by Henry Porter
He did not stamp out the fire straight away, but moved some flat stones into the flames then settled down near the light to look through the Palestinian’s pouch of documents. There were a number of identity cards with different names. The most frequent name used was Jasur al-Jahez and all the cards included pictures of the dead Palestinian. He noticed that many were out of date, but felt sure that somewhere among the mostly Arabic documentation an address would be found. When he’d had them translated he would write to Jasur’s relatives and tell them what had happened. The death of the man who’d fought so hard to live had stayed with him all day and, as with his men in Afghanistan, he felt a keen responsibility to the relatives who had been left behind.
Some time later, he pulled the stones from the fire and placed them in a line, digging them in so their tops were flush with the surface of the ground. Then he swept the embers away, buried them and laid his bed-roll where the fire had been and along the line of warm stones. It was a trick he’d learned during his first winter in Afghanistan. Going to sleep by a fire was less efficient than lying on ground that had been heated for several hours. With rocks placed in a line under your body you stayed warm all night, or at least warm enough to go to sleep.
Next day he woke at dawn and packed his things quickly. He was about 700 feet above the village and a good mile away as the crow flies. A slight haze hung over the mountains. When he moved to look down he noticed that an army truck had pulled up in the main square of the village and a knot of figures were gathered round it. It could mean nothing; on the other hand, there was every possibility that the old lady had reported him and the missing food had lent credibility to her story. He moved off without a second glance and decided on the tactics he’d used the first day, of marching further than anyone thought possible. But it was already quite hot and the one thing he hadn’t thought to do while in the village was replenish his water supply. He would have to save the cup or two that remained in the canister.
Half an hour later a helicopter appeared and circled the ground immediately above the village. He saw troops moving up the mountainside. They were much fitter and faster than the soldiers who had hunted him two days before and he estimated that if he stayed where he was they would reach him in under an hour. However, it would be suicide not to pick his route carefully while the helicopter was so close.
He waited under some bushes, remembering what a Stinger missile launched from a man’s shoulder could do to a chopper. As soon as it shifted, he sprinted into a plantation of pines and moved rapidly up the slope, running with the gun in one hand and the sack of possessions tied round his back with the gun strap. He reached some open ground and decided to make for a long shelf of rock about a hundred yards ahead.
Something must have attracted the pilot’s attention. The machine dipped and slewed across the mountainside towards him. Khan dived under a clump of bushes to his right, rolled onto his back and pushed the muzzle of the gun through the foliage, briefly aiming it at the tail rotor as it came into view. Instead of settling over the bushes the helicopter passed him. He wiped the sweat that was trickling from his brow and took a sip of water from the canister. He could see very little, but from the rhythmic thud he judged the helicopter was in a steady hover high over a position about a thousand yards to the north of him.
He pulled the shirt-sleeve across his face again, dabbed his eyes and took in the pinpoint clarity of the day. The sun had burned away the haze and was heating the ground so that the air was filled with the smell of herbs.
His eyes returned to the skyline above the shelf. One or two scrawny mountain sheep had appeared and were looking over the ten-foot drop. They were joined by the rest of the flock, obviously scared by the helicopter. With one sudden movement they cascaded over the edge, many of them landing legs akimbo or on their sides. They struggled up and stampeded past him like a river in spate, down towards the pine trees. They were followed by a pair of dogs and a shepherd boy who stood on the edge of the shelf, waved a stick and shouted. Khan noticed that he had a blanket tied across his chest and was carrying a good many pans and bottles that made almost as much din as the sheep bells. As the boy scrambled down, a corner of the sack-cloth came loose and neat bunches of herbs tumbled out. He dropped the sack and ran on after the sheep without noticing Khan’s boots protruding from beneath the bushes.
The helicopter’s engine was producing a more laboured note. He saw it pop into view above, climb rapidly and drop away to his left. He caught another noise – the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons firing and a heavy machine gun, or even a cannon.
He scrambled up to the rock and put his head above the parapet. About two hundred yards away he saw a group of men moving into the open from an old stone shelter. They didn’t seem to be in the least concerned about the presence of the helicopter sitting above a cliff some distance away, and were moving without haste up the scree towards a cleft in the mountains. Several packhorses or mules followed them.
He realised these must be the insurgents he’d heard about from the Bulgarian truck driver who had brought them all the way from Eastern Turkey and left them near the town of Tetovo, West of Skopje. It was a long way from the agreed drop-off point and they had missed their connection, so the driver had got out a road map and showed them that they were south of the place where the borders of Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania meet. He told them there was a lot of trouble because the men from the north crossed into Macedonian territory and stirred up trouble with the local Albanian population. He had been forced to change his route countless times by the Macedonian patrols. Khan had only half-believed him, but here were the men he had spoken about and they might well provide a means of getting over the border.
