Fatal Ally

by Tim Sebastian

  Darkness had drifted in across the jagged rooftops and satellite dishes, a blue light flashed in an alley on the other side of the square. There were voices shouting, always shouting. No one talked anymore in the Arab world. All they did was scream and cry and wail against the madness that had closed in around them.

  She didn’t sit up. You learn very quickly that movements are a dangerous luxury. Only move if you have to, when you know where you’re going, when you have a plan.

  Her eyes toured the dismal room, empty except for the chunks of crumbling plaster, blown away from the ceiling, smashed china in the corner, paper and boxes everywhere. A single men’s shoe stood alone on a window ledge like a prized artefact.

  They had asked her only two questions in Syrian Arabic – the language of her family, her childhood and the innocence she had left behind.

  What are you doing in Syria? Who sent you?

  And each time she repeated the answers they’d given her in Washington and each time they beat her.

  She turned painfully onto her back and wondered about the time. Three hours, she reckoned, since she’d arrived. Two days since she had understood with absolute certainty that she was going to die.

  ‘My name’s Mai.’

  The American security guard had shaken her hand and smiled in disbelief.

  ‘No really,’ she said, ‘it’s my real name. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know it. Especially since we’re going to be spending some time together.’

  For a moment they had both stood there in silence on the tarmac at Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey.

  She thought he looked about fifteen. Too young to be doing this.

  Two other guards had joined them – they looked ill at ease, sharing names – Matt, Charlie and Owen … all in jeans and T-shirts. She could almost have been their mother.

  They gave a little whoop of excitement as the helicopter spun its rotor and lifted them into a cloudless, blue sky. She could see on their faces – they all believed they’d be going home when it was done.

  Hours later they had landed in darkness outside Antakya, close to the Syrian border, and been taken to a small house on a hillside.

  The smell of apricots and olives made her smile. For a moment, she thought she remembered a summer evening in Damascus, happy voices, singing, long before the war and the treachery that had taken her to America.

  Someone had left food in the house, kebabs and flatbread – she had warmed the meat on the stove, before clearing the table and getting out the maps.

  It was always the same with plans – too many or not enough. But this one seemed better than most – devised outside the federal agencies by people paid from so-called ‘black budgets’ – unannounced in public and unapproved by Congress. This was the money that let the president of the United States do what he wanted, when he wanted.

  And he had wanted a little team to go into Syria and do some serious damage to the leadership.

  He had wanted it to join forces with any of the moderate rebel groups that could be bought or rented, to cut through the terrible confusion and mayhem, and in an operation way off the books and never to be acknowledged, to take out Syria’s presidential palace.

  An operation with no footprints and no attribution.

  Which was why they had turned to Mai.

  The daughter of a Syrian émigré doctor and an American mother, she had done her time in Washington’s spy community. Native Arabic had helped – so had mental agility. But there was something else as well. The guts to tell the men with the red power ties and the button-down white shirts the real story, instead of the one they wanted to hear. They could have put it about that she was a lousy team player – but somehow the charge never stuck. And the guts did. Besides, her teams went out to the violent and volatile places around the world and came home again. One or two without legs or teeth. But there weren’t many who achieved even that. And when she spoke in the tiny, classified gatherings, mostly in rooms many storeys underground, Mai had a quiet authority that made even the young officers lean forward so as not to miss her words.

  For all that, there could have been a desk waiting for her high in the CIA hierarchy – but the White House talent spotters had seen her first.

  Job one had been to get her outside the Beltway – spirit away the woman, with the big dark eyes and the jet black hair and put her with the grandees of US Intelligence who rarely, if ever, showed their faces to anyone.

  A few of them had surfaced briefly over the years. Not in pretty pictures but in scandals such as Iran Contra or the allegations that the CIA had helped drug smuggling into the US, or the killings in Guatemala and El Salvador.

  She had asked around in Washington and the view had been pretty much unanimous: these were formidable players on the outer edges of the establishment and the law.

  But there was a choice that had been spelled out as well: if you want to spend all your time answering stupid questions in congressional committee hearings then you go to the CIA – if you want to get things done, there’s another place.

  And when she had watched in silent fury, month after month, the endless killings and the destruction of the country she had loved, Mai had gone looking for that other place and had knocked on the door.

  Outside the room, she could hear them climbing the stairs, two maybe three of them. More shouting, more anger. She knew what to expect – and she realized in a moment of sudden clarity that the blood she had smelt when she woke up had been her own.

  AMMAN/JORDAN

  By early morning Ahmed could read between the lines. The Russians were unhappy. The information he’d sent had been useful – but too late to be of maximum benefit.

  ‘What do you need now?’ he had asked.

  But Moscow had gone silent.

  He knew better than to ask again. Russians weren’t touchy-feely employers. Even when things went well there was no jumping up to lick his face, no lavish praise, no cake.

  There was, however, an occasional, curt ‘thank you’ and an extra 2,000 dollars in an envelope – and that passed for gratitude. The kind you could take to the bank.

