Firefly

by Henry Porter

  ‘As we know, he’s an exceptionally smart kid. She told me he breezed through every class at school and it became almost impossible to teach him because he already knew it all. IS spotted this potential. She thinks now that they were training him up to be a suicide bomber, but they recognised his gifts and decided that one day he would be an asset to the caliphate. These people think they’re going to be around for a thousand years, so they’ll need brains like Naji’s. The upshot was that Naji achieved the position of a privileged young disciple, which benefitted his family in all sorts of material ways.’

  ‘So his sponsor was Al-munajil?’

  ‘Looks like it. He seems to have swallowed all their bullshit and was apparently dedicated to the cause. This wasn’t an act – he really was buying into it. This went on for almost fifteen months, but then Naji heard that his eldest sister was being lined up as a bride for Al-munajil and he started plotting their escape to Turkey. This was all entirely Naji’s doing apparently, but his father went along with it. Naji handed over the money to the smugglers and arranged for the family to be transported separately to the border and led them across at night. This was in the summer. The father died a few months later from a stroke that was probably caused by the same blow that damaged his sight.’

  ‘When did Al-munajil appear in the camp?’

  ‘She doesn’t know exactly because she never saw him. But she thinks it could have been about the time Faris died, because Naji was very tense and secretive. This was when Naji and the father were planning Naji’s journey into Europe. Faris blessed the trip and sanctioned spending a lot of the family’s resources because Naji had managed the escape from Syria so well. He persuaded his father that he could get to Germany in a matter of weeks. The psychologist talked a lot about his reality distortion – making up his own version of reality for his needs. She mentioned Steve Jobs, who was half Syrian, in this context. She says Naji has equal powers of self-delusion, although she called it self-indoctrination.’

  ‘What about the relative in Germany?’ Samson asked. ‘Where’s Naji going?’

  ‘He made it all up. He told a lot of lies to the psychologist – there was never anyone. He has no particular destination, which is even braver, when you think about it.’ She stopped as the waiters set down several wooden bowls and two skillets loaded with cabbage rolls, beans, sliced sausage, pastry filled with cheese and an earthenware dish containing turli tava, made out of peppers, potatoes, rice, onions and minced meat. Samson investigated the dishes, thinking of his mother’s love of food.

  ‘We need to concentrate on this,’ Sonia said, and they were silent while they helped themselves.

  ‘How soon after Faris died did Naji leave?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘The poor woman can’t remember – she’s still devastated. It’s just a few weeks since he died. We have to remember Faris was only thirty-eight. She expected a long life with him.’

  ‘I thought of him as being well into middle age,’ said Samson.

  ‘They married young after university.’

  Samson looked across the restaurant and reminded himself to talk to Anastasia as soon as possible and get her unfiltered opinion. He briefly wished he was sitting with her rather than Fell, but pushed the thought away. ‘Does Anastasia think Naji understands that his father is dead?’

  ‘In a way, he has because he has taken on responsibility for looking after his family – that can’t be doubted. But she believes he hasn’t absorbed it emotionally – that he’s still doing this for his father. He may in some strange way think that if he gets to Germany his father will still be alive.’

  ‘So he fled the reality of his father’s death?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘I’m trying to work out whether that triggered his departure, or if it was seeing Al-munajil and his associates in the camp.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It may do,’ he said,

  She gave him a sideways look. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘If he left Turkey to escape the reality of his father’s death, he may not know as much or have brought out as much intelligence as we originally thought. It’s a different matter if he went because he was fleeing Al-munajil – if seeing those men he knew in Syria was the trigger.’ He looked at her hard and took up his glass, wearily resigned to the realisation that his former colleagues were acting in what they regarded as a hard-headed way, but which in fact was rather stupid. The boy was everything in this investigation – the IS team was clearly interested only in finding him – and yet MI6 was now shifting the focus from the quarry to the pursuers. ‘I assume he’s now focused on the three men,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have to ask him that yourself.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Sonia. It’s plain that’s what’s going on.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘What about the rest of Naji’s family?’

  ‘The three girls are lovely – the older one, Munira, is a true beauty. She’s nearly sixteen. I can understand why he wanted to protect her from IS. She and Naji are very close. She looks like him and is extremely bright, with near perfect English. Their father taught them all from an early age. He read them Robert Louis Stevenson and H. G. Wells, would you believe?’

  ‘Did you talk to Munira properly?’

  ‘No – the mother did all the talking for the family, though Munira translated. Then Nyman called to bring me to this meeting, so I couldn’t stay and get Munira on her own. We could surely use her to get to Naji.’

  ‘If Naji had a phone she could call him. Does she know anything?’

  ‘Yes, there were moments when I could see that she knew a lot more than her mother.’

  ‘Like what Naji saw in Syria and maybe what he saw and heard in the camp?’

