Fatal Ally

by Tim Sebastian

  For the first time, Ahmed saw fear in his eyes.

  The man hesitated. ‘OK, OK … thirty is fine … not a problem …’ He glanced at the others, as if seeking their support, but they wouldn’t look at him. ‘I was just joking … it’s OK.’

  ‘You don’t seem to understand what I said.’ Ahmed got slowly to his feet. ‘I don’t want you here anymore. Go.’

  ‘But you said no one leaves once they know the mission …’

  ‘Yes, I did say that.’ Ahmed shrugged. ‘So maybe you shouldn’t go after all.’

  The man seemed to relax but for no more than a few seconds. He saw Ahmed turning away and realized far too late that he was pulling a gun from his right pocket, swinging it around with industrial speed and precision. Even as the man struggled for his own weapon, Ahmed’s two bullets spat into his forehead from barely a metre away. His body slumped in the chair and fell sideways onto the floor, face down.

  Ahmed stood over him and fired a third shot just below the nape of the neck. He knew the man was already dead, but he needed the others to remember what they’d seen.

  He replaced the gun in his pocket and turned back towards them. They were sitting expressionless and in silence, eyes focussed in the middle distance. As he watched, one of them leaned forward and drank slowly from a glass of water on the table in front of him. The other yawned and rubbed his eyes. Ahmed was satisfied that the killing had been of no concern or even interest to them.

  They were exactly the kinds of men he wanted.

  TELL SHIHAB, SYRIA

  Mai had turned on the car engine – but in that moment the pain seemed to attack her simultaneously from different angles. She fell back against the seat, breathing hard, fighting for air.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ The girl grasped her hand.

  ‘Wait … just give me a moment …’ The pain was spreading out across her abdomen, her hands seemed cold and numb; in a few moments she knew her body would be overcome by weakness and go into shock.

  I can’t let that happen.

  Her eyes must have closed for the next thing she remembered was the sight of hands, banging on the window. She thought it was a dream but the banging got louder. With one eye open, she looked outside, took in the black hijab, the nervous eyes, the shouts to open the door. Lubna was telling a woman to go away.

  ‘Wait …’ Mai struggled to sit up. ‘Open it, let her in. In the front …’

  A slap of cold air and the car seemed to fill with black, flowing veils.

  Mai turned stiffly and stared at the woman. ‘I know you. I’m sure I do … The bakery … you were there.’

  ‘Yes … My husband’s the owner. He sold you food a few minutes ago.’

  ‘I remember …’

  ‘But you need to get out of here. Now! I don’t have time to tell you why, but I think you’re in danger. Please leave here while you can …’

  Mai reached for the steering wheel but her hands never got there. ‘I can’t do it … I’m sorry …’

  Beside her the woman began giving orders to Lubna. Together they pulled Mai over into the passenger seat. The woman sat behind the wheel and the car jolted slowly forward.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Lubna’s frightened whisper from behind.

  ‘I’ll take you somewhere safe. You need a place to stay. My brother will help us, I promise.’

  As she lay on the passenger seat, Mai could feel the woman’s black chador, stroking her face as she moved the wheel.

  ‘Why did you say we were in danger?’

  The woman glanced sideways at her. ‘My husband was watching you. He was very curious about who you are and where you’re going … I’ve no idea if he will start asking questions.’

  ‘But what about you? Did he see you leave?’

  ‘I hope not. I sent him to the storeroom to get some supplies.’

  ‘You’re a very brave woman.’

  The baker’s wife stared straight ahead at the road. ‘I’m not brave at all,’ she replied. ‘All the brave people in Syria are dead.’

  THIRTY KILOMETRES FROM SYRIA/JORDAN BORDER

  When he awoke, Youssef sighed with relief.

  He had been badly beaten, but eventually the commander had believed his story.

  After fulsome apologies, he had driven Youssef to his own house, where his wife had treated his bruises and given him food and water. God had not deserted him, after all.

  Before he had slept, he had promised to help the commander find the American woman.