  Ahmed preferred it that way. He didn’t do pleasantries either. Moscow would tell him soon enough what it wanted.

  WESTERN SYRIA

  They hadn’t come after all, the two torturers, with their clipped moustaches and plastic briefcases.

  Perhaps there had been someone else to visit. Perhaps she had simply imagined the footsteps in the wounded, battered house.

  Mai lay on her back and tried to remember what had gone wrong.

  She could still see the friendly, open faces of her security guards: Matt from the limitless plains of Montana, Charlie from New York, Owen from all sorts of places, none of which had earned the coveted title home.

  They were good and solid – stuck to the script, followed the map – didn’t deserve what happened to them.

  There is always fear. You allow for it, use it to keep you sharp, just as she had on the night-time dash across the Turkish border and the awful ride in the back of the pickup. The roads were moonscape – craters and rocks, untouched, it seemed, by human engineering. But they’d known that all along. You took bad roads to avoid bad people. Golden rule of the covert op. No one expected a joyride.

  At the edge of a village, they took on a guide. A young fighter from the Free Syrian army, no more than twenty. He was exactly where he should have been at the time he was supposed to be there.

  Only that never happened in the Arab world. Too damn easy to be true. Should have set off all the red lights from there to Cincinnati. But they had wanted to believe it – wanted an early success. Weren’t in the mood to turn down good fortune. Her fault.

  She opened her eyes, staring at the cracked ceiling, counting the holes. She should have known better. Did know better. But she hadn’t wanted to dampen the boys’ morale, knew how quickly it could drain away. Maybe it would work out.

  So very stupid to think that way.


  In the back, the young Syrian fighter stank of sweat and pressed his leg against her thigh. He couldn’t resist, could he? The boy might die that night so he wanted a grope before he went. ‘Animal,’ she whispered to him. But she didn’t push him away. So maybe she’d wanted it as well.

  They got out after two hours, pissed and changed places. Owen drove, Matt riding shotgun, she in the middle. Fifty miles down, another seventy before they would meet the local team. The route meticulously planned.

  The boys had their coordinates, GPS systems, best of the secret stuff, with a dedicated satellite all for them, they said. They’d done this before, they said. Plenty of times, said Matt. Just a few, whispered Owen, who didn’t do hype or bravado.

  They didn’t talk after that.

  They had looked so fresh, all three of them, heading into darkness.

  And then the guide started shouting – Arabic first, then mutilated English – seemed they had missed a turning, were way off track.

  ‘Jesus, fucking unbelievable.’ The first volley of expletives, the first sign that nerves were on edge.

  ‘Get a grip guys, keep steady …’ She was between Charlie and Matt. Owen said nothing. He’d be the strong one, she thought, if it all went to hell.

  They stopped the truck. Changed the number plates. Buried the green tarpaulin that had covered the back, exchanged it for a new one: filthy grey, decades-old, covered in oil. Standard procedure in case they’d been clocked.

  Owen was driving when they made the turn. The guide said they’d screwed it up. He was yelling into his mobile phone. ‘We’re on our way, we’re on our way.’

  ‘Cut the phone,’ she told him in Arabic.

  But he wouldn’t do it. Went into local dialect, said he didn’t like the way things were going, wasn’t happy … She tore the phone out of his hands, slammed it on the dashboard, glass everywhere. She flipped the sim card and threw it out of the window. The Syrian put his head in his hands.

  ‘You OK?’ she said to Owen.

  He didn’t reply, maybe hadn’t heard, his entire focus on the road ahead. No markings, no barriers, no lights. The van was heading for a ridge, the moon bright against the hilltop. The tyres weren’t gripping, so the wheels skittered and slid and the gears jarred as he fought to change them. But the boy knew what he was doing, knew how to drive. The van kept moving.

  She looked across at the others – big black, military tablets in their hands, data pumping out across the screens.

  How many times had they rehearsed this in Washington, checked and re-checked with the local teams, checked their backgrounds, their parents and cousins and distant aunts? For fuck’s sake, they had done the best with the crap choices on offer. Information was patchy, stories didn’t always add up, facts were omitted, memories short and fallible. Not every question mark indicated a lie. Not every dubious explanation came from a fabricator. People don’t always think or recall in logical, sequential bites. Especially in warzones.

  Mai checked her watch, verified the coordinates. Her satellite phone registered a single codeword which meant the local teams were in place. For the first time she felt a jolt of excitement. The word was ‘Gazelle’. It made her smile.

  The locals were to meet them at the southern end of a hamlet, three hundred metres past the last house. They’d seen the satellite pictures, knew that the territory was open, that any lights would be visible from far away. But open was safer. That had been the expert judgement from Washington.

  She thought back: so much wisdom imparted, so many earnest men and women, sharing their best calls and judgements, tracing you a path between fear and confidence, always reminding you that confidence was the final treat that had to wait until the journey home. You never unpacked it before then.

  They had known that the ridge would be the hardest part – for at least a minute, they’d be lit up by the moon – a noisy, clumsy target that would be visible for miles around. Worse, they’d have to manoeuvre their way between giant rocks, where the road would be little more than a surface smear.

