by Roger Pearce
‘Access denied, you mean?’ said Justin.
‘No,’ said Melanie, quietly. ‘I think he means destroyed.’
Kerr’s team were in what Fargo called the reading room, a tiny glass-screened area, with a single desk and computer terminal, squeezed into a corner of Room 1830. As soon as he had heard the alarming news from Fargo in the early hours, Kerr had decided to collect them together. Kerr, Langton, Melanie and Justin crowded round the small table while Fargo squatted on the airvent with the tower of Westminster Abbey looming behind him. Kerr had brought in double espressos from the sandwich bar in St James’s Park station across the road from the Yard. When Fargo had immediately knocked his over, dousing his notes and spilling coffee into the airvent, the others had laughed and accused him of finally killing off the aircon.
‘Let me show you.’ Fargo leant across Justin to type in the search. ‘Look, the old intelligence has gone, and if there’s anything new we’re not getting it.’
‘Since when?’ said Langton.
‘Since hours after his arrest. Or even minutes.’
‘Who put the block on?’ said Melanie.
‘Inter-agency politics,’ groaned Justin, shaking his head.
‘Or something more sinister?’ said Melanie.
They looked at Kerr, but he had done his thinking hours before and wanted their ideas. The pressure of their fast-moving surveillance operations meant Kerr’s team spent most of their time together on the street, or in cold vehicles and freezing observation posts. Compared with that, Alan Fargo’s cramped workstation was sheer luxury. Everyone was pretending this was just another day, but this morning they looked damaged. The gauze dressing visible beneath Justin’s woollen hat was a reminder of his own narrow escape from death. Justin was a brilliant Durham University engineering graduate and held down the most sensitive job in SO15. But this morning he was in his jeans, T-shirt and baseball boots, and Melanie told him he looked just a kid.
Melanie had bruised her upper arm when she was thrown against the bus and Kerr saw her wince when Justin accidentally pressed against her. She had been the first to arrive after Fargo and looked all right, dressed for a normal shift at the office. Langton had winked at her and mouthed, ‘OK?’ as he squeezed alongside. In jeans, polo shirt and motorcycle boots, he looked uncomfortable without his leathers, eager to return to the street.
‘So, Joe Allenby gives us a terrorist from Yemen under the wire,’ continued Melanie. ‘Then somebody in London presses the button and the bad guy suddenly becomes a clean skin. What does that say to you?’
‘Jibril is being brought into the UK by MI5 as, I dunno, some sort of Al Qaeda mole?’ said Justin, frowning. ‘And whoever it is forgot to tell Joe Allenby. Isn’t it inconceivable that MI5 wouldn’t involve the man on the ground?’
Melanie gave a short laugh. ‘Five not speaking to Six, you mean? Come off it, Justin. We’re talking serious power games here. And budgets, and sucking up to Number Ten.’
‘If Jibril was recruited in Yemen they’d need Joe to set the whole thing up,’ said Langton. ‘He would have known about it from day one, probably made the actual pitch.’
‘I still think it’s completely possible MI5 would keep Joe in the dark,’ said Melanie. ‘Perhaps they were going to approach Jibril in London and we ruined the master plan by arresting him.’
‘OK, so who paid for his flight?’ said Justin. ‘I say Joe would have to have been in the loop.’
‘That’s the other piece of crap news,’ said Fargo. ‘Allenby has disappeared. I tried the MI6 office in Yemen last night but it was switched to voicemail. Closest I got was Vauxhall Cross. Night-duty officer blanked me.’
They shot another glance at Kerr.
‘So what about the intel?’ asked Melanie.
Fargo shrugged. ‘Vauxhall wouldn’t say.’
‘So, Jibril is either a terrorist or an agent. And if he’s on our side everyone kept it from Joe, right? And now we’re getting radio silence.’ Kerr was staying cool, but this concerned him as much as the interference with Excalibur. He needed cover from Allenby because he had defended himself to Weatherall and Ritchie solely on the basis of his friend’s tip-off. ‘Remind us, Al,’ he said, ‘what was the info from Yemen? What were Allenby’s exact words?’