Shading his eyes from the light, he peered down the mountain to look for the soldiers. At first there was no sign of them but then he noticed that the sheep which had scattered into the pine plantation were now bolting from cover. He saw a figure flash across a patch of light and realised that the soldiers were nearly in range. They would reach him in minutes. He had a choice. He could try to conceal himself but risk being discovered, or he could warn the men above him about the size of the approaching force. He opted for the latter, and jumped up, letting off a burst in the air to gain their attention, then loosed a full magazine into the trees without hope or desire of hitting the soldiers. They rose to the bait and returned his fire and so announced their presence. He turned and raced across the plateau towards the men, shouting and waving, praying they understood he was one of them; at least that he had earned an audience.
This performance brought them to a halt and even now they seemed to have time to exchange looks and rest their hands on each other’s shoulders and point at the man tearing across the bare plateau. He reached them almost incapable of speech, but gestured down the mountain and said the word soldier in as many languages as came to mind. The men stared back at him. They were all quite short with dusty hair and faces. Beneath the grime was two or three days of stubble and without exception a look of undisguised suspicion. One of them gestured he should fall in behind the column and then they moved off again. A hundred feet up, Khan saw why they were so confident. Hidden behind a wall of boulders was a heavy six-barrelled American machine gun, known as a Sixpak. As soon as they passed the gun, a young man of no more than eighteen years, with eyebrows that met in the middle of his face and the solemn concentration of the truly insane, opened fire, strafing the ground immediately in front of the rock shelf and kicking up an impressive spray of pebbles and dust. Still firing, he swung the weapon in an arc towards the helicopter and pumped rounds in its direction, causing the pilot to rise and feint to the left. He kept up intermittent bursts until the men and mules passed through the opening of the rock, at which point he gathered up the gun and ammunition belts and ran to join them.
‘Albania,’ said the man who was evidently their leader. ‘This Albania. Albania is shit. And you? Who you are?’
‘Mujahadin,’ replied Khan, thinkin
g that this was his only recognisable credential, but at the same time regretting that he had resorted to his past. His name was Karim Khan now.
‘Mujahadin is shit also,’ said the man.
CHAPTER FIVE
It seemed to Herrick that life continued with bright, feverish simplicity. The Saturday papers learned that Norquist had been travelling in the Prime Minister’s car and concluded that the events of May 14 could only be read as an attempt on the Prime Minister’s life. No one seemed to take any notice of the reports in the International Herald Tribune that asked how the terrorists knew Norquist’s travel plans when his own secretary hadn’t been told. It also questioned the nature of the information that the British had been acting on. Was it a tip-off or the result of secret surveillance? The most important issue, said a columnist from the Herald Tribune, was how the Pakistani assassins mistook the President’s old ally for the British Prime Minister. The two men could not be more dissimilar, even in the reportedly wild conditions on the M4 that day.
After finishing the papers, Herrick did a couple of hours impatient shopping, which produced two new suits, a pair of blue jeans and a white shirt. She dumped the clothes without looking at them again at her house in West Kensington and returned to Heathrow, this time on an entirely unofficial basis. What had hardened in her mind was the absolute need to link the identity switch with the operation against Norquist. But the contrast between the care and timing of the switch and the haphazard nature of the hit, which had apparently only succeeded because of a stray police bullet, suggested that different minds were behind them – unless the disparity had been planned.
At Heathrow, she went to the viewing terrace and began asking the plane spotters tucked away in a shelter whether they had seen anyone acting unusually in the last week or so. They were unsurprised by the question because the police, for which she read Special Branch, had already been to talk to them and they had provided a description of a man in his late thirties. He had Mediterranean looks, was overweight by twenty or so pounds and spoke fluent English with an Arab accent. His knowledge of aircraft was good but he seemed a lot more interested in the carriers than their planes. Referring to their notes from May 14, one or two were able to place him in the context of planes arriving and leaving and claimed to remember him making a remark about two Russian planes. No one could remember seeing him after that day.
She took the description to the incident room at Hounslow police station, where she had arranged to meet a Chief Superintendent Lovett who was leading the investigation into the fire at the home of the washroom attendant. The policeman was cagey but eventually agreed that the washroom attendant Ahmad Ahktar had associated with a man who more or less fitted this description. He had made contact at the mosque in central London which Ahmad had attended when his work allowed him. They were treating the case as multiple murder because the injuries on Ahmad’s head and back could not have been sustained by the roof collapsing. There was another, more telling clue: the youngest child was found to have high levels of Tamazepam in her body. The remains of the other members of the family were being tested and there was some hope of retrieving enough tissue for analysis.
Herrick had all she needed. The Ahktar family had been murdered to stop Ahmad talking about the identity switch and it was possible that the man who had watched the planes come in was responsible for this. But the important fact was that her line of inquiry had already been followed by Special Branch. They had made the connection between the man on the viewing terrace and the fire in Heston. In other words, someone was acting on the memo and the medley of CCTV clips she had sent.
Late that afternoon, she called Dolph and arranged dinner in a room above a pub in Notting Hill. Dolph arrived late and for a time they talked about ‘the office’ in neutral terms and drank some cocktails of Dolph’s invention.
