by Henry Porter
He reached over to a dark blue plastic box the size of a computer case. ‘This is the medical equipment which Loz will need to treat Khan after his ordeal. It contains all the usual drugs – antibiotics, vitamins, anti-inflammatory drugs, painkillers, sleeping pills – and some unusual ones, together with bandages and syringes. Our people have tried to allow for the sorts of injuries Khan will have sustained at the hands of The Doctor. Loz will know what to do with them. If not, there are instructions for each. In the unlikely event of your being questioned by Egyptian customs, you will say this is the emergency pack for the elderly patient you and Christine Selvey are accompanying.’
‘Which elderly patient?’ she asked.
A flicker of a smile escaped the mouth that had been set in grim purpose for the past two hours. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely open with you, Isis, but there has been very little time. Your father has agreed to take part in the operation.’
‘What! You can’t be serious. He’s in his eighties.’
‘It’s only a very minor capacity and I still have the highest regard for his abilities.’ He put up a hand to silence her objection. ‘Besides, what would be better cover than you and his devoted nurse travelling to see the Pyramids at Giza and Saqqara?’
‘But it is such a liability. I can’t think of a worse way of going about an operation.’
‘Nonsense. The moment Khan is in our hands, your father will travel home with Christine Selvey, with whom, by the way, he gets on splendidly.’
‘With Christine Selvey!’
‘Security and Public Affairs are not all she knows. She gave up field-work a dozen years ago because there was no one to look after her ailing mother in the evening. She was an excellent operative. Quite superb.’
Herrick shook her head in disbelief. ‘It’s so bloody unorthodox, sending two related people on the same job.’
‘The whole thing is bloody unorthodox, Isis.’ He didn’t smile. ‘Now, all you have to concentrate on is getting Khan to a point where he can tell you what he knows. I believe you are right about Bosnia and I’m sure that line of inquiry will prove fruitful. In the meantime I will tell Spelling that you’re doing some work for me.’
She wondered fleetingly whether to tell him about the package from Beirut that she had forwarded to the address in Oxford before getting to the office, then decided that there wouldn’t be any point until she had got the results.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A large wheel was fitted into a wooden beam in the ceiling. Through it ran a dirty brown rope that had been stretched and pulled until it had the appearance of a rusty cable. One end of this hawser led through a pulley fixed on the stone floor, then to a two-handed winding mechanism, allowing the load to be lifted to the ceiling and held there by a ratchet. The other end was attached to a number of chains and manacles designed to be fastened round human limbs.
Though elementary, the capstan provided several options. A man could be hauled up by both arms, or just one; he could be suspended with one arm behind his back and bound to his leg; or he might be winched up by his neck only, so that for what seemed like many minutes he experienced the sensation of being garrotted. Usually, being hung by his arms for several hours was all any normal man needed to persuade him to talk.
The man in charge of the interrogation understood perfectly well that most people would talk when confronted with the prospect of this treatment, but in his trade there was a saying, which translates as ‘squeezing the lemon dry’. It summarised the belief that when a man was broken he could always find something more to blurt out – the name of a street or a person, some old gossip about the activities of a neighbour. There is always another drop to coax from the crushed fruit. Even if the persistence of the interrogators produced stories and lies – for it was often the case that the man really had nothing more to tell the security forces – the process was still vindicated. The suspect was talking, wasn’t he? And talk in all its forms – babbling, whispering, crying, pleading or cursing – is less threatening to the state than silence. Put simply, the information that came from a man experiencing such brutality was the operation’s product and, like any diligent workforce, the men who stepped into this hellish place every day had standards of productivity, a yardstick by which they measured their output. The stories and lies were merely the husk of the operation, the off-cuts that would eventually be discarded after the creaking security apparatus had checked out the statement through its thousands of investigators and informers and established which parts were unlikely to be true. But even this might result in some innocent being lifted from the street and given similar treatment.
Karim Khan entered this brutal world at precisely 7.30 a.m. local time and was straight away hoisted by his arms so that his whole body was suspended four feet from the ground. The Doctor was in the cell with him but an Egyptian was in charge and gave the order for Khan’s feet to be beaten by two men with long rubber truncheons. Khan cried out that he would tell them anything they wanted. They stopped and the Egyptian shouted questions at him in Arabic. Khan pleaded that he could only speak English. The men returned to beating him and soon the pain in his feet, together with that in his arms and shoulders, took hold of his mind, though he did experience a fleeting astonishment that strangers would take such care to hurt him. After several minutes they let him down to the ground with a bump so that the force of his weight shot through the injuries on his feet.
The Egyptian officer approached him and spoke in English. ‘You will talk to us now.’ He said it like a reprimand, as though Khan had been impossibly obstructive.
Khan nodded.
‘And make full statement of your plans to make terrorist attacks.’
‘I will do this.’ Khan understood the pretence that he was Jasur Faisal had been dropped.