  For more than twenty-four hours, patrols had been going house to house in the area, searching for her. There were lookouts and informers everywhere. Someone was certain to notice her. The commander seemed confident.

  ‘I am bringing in one of my best men from Jordan.’ The yellow and gold teeth appeared in a broad smile. ‘We have plenty of supporters there. Even public demonstrations have been held for us. In Ma’an and other areas. Don’t worry, together and with God’s help we shall corner the woman and destroy her.’ He had patted Youssef on the back. ‘We’ll get her across the country to Raqqa and interrogate her. And then you will finish it.’

  Youssef had simpered and bowed a few times, anxious to show that he was appreciative of such a privilege.

  It was hard to forget, though, that just a few hours earlier, he had been promised a similar fate.

  LONDON

  ‘Why the urgency?’

  Manson ordered coffee and threw Margo an unpleasant look. She had arrived earlier at the restaurant in Covent Garden and was halfway through a three-course lunch. The timing was perfect.

  ‘Some important information.’

  ‘So important it couldn’t wait for the investigation?’

  ‘Yesterday, you were keen on getting answers now. Today, it seems you don’t want any.’ She put down her fork. ‘Or have I got that wrong?’

  ‘Don’t be too clever. We work on the same side, remember?’

  ‘I’m trying to.’ She picked at her food, speared a prawn and pushed the rest of it away. ‘I had a visitor from the Israelis. Mossad. He seemed to know quite a bit about what happened in Moscow.’

  Manson’s eyebrows flickered. ‘Mossad? How the hell do they come into this?’

  ‘Long story.’

  ‘Then tell it.’

  ‘There’s a price. Proper investigation and a proper response team. Headed by me.’

  ‘Done.’

  Ten minutes later Manson rose abruptly and put on his coat. But a thought seemed to puzzle him. He frowned and sat down again.

  ‘This story you got from the Israeli … Why would Harry Jones risk betraying our agent just to get this woman out of Syria? If she was so valuable, why send her there in the first place?’

  ‘The Israelis assume there’s something between them. A personal commitment of some kind. A debt maybe …’ Margo raised an eyebrow. ‘Who knows, perhaps he fell for her …’

  ‘What, Jones? With his tweeds and bow ties. Don’t be stupid.’ Manson snorted derisively. ‘Besides, his wife’s got terminal cancer so …’ He stopped mid-sentence.

  ‘So maybe he went looking for comfort elsewhere.’ Margo raised an eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’ She took an envelope from her bag and pushed it across the table.

  Manson removed a small black and white photo, passport-sized, and stared at the face in it. ‘Name?’

  ‘Mai Haddad. Harry Jones’s special interest.’

  He glanced again at the picture. ‘I assume there’s very little to know about her.’

  ‘Yes. All references comprehensively removed from open sources and most classified ones as well. Someone from Defence Intelligence met her on a briefing trip to Washington five years ago – filed her name. But that’s it. It seems someone swept up very carefully after her. So she obviously matters.’

  ‘In more ways than one, it seems.’ He got up. ‘You have been busy.’

  She watched him pick his way through the restaurant and went back to her food.
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  Manson wasn’t important. Nor was Mai Haddad.

  The only thing that mattered was to make Washington pay for its betrayal.

  ‘Prime Minister?’

  Wally Sears, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, put his head around the study door and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, come in, Wally.’ The prime minister pushed away the papers on his desk, got up and gestured towards the sofa. Sears was one of only a handful of advisers who didn’t need an appointment. He had known the prime minister since they had shared lodgings at university. ‘You’re like that three a.m. call that I’ve come to dread. I take it this isn’t a social visit?’

  ‘’Fraid not. Manson, one of the senior directors at Six wants to see you. Says it’s important. But I have an idea what it’s about, so I wanted to get in first.’

  ‘Why Manson? Why not C?’ The PM passed him a glass of whisky and poured another for himself.

  ‘Chief’s ill. Appendicitis.’

  ‘Isn’t he a bit old for that?’