‘He scanned a handwritten message to our unit in Heathrow with Jibril’s details, pic and flight number,’ said Fargo, wiping coffee from his notes. ‘Quote, “This is to return a favour. Please forward urgently to JK. Take care and good hunting,” unquote.’
Kerr was frowning. ‘I helped him last summer with an agent pitch at Terminal Four on the hurry-up, but that’s nothing special.’
‘It was Sunday afternoon. Allenby had time on his hands.’ Justin shrugged.
‘None of it makes sense,’ said Melanie, ‘because people like Allenby, working in a country as volatile as Yemen, have a motive for everything. So let’s not waste time on the cock-up theory.’
‘She’s right, John,’ agreed Langton. ‘This has to be a calculated act. MI6 don’t do return favours unless there’s something in it for them. If Allenby short-circuited the normal reporting channels to London it was for a reason.’
Kerr was beckoning to someone in the outer office. Detective Sergeant Karl Sergeyev, unfailingly correct, gave a courteous tap on the glass before squeezing round the door. Russian by birth, he was over six foot three, powerfully built and always immaculately dressed. This morning he was wearing a charcoal suit with white shirt and yellow tie. The cufflinks were gold, and the black shoes Italian. He took a long look at them all as they greeted him, and gave Melanie a special smile. ‘I heard about Hackney,’ he said, in his deep bass voice, the only person explicitly to mention her ordeal the day before. ‘I suppose you look pretty good, considering.’
Justin reached out to test the wool of Sergeyev’s jacket. ‘And nice of you to slum it with the lower orders.’ He shifted up to make room, but Karl joined Fargo on the airvent, carefully avoiding the pool of spilt coffee.
Karl Sergeyev worked the Rest of the World desk, just along the corridor from Room 1830. Known simply as ROW, it covered global political extremism apart from Al Qaeda, including counter-espionage. A natural intelligence officer, he was firmly plugged into London’s émigré community and seized every opportunity to cultivate visiting big cheeses from Eastern Europe. Karl was popular, the kind of guy everyone was happy to have alongside them. He was also attractive to women, a trait that, according to the rumour mill, was about to cost him his marriage.
‘Looks like I’m a bit late, boss,’ he said, tapping Fargo’s empty cup.
‘Perfect timing,’ said Kerr. ‘You can imagine what I’m getting from my gang of conspiracy theorists. Anything happening on your radar?’
The others exchanged glances. At some stage during the night, Kerr had obviously briefed him on the whole story.
Karl slowly shook his head. ‘On my side everyone’s got clean hands, these days. It’s all about protocol and trade. With the focus on energy, of course. Cold War forgotten, relationship reset,’ he said. After sixteen years in the Branch his accent was as strong as ever, the sentences short and spare. ‘These are the days of co-operation. Joint investigations all over the place, especially against fraud and trafficking. Ambassadors taking tea with the commissioner. Multiple exchanges of criminal and political intelligence with us and other EU partners. Terrorism in the UK? None of the people I’m interested in would risk getting their hands that dirty. To me this looks straight Al Qaeda. Sorry, guys.’
‘That’s fine, Karl. So let’s concentrate on Jibril himself. Can you have a quiet recce at Paddington Green, Mel? See what they’re up to?’
‘I already called my contact. Uniform sergeant in the custody suite. There’s something strange occurring there, too. Couple of MI5 girls pitched up almost as soon as Jibril. Plus a bloke he thinks must be from Joe Allenby’s lot at Vauxhall Cross because the women don’t seem to want him there.’
‘Probably ar
guing about who has the lead,’ said Langton. ‘But why would Five and Six want to muscle in on a UK police investigation? It’s totally against protocol. Why isn’t Finch telling them to fuck off?’
Melanie shrugged. ‘Whatever, between them they’re trying to hijack the whole thing.’
‘I’ll take a look at that,’ said Kerr.
‘It’s a bit pathetic, actually,’ continued Melanie, ‘and Jibril is staying dead silent, of course.’
‘Who’s he got for his lawyer?’