  ‘Perhaps. It’s clear that his mother is finding it very hard without Naji as well as her husband. She kept on bursting into tears. I felt for her. Munira was on the point of saying something but I don’t think she wanted to upset her.’

  ‘When are you going back?’

  ‘After the meeting tomorrow – there’s a lot more to do.’

  ‘What the hell is Nyman doing pulling you out so quickly?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Paul, you know I can’t tell you. You’re the hired gun and outside the loop.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘This is Office stuff. See what he says. We’re meeting at 7 a.m. at the embassy. Everyone will be there.’

  ‘Who’s everyone?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  *

  He dropped her at the embassy – a functional but not unattractive building beside a park – and found a hotel for himself near the Vardar River. It was late but still warm. He went out to the promenade along the riverbank and ordered another beer at a bar with tables of smokers outside. In front of him were two huge galleon ships that housed restaurants and bars, and which were fixed into the riverbed with all too visible metal struts. Skopje tried hard to look like a capital, but the state buildings were too white and neoclassical and there were too many supersized statues of heroes, including the disputed Alexander. The galleons made it look like a stretch of Las Vegas.

  He messaged Anastasia: Need your advice on your client if I find him.

  Am at dinner with my boss, came the instant reply. Can’t talk. Tomorrow any good? How are YOU? A.

  Great. Can we make it early – like 6.30 a.m.? he replied.

  Sleep well. Xx, she wrote.

  Samson considered looking at Naji’s phone. He’d bought a charger for it at the airport and it now had full battery. The password had been remotely disabled by London after he had found the phone in Al Kufra’s pocket. He assumed they’d been looking through it all day, but it was odd that O’Neill had not been in touch to find out when he was going to hand it over. Samson was not technically capable of dealing
with any encryption that might be on it, but he scrolled through the photographs, stopping at the few shots of Naji’s family, all of them caught unawares in the last few months. He wondered if he had taken them knowing that he was about to go on the road. But much of it meant nothing to him, for Naji appeared to have different ideas to most about what made an interesting photograph. There were shots of machines, many diagrams and some geometric schemes like the one he had drawn for Anastasia in the camp, which all attested to his scientific bent.

  At midnight, Samson received a call from Vuk. It took a little time to understand what he was saying because Vuk’s English was more haphazard late at night, but the substance was that he had seen an item on the local news bulletin about an off-duty police officer who had been found by two women on a country road, suffering from blood loss after being stabbed by a migrant. One of the women happened to be a nurse at the hospital fifteen kilometres away and she was able to stem the blood coming from the single wound. He later told his colleagues that he had given a ride to a youth, not a boy, who had demanded money, attacked him and stolen his car – a blue Opel. At the end of the report there was a picture of the victim in his uniform. Vuk was certain that this was the same man they’d seen on the service station CCTV footage. They had all the information they needed, so it was now just a question of finding him.

  Samson paid and got up, noticing the twitch of interest in a man a few tables away. He had felt there might be watchers at the restaurant. With British spies flying into the capital, it wasn’t surprising that the locals were showing interest. He would be careful what he said on the phone in the room.

  The next day, he woke at dawn and drew the curtains to see the vast Russian-owned power station belching a vertical plume of steam into a murky sky. He eventually managed to make a mug of instant coffee, having sprayed the contents of one sachet across the room and squashed two of the little milk pots while trying to open them. He took his mug to the stairwell and phoned Anastasia.

  Before she said anything, he told her, ‘Perhaps better not to use names.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said brightly. ‘So, how are you? Is it all going well?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m concerned about your nephew. Maybe he did not accept the death of his father. I believe he thinks that he is still alive, even though he was there when he died.’

  ‘That’s going to be a problem. Have you found him?’

  ‘No, but I’m not far behind him. I’m trying to work out how to handle him when I do and whether there’s a way to predict his behaviour. The one thing I have learned is that this boy is a born survivor, and tough with it. He has escaped death and capture and he just keeps going. What he’s going through is very rough for an undersized kid of not even fourteen. Is his stamina likely to hold out? Will he crack? Will he press on until he meets an obstacle that he just can’t get round?’

  ‘No way to tell, I’m afraid. But you saw his persistence in escaping the camp. And to survive the sinking of the raft, to hold on with that baby in his arms, took a lot of courage.’

  ‘I don’t believe he told you anything like the full story of what he’s witnessed in the last couple of years, or how closely he’s been involved with some very bad people. He has had to make some serious calculations and compromises to get his family out, which most adults would find too hard. Does this surprise you?’

  ‘No, a lot of these children get used to taking life-and-death decisions. Young people are resilient and more adaptable, yet he has a bigger load than any I’ve met. And the failure to accept his father’s death, well . . .’ She fell silent.

  ‘When I find him, I wonder if you could take a couple of days off and help me? He trusts you. We need him to tell us everything he knows as soon as possible, but I don’t want to push him.’

  ‘I’ve worked here for a straight ten months without a day off so I have a ton of holiday owed to me. Say the word and I’ll come.’

