to grips with the data. I guess you now have the option of calling him and offering help. That’s what his lordship wants.’
‘I don’t want to risk spooking him. I’ll think about it.’
As well as giving a current location, Samson knew that a smartphone could supply a wealth of information about a person’s habits, who they were communicating with online and who they were texting and speaking to. It could be commandeered to transmit the owner’s conversations and tasked to take pictures of them and their surroundings. With very little effort the smartphone could be converted to a perfect surveillance and tracking device.
Yet all these things could only happen if the phone was switched on long enough for the hack to take place. And the problem with Naji, O’Neill said, was that he hardly ever seemed to use his phone. Since GCHQ had intercepted the messages with their attachments, the phone had remained off. They discovered
that he’d made almost no calls, although the phone had been credited with nearly €100 in Izmir, where Naji had been three weeks before. Most kids of his age with that kind of credit on their phone would burn through it quickly. Not Naji. He turned on the phone to take a picture or send a message, then immediately turned it off. He’d made just one phone call – lasting under three minutes – in the past four weeks, and that was from Lesbos. Samson said that the boy had an inbuilt respect for money, but O’Neill suggested there was maybe another explanation for the lack of activity. The phone was an old model – maybe the battery was faulty and wouldn’t work unless it was on more or less permanent charge, and anyway, charging a phone on the road couldn’t be easy.
But they had his location from just twelve hours ago and that was vital information. If the group he was with had stayed on the eastern bank of the Vardar, their current position could be estimated to be between about fifteen and twenty kilometres north of where the group had been on the previous evening.
Samson ended the call, looked across the fields for signs of Vuk’s Land Cruiser, and, seeing nothing, called him.
‘I need you here right now. I have got a position for the kid.’
‘I am coming in ten minutes tops,’ Vuk replied.
‘Where are you now?’ demanded Samson testily.
‘I am beyond you, but very near,’ said Vuk emphatically.
‘Just hurry.’
Then the Office phone vibrated with another message from O’Neill: Call me when you’ve read this: The man in the top row of the photograph, three from the end on the right, is a bad guy. CT recognised him as Mohammed al Kufra. He is a Libyan who studied two years of law in Italy. CT checked with Five’s group of identifiers who have just got back to us. He is definitely IS and was recently in Syria. We know he was an important figure in the administration of the caliphate. He raised money with oil deals, drugs and selling slaves. He was sending hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Captagon – the amphetamine IS manufactures – to the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. After oil, it’s their main source of revenue. A large shipment of the drug was recently intercepted in Beirut. We knew that was his.
Samson examined the photo again. The individual spotted by counterterrorism and confirmed by MI5 seemed to have been caught unawares. Whilst the rest of the group plainly knew that the photo was being taken and were smiling or pulling faces, Mohammed Al Kufra looked surprised. He wore a bandana and a Roma supporters’ shirt. He was certainly the oldest in the group. There was something about Al Kufra’s profile that was ringing bells.
He spotted Vuk bumping across the field and waved frantically. Then he called O’Neill.
‘This doesn’t look good,’ he said.
‘On the other hand, Al Kufra may not know who Firefly is,’ said O’Neill. ‘He could be travelling independently from the three men you were following last night.’
‘Doesn’t sound right to me. He’s a big wheel. What’s he doing on the road with these no-hopers?
‘Friends over the water think he may be on the run, having pissed off his masters by dealing drugs on his account. But that’s beside the point. If Al Kufra knows who Naji is, he won’t last long.’
‘I’ll do my best to find him today, though we haven’t got a lot of time before nightfall. What’s happening about Turkey – the boy’s family?’
‘Sonia Fell’s already on her way,’ replied O’Neill. ‘We know where they are, but haven’t yet made an approach. We should have a lot more information by close of play tomorrow, or the next morning at the very latest.’
‘Keep on Naji’s phone – let me know if you get a new position,’ he said, before hanging up and running to meet Vuk’s car.
They went north to a tunnel under the rail line, which led to a bleak little hamlet sandwiched between the tracks and the river. They passed through the hamlet and followed the road south towards a bridge over the river that was missing part of its parapet. As they drove, Vuk spoke to Aco and told him to meet them at the bridge. He was already there when they arrived. He had his arm through his helmet and was speaking on his phone. The moment he saw them, he put on his helmet, kicked the bike off its stand, waved for them to follow him across the bridge and roared off. ‘What the fuck he doing?’ said Vuk more than once.