  ‘You guys need to hang on from now’ – Owen leaned forward and seemed to hug the oversize steering wheel – ‘this is gonna be a bad part.’

  They all reached for a handle or the back of a seat and the van had skidded wildly in the corners.

  She could remember thinking that the moonlight was brighter than she had ever known. And then Owen was braking hard and swearing, and right in front of them, blocking the road was a dark truck.

  Owen glanced over to her. ‘I can’t get through here … what do you want me to do? We’re going to have to stop.’

  Instinctively, she had drawn her pistol; she could hear the others cocking their machine guns.

  And in that moment, she had known why the light was so bright, known that it hadn’t come from the moon at all, that the danger was behind them, not in front.

  But there was no one in sight. Not before the stun grenades and the first clatter of machine gun bullets, smashing into the van from all angles.

  And then, just as rapidly, the firing stopped. She couldn’t tell who was injured. Nobody was speaking, so maybe they were all dead already. A strange silence seemed to descend on the van.

  She could see around her a grey mist, all the movements in slow motion.

  A hand with a pistol attached to it came through the window, calmly and with no sense of urgency and she watched Matt’s head jerking sideways with the blood and tissue exploding around him.

  Turning, she saw Owen half out of the truck, caught twice in the back, catapulted forward and lost in the shadows beside the vehicle.

  And then darkness seemed to stamp on her head, squeezing out the air, forcing her into a tunnel with nothing at the end of it.

  In all probability, someone had swiped her with the butt of a rifle, pushed her out of the car and let her drop on the stone track. One of the highest-rated operatives in America’s clandestine services, trained and trained again for emergencies like this one. Trained for the day when her lifelines would break, her communications went down, her presence betrayed and she was the last person on the team left alive.

  But all they had needed to do, was pick her up like a broken puppet from the rough track, where she lay face down and inert, sling her in the back of a truck and take her wherever they wanted.

  She didn’t know why it had gone so badly wrong. But she knew they’d made mistakes. The mission had been fatally flawed. They’d ignored the glaring question marks and the inconsistencies and the biographies of their contacts that didn’t quite add up. Why? Because nothing in the fucking Arab world ever added up. Nobody told the truth. Nobody. All they ever did was find out what you wanted to hear and tell it back to you.

  And instead of walking away from this farce, you went in because these catastrophically, lousy odds of success were the best you were ever going to get. This year, next year or at any other point in this grotesque conflict.

  Small wonder then that the whole thing had fallen apart before her eyes and taken her to hell in a dying land.

  Look at it, she told herself, and cry your heart out.

  But Mai was long past crying.

  WASHINGTON DC

  Soon after nine a.m. Lydia Yanayeva drove her car to the Safeway along MacArthur Boulevard and hurried inside with her shopping bag.

  She was tired. Vitaly had fallen asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, but she had got up and stayed writing for more than two hours.

  It shouldn’t have taken so long, but she wanted to include as much relevant detail as possible and to make sure that her handwriting was neat and legible. After all, there were no copies and nothing had been written on the computer.

  As she walked around the aisles, she searched for the things that Vitaly liked most. Kiwi fruit, yoghurt, French cheese. Really, the choice was excellent.

  At the hardware shelves, she put down her bag, to reach up for some cleaning fluid, taking a few moments to choose the one she wanted.

  She was
aware of several other people in the same aisle but she paid no attention – simply located the item she sought, picked up the rest of her shopping and paid for it.

  Once inside the car, a quick glance at the bag showed that the papers she had written were gone – and she smiled inwardly at the efficiency with which it had been handled. The way it was always handled, ever since the process had begun.

  Lydia switched on the engine and drove back towards the residence. In about thirty minutes, she estimated, her report would be in Tel Aviv.

  No one at the White House had asked why Harry Jones was absent. The people who needed to know, knew. Or thought they did. To the others, everything about Harry was a classified secret.

  As is the custom, a military aide had brought the overnight intelligence briefing from Langley, with inputs from State and the Pentagon.

  So he knew what had happened at Domodedovo airport. The outlines, at least. He knew events had transpired. From New York, came the signal that Mazurin would not be transiting the city for reasons that were already clear.

  So far then, it seemed the US Intelligence machine was running in ‘report’ mode only. No one had begun asking the ‘whys’.

  Why had Mazurin died? Why had the security services gone after him? Why did it all have the feeling of a last-minute leak?

  But it wouldn’t be long before the agencies were tasked to answer those questions. And answer they would.

  He might have made mistakes, but he had done so with his eyes open – and he wasn’t naïve. The formidable array of listeners, roaming the digital galaxy, sucking out and filtering words by the billion, would track the communications footprints, one by one, right down to the earpiece radio on a Russian traffic cop at Moscow airport.

  And eventually, they would tell you the origin of the orders that ended in the death of Arkady Mazurin.

  Everything left a trace, the noise of the wind in the trees, seagulls beside the Verrazano Narrows; treachery in all its many incarnations.