by Henry Porter
Khan replied that he had shared an apartment in Camden Town with some students.
‘I am living in Hoxton,’ Skender said. ‘ There was I happy.’ His cough began again, with a more rasping note.
Khan listened for a while then reached down to the bottom of his trousers and silently made a little opening in the seam. From the cavity in the material he withdrew a roll of money slightly thicker than a cigarette. He got up, crab-walked over to Skender and placed the four twenty dollar bills – half of what he had left – in the palm of his hand. ‘This will buy you a visit to a doctor and some medication. It seems that I may not need it now.’
Skender shook his head but his hand closed around the money. ‘Thank you, Mister Khan.’
‘I want you to do something for me in exchange. Do you have a pen?’
He produced a stub of pencil from his pocket and handed it to Khan, who quickly wrote a message on one of the three remaining postcards.
‘I want you to send this to America by airmail. If I am killed, please write separately to the address and tell them how and where I died. You understand? Tell him what is happening to me.’
Skender took the postcard and slipped it into his clothing. Khan scuttled back to his bundle to await his chance to escape, reflecting that he had never been in as wretched and menacing a place. Berisha was, he thought, probably mad. He felt that anything could happen to a human being who came into Berisha’s orbit. For a time he listened to a young woman’s voice alternately wailing and remonstrating until the volume of the TV was turned up and a soccer game drowned her words.
Next thing he knew it was daylight. He woke to see Berisha sitting not far from him, holding a cup. He was dressed in sports kit – trainers with a gold Nike flash and an outlandish American football jacket with a dragon emblazoned up one side. Beside him stood Skender and two men in uniform.
‘Mr Berisha has made decision,’ said Skender apologetically. ‘You must go with these men from police.’
Isis Herrick was met at Newcastle station by her father, who had bought himself a new car, a replacement for the dark blue Humber Super Snipe that had met with an unspecified end a month before. The Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire was older and less sedate. Herrick eyed it with little enthusiasm, but the journey to Hopelaw village fifteen miles over the Scottish border passed without incident and the car did seem to make her father happy. As they climbed through the moorland, upholstered in the soft green of new bracken, her spirits lifted and she told him that she was coming round to the Siddeley.
They didn’t talk properly until after lunch, when they took a walk up to Hopelaw Camp, an iron-age fort above the house. They reached a flat rock pitted with ancient cup and ring carvings and sat down. The discussion was new for them: they had never spoken about her job, let alone discussed individual operations, and she thought they would find it awkward. But he listened to her acutely, gazing south, his eyes watering slightly in the breeze, occasionally pressing her for detail.
‘When your mother died,’ he said, ‘I thought the best thing I could do was to keep you out of this business. But it wasn’t my choice, was it? You did what you wanted and you never asked my advice.’ He searched her face. ‘But at least you’re doing so now.’
He picked up a field snail’s striped shell and examined it carefully. She knew it might appear in one of the paintings her father had been producing on and off since he was required to find himself a convincing cover during World War II in the Pyrenees. Herricks were now more sought after than ever; they fetched thousands of dollars in America and on the continent, although his work was generally disdained by art critics for the simple reason that they missed the point of minutely recorded still lifes. One said that they were just ‘quotations’ from nature.
He peered at the shell again. ‘It’s the surface of things that’s usually important. Most people don’t understand that everything is staring them in the face. They just have to look a little harder than they are accustomed to. Here, have a squint at this.’ He handed her the shell and a magnifying glass. ‘You’ll see that there’s a yellowish varnish that’s been worn away in some parts by the sun, and beneath that there are little ripples made as the snail secretes the substances that make the shell. From the top you can see the black stripe achieves a more or less perfect spiral, yet there are flaws in the design that remind you of the miracle of its creation. Here you have all you need to know about the snail, but it’s remarkable how few people are willing to spend time looking closely at anything.’
She had heard the lecture before. She handed the shell back to him. ‘It’s lovely. But what do you think about this operation?’
The old man looked across the hills, and she wondered whether she should be bothering him with it. ‘Intelligence work contradicts my view about the surface of things,’ he said, ‘I think your operation is probably destined to failure because of that.’
‘How?’
‘Because you can’t get an idea what these people are planning from simply watching them. Before the attacks on America in 2001, I understand various security agencies had those characters in their sights. The cell in Germany was under surveillance and I believe someone in the FBI had noticed that they were taking flying lessons. They were looking but they didn’t see.’
‘That was a failure of the system – people not putting it together with other data.’
‘Data! How I do hate that word.’
‘You know what I mean, Dad – intelligence. They weren’t analysing it properly.’
‘The only way to deal with these bastards is to penetrate their organisation and that’s going to take a long time, unless you’re lucky enough to have one of them drop into your lap. None of it’s going to mean much until you’ve got the man on the inside telling you what’s going to happen.’
She told him about the murder of Youssef Rahe.
‘That’s a bad sign,’ he said. ‘It means they know you tried and are now aware of the process which led him to become your man, the recruitment and so on.’
‘Yes, he was tortured.’
