Empire State rh-2

by Henry Porter

  Raised from this activity was a control box with glass sides where Vigo, Collins and the man from the NSA, a Colonel John Franklin Plume, worked. Vigo had already taken his seat and removed his jacket to reveal a pair of vermilion braces. In front of him was a large screen, split to accept several different feeds at once from secret surveillance cameras. Above the aisle was a much larger screen that could be seen by everyone. The screen was being tested and flashes of blue TV lightning probed the recesses of the cavernous space above them.

  They went over to the investigation and intelligence desks. Lyne introduced her to his group, then to the ‘Wallflowers’, a team of twenty eager young American research assistants whose work stations were ranged along the concrete wall of the Bunker. ‘These are the slaves of the investigation desks,’ he said, giving a managerial shoulder rub to one of them. ‘Our Stakhanovites.’

  She looked down at the desk. Each Wallflower was on the internet. Their work stations were choked with boxes of files and copies of every conceivable reference book. Herrick read some of the titles – Gulf Maritime Conventions, Ancestry and the Tribes of Saudi Arabia, The Dictionary of Muslim Names.

  ‘That’s about it,’ said Lyne. ‘Coffee, food, exercise machines, massage, laundry, sleeping arrangements: you can find them for yourself.’

  She nodded, impressed.

  ‘This is America mobilising,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ she said, and sat down at Southern Group Three.

  It soon became clear to Herrick that every second of the day, RAPTOR was producing a vast amount of information which in turn spawned endless new investigative possibilities. Field officers were being sent to check out the most casual contacts made by the suspects while a lot of work was being done on the helpers who had eased the men into their hiding places. A separate data bank was dedicated to this information as it constantly threw up possible links and cross-references in the backgrounds of people and organisations across Europe. Already, interesting connections had been made – men who had attended the same university or were from the same Middle Eastern tribal grouping; clerics who had visited mosques in Stuttgart and Toulouse; businesses belonging to the fixers which had arrangements with cities where suspects were present; the use of the same banks or hawala agents to transfer money.

  The range of activity was bewildering. The hackers based in Crypto City at Fort Meade were penetrating the defences of every relevant public agency, including in a few instances the computer records of European intelligence services. Vast amounts of data were sucked up and flung unedited in the direction of London, where the systems people had breakdowns trying to absorb the flow of information and make sensible arrangements for its analysis. Added to this was the work of the Special Collection Service, a joint unit run by the CIA and NSA, based in Beltsville, Maryland. Known simply as ‘Collection’ it had sent a substantial proportion of its staff to Europe to eavesdrop on the suspects and their helpers. A similar outfit run by MI6 and GCHQ was also on the ground, erecting eavesdropping antennae disguised as TV aerials and dishes, and attaching devices to the suspects’ phone lines. But circumspection was called for because a few of the helpers and two of the suspects were seen carrying out anti-surveillance routines while on the street. This meant they would also be alert to the possibility of electronic eavesdropping and might have access to the equipment to detect it. Electronic surveillance added another swollen tributary to the flow of intelligence that the Bunker attempted to process each day.

  The British and American service chiefs let it be known they were already exceptionally pleased with the detail being gathered and sifted – they were already far in advance of their previous understanding of terrorist methods and planning, and most importantly there had been no breach in security.

  ‘In due course,’ said Spelling in a rallying speech at the end of Isis’ second daily briefing in the Bunker, ‘these networks of sleeper cells and enablers will be lit up like an air traffic control board. We will know the routes, the timing, the intention of these people before they know themselves. This is a very great step in the war against terrorism.’ Beside him were Barbara Markham, Director of MI5, and Walter Vigo.

  The Americans had all fallen in love with Vigo. They said he knew what it was like to be at the sharp end. Herrick observed that he often wandered over to the investigation desks and chatted to Lyne. On Friday evening he had made a crucial suggestion. The Rome suspect had disappeared for two days after losing the surveillance at the city’s northern rail terminal.

