Firefly

by Henry Porter

  ‘Firstly,’ began Samson, ‘I want to thank Arron Simcek of the Macedonian Administration for Security and Counterintelligence for all that he has done to neutralise four extremely dangerous individuals. We owe our lives to him and his colleagues and we are extremely grateful to him.’ Simcek accepted the thanks with a nod.

  Nyman coughed and looked at Samson hard. ‘You were indeed lucky to be able to raise the alarm. We were wondering how that was achieved?’

  ‘Shall we do the operational debrief later?’ said Samson, turning so that he could see Nyman with his good eye.

  ‘We’re so relieved that you are all here,’ Nyman continued. ‘I just thought I’d say that. By the look of you, it was obviously a very near thing.’

  ‘Shall we move on?’ said Samson, not quite losing his patience – yet.

  ‘But how was it done – how on earth did you raise the alarm?’

  Naji suddenly pushed back his chair, got up and put his phone in his pocket. ‘They do not want to hear me,’ he said in Arabic. ‘I go to see my friend Ifkar in the hospital.’

  The man from DGSE, Louis Fremon, saved the situation in perfect Middle Arabic. ‘Please, we are eager to hear what you have to tell us. We want very much to know how you can help us in the fight against men like Al-munajil. Don’t go just yet.’ The Frenchman looked pointedly down the table at his rumpled and fatigued British colleague.

  Naji nodded to Fremon, then sat down again.

  ‘My friend has one or two conditions that he needs agreement on,’ Samson continued, ‘before he shows you what he’s brought out of Syria and Iraq at the greatest possible personal risk. I have some sense of what he will disclose and I can assure you all that it will be of great value. However, he wants an assurance that his family will be given sanctuary and citizenship anywhere of his choosing in the EU and that they will be given a home and money to begin a new life.’

  There was silence. Then Nyman said, ‘I’m sure this is all perfectly easy to arrange. Take it that we will see to a new home.’

  Naji shook his head and whispered to Samson, who had to crane to hear him.

  ‘He further wishes,’ said Samson, ‘that he and his two remaining sisters will be assured places in universities of their choosing, provided they meet the required academic standards. He hopes that the governments represented here will bear the costs jointly.’

  Hans Spannagel of the BND began nodding vigorously. ‘It will be our pleasure. I have had instructions from Berlin that Germany is content to take the lead in this,’ he said. ‘We are aware of the family’s plight and are in a position to fly them to a reception centre close to Munich within the next three days. I am pleased to say Germany will welcome your family, young sir.’

  Samson translated, but Naji was already smiling. ‘I believe that is acceptable to my friend,’ he said, and sat down next to Naji.

  Naji switched on the phone and plugged it in so that the phone’s screen was projected onto the wall at the darkened end of the conference room.

  He moved quickly to the camera roll, paused on shots of the group of migrants in the orchard, which Al Kufra never did delete, and the swirl of firefly lights in the forest which had so appealed to the people in SIS headquarters, and eventually reached the screen grabs of computer architecture, which were remarkably similar to the blueprints of buildings. He enlarged each one before examining different parts of the structure intently then, seemingly satisfied, he closed the camera roll and opened the phone’s calculator. At this point most of those around the table took out their own phones and began to film what was happening in front of them on the screen, though few probably appreciated he was entering the prime numbers between one and 1,000 in reverse order, except for the three numbers in the middle of the sequence, of course. He then turned to the calculator’s function keys, which he touched in order with unerring speed, and a string of digits duly appeared in the calculator’s display panel.

  The code was ready. Naji sat back as the animated chicken bearing the newly generated code appeared on the screen. There were smiles around the room. He logged into his account on yondaworld.com and started navigating the towering maze of one of the virtual computers the site encourages its members to build. Dragging the chicken with his finger, he paused occasionally to consider his location before allowing it to land. Each time, a starburst indicated the chicken had hit the target correctly.

  Then the screen went blank. Naji tapped it and suddenly it filled with a list of files. He opened one and murmured to Samson that he thought this was to do with petroleum sales. Another file contained hundreds pictures of young men and women, all unmistakably jihadists. There were files containing emails, texts, messages from social media, screen grabs of Internet bank accounts, invoices for weaponry, videos of explosions, contact lists taken from other phones, maps, endless sheets of figures and photographs of locations in Europe. He moved through them, talking animatedly in a mixture of Arabic and English, saying what he thought they were and how he had acquired particular files by hacking into systems at locations visited by Al-munajil. When prompted, he explained that he almost always gained access by using either the phones or a laptop that Al-munajil left lying around in the pickup. Without Al-munajil’s lax attitude to security – which Naji had noticed the first time he repaired and adapted his phone – none of this would have been possible.

  The room was duly impressed and arrangements were made for the hundreds of files to be copied and immediately shared among all the services present. Various encryption and computer experts appeared and went through the access procedure with Naji and murmured their appreciation of his unorthodox approach to encryption, which one German expert described as a combination of ingenuity, cunning and playfulness. Samson thought this was a fair description of the boy he had pursued around the Balkans.