‘But not by the characters who have flown into Europe for their big party. Some other part of their organisation determined that he was working for you and got hold of him.’ He coughed and felt for a pipe that wasn’t in his pocket. He had given up tobacco four months before. ‘In that case I think this is a very dangerous affair. These people have already proved exceptionally adept at carrying on their business while being observed. I’d take the view that there’s very little useful intelligence to be had from watching them. Arrest the whole lot and throw them into jail on whatever charges keep them in there longest – or worse.’
‘You mean kill them?’
‘Yes, these men have no fear of suicide. They’ve moved to a certain level. You can’t reason with men like that or seduce them from the cause because self-interest in the normal sense has been rejected.’ He paused and raised his eyebrows. ‘And Teckman is apparently out of the picture?’
She nodded.
‘And that bloody little tick Vigo is back – astonishing!’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I doubt the Chief is really out of it. Just lying doggo, waiting to make his move.’
‘Against his successor?’
‘Let’s hope so. Spelling is all mouth and no trousers. Complete phoney.’
She smiled. Her father’s forceful opinions meant that he had never stood a chance of rising in the Service, although the operations he conducted against the KGB along the Iron Curtain for twenty-five years were textbook studies, celebrated for their panache and cunning. He had once summarised it thus: ‘They relied on my judgement to keep myself and others alive in the field, but when I got back to London I was expected to let others think for me. I couldn’t get used to it.’
‘What about the operation itself,’ she asked. ‘Any advice for me?’
‘You know it all, Isis. Probably more than I do. The first thing you must realise is that these men know t
hey’re in enemy territory. They’re like we were during the war. We couldn’t trust anybody in France and these holy warriors will suspect everyone they come in contact with. They will have had training in anti-surveillance techniques, so don’t fall into any dry cleaning traps. If they’re taking a particular route every day they’ll get used to the sights along that route and will know what is normal. They will also build in a couple of observation spots along the way so they’ll be able to tell when they’re being followed. Apply all the same rules if cars are involved, only more strictly.’
She nodded. She knew most of it but there was no stopping him now.
‘What you need to do is to learn the place thoroughly before you start the watch. There wasn’t a street I didn’t know in Stockholm or Vienna during the Fifties. I could have been a tour guide in Istanbul. This is very important: you can’t just go to a foreign town and blend into the scenery without knowing the place like the back of your hand. Take care with your clothes, too. Study what the women wear locally. There’re always slight variations of fashion between towns on the continent. A particular shop may be popular and you will need to get one or two items from there. If you need cover, a job to help you get close to your target, choose this very, very carefully. It’s important to keep your flexibility, so don’t rush into his local cafe and get yourself work as a waitress on the grounds that he visits the place twice a week. You won’t learn anything that way and you’ll tie yourself up. Other opportunities will present themselves.’
He stopped and examined her with fierce compassion. ‘Isis, you know these men aren’t playing things the way we used to. If we were spotted it often didn’t matter. It was part of the game of cat and mouse. But these men are utterly ruthless – they butcher air stewardesses without the slightest qualm; they think nothing of killing thousands of people one fine morning. They’re different from what we had to face – much, much more dangerous. But remember, you’re different too. You’re one of the few people who know the full extent of the operation against them. If you fall into their hands, they may work out that you have a lot to tell them and that is not an enviable position to be in.’ He put up his hand to stop her interrupting. ‘Of course I know there will be others with you, but from what I gather your people are nothing like as good at field craft as we were. Not interested in the detail, no preparation. You’ll have to watch your colleagues as closely as you do your own behaviour. I don’t want some berk from Vauxhall Cross on the phone telling me you’ve been killed, do you hear? You’ve got to use your own judgement.’
He slapped his hand against his thigh and then rubbed his knee. ‘It’s not much fun, this business of getting old. I’ve lost the feeling in my legs sitting here. I’m going to have to move.’
She helped him up. They stood on the Cup and Ring Rock and he looked at her, his rigid grey hair standing up in the wind, his eyes misted by limitless affection. ‘You know I can’t help seeing your mother in you. It’s twenty-four years since she died, but there hasn’t been a day I didn’t think about her. And now I see you so close to the age she was when she died, well… I fear for you, Isis.’ He stopped and looked apologetically down at her. ‘It’s an old fellow’s panic, I know. But I think I’ve reason enough to be worried.’
‘Come on, Dad. I may look like Mum but inside I’m all you – hard and practical.’
‘You’re going to have to be very hard and very practical,’ he said, almost angrily. ‘Don’t lose your concentration for a moment.’
They took the longer route back to Hopelaw House, stopping along the way for her father to pluck things from the hedgerows and scrape pieces of moss from the trees. ‘I mean to go on to some studies of lichen,’ he said, ‘and the moths that pretend to be lichen. They’re getting rarer and that’s because their camouflage is only good for one set of circumstances. The lichen disappears with all this pollution and the moth is left sticking out like a sore thumb. So, end of moth. It’s a point to remember. Your cover should be adaptable.’
‘Dad! I’ve been trained.’
‘Yes, you have,’ he said as though to scold.