  ‘Have a look at the Muslim student groups in Perugia,’ said Vigo. ‘There’s a foreign university there and our chum may be in contact with the radical groups around the Italian university.’

  This advice turned out to be spot on, and two Arabic-speaking Americans were sent to the Umbrian town to sign up for Italian language courses. After this, Vigo made a point of coming over to them at least once a day. He would pull up a chair and sit with his hands folded across his Anderson and Sheppard suit to attend to detailed questions about the beliefs of the Wahabis or the transfer of gold through the Gulf States. His manner was that of a concerned PhD supervisor. The vibration of sophisticated menace Isis felt in the late night meeting with Spelling a week before had been replaced by an almost amiable focus.

  Her misgivings about Vigo and the operation receded at equal pace mostly because of the pressure of work. Lyne was demanding and insisted that every avenue was investigated thoroughly. He nagged them constantly to remember the two central questions: what were the eleven planning and when were they going to move?

  Lyne knew which buttons to push. When he wanted a favour out of the embassy in Riyadh he dashed off a cable and routed it through the State Department, marking it for the attention of several diplomats, even though he knew they couldn’t read it because of the special encryption used by RAPTOR. What mattered was that America’s spies knew their performance was being watched by the highest levels of government in Washington. On scrambled phone lines to CIA stations all over the Middle East, Lyne harried officers to make that last call. Late one night Herrick heard him organising funds to bribe an official in the Qatar immigration service. It was four in the morning in Qatar but he ordered the station chief round to the man’s house and told him to email copies of the passport applications to the Bunker by morning Middle Eastern time.

  Herrick pushed the British embassy officials in a similar fashion, though most of the MI6 officers working undercover in British embassies already sensed the urgency of the situation, even if they did not know precisely what was going on.

  It was Herrick’s conversation with Guy Laytham, the MI6 man in Oman, that produced a crucial breakthrough. Laytham remembered a reception early in the spring when a director of one of the country’s bigger banks had pointedly asked him about the funding of rebuilding programmes in Sarajevo. The question struck Laytham as odd because he hadn’t served in the Balkans and was unfamiliar with the levels of corruption. The banker said he was worried about a client’s money that was being sent to a Muslim charity he had not heard of, through the Central Bank of Bosnia CK. Could Laytham make inquiries about the bank and the charity? Thinking about the conversation later, Laytham realised that his contact was not asking him to check out the bank and charity; he was telling him that one or both were involved in something that would interest him.

  Herrick hung up and arranged to speak to Dolph in Sarajevo. Dolph, no slouch when it came to Middle Eastern banking practices, said he welcomed the distraction since the RAPTOR team was tripping over itself in Bosnia. The local suspect was only a little more active than a pregnant sloth, he said.

  Fifteen minutes later he came back to her.

  ‘How about sending a second donation from the same bank in Oman using the name of the original remitter, but with instructions that the money be picked up in cash at the bank in Sarajevo? I’ll see to it that we have someone inside the bank to tell us when the transfer comes through. Then we’ll simply watch who collects it
.’

  There was some prevarication at the British Embassy in Masqat, but eventually $5,000 of British taxpayers’ money was released and sent on its way by the bank in Oman. Twenty-four hours later, Dolph was on the line saying they had surveillance pictures of someone picking up the money. Dolph suggested that the look of surprise on the man’s face meant one thing: he had been the one to send the first donation from Masqat and was therefore the primary financier.

  Photographs of the helper were sent back to Laytham. A bank official remembered the man from a year before when he had changed a very large sum of Saudi riyals into the local currency and US dollars. Records showed that the man’s name was Sa‘id al-Azm. He had produced a Saudi passport and an Omani driving licence when setting up two business accounts. The driving licence meant he had been resident in Oman for some time. A search was ordered of the country’s driver and vehicle licensing authority records. On the application form he gave his occupation as construction engineer and property developer. Further search of Oman’s corporation registry yielded the fact that al-Azm was from a well-known professional family in Jeddah with business connections all over the Gulf.

