by Henry Porter
‘And you Bobby, why are you here?’
‘Because I am.’
‘But…?’
‘But nothing, Walter. As far I’m concerned, you should be in jail. If you’d been prosecuted for the last business, none of this would have happened. You’re within an inch of being arrested now, so…’
‘On what grounds?’
‘Aiding and abetting a burglary of Isis’s house, for one thing. But that’s only a start. They want your blood, Walter. What we need are straight answers to our questions and, more than that, we need you to volunteer everything in your mind, every tiny scrap of information, every faint suspicion that you possess about Youssef Rahe, also known as Yahya.’
Again the slow-motion blink. ‘Yes, of course,’ said Vigo. ‘Where do you want to start?’
‘How did you meet him?’ asked Herrick.
‘At a sale of early Arab manuscripts. Rahe was there to look at them before they went into private hands. I saw him at the preview. We talked.’
‘Who made the first move?’ asked Herrick.
‘I forget.’
‘In the light of what you know now, do you think you were targeted?’ asked Herrick.
‘Well, obviously,’ he said disagreeably. ‘But at the time I thought he might be useful in understanding the GIA – the Groupe Islamique Arme. The Islamists had taken their fight to France. We felt we were looking at the Islamic equivalent of the Cambodian massacre. He seemed to know quite a few people involved.’
‘Sure he did,’ said Herrick. ‘He’d been in Bosnia with all of them.’
Vigo sighed. ‘It’s easy with hindsight to say that, but our job does involve taking calculated risks about people.’
‘And as you got closer, he began to open up,’ said Herrick, brushing the remark aside. ‘Did he give you anything worthwhile? ’
‘Yes, there were names – names that were useful in the round-ups after September eleven.’
‘And you plugged in and heard about the people passing through his shop, people asking for help in London. That sort of thing?’
‘Yes, the information was always accurate.’
‘How much checking of his background went on?’
‘As much as was necessary. The story about his upbringing, his job, where he lived in Algiers, all that seemed to tally.’ Vigo’s manner was now markedly less cowed.
‘And you got his brother and family out?’ said Herrick. ‘Where are they?’
‘In England. They were granted asylum.’
‘Did you meet the brother? Can you describe him? Where does he live?’
‘In Bristol, under the name of Jamil Rahe. He’s younger than his brother. Tall, a little overweight, an engineer by training.’
Herrick took out the envelope from a bag and dropped a selection of shots of Rahe and Sammi Loz in Bosnia into his lap. ‘Is the man you know as Youssef Rahe here?’ Harland looked at the picture but said nothing as he registered Sammi Loz.
Vigo pulled a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and examined the picture a little wearily. ‘Yes… I see Rahe.’
‘Anyone else?’ said Herrick briskly.
He looked through the pictures and then handed them back, tapping the top image. ‘That’s the man I know as his brother – Jamil Rahe.’
Herrick glanced at the figure in a balaclava, pulled out her mobile and phoned Dolph, who said Jamil Rahe would be added to the arrest list.
‘Let’s wait,’ she said. ‘This may concern a murder charge, as well. He’s important.’
She snapped the phone shut. ‘A man of very similar appearance coordinated the switch at Heathrow, having come to an arrangement with a washroom attendant in Terminal Three named Ahmad Ahktar. Ahktar and his family died in a fire after the switch. The point is that we have witnesses who saw him watch the planes that day. Also, he appears to have shown interest when Norquist’s escort left the airport.’
Vigo said nothing.
‘About Youssef Rahe,’ she said. ‘In the last twelve months, what kind of information was he passing to you?’
‘Much the same as before. Things he heard from the Arab community in Bayswater and Edgware Road areas. Useful material about mosques – who worshipped where, the financial support of certain charities, here and abroad. It all helped. Then he was approached by a group, mostly Saudi and Yemeni in origin.’
‘And you encouraged him to be recruited?’
‘Naturally. It seemed a very good opportunity.’