They went due south on narrow gravel track. They were now about twenty-five kilometres north of where the boy had sent his photograph that morning, which Samson reckoned was the maximum distance the group could have travelled that day. The track rose for a few hundred metres, and at the top of the incline Aco skidded to a halt with a spray of gravel and pushed his bike back on its stand. Vuk pulled up and they got out and walked over to him. Aco gestured down into a small valley, where they saw army trucks being loaded with migrants. Samson understood immediately what had happened. As the stream of migrants moving north had descended the slope on the other side of the valley, they’d walked slap into a squad of soldiers hidden in the trees near the river. There was no escape, unless they ran back up the hill. Aco told them that Simeon and Lupcho had seen a helicopter in the area, then out of curiosity had followed one of the army trucks and come across the operation. They’d phoned to tell him what was happening when he was on the bridge.
Samson swept the valley with his binoculars. There was no sign of Naji on the ground and, as far as he could tell, he wasn’t among the men on the trucks. It was a pitiful scene. The migrants, most of whom looked to be from West Africa, sat cowed and with shoulders sagging.
Samson called down to Vuk, who had walked ahead. ‘Can you ask your two guys if they know what’s going to happen to these people?’
Vuk called Simeon, who said he was talking to the soldiers. He had learned that the trucks were to be driven to the border that evening and those people without registration papers – mostly likely all of them – were going to be escorted back into Greece, whatever the Greeks had to say about it. He’d discovered that the operation had been going all day and that the Macedonians were detaining a lot of Africans, some of them walking with children. But no one of Naji’s age had been reported – they were quite sure of that. Apparently, a few migrants had escaped the net, but the officer in charge wasn’t concerned because they would be rounded up sooner or later. It was enough that they had apprehended sixty illegals over the course of the day, and these people would no longer be a threat to their country. That was how he’d put it.
Samson texted O’Neill: I need a good file photo of the Libyan right away.
O’Neill replied immediately: Coming up.
It arrived a minute later. Samson sent it to Vuk’s phone. ‘Can you find someone in the intelligence services here to share this with?’ he said. ‘Tell them that this man is a dangerous jihadi and he may be on one of those trucks down there.’ Vuk goggled at him, astonished by Samson’s information. ‘If he isn’t on the trucks, he’s got to be somewhere in this area.’
‘How you know that, boss?’ he asked.
‘London told me,’ he said, lifting his binoculars again.
His attention went to a very tall young African, who rose from a squatting position. With his bag slung over his shoulder, he started walking away from the trucks towards the river. Nobody seemed to notice until he had gone some distance, then a soldier shouted for him to come back. The man kept going. The soldier raised his gun and yelled again but did not shoot. The African passed the trees where Samson assumed the soldiers had concealed themselves to catch the migrants coming down the hill. It was now obvious that he was heading for the river. The soldier dropped his weapon and began running; two others joined him. They knew what the man intended, and so did Samson. His walk told you that something in him had snapped. His hope, his resilience, his stamina – whatever it was that kept these young men going – had finally given out. The man sat down on the riverbank with his feet in the water, looked up at the sky and then lowered himself into the milky brown torren
t. In no time at all he was dragged out into the main current, and all that was visible of him was his perfectly round head and his bag bobbing in the middle of the river.
Samson watched, horrified, until the man’s head disappeared around a bend in the river. There was no way of telling whether he might be washed ashore, or be swallowed by the waters of the Vardar. He caught Vuk’s eye. Vuk shook his head gravely, as if to say no one could possibly survive the river in spate. Samson moved the binoculars back to the valley and to the soldiers walking to the trucks. They looked genuinely appalled. The migrants who had been waiting on the ground in a stupor had all jumped to their feet, and those on the trucks were craning to see what had happened. Samson found himself hoping that someone down there knew the man’s story – who he was and where he’d come from and why he had taken his own life.
Eight
When he was awoken in the early hours by a prod and a tug at his backpack, Naji assumed that they were about to set off, for the remaining nine had agreed the evening before that from now on they would try to travel as much as they could at night. But soon he realised that someone was trying to undo the fastener on the pocket of his backpack. He shot up in his sleeping bag, ready to pull his knife, but the man was too quick for him: a hand closed around his throat and he was pinned to the ground by the man’s body. It was then that he smelled the spicy breath. The man continued to work at the fastener and eventually got it undone and took out what he was looking for. He twisted as he placed it in his pocket, then Naji felt the full force of the hand around his neck and the air being pressed out of his lungs by the man’s weight. He would be dead in seconds. He writhed in the sleeping bag and kicked out and miraculously landed a blow on Lashkar’s head. Lashkar woke, immediately realised what was going on and seized the only thing to hand – Naji’s stick, which was being used to hold the plastic sheet in place. With a scything motion he caught the man on his back. Then he beat downwards, repeatedly connecting with the man’s head and shoulders, causing him to cry out. The others woke and began shouting. The hand released Naji’s throat and the weight rolled away. Naji was aware of people jumping up and someone waving a torch but his whole being was focused on getting air back into his lungs and on the terrible pain in his windpipe and neck. But even while he was being strangled under the waves of the man’s noxious breath, Naji had known the man had taken his phone.