  Late that night, as Lyne and Herrick ate a meal in the Bunker canteen with the rest of Lyne’s crew, Herrick suggested that al-Azm must have known suspect Four before they both ended up in Sarajevo.

  ‘You got a point. The Parana suspects knew each other in Rome.’

  ‘Right, maybe they attended the same Islamic college or worked together.’

  ‘Everything says Four’s got to be a Saudi, like al-Azm. We got pictures of both so why don’t we start with those and get the Wallflowers to trawl through the picture agencies?’

  It took just a day for the hunch to pay off. Sa’id al-Azm’s professional life didn’t merit a published photograph, but in a brief newspaper description of his work as project manager for a sewage works in Oman, it was mentioned that he had played for the Saudi national under-eighteen soccer side. Pictures of the side were sent to the Bunker, but Four was nowhere to be seen. Lyne wasn’t about to give up.

  ‘Maybe he made the local side with al-Azm.’ A search of the newspaper libraries around the Gulf eventually produced pictures of the Jeddah touring team from 1984 and 1985. Al-Azm was seated in the front row holding the football. Standing in the back row was the man currently under observation in Sarajevo. His name was Abd al Aziz al Hafy. ‘The servant of the Almighty,’ said Lyne, translating the first part of the name. Then to anyone in earshot he announced, ‘We’ve ID’d another wood pussy. He’s in the cross hairs, brothers and sisters.’

  A small celebration was held – champagne in throwaway cups and cheesecake bought from a patisserie near the US Embassy. Spelling and various American officials emailed their congratulations to Lyne. Vigo came over to them, made a courtly bow and said they were about to get a line into al-Azm’s phone.

  ‘With their usual lack of regard for our convenience,’ said Vigo, ‘it’s quite possible that the suspects are passing messages by word of mouth – Chinese whispers from person to person. But somewhere along the line, someone has got to make a telephone call.’

  We know that, thought Herrick rather testily. The satisfaction she got from the identification of Four had not done much to reduce her unease about RAPTOR, which seemed to her to be displaying the classic growth of bureaucracy. When later someone wandered over to ask Nathan Lyne whether they should mount an operation to get DNA samples from the suspects, she shot a look of cold fury at the man. ‘Why the fuck would anyone want to know their DNA profiles? The only thing that matters is what these men are planning, not whether they drink cafe macchiato in the morning or have a predisposition to male pattern baldness.’

  ‘I agree with Isis,’ said Lyne, looking a little startled at her outburst. ‘I think that’s a really dumb idea.’

  When the man had left, Lyne steered her away to a coffee machine. ‘Something eating you, Isis? Maybe you need to go get some daylight. I know I feel like a goddam earthworm down here.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not what’s bothering me. This thing is too remote. We’re no nearer to knowing what they’re planning. We have no concept of their leadership, although that was what my people said they wanted when they told me about all this.’

  ‘Hey, the whole point is to watch these guys at work. We’re learning all the time. It’s a long process and it may go on a year or more. That’s what a good intelligence operation takes – sweat, frustration and hard labour. Who said it was going to be fun?’

  ‘All that’s true. But doesn’t it strike you that in this microscopic observation we’re missing some of the big things?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like what happened to Youssef Rahe, the MI6 agent who was found murdered in Lebanon. Like what happened to the twelfth man who got on the same flight as Rahe and is presumed to be responsible for his death. We don’t know that, yet no one has bothered to find out where he went or who he was. We just assume he was the hit man and that he’s disappeared into the sands of the Middle East. Why are we ignoring him?’

  ‘You got a point about Rahe,’ said Lyne. ‘But the rest of what you say challenges the policy, the whole purpose of RAPTOR. You signed up for it.’ ‘Well, someone needs to challenge it. Remember, these men are masters at flying under the radar. What we have here is a fantastically complicated radar system designed to detect everything but the obvious.’