They tramped back to Hopelaw House and her father disappeared into his study where the bits and pieces he had collected on the walk were interred in cotton wool. Then he emerged clutching a felt envelope.
‘Found this the other day,’ he said. ‘Thought you ought to have it. Mislaid it for years.’
She undid the package and found inside a photograph frame and a small black and white picture of herself and her mother, bent double with laughter in the sunlight of an afternoon long ago.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Khan was beaten casually and inexpertly as a natural part of detention. Perversely the treatment gave him hope. As he sat, shackled to a chair in the first-floor interview room, hearing the sound of children playing in a sunny courtyard below, he reasoned that if the police had thought him important, they’d have made sure that they could hand him over to higher authorities without a cut lip, swollen eye and bruised ribs.
The police captain, a man named Nemim, had departed. Khan sat respectfully and passively, hoping to look cowed. The hot afternoon passed slowly. A lone policeman sat in a chair tilted against the wall. An old 303 rifle lay in his lap. Khan thought that he might be able to overpower him, if he could persuade them to remove his manacles – perhaps for prayer – and climb down from the window into the courtyard. But where to after that? He didn’t have the strength to run. He had caught sight of his reflection in the police van’s mirror on the way in and hardly recognised the haggard face staring back. He looked condemned, just like the two poor Pakistanis on the road. It would be better to sit this out; get some food in him, sleep, make a plan.
This discussion with himself ended when Captain Nemim came back with a sheaf of papers and an open notebook. A look of animated curiosity had entered his expression. Khan realised that Nemim now saw him as an opportunity, a gift to an officer who could speak English and harboured ambitions way above his present tenure as the chief in a mountain station.
‘So, Mister Khan, or is it Mister Jasur? What do we call you?’
‘Khan – Mister Khan.’
‘Then why you are carrying these documentations belonging to Mister Jasur?’
‘Mister Jasur died when we were chased by Macedonian security forces. I took his possessions so I could tell his family when I reached safety.’
‘Ah yes, the terrorist party executed by the Macedonians. You were with them?’
‘Yes, and so was Jasur. But we were not terrorists. You have to believe me. He was a Palestinian. A refugee. He died of a heart attack while we were escaping.’
‘Of course we Albanians are used to these stories about terrorists. To the Macedonians and Greeks we are all terrorists and we do not believe what they tell us. But the Macedonian army say there were eight terrorists on the road.’
‘That’s right. We were just looking for work. We wanted to go to Greece. Those men with me were all innocent. None of them was carrying a weapon.’
‘But, Mister Khan, you are not understanding what I am saying to you. Maybe you do this on purpose – not understanding me?’
‘No, no. I am trying to understand what you want.’
‘They say there were seven terrorists and one other who escaped after he was cutting the Macedonian with knife.’
‘Yes, that’s right. That was me. I stabbed him and took his gun.’
‘Look at these photographs. Mister Khan.’ Captain Nemim flourished a newspaper and showed him a photograph of a mortuary in Skopje. Seven bodies were lined up and at their feet lay an assortment of automatic weapons, pistols and grenade launchers. Khan recognised the men – the Kurdish trio, the Pakistanis and the rest of them, laid out like trophies with their killers standing behind them.
‘They weren’t carrying these weapons,’ he said.
‘We know that,’ said Nemim. ‘This weapons used by the Macedonian security forces. But you make not to understand me again. I
am not stupid man, Mister Khan. You see? Which is the Palestinian gentleman please?’
Khan peered at the picture. ‘He’s not here. They must have left him on the hill. Maybe they didn’t find him.’
‘But you say seven men were killed. There are seven bodies here but where is Mister Jasur?’
‘Hold on,’ said Khan, adding up the members of the party again.
‘Maybe he was ghost. Maybe this Jasur has flown away.’ Nemim seemed pleased with his sarcasm and looked to the junior officer who had come into the room, as if to say this is how it is done; you are watching a master at work, a man who is going far.
‘But the soldier I injured with the knife knew there were two of us who escaped. He would have reported this to his senior officer. There were nine people in our group.’
‘No, this is what they say. The Macedonians like to boast about this murders so there is no reason for them to lie. They say seven men were killed and one escaped. That is you. There is no other man.’
‘But they saw the other man…’
Nemim shook his head. ‘There was no other man.’
There followed a hurried exchange with the junior officer during which Nemim’s eyes never strayed from Khan’s. Then the junior left and Nemim folded his hands on the table with a look of satisfaction.
‘You know we weren’t terrorists,’ said Khan. ‘You said yourself that these weapons belong to the Macedonians. So why are you holding me here?’
‘It is necessary for us to know who you are. I have spoken to Mr Vajgelis.’ He nodded several times to signal that this was the first of many trump cards. ‘Mr Vajgelis says you are fighter. He saw you attack the security forces with a machine gun and then you were wounding his men with your head and arm like this.’ He threw his elbow backwards and did a head butting action. ‘He say you are professional Mujahadin. And you tell him you are Mujahadin. You are saying this to Mr Vajgelis. That is why he gives you to Mr Berisha and Mr Berisha gives you to me. They are good men.’