He was put on a tiny stool which required him to use his feet to balance, and the only way of doing this was to turn them in so that the outside of his soles rested on the floor. The Egyptian lit a cigarette and offered one to The Doctor, who shook his head, and then with fastidious care replaced the packet and lighter in the pocket of his jacket. With the cigarette in his mouth and one eye closed against the smoke, he put out a hand to one of the men who had been beating Khan and snapped his fingers for the truncheon. He slapped it gently into the palm of his left hand, then leaned forward and brought it down on Khan’s collar-bone. Khan fell from the stool screaming and had to be lifted up and held straight by the two thugs.
‘I was… in Afghanistan,’ he stammered. ‘I was trained to use explosives. I was trained for political assassination and to eliminate large numbers of civilians. I know the plans. I know what they are going to do.’ He threw these lines scattershot, hoping that one of them would interest them.
‘We know all this. Where were you trained?’
‘Khandahar… for six months in 2000. I learned about political assassination. I know the plans to attack buildings in the West.’
‘Which buildings?’
‘Christian buildings, embassies and water supplies also.’ This was remembered from one or two newspapers that Khan had read in Pakistan and Turkey.
‘Which buildings?’
‘A big church in England – London.’
‘When are these attacks due to take place?’
‘Soon – next month.’
‘Next month? Then how were you expected to be in place? A man like you with no money walking through the mountains? ’
‘That was the plan, to enter Europe illegally. Then if I was caught, I would say that I was a man looking for work. That is all. They send you back to where you came from, but they don’t put you in jail. They know terrorists have money and travel on planes, so they are watching the airports. But with all these men on the road they don’t know who people are. It’s much safer. I came with many other men. Many, many men. And I know who they are, where they went, what their plans are.’
The Eygptian turned to The Doctor, who shook his head. ‘These
are stories,’ said the Egyptian.
Khan looked up at him. ‘Ask yourself why you’re questioning me. Ask yourself if I would lie about these things when I know what you can do to me.’
The officer threw the cigarette away into the gloom of the cell and returned the look. Khan noticed the whites of his eyes were muddied and that his skin, a degree or two darker than his own colour, was very thick and plump, as if blown up slightly from the inside. The Egyptian shook his head and without warning stepped behind and hit him several times. ‘ You will answer my questions.’
‘I am,’ he cried out. ‘I am trying.’
Khan now understood the game he had to play. The Egyptian must be seen to win. If he failed to make this happen The Doctor would take over, and this he had to avoid at all costs. So the Egyptian became a kind of ally. Khan had to work with him and make it look as though it was his skill that was persuading him to talk, and that there was no need of The Doctor’s expertise. But this meant he would have to endure much more pain while letting the information out slowly.
He was terrified by this conclusion. He was taken up to the ceiling again and began to experience a quite new level of pain. He lost count of the times he passed out during these hours but the investment of pain seemed to be working. The gaps between the beatings grew longer and a man was summoned to write down what he said in English, which was a slow process because he had to stop and ask Khan how to spell certain words. This gave Khan time to collect his thoughts, however, and add convincing detail to the story of his training in an al-Qaeda camp. He found that the things he just made up out of desperation were the most readily accepted by the Egyptian.
Night came and the questions continued under a naked bulb. At some point in these hours, Khan’s faith in humanity, more particularly his assumptions about his fellow men, slipped away. He had been changed, although his mind was in no state to hold such an idea or to know what it meant.
Herrick noticed that the prospect of the adventure in Egypt instantly took ten years off her father. His eyes shone with animation and he seemed to be moving less stiffly. Besides the essentials of the plan, he had mastered the hand-radios, the encryption phones and the topography of the district of Cairo where Khan was believed to be held. On the way to Heathrow he explained to Herrick and Christine Selvey that he’d spent two weeks in Cairo before leaving for Palestine in 1946, exploring the medieval quarter and the area around Khan al Khalili souk. He understood that little had changed.
They were booked, not into one of the modern hotels along the Nile, but the more central Devon Hotel that once acted as a kind of officers’ mess for the British Army. Munroe had stayed there when the more exclusive Shepheard’s had been full. He was astonished to find the same 1930s switchboard behind the front desk and the ancient lift that carried guests up to the rooms in a steel cage and stopped short of each floor by about a foot. He was even more taken by the scorched canvas which had once been a hunting scene and still hung in the dining room as a reminder of the anti-British riots that coincided with Nasser’s coup in 1952. ‘Of course they were right to kick us out,’ he murmured. ‘We had no business being here.’
‘And what about now?’ asked Herrick.
‘That’s another matter, as you well know, Isis.’ He shook his head with affectionate despair. ‘Anyway, we haven’t time for this. We’ve got a rendezvous to make.’
They left Selvey at the hotel and caught a cab to the Sunset cafe, which was still nearly full even though it was well past midnight. They didn’t know which member of the team to expect, just that someone would arrive with details of the next day.
When they had ordered tea and a hookah, Herrick said, ‘You have to admit this is bloody weird, Dad.’
‘I suppose it is,’ he said. ‘I was even less keen than you, but I believe the Chief needs our help, and you have to admit I’m an excellent cover.’
‘But you’re part of the operation, not just cover. That’s what worries me. And what about the Chief? Even if we manage to pick up the package, this is bound to get out sooner or later.’