  Sears tried to smile. ‘It’s the Americans.’

  ‘Oh God. Go on.’

  ‘I need to tell you a little story. You’re not going to like it.’ He could hear the prime minister’s intake of breath. ‘Three months before you came into office Washington screwed us over with one of our Russian sources. He was someone we’d begun to work in the US, and in the short time we had him, we got some of the highest-grade intelligence we’d seen for years. We were in the process of assessing it – and him – when he was extracted by his own people, taken back to Russia and shot.’

  The prime minister removed his glasses and laid them on the armrest. ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘The Americans let it happen. One of their assets was blown in Moscow. So they did a deal with the Russians – they were allowed to get their agent out, provided they blew one of ours.’

  ‘For God’s sake! … why wasn’t I briefed about this?’

  ‘At the time it wasn’t high on our list of priorities …’

  ‘Then it’s a bloody strange list of priorities.’ The prime minister put down the glass. ‘If our closest ally is selling out our agents on the open market and you don’t happen to think it’s worth telling me, there are some pretty poor decisions being made around here.’ He eyed Sears angrily. ‘So what’s happened this time?’

  Sears bit his bottom lip. ‘It appears they’ve done it again.’

  The prime minister got up from the sofa and went over to the window. ‘I can’t tell you how angry this makes me. The fucking bastards are always talking about values and integrity – and then they go and do this to us.’

  ‘Come on, Alec – what did you expect?’

  ‘Better. I expected better. Especially since successive governments here have fallen over themselves to help with everything from the Iraq disaster to all the bloody listening devices and surveillance. We took a lot of flak for that. For them.’

  ‘It’s who they are. Christ knows, go back to the war. You know as well as I do that without Pearl Harbour there’d have been no Americans on the Normandy beaches or anywhere else in Europe. Roosevelt’s grandson said it the other day: “my grandfather had no intention of entering the war – he was quite prepared to see the swastika flying over Europe” …’

  ‘I don’t need a bloody history lesson. And I’m well aware of who I can’t trust. Which is pretty much everyone these days, especially the wankers in my own party.’ The prime minister returned to the sofa. ‘But I can’t simply ignore this. It’s huge. Puts the whole alliance at stake.’

  ‘You can’t allow it to.’

  ‘It already has. Straight fucking treason. No way round it. If I ignore this they’ll keep on doing it, and then we’re finished.’

  ‘So raise it with the president – you’re due to see him next month. Have a private chat.’

  ‘Private chat? For God’s sake, Wally, think this through.’ The prime minister reached out and poured another whisky. ‘I push it under their noses and they deny it point blank. What then? You know how prickly and defensive they are. The relationship’s over.’

  ‘Listen, Alec. It’s business. That’s all. Americans understand that.’

  The prime minister shook his head. ‘So how does this go? A little shouting match in the Oval Office, we throw pillows at each other and then he offers me a jelly baby, slaps me on the back and we’re friends again? Bollocks. It isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘What if it’s a rogue operation – sanctioned by no one except the national security adviser?’

  ‘I can’t take that risk. I’m supposed to safeguard the security of this country. It’s what I was elected to do.’

  ‘Don’t be a pompous prick, Alec. You’re here to shovel the shit. That’s it. Holding your nose while you do it. You’re shit-shoveller-in-chief. Get used to it.’

  ‘That’s just great. Fact remains, though, that if our closest ally is getting our agents killed and giving away our secrets, I’ve no choice but to put some distance between us …’

  ‘And if you do, it could backfire badly on us … This is a bomb, Alec. A big one. If you can’t live with the fallout, don’t even think of using it.’

  For a moment, the two men stared at each other in silence. Outside in Parliament Square Big Ben chimed eleven thirty. The prime minister got up and rescued his jacket from the chair behind his desk. ‘I’m not going to speak to the president for the moment. But you tell Six we need a way to stop this US operation in its tracks. I’m damned if they’re going to profit from the death of our agents.’