‘When was this?’
‘Summer of 2001.’
‘And he told you about the website, the screensavers that contain a daily message?’
Vigo nodded. ‘That’s what you were looking at in the shop, I assume.’
‘It would help if you’d just answer my questions,’ she said. Vigo stared back at her and she became aware of something stir in the shadows of his personality.
‘I wouldn’t take that tone with me, if I were you.’
Harland got up and crouched by Vigo’s chair. ‘Walter, you should know that I’m here on the off-chance that I get to beat the living shit out of you. Otherwise I would not waste my time. Now, answer Isis’s question, or by this time tomorrow you’ll find yourself on remand in Wandsworth Prison.’
‘The screensaver,’ she said. ‘You were monitoring the messages coming in each day?’
‘You forget, I was no longer part of the Service by then.’
‘So who was?’
‘GCHQ and the Security Services.’
‘But there was something different about the information on Norquist’s travel arrangements?’
‘I gather it was in a double encryption,’ replied Vigo.
‘We know the Israelis had access to this particular service,’ said Harland. ‘How long had it been going?’
Herrick wondered how the hell he knew that, but let Vigo answer.
‘Two years or so. I’m not sure. You have to remember that once I had handed over Rahe to SIS, I had very little contact, although I did see him on the book-dealing circuit.’
‘When the tip about Norquist came in, you were asked to check it?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I called him and he phoned me back on the day of the switch. Before he left for the airport.’
‘Tell me about him,’ said Herrick. ‘What kind of man is Youssef Rahe?’
‘Very able,’ Vigo replied. ‘A true scholar in his own field. A good father and husband too, I would guess. He has none of the obvious appearance of a fundamentalist. He goes to the mosque infrequently, doesn’t pray five times a day, is relaxed and liberal in his attitudes.’
‘Where do you think he went?’ she asked.
‘Beyond Beirut? Naturally, I have no idea.’
She sat back and laid her phone on the table deliberately. ‘I’d like that drink now,’ she said.
Vigo poured the Pimms, holding back the mint leaves and fruit in the jug with a silver spoon.
‘What would you do if you were in our position?’ she asked quietly. ‘We have two or three main suspects who are rich and mobile. They plan months, maybe years ahead and have a very sophisticated understanding of the way we work. What would you do? Where would you go?’
‘There are two options, clearly. You can make it very difficult for them to move by releasing their photographs and all the information you have on them. But that may not deter anything planned to happen this week. So I would be inclined to risk revealing nothing whatsoever and hope to trace them. Sammi Loz probably thinks we believe him dead, and neither Youssef or Jamil Rahe know you’re onto them. So I would use that slight advantage.’
‘How?’
He breathed deeply and looked away to a column of gnats dancing in the sunlight. A blackbird sang out some way off. ‘Well, there’s no obvious way. But if Youssef is unaware that we’re onto him, Jamil also thinks he’s safe. You say you believe Jamil is a major figure in the Heathrow plot. I suggest you find him and start by monitoring his phone. If an attack of some kind
is expected, then Jamil will be part of it. From what you say, he’s murdered before – his own people. Then there is the mosque. You say Jamil made contact with this attendant from Heathrow at the mosque. I take it you’re referring to the Cable Road mosque in Belsize Park, the one attended by Youssef Rahe and which is now believed to be under the influence of Sheik Abu Muhsana?’
Herrick nodded.
Vigo talked on, unaffected by Harland’s hostility, and began to adopt the professorial manner he had used with Southern Group Three back in the Bunker. At length, even Harland was listening with grudging nods. They discussed ways of prodding Jamil to make contact. He added that this should all happen before the raids on the continent, so that it appeared to come out of the blue, but would be sufficiently menacing for Jamil to break cover. ‘These men are not without fear,’ he said. ‘As Seneca said, “Fear always recoils on those who seek to inspire it; no one who is feared is unafraid himself”. ’
‘Let’s keep to the point,’ said Harland.