  At length, Naji began to tire, answering more of the experts’ questions with an uncooperative shrug. Anastasia, who had kept her eye on him for all this time, began to look concerned. Suddenly he had had enough, and rose and unplugged the phone from the projector and put it into his pocket, which prompted a look of alarm from Sonia Fell. She leaned over to whisper to Peter Nyman.

  ‘This is a rather good point my colleague makes,’ he said to the room. ‘Do we think it sensible that this young man is walking around with access to this information in his pocket?’

  Samson, now also standing, shook his head. ‘Instead of worrying about the phone, which, after all, is his property, I would suggest that someone around this table has the good grace to formally thank him for the great service he has rendered to the security of Europe. He has made your lives easier and those of European citizens much safer, at least for the time being.’

  ‘You’re right, and we are grateful,’ said Fremon, ‘but Monsieur Nyman is right – we cannot risk the other side knowing what we have in our possession. That is a basic tenet of our work.’

  Samson looked down at Naji. ‘Why don’t you pay Naji the courtesy of asking him to delete the information, or at least his access to it?’

  Naji eyed the Frenchmen and grinned. ‘I just did that – didn’t you see?’

  Fremon returned the smile and said, ‘I am sorry – you were too quick for us. I did not notice.’

  ‘I have no use for the material,’ Naji said. ‘I kept it to hurt Al-munajil and stop him marrying Munira. That is all. Now he is dead and I do not need it.’

  ‘I think we are all guilty of misjudging the clever young man we have in our midst,’ said Fremon. He took a few paces and put out his hand. ‘I thank you on behalf of the French people for the mission you have completed, Monsieur. You are an individual of rare gifts and courage, and we honour you.’

  And then Fremon’s colleague from the DGSI followed him, and eventually the whole room lined up to shake Naji’s hand and offer their thanks, and even the eternally morose features of Nyman broke into something approachi
ng good humour as he patted Naji on the back and expressed the gratitude of the British government.

  Samson, Anastasia and Naji left the room together, with Naji leading the way, apparently unaffected by the praise heaped on him. He said he wanted to go outside and call his family and tell them the good news that they would soon be reunited in Germany. They walked with him to a high spot among the trees, where there was good reception, and waited a little way off while he made the call. When he’d finished, he sat down on a stump and looked up at the topmost branches, which were swaying in the wind and shedding a few of their leaves. He shivered and Anastasia went over to him and took him in her arms.

  ‘You’ve done what you promised,’ she told him. ‘Your family will soon be in Europe and they’ll be safe, all because of you.’ She held him tightly against her down jacket and Naji smelled her scent and closed his eyes. ‘You understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Naji? You have fulfilled every part of your promise to your father, and he knows that. When you were on the road it was he who kept you going, but now it’s time to start to think of life without him. Let him go. Let him be in peace.’

  Naji struggled and but she held him and kissed the top of his head. ‘You must come to terms with the loss; otherwise it will hurt you. Do it in your own time, but you should try to do it.’ She let him go and bent down to pick up his cap, which had fallen to the ground, handing it to him with a smile. ‘Okay?’ she said.

  Naji shrugged and then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, looking at the ground.

  ‘Good.’ She took his hand and they started back to the hotel, with Samson following some way behind.

  When they reached the hotel’s entrance, Samson remained outside to smoke his last cigarette, for he had decided while being treated in the hospital to quit. He noticed he had a text from a number he didn’t recognise. Glad our horse triumphed in the end, it read.

  He called the number, expecting to get Macy Harp, but when the phone was eventually answered he found he was speaking to Denis Hisami. ‘Dark Narcissus was second,’ said Samson. ‘I checked this morning. Anyway, what do you mean by our horse?’

  He heard a chuckle at the other end. ‘Dark Narcissus won after Snow Hat was disqualified when traces of an illegal substance – the residue of medication used to treat ulcers, it turns out – showed up in the drug test. Surely you don’t imagine that I wouldn’t try to find out which horse you favoured. It was obvious what was happening when the price of Dark Narcissus came in on the morning of the race. So, having kept to our agreement, I placed a bet on Dark Narcissus. We were very, very lucky.’

  Samson exhaled the smoke, stubbed out the cigarette and looked at the shafts of light from the setting sun play in the trees. ‘Indeed we were,’ he murmured.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks are due firstly to Alexandra Tzanedaki, volunteer aid worker on the Greek island of Lesbos, without whom the first part of this series would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Anna Panou, a psychologist working in the Moria refugee camp, Lesbos, who was generous with her time during a very challenging period in 2016. That goes for members of Médecins du Monde, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and some smaller aid agencies, all of whom gave me advice and help on my journey through the Balkans.

  For this novel I have been reunited with my former editor Jane Wood. I thank her for her care and the huge improvements she has made. My thanks also go to Pamela Merritt who read the manuscript with her usual intelligent eye and to Roger Alton whose enthusiasm for the story gave me the confidence to launch into it. Finally, salutes to my literary agent Rebecca Carter of Janklow & Nesbit, who has given me unwavering support through the writing of Firefly, and Charles Collier of Tavistock Wood, who made valuable suggestions after reading the manuscript.

  HP, London, 2017