  ‘That means a lot. Thanks. I’ll cover the costs.’

  ‘Not an issue,’ she replied.

  He looked out on the power station and was reminded of the city in Germany they once thought Naji might have been aiming for. ‘You remember I questioned you about something in your email, when we thought that you had started to spell out a German city but failed to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t say the name now. I just wonder where you got that name. Do you think it might have come up in a talk with your nephew?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t remember in what context – that’s why I probably did not complete the sentence. I maybe thought he was going there because of the relative he spoke about.’

  ‘That was all made up. There’s no one in Germany.’

  ‘Really! He was so convincing.’

  ‘But the name of the city definitely came from him.’

  ‘I am pretty sure, yes.’

  ‘So, I wonder why he had it in his mind. I mean it’s not the first place you’d think of in Germany, if you were spinning a story.’

  ‘Who knows – is it important?’

  ‘Probably not. But I’ll tell you when we meet.’

  ‘If you find him.’

  ‘I will.’

  *

  ‘Ah, here cometh the hero of the hour,’ exclaimed Nyman with unusual bonhomie. ‘Welcome, welcome, Mr Samson.’

  Nyman had less natural cheer than a pebble. As well as embarrassing Samson a little, this effusiveness put him on the alert. He nodded, sat down and looked around the seven faces. Apart from Nyman, he only recognised Fell. ‘Apologies for my lateness,’ he said. ‘I had an important call to make and then it took longer than I expected to get out here.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Nyman. He made the introductions – to Hans Spannagel from Germany’s BND, Louis Fremon and Anna Houlette, respectively of the French foreign and domestic intelligence services, the DGSE and DGSI; Giles Rogerson from MI5 and Nik Verhoeven of Belgian State Security Service, the VSSE. They nodded in turn and at the end of the roll call Fell gave him a conspiratorial wink that Samson didn’t trust.

  ‘Owing to Mr Samson’s efforts, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Nyman, ‘we are now in a position to know that a three-man active service unit is travelling through the Balkans at this moment. We believe that these men are headed for Bosnia but that they have yet to cross the border with Serbia. Bosnia is the staging post on their way to central Europe. We anticipate that they will rest and recuperate there before making the onward journey. We know their identities and we have images of two of them. We expect to have a photo of their leader – Al-munajil – very soon. This is all entirely due to Mr Samson’s efforts in tracking the boy Naji Touma, whom we sometimes refer to as Firefly. We owe him our thanks.’

  There were nods of appreciation around the table, but Samson knew this was the big brush-off. ‘I haven’t traced Firefly yet,’ he protested.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Nyman, anxious to move on. He raised a hand to cue Fell, who went to work on her keyboard. Two images of the same man were projected onto the wall, one of which was the still made by Samson from the highway service area CCTV. The second showed him in a turban, standing over a cowering figure in an orange jumpsuit. His long, gaunt face was much clearer. Samson thought that if the face in this photograph were isolated, ninety per cent of people would certainly recognise the gaze of a killer.

  ‘This is Ibrahim al Almania – a name that admits his German association. He is variously known as Rafi Abu Saif al Almania and Abu Alamia, which we guess is a kind of joke that broadly means Father of Pain. We believe his original name to be Ibrahim Anzawi. He was born in Iraq and fled Saddam’s persecutions with his family in the 1990s and went to Sweden. He has lived and worked in Germany, and is a fluent German speaker. He’s thought to be Al-munajil’s right-hand man and to have taken part in mass executions in Iraq and Syria. He’s thirty-five years old, has been a part of IS since the earl
y days and is a thoroughly evil individual.

  ‘We were able to identify him after collecting imagery from Athens railway station, Turkey and Lesbos. He registered under the name of Zaman, having provided a passport in that name, and his photograph was taken for the registration papers.’ He nodded to Fell, who brought up the picture taken in a Turkish refugee camp, together with that of another man standing against the same background. ‘He registered at the same time as this man – Usaim al-Mazri. They didn’t bother to disguise the fact that they were travelling together.’

  Two photographs of Usaim al-Mazri appeared – one from the railway station CCTV, the other a head and shoulders shot taken in Turkey for his registration papers. Usaim was stockier and looked quite a bit younger than Ibrahim. Another photograph showed him wearing a beard and turban and carrying a rocket launcher. ‘In the background you can see a severed head on the fender of the Isuzu truck. That is thought to have been Usaim’s work.’

  ‘Usaim has lived in Cologne and Amsterdam. Last night, Britain’s Security Service ran his photograph past some “reformed” IS fighters and he was recognised by several. He has been in Iraq for the last two to three years and took part in the early IS offensives with Ibrahim. As yet, we do not know much about his associations and network in Europe. We believe he studied as an engineer in Hamburg and that he is active on social media as “DogkillerX”, but he has posted nothing in the last seven weeks.’