‘I find Seneca is always to the point. It’s a consolation that we experience nothing in the way of anger, failure, disappointment and sheer bad luck that has not been explored two thousand years ago.’
‘I can see why you’re reading him,’ said Harland. ‘I think it’s highly unlikely the Chief will want anything more to do with you, other than arranging for you to be tried.’
‘We shall see,’ he said, studying Isis. ‘After all, we’ve all been duped and made to look fools, have we not? Now, I know Bobby that you and I have never seen eye to eye; that we have a history, as my wife says. But I would suggest that we are the best people to be working on this. I know Youssef and Jamil Rahe, and you two both know Sammi Loz. We’re the natural front line – the only front line. And with your contacts in Mossad, we should make an admirable team.’
Harland flinched enough for Herrick to notice. ‘I agree with Harland,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘Well, give it some thought overnight. If I don’t hear from you or the Chief tomorrow I will understand.’
Herrick and Harland rose.
‘And please, no more threats. You know as well as I do they can’t put me on trial. Any more talk of this nature and I will make life extremely difficult for this government and several past governments. Tell Teckman that. He knows I mean it.’
‘I suppose that’s how you wrapped your coils around Spelling,’ said Harland.
Vigo got up heavily and made towards a bed of hostas. ‘I will expect to hear from you tomorrow.’
‘One other thing,’ Herrick called after him. ‘I want you to admit that you had my house searched by Marenglen’s men.’
Vigo stopped in his tracks. ‘We wanted to know what you had got, Isis. We knew you weren’t just looking at the computer. I think you’ll find the Deputy Director was also aware of the need to find out. You could say it was an official operation. ’
‘What, with armed Albanian pimps?’
‘Needs must,’ said Vigo, turning back to his hostas.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They were in Holland Park Avenue again. Herrick snapped the phone shut after talking to one of the Chief’s two assistants.
‘He’s going to call me later,’ she said to Harland. ‘They don’t know when. Look, we don’t want to be in a restaurant when he rings. Would you mind if I made dinner at my place? I’ve got a sort of garden – we can eat outside.’
Harland shrugged pleasantly and they went to a shop nearby to buy wine and some rump steak.
‘Vigo is such a complete and utter bastard,’ she said as they left the shop. ‘I mean, what’s his game? What does he want?’
‘Influence,’ said Harland, flagging down a cab. ‘He likes pulling the strings without anyone seeing it’s him. He likes the aura of power and he wants acceptance – the clubs, shooting parties, the best stretches on the Tweed; all that bollocks. In one way he’s just an unrequited snob, both socially and intellectually.’
‘But he is sharp,’ she said, as they climbed into the cab.
‘Oh yes, very, but somehow that makes him more disappointed. All that superior talent and where is he now? Desperate to have some minor role in the final stages of this operation.’
‘You think Teckman will go for it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, he expected him to make the offer of help. He reads Vigo like a newspaper headline because Vigo wants everything that the Chief has acquired effortlessly. Teckman understands his longings.’
They were silent for the remainder of the journey and watched London slide by, bathed in a soft, crepuscular light.
When they arrived, Herrick went to change and put Harland to work on her terrace, clearing dead leaves and wiping down the chairs and table.
The garden was a triumph of neglect. Where a more careful gardener would have tidied and pruned and scraped away at the ground, Herrick had simply bought a collection of shrubs, vines and climbing roses one afternoon five years before, planted them and left them to their own devices, with the result that the roses had spread over the bushes and reached into two apple trees next door, closing off the garden to inspection from neighbouring houses.
Her attitude to cooking was similarly uncomplicated. As Harland drank a glass of wine outside, he watched her through the kitchen window as she threw together a salad, then briskly dealt with the steak and mushrooms. She had it all ready in under twenty minutes and brought it out to him.
‘Have you heard from your father?’ he asked.