  Margo took the 113 bus north from Victoria and got off at the top of the Hendon Way. When she needed to think, she went back home to do it. The last place, she often told herself, where life had been open and real.

  Manson had called her in and explained it all in a collection of blunt monosyllables. The prime minister wanted a plan; Washington’s betrayal had to be confronted and their deal with the Russians aborted.

  ‘One more thing, though.’ He had got up, circled his desk and stopped right in front of her. ‘Just so I make myself perfectly clear. The instruction is not to destroy the Western alliance, however much you might enjoy doing that. It’s to disrupt this American operation and leave them with the unshakable conviction that this can never happen again. Do you understand?’

  She had nodded.

  ‘I need to hear it.’

  Margo didn’t move.

  ‘Go on, get out of here.’ He didn’t hide his irritation. ‘You’ll be briefed at ten a.m. tomorrow.’

  She crossed the Finchley Road, now clogged in traffic. In years gone by she had alighted from the same bus with her school satchel, stuffed with exercise books and homework, and the pullover with the ragged sleeves that she had always bitten and chewed to destruction.

  Now, she reflected, the homework was rather different.

  In through the garden gate, up the three steps and suddenly the house was all around her like a blanket. A thousand memories threw themselves at her and Mum and Dad were putting tea on the table, hunks of cake conjured from an ancient tin.

  Conversations had always been with Dad. Mum just sat there, trying to smile; same face that Margo remembered throughout her childhood, the reassuring one, the one slightly dampened by tears, the one that promised, however bad the situation, it would always end well.

  They finished tea and sat looking into the garden.

  ‘We can’t just let it go, Dad.’

  ‘Is it you saying that – or the Service?’

  She reached across and squeezed his arm. ‘Both, I suppose. They’ve betrayed us twice. First Mikhail, then Arkady. One I liked and the other one I’d probably never have liked. But they were my responsibility. That means something. Has to. Otherwise I’m finished in this job.’

  She knew it was wrong to tell them the story. The men in grey suits would throw every book they could find at her for that. But so what? There had to be someone to trust. And Mum and Dad would have swun
g from the gallows before telling a soul what she’d said.

  ‘This woman in Syria …’ Dad stopped for a moment. ‘The American agent – what if she makes it out?’

  ‘Then they’d win. Winner takes all. We can’t let that happen.’

  ‘But it’s not her fault, is it?’

  ‘They put her in harm’s way …’

  ‘And you’d make sure it reached her.’ He stopped suddenly, seeing her recoil, realizing he’d gone too far. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to say that. I don’t know the facts or the context …’

  ‘It’s OK, Dad. It’s OK.’ She tried to smile at him, but her lips wouldn’t move. His words had caught her like a blow to the head. All the excuses, the self-justification, the notion of the greater good – and Dad had punched a hole right through them. As he always did.

  ‘I have to go.’ She got up and kissed them both. In that moment she thought they looked very old and forlorn and the tears on Mum’s cheeks were fresh.

  ‘Please don’t go like that.’ Dad holding her arm. ‘I’m so sorry I said what I did.’

  ‘But you were right. You’ve always been right. The very first day I went to the Service, and I was full of idealism and crap – all the stuff about Queen and country, the sacred duty to protect democracy and you remember what you said? You told me what a bunch of shits they all were and I should watch my back. And it took me years to realize how true that was – and is. I work in a dirty business, Dad. Fact of life. I do horrible things so as to stop even more horrible things from happening. It’s what I keep having to tell myself.’

  He hugged her, unwilling to let her go. Hated himself for asking the silliest of all questions. ‘Will you be OK?’

  ‘I’m a fighter, Dad. You know that. I don’t ever give up.’

  ZARQA, JORDAN

  The two men nodded to Ahmed and hurried out into the narrow street. The wind was furious, flinging rain at their faces, driving rivers of dirt along the cracked, uneven road.

  Neither had even glanced at the body, left behind on the floor. The victim had meant nothing to them. If ordered to shoot him, they would have done exactly the same as Ahmed.