‘A woman no one’s ever heard of. Julia Bakkour. Smart, polite and confident, like she’s defending some hotshot City fraudster. Office in Manor Park, the smart end of East Ham. Wears a headscarf but she’s Westernised and affluent, not one of your pro bono community-worker types. “Jilbab and jewels” is how my contact describes her. A real piece of work.’
‘Who called her?’
‘No one seems to know. But I already did a look-up and Bakkour has no background in defending terrorists.’
Kerr frowned. There was a well-known cadre of lawyers specialising in terrorism cases, so the sudden appearance of Bakkour on the scene was highly unusual. ‘Did Jibril ask for her?’
‘Not according to my contact,’ said Melanie. ‘And there’s no record of anyone instructing her. She appeared out of nowhere, apparently, pacing round Paddington Green front office almost as soon as they’d banged Jibril up.’
‘OK. Say thanks to your guy, Mel. And tell him to watch his back. I don’t want him taking any more risks for us. Hold on, everyone.’ Through the window in the door he saw Bill Ritchie enter 1830, pick up the daily secret intelligence brief and head for the reading room. ‘Sit back,’ said Kerr, minimising the screen.
Ritchie paused as he spotted them, then put his head round the door. ‘What’s new?’
‘Just doing the welfare debrief,’ said Kerr, as Fargo covered his papers.
‘Well done yesterday, folks.’ Kerr nodded at Karl, the outsider on this particular operation. ‘And you’ve all been for a med check, yes? Justin?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Melanie, lying for them all.
‘Can you spare me a few minutes after this?’ asked Kerr.
‘Wall to wall meetings,’ replied Bill Ritchie. Kerr couldn’t decide whether he was still pissed off with him. ‘Give me a call late this afternoon.’ Or perhaps he was hiding something.
When he was gone the team made faces at Kerr, as if he was in disgrace.
Kerr exhaled loudly, his mind made up. ‘So stuff them,’ he said, ‘we’ll work this among ourselves. Let’s find out how Ahmed Jibril got into the country. Can we track down his passport, check out his other possessions?’
‘All embargoed by the investigators,’ said Melanie.
‘What the hell does that mean?’ Kerr felt a stab of anxiety. ‘Who says?’
‘Detective Superintendent Metcalfe,’ said Melanie. ‘He’s Finch’s senior investigating officer for this job. Operation name “Dragstone”. We’re not allowed access while Jibril’s being interviewed.’
‘Who says?’
‘Orders from Finch himself, apparently.’
‘I’ll see about that,’ said Kerr. ‘What about his safe-house? How soon will they finish the search?’
‘Already gone,’ said Melanie. ‘Forensics were inside for less than two hours. If they recovered anything they’re not sharing.’
Justin seemed to understand even before Kerr turned to him. ‘Sure, boss,’ he said, ‘no worries. Want me to take a look tonight?’
Kerr smiled. ‘You and Jack wait till I get back to you.’
‘It’s just one room in a run-down Victorian house,’ said Fargo.
‘Anything on the history?’
‘I’ve got the terrorist finance guys in 1830 working on it. Should have a result by tomorrow.’
‘Good. Make sure you copy all your notes from the ops room, Al, and lock the originals away.’ Kerr pushed his chair back. ‘Right now we need access to Jibril’s passport, so I’m going downstairs to have a chat with Metcalfe. Thanks, guys. Try and take it easy today and let’s catch up later.’
Melanie stayed seated as the others began shuffling around her. ‘We’ve been talking about the possibility Joe Allenby was out of the loop, made a mistake, whatever. That Jibril is an informant, under control. We arrested a good guy, and now people are trying to protect their asset without telling us.’
‘I don’t buy that,’ said Langton. ‘What’s an agent doing walking to a bomb factory? Meeting up with suicide bombers getting ready to blow themselves up? What kind of control is that? The man’s a terrorist.’
‘Exactly. And I’m guessing the boss has already figured that out, too,’ said Melanie, tapping her pen on the desk. She looked at each of them in turn, ending with Kerr. ‘And if we’re right about that, we have to face another possibility, don’t we, John? Which you must have thought of. Am I going to say it, or will you?’
‘Don’t stop now,’ said Kerr.
‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? If Jibril is the bad bastard we think he is, we’re prising off the lid on some gigantic cover-up.’
Kerr nodded slowly. It was the possibility he had faced in the early hours, even before the news about the odd goings-on at Paddington Green. Now, as he felt their eyes on him, he was reassured. They were ahead of the game, their life experience as Special Branch officers allowing them to think the worst, and he found this liberating. He was already reaching for his BlackBerry, their collective energy bringing forward the call he had intended to make later that morning.
Bad people were slamming doors in his face, so he would find another way in. Kerr scrolled down through his contacts to ‘Kestrel’, the work-name for his mole inside MI5. He speed-dialled and held up his hand as the voicemail kicked in. ‘It’s eight-fifteen Friday morning and I need you to call me the minute you get this.’
Fourteen
Friday, 14 September, 10.26 local time, Istanbul, Turkey
When the office was quiet, Abdul Malik pushed his aviator glasses onto his forehead, carefully folded his shirt cuffs and leant forward in his slimline executive chair to scan the secret inbox. ‘So, let us move to business. Tell me every detail about our Foreign Office lawyer.’
Rashid Hussain opened the folder he had been preparing for Malik. Then he rotated his chair and retied his shoelace. He wore highly polished Oxfords. The shoes and navy suit, almost as expensive as Malik’s, had been purchased in London, a city Hussain had not felt safe to revisit for more than two decades. He crossed his legs, picking a speck of dust from his trousers, and rolled his chair closer to the desk. ‘His code name is Sandpiper, forty-seven years old, homosexual but married with two teenage children,’ he said, scrolling through the text. ‘Senior management and rising, and works in the main office in King Charles Street. All the detail is in the folder. I have the full profile with covering photograph.’ He checked the biographical details and background.
On his screen Malik studied the secret photograph of Sandpiper in a navy pinstripe suit, drinking a glass of champagne and laughing with a young man.
‘There are two or three images I need to enhance, but the identifying features are good,’ said Hussain, clicking the ‘Forward’ button again.
The digital photographs that flashed up on Malik’s desktop showed Sandpiper naked and being sodomised by the same man. In five of the seven images his face was clearly identifiable. ‘And we have video, yes?’ he asked.
‘Yes. All the images are usable.’
‘How long has Harold known him?’ he asked, scanning the text.
‘From his days at Cambridge University.’
‘How many guests at the party?’
‘Twelve, including two women, who were the first to occupy the bedrooms.’
‘The corruption of those whores knows no bounds,’ growled Malik, staring in disgust at the incriminating photographs. ‘And few infidels can match the depravity of Western foreign services.’
He spoke f
rom personal knowledge. During the nineties his own father had been posted to the Turkish consulate in London’s Belgrave Square as third secretary, responsible for developing trade links. He had displaced the family from their comfortable home in Ankara to a government-owned apartment in Maida Vale, and a young Malik had gone to the London School of Economics to study for a BSc in international economics. In his youth he had been small and unprepossessing, with an adolescent’s stringy moustache. But he was deeply thoughtful, with an intellectual horsepower that set him apart from most other LSE students.
The unworldly teenager had never been out of Turkey before, and the loud manners of Britain’s capital had disoriented him. He was deeply offended by the drinking, drug-taking and promiscuity, the lack of modesty among the women and brashness of the men. When he watched television the whole of British society seemed depraved, and when protocol required that he and his elder sister attend the occasional reception at the consulate, he had realised with deep sadness that even his parents had been seduced by the excesses of the West.
By 1997, his final year at the LSE, Malik had emerged as the best in his class, on course for a first, and moved from his father’s government apartment to a student flat in Herne Hill. He had had the smallest room at the very top of the rambling Victorian merchant’s house, which he shared with three female and five male LSE undergraduates, including Dimitri, a third-year in labour economics.
Halfway through the new term Dimitri took him to a student party in Brixton where everyone was drinking and smoking cannabis. The students from his house were taking photographs of their friends having sex on the floor, often three at once, sometimes men with men. He went to find Dimitri to tell him he was going home, only to discover his fellow Turk having sex with an English girl in one of the bedrooms.