‘I’m certain you’re right. But he’s not furthering his own interests. He’s only trying to protect the Service from Vigo and Spelling.’ He looked at her with a sudden, intense concern. ‘The Chief told me what happened to you. He said it was almost certainly Vigo who’d put those two bloody Albanians on to you. You did well to fight them off. I’m impressed and immensely relieved.’
‘That’s what I mean. You shouldn’t know about this stuff. How can I possibly be expected to work if I know you’re being told about every minor danger? Anyway, they weren’t after me. They were searching the place and I happened to turn up.’
‘What were they looking for?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. It had now become almost a matter of faith that she told no one about the package from Beirut.
He smiled sceptically. ‘But Vigo knew it was there.’
‘Yes, that means he was listening to a phone conversation I had a few hours before with a friend. Though God knows why he would bother.’
‘Come off it, Isis. You surely understand?’
‘No.’
‘He’s jealous of your talent. You’re a natural. The Chief never stops telling me how good you are. The idea that anyone could possess the sort of flair he once showed would certainly grate with him. Besides that, you’re critical of his operation. He’s bound to be put out.’
She shrugged and moved a little closer. ‘What chance do you think we’ve got here?’
‘Fifty-fifty. It relies on quick, accurate information and if we don’t get that, we’re jiggered.’
‘Jiggered! Where did that word come from?’ She looked at his eyes moving over the cafe’s customers, discreetly noting who was showing an interest in them. ‘Well, I suppose this is better than looking at snail shells through a magnifying glass.’
‘Not a patch on it, but the change is certainly refreshing.’
They waited a further half hour gossiping about Hopelaw, and then a young man who had been browsing along a magazine stand twenty yards away came to sit at their table and ordered a pipe and coffee. He was pale and sickly looking with eyes set wide. Herrick noticed he moved awkwardly as though he had damaged his back or pelvis, and she asked him what was the matter.
‘Big lorry jump on little car. Everyone dead except Mr Foyzi.’
‘I’m glad you survived, Mr Foyzi,’ she said.
‘Yes, but treatment at hospital very, very expensive. Mr Foyzi needs money to make back straight. You want buy papyrus?’ He handed Munroe Herrick a card. ‘This address of best papyrus shop in all Cairo.’ His arms danced in the air as he described the splendour and size of his brother’s factory. ‘Okay, you come. We have coffee and make party.’
‘This sounds exactly what we want,’ said Munroe. He handed the card to Isis. It read, ‘Go with Foyzi – Harland.’
‘What time should we come?’
‘But of course now. There is not long distance to factory.’
They left money on the table and were ushered from the alley by Foyzi, who made a great show of leading his new and valued clients to the factory. They crossed at the intersection of two large streets then plunged into another alley. Either side of them rose elegant turn-of-the-century apartment blocks with balcony windows that jutted over their heads. They passed men labouring over tiny fires in dimly lit work-shops and others loitering, picking at grilled corn cobs, smoking makeshift hookahs and offering advice from the street with the exaggerated movements of a mime troupe. No women were about and Herrick, dressed in jeans and a shirt, felt conspicuous, although Foyzi’s presence seemed to reassure the men and they gave her barely a second glance. For fifteen minutes they dodged back and forth, moving through the dark maze of alleys until eventually they came to a courtyard where a man with welding equipment squatted by a car door. The sparks flew into the dark, illuminating three trees and washing lines that swayed in the warm breeze.
Foyzi s
topped and beckoned them to the side of the courtyard. ‘No speaks now,’ he whispered, putting both hands to his lips, then turned to watch the entrance of the courtyard. A minute or two later the welder lifted his visor and snapped off the flame. The courtyard became utterly dark and silent. Foyzi guided them to an entrance, knocked on the door and spoke through a grille. Locks were turned heavily and bolts drawn back. Inside there were some candles in red glass pots and a figure wrapped in white cloth and a headdress who immediately slipped away into a recess. Without explanation, Foyzi hurried them along a corridor heavily scented with flowers and the smell of candle wax, then they burst into a brightly lit room with chandeliers and show cases full of bottles.
‘Where the hell are we?’ asked Herrick.
‘A perfume factory, I think,’ replied her father.
‘Gentleman is correct, but we not stay here,’ said Foyzi officiously. ‘You buy lotus oil some other time, missus. We see your friends now in next store.’
A communicating door was opened and they were propelled into another cavernous space hung with carpets and huge brass lanterns. Foyzi took their arms and navigated them through the piles of rugs on the floor. When they reached a better-lit part of the shop, Herrick checked her father’s face. He showed no signs of strain whatsoever.
‘Isis, I will say this once,’ he murmured as they approached a room where they heard voices. ‘Do not fuss over me. I am perfectly all right.’
Inside, she saw Harland, Colonel B and, to her surprise, Colin Guthrie, who explained that it had been decided in London at the last moment that he would oversee the operation. Harland greeted them both with an enigmatic grin and said that Loz was already under guard at the place where they would take Khan. Foyzi sat down at one of the chairs and tipped a little liquid from a flask into a cup of coffee.