  Lyne shook his head sympathetically but didn’t agree. ‘What do you want, Isis? Arrest the suspects and lose the chance to learn who’s pulling their strings and how they receive money and instructions? What we’re doing here is gathering life-saving intelligence that’s going to be important for maybe the next five years. It’s a real opportunity you created. As Walter says, it’s your baby, Isis, for chrissake.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, but we’re missing something. I know it, but I can’t tell you what it is.’ She didn’t like saying this. She knew that graft, logic and occasional inspiration solved problems in their world, not some kind of daft women’s intuition.

  ‘I like having you work with me,’ said Lyne. ‘You’re solid talent right through. The real thing. But if you’re going to buck against this, you may feel you’re more comfortable quitting and going back to Vauxhall Cross.’ Then he slapped his forehead. ‘Hey, you know what, I have an idea for getting you out of here for a while but not losing you entirely.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve talked to Jim Collins and Lord Vigo. Meantime, get your ass back to work.’

  She returned to the desk, picked up the phone and dialled a number in Beirut. After a little while a familiar English voice answered. Sally Cawdor was placing her ineffably sunny nature at Herrick’s disposal.

  In the headquarters of Albanian State Security in Tirana, Khan heard the other prisoners being beaten and brutalised during the day, and at night the groans and terrified whispers between the cells. Yet the interrogators did not lay a hand on him and after a week he was beginning to recover some of his health. They fed him well, or at least regularly, with pasta and potatoes and chicken broth. On the third day they even called a doctor to stitch the lip split by Nemim’s cane. The doctor smelled his breath and gave him antibiotics for the abscess. Throughout the visit the man did not say a word, but before leaving he touched Khan’s shoulder lightly and gave him a strange look, as though measuring him in some way, gauging his character.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TEN

  Robert Harland inched upwards from his chair in the cafe on 31st Street and waited for the spasm to shoot from his lower back into his leg. He gritted his teeth as the pain reached a point behind his knee in a pure molten form. For a month now he had not been able to lie down, and had to sit perched on one buttock, holding his leg out at a particular angle. When he walked, he had first to stand, slowly stretching his frame, then move off with his right side leaning down and his head turned up to the left. The pain was unrelenting and latel
y, as he dragged himself between specialists, he’d begun to wonder if it would ever leave him.

  He shuffled out of the way of the people on the sidewalk and reached a gingko tree where he fought for a space with a dog that scurried round him before squirting the other side of the trunk. He breathed in. Eva had once told him he could breathe into pain, but it didn’t help. What did help was the neat whisky he had poured into the black coffee. It blunted his senses, and he resorted to it increasingly even though he had been warned not to mix it with the anti-inflammatory drugs, pain-killers and sleeping pills.

  He started looking out for a cab to take him just six blocks to the Empire State building. A couple cruised by with their lights on but did not see him flap his arm wanly from the kerb. Finally a waiter came out of the cafe and asked if he could hail one for him, but Harland had changed his mind. New York cabs were as much of a problem for him as a convenience. The only way he could travel in one was by almost lying across the back seat, exposing his spine to the full force of the jolts as the cab surfed over the bumps and metal plates that lay in Manhattan’s streets. That was his life today, a querulous, narrow existence filled with obstacles. The pain had come to occupy his whole being and it was now a matter of making small gestures of resistance. He decided to walk, whatever it damn well cost him, and moved off slowly, forcing himself to take notice of the early summer sun pouring into Park Avenue. He summoned Benjamin Jaidi to his thoughts.

  The Secretary-General had called him at home that morning from a plane somewhere over North Africa and ordered him to phone Dr Sammi Loz. With a thousand things on his mind and a Middle East crisis, he was apparently worrying about Harland’s mysterious condition. True, the injury had prevented Harland from carrying out a mission on the West Bank in advance of Jaidi’s arrival in the Middle East and he had been irritated. Still, it was thoughtful of him to have phoned and elbowed a space in Loz’s schedule late that afternoon.