‘Yesterday. We’re planning a trip when this is over.’ She tore off the end of the baguette and began to work at the steak. ‘Actually, I can hardly wait. You know they bloody well fired me this morning. I was pushed out of the building by a creature called Cecil.’
‘But you were seen to be right – vindication is rare in your job.’
‘I haven’t even been officially reinstated yet.’
‘How’s his wrist?’
‘Just sprained. He was lucky. It was his right hand, so he wouldn’t have been able to paint and that would have killed him.’
‘You’re pretty close to the old man,’ he said.
She picked up her glass and thought about it. ‘Yes and no. Proximate in the sense that we have led our lives together without my mother for so long – yes; intimate in the sense that I know what’s going on with him and he with me – no.’
‘You rub along.’
She smelled the night air and said, ‘God, I’m glad to be back,’ then paused. ‘These things are so bloody difficult to talk about, you know. People expect love to be one of a number of standard and recognisable varieties, but it isn’t like that. The relationship – God, I hate the word – is as individual as the people, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘But you’ll miss him.’ He saw the look pass across her face and he wished he hadn’t said it.
‘Yep,’ she said. ‘He’s exceptional, untrammelled. That’s what I’ll miss – the idea that there will be no one alive who is quite so independent and, well, strange.’
Harland remembered Eva looking after Hanna Rath in the Tel Aviv apartment, the protectiveness that had made her leave him.
‘You want to talk about this personal stuff,’ she continued, ‘then tell me what happened in the Middle East and why you’re so frisky suddenly?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Well, tell me how you knew the Israelis were deciphering the messages to Rahe from that website – the one that trumpeted Norquist’s arrival in London. Who the hell told you about that? I mean, I’ve only known about Youssef Rahe since this morning, so how did you get onto this so quickly?’ She fixed him with an acute look that let Harland know he couldn’t be evasive.
He set down his knife and fork and told her about the strained meeting with Eva at the Playlands Hotel. Then about Sammi Loz’s relationship with Norquist and Eva’s appearance on the Heathrow security film. At one point during his account, Herrick darted to take one of the two remaining steaks an
d proceeded to consume it at a speed that temporarily put Harland off his stride. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Have the other one,’ he said sarcastically. ‘You obviously need it.’ A very short time afterwards, her hand moved to the dish to take the third steak.
‘So the upshot,’ he continued, still shaking his head, ‘is that Mossad were watching this thing very closely and were not surprised when Norquist was killed. They know about Sammi Loz, but they have no idea about Youssef and Jamil Rahe.’
‘Which is the important one – Rahe or Loz?’ she asked. ‘Who gives the orders?’
‘Youssef Rahe – everything points to it,’ he said.
‘But on the face of it you would say Loz. He’s the one with all the money and he’s got the better contacts both in New York and the Middle East, to say nothing of the Balkans.’
‘So what? Rahe is better hidden. He’s been the strategist all along.’ He sighed. ‘Look, Isis, I don’t have the stamina to think about this any more.’
‘There’s something I don’t get,’ she said, sitting on the edge of her chair. ‘Why are you still working for Teckman on this? Now that RAPTOR is winding up and Teckman has got his job back, we’re hardly short of people. Why aren’t you floating about with Benjamin Jaidi in the Middle East? I mean, I’m glad you’re here and all that, but why? What are you doing?’
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I have to tell you you’re becoming remorseless.’ He reached over and touched her face, without thinking about it. For a second she looked startled, then let her head collapse into his hand and smiled with a mixture of shyness and devilment.
‘What do you think about all this,’ she asked. ‘The clash of civilisations – Islam versus Christendom?’
‘Christ, I don’t bloody well know.’
‘But don’t you want to understand what we’re in the middle of? How we got here?’ she asked.
‘All I know is that there are lunatics, envious of Western technology, resentful of Western wealth, who believe that the solution to humanity’s problems is to drag us back into some barbaric state on the lines of the Taleban regime.’
‘But you’re not anti-Muslim?’