‘They’re holding their breath, Isis,’ he said, ‘waiting for something to happen – or not to happen. The whole bloody place’s on edge. You can feel it.’
Herrick murmured that she thought something was already happening, but that they were being kept out of it. Dolph didn’t pick up on this.
‘They’re constipated,’ he said, ‘bent double with it. They need a fucking good dump.’
Herrick grimaced. ‘You’re a barbarian.’
‘You can’t deny there’s something weird about it.’ He paused and looked across the room of mostly young diners. ‘Look at this lot,’ he said. ‘There’s not a person in this room who earns less than we do – and that’s including the waiters. What do we do it for?’
‘Vanity?’ she offered.
Dolph turned back. ‘That’s why I like you, Isis. You get it all. Do you think this weird mood in the office has anything to do with the Chief going?’
‘Might have.’
‘Oh come off it. Talk, for Christ’s sake. I want to know what you think.’
She smiled. ‘I am talking, but this isn’t the best place for it.’
Dolph eyed the waitress and then let his gaze fall on Herrick. ‘Okay, tell me about you. What happened to the man in your life – the academic?’
She shrugged. Daniel Brewer, outwardly a soft-hearted academic, had turned out to be an incipient drunk, a clever Cornish working-class boy prone to bouts of despair and unreason. ‘He found someone who listened better than I did. And he didn’t like our business – the vanishing act, the secrecy. He felt excluded.’
‘You told him what you did?’
‘No, but he guessed. That was part of the original attraction, I think.’
‘What about your father? Did he like him?’
‘Didn’t say.’
Dolph ordered some wine. ‘Did you know I went to your father’s lectures? My intake was the last to get the Munroe Herrick treatment. He was very impressive. Believe me, I’d never have survived all that crap in the Balkans if it hadn’t been for him.’
‘Yes – he had stopped by the time I was taken on.’
Dolph regarded her sympathetically with his handsome, dissolute face. As he was choosing the wine she had noticed his expression suddenly betray the very sharp intelligence which lay behind the facade of effortlessness. ‘I often think about you,’ he said. ‘I wonder what’s going on with you.’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing Dolph, just bloody work. I’m considering taking the Cairo job.’
‘You should have some fun.’
She revolved her eyes in an arc, knowing what was coming next. ‘Yes, I should,’ she said. ‘Which is why I’m going to take Cairo.’ She smiled a full stop.
He laid his hand on hers. ‘Look, this is embarrassing. But I’m really fond of you, Isis. Really, I mean, I think you’re the one.’
‘And I’m fond of you too. But I am not going to sleep with you.’ She let his hand remain for a while then gently removed it.
‘Pity,’ he said morosely. ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded.
‘You’ll miss the pillow talk that keeps the girls coming back.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s hardly an inviting prospect, Dolph – the idea that I would be one in a bus queue of women listening to your ravings.’
‘God, you’re so fucking prim. Perhaps we should do it now – I mean the pillow talk.’
‘If you can do it discreetly.’
‘Loosen up, Isis. That’s the point of pillow talk.’ He drank a glass of wine and smiled at the restaurant. ‘Your friend, the man in the bookshop, was doing interesting things with his PC.’
Herrick set down her glass and looked at Dolph’s black eyes dancing. ‘Can you talk about this now?’
‘Of course. He has a novel line in screensavers. Actually it’s one screensaver – an aquarium with fish swimming across it. You know the kind of thing.’
She nodded.
‘Only, his aquarium is different, you see. It’s got a little timer in it that ticks away and then releases information.’
‘There was a message hidden in the image?’
‘Not quite.
What happens is this. He logs on in the morning and automatically downloads the same screensaver – same bloody guppies, same bloody eels, same bloody octopus with the smiley face. Then half an hour later, maybe an hour, maybe two hours later – the interval changes according to the day of the week – he clicks on one of the guppies and a message is sent from the screensaver to a pre-prepared file on his hard drive. You only have a few minutes to read it before it disintegrates.’
‘Where’d you get this?’
‘Friend of mine – a bloke I play poker with in the office. Good guy. Crap at cards though.’
‘Why’d he give it to you?’ She lowered her voice. ‘This is sensitive stuff.’
‘He owed me a couple of bob from a game. I told him he had to tell me something interesting to stop me breaking his legs.’ He saw Herrick’s brow furrow. ‘Look, I’m joking. Don’t be so fucking serious.’
‘What else did you find out?’
‘This and that.’
She gave him a look of exasperation.
‘Try me,’ he said.
‘Okay, so why was Norquist here?’
‘Cabling – they’re going to lay high capacity cables under the Atlantic so the Americans can get more of the stuff they already don’t have time to read. It’s as simple as that. ’
‘But why was the Prime Minister involved? That’s all a bit nuts and bolts for him, isn’t it?’
‘Strategic matters also, I hear. That is to say, what are we going to do about the Europeans?’ Dolph lit a cigarette and offered her a drag which she declined. ‘We’d be good together, Isis. Really, we’d be fucking wonderful because we get each other.’
