With the small bag now full of glass tubes, Wahid told his men to follow him, and he ran back out into the night.
‘They’re coming,’ his driver told him as he jumped into the passenger seat of the truck.
Wahid snatched up the NVGs and saw the army convoy in the distance. He stuck his head out of the window and shouted to his lieutenant. ‘I must get this safely to Karim. You know what to do.’
Without waiting for a response, Wahid told the driver to floor it, and he left the scene trailing a cloud of dust in his wake.
His men would fight until he was well clear of the area, and many of them would die before sunrise. Whatever he was carrying in his small bag, he hoped it was worth the price they would pay tonight.
CHAPTER 9
Thursday, 27 July 2017
These last few frustrating days weren’t showing any signs of improving.
Harvey was trawling through the mountain of communications data that GCHQ had sent over that morning, but none of it mentioned SAI or Nabil Karim. His team had spent hours scouring the CCTV coverage of the garage raid and had seen one person leave a nearby café and take a bus to a mosque. They hadn’t been able to identify him, but others associated with the place of worship included Imran al-Hosni, the imam and a person of special interest.
He’d been recorded months earlier at his mosque in Stockwell Green giving a sermon that praised the destruction of the temple at Palmyra in Syria. In his speech, the imam suggested that the brave young men who had travelled abroad to help their Muslim brothers should be seen as heroes, not criminals, for their support of Islam.
As a result, MI5 had placed electronic surveillance on al-Hosni six months ago, but there hadn’t been enough evidence to charge him with any offence. The Crown Prosecution Service had listened to the original recording but hadn’t deemed it enough to arrest him on a charge of incitement. Since then, al-Hosni had gone quiet, his preaching more mainstream and his meetings with a few members of the mosque infrequent, and although Harvey and his team had expanded their surveillance to incorporate his cohorts, no-one was making any noises to indicate an imminent threat.
Harvey rose from his desk and went over to Ellis’s office, knocking before entering.
‘I’d like to put some people on Imran al-Hosni,’ he told her. ‘We’re getting nothing from phone or internet chatter, so it would be useful if we could have eyes on him for the next few weeks.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Ellis said, ‘but don’t get your hopes up. Maynard is still pissed at me, and I’ll need him to authorise the overtime.’
John Maynard, the Home Secretary, was becoming the bane of their lives. He’d wanted to see Ellis kicked out of the service for the way she’d handled the Milenko affair at the start of the year, but the PM – with input from Tagrilistan’s president – had seen fit to keep her in the role, much to Maynard’s chagrin. His promise to make life miserable for Ellis had been no empty threat, and he did everything within the law to make her job as difficult as possible.
‘Does he understand the severity of the threat Nabil Karim poses?’
‘I’m sure he does,’ Ellis said, ‘but what better way to get rid of me than to have me screw up on the job? I’m sure that by withholding the resources we need, he’s hoping we drop the ball and give him the opportunity to replace me.’
It wasn’t just Ellis who suffered from Maynard’s petulance. Harvey’s own team had been hamstrung by dwindling staff and budget cuts that made a tough job a lot harder. They should have had a new intake of trainees at the start of the year, people who would free up Howes and Solomon to do some fieldwork, but that had been put on the back burner indefinitely.
‘I think you should at least try. Let him know that, if there’s an SAI cell in the UK, then al-Hosni’s the man most likely to be behind it.’
‘As I said, I’ll do my best.’
Harvey could tell that Veronica Ellis didn’t relish another trip into the lion’s den.
Heat haze made the desert road look like a river as Karim glared into the distance. Night would soon be falling, and he was anxious to see how the latest stage of the mission was progressing.
The doctor’s house was in a small town east of Aleppo, and it was dark by the time Karim’s driver pulled up at the gates. Two of his men were standing guard, having been sent there the day before, and they recognised him as he approached, swiftly opening the gates to allow him ingress.
Karim walked through the front door, opened by the doctor himself, and the two men exchanged greetings.
‘How are the patients doing?’
‘Very well. They are all young and fit, so the recuperation period should only be a couple of days.’
‘They have a tough journey ahead of them,’ Karim said, walking into the living room. ‘Will they be able to handle two weeks of travelling?’
‘It shouldn’t be a concern, as long as they don’t lift anything too heavy. I have prepared painkillers and antibiotics, just in case.’
‘Very good. I’d like to see them.’
The doctor led Karim down a hallway to a dimly lit room containing five beds. In each lay a woman, at least two of them sleeping. Probably a result of their recent surgery, Karim assumed.
He went to the first bed and stood over the woman. She looked calm despite her recent ordeal, and the empty phial of morphine on the wheeled trolley beside her went some way to explaining why.
‘How are you feeling, Ramla?’ Karim asked.
The woman offered a weak smile and touched her abdomen. ‘It hurts, a little.’
‘That is to be expected, but the doctor assures me you should be up and about in a couple of days. Are you ready to make your journey?’
Ramla nodded.
‘Good. And are you sure you know what you have to do?’
Ramla went over the role she would play in the coming weeks, and Karim listened intently, ready to pounce if she made an error. He was pleased to discover that she could recite every aspect of the plan, despite having just undergone surgery.
This one wouldn’t let him down.
Karim thanked her, then moved on to the next bed, where the occupant was waking from her slumber. He went through the same process with her, and again she knew exactly what was expected of her in the coming weeks.
Forty minutes later, he arrived at the last bed. In it lay the youngest of the women, and the one closest to his heart.
‘Malika, are you prepared for what lies ahead?’
‘I am,’ she replied.
‘You know it will mean you can never come back.’
‘It is Allah’s will.’
She seemed confident, as were the others, and Karim smiled as he stooped and kissed her on the forehead. As with the others, he asked her to go over her role, and she gave a faultless delivery. He interrupted from time to time with questions, but her answers were always the ones he wanted.
Karim took her hand. ‘This will be the last time we see each other, but what we do in the coming days and weeks will shape history.’
Malika squeezed his hand and smiled.
‘I won’t disappoint you.’
CHAPTER 10
Wednesday, 2 August 2017
Nasir Qureshi handed over his Turkish passport and stood with a bored expression as the immigration officer studied the visa.
‘How long do you plan to stay?’ the official asked.
‘Just a few days,’ Qureshi told him.
‘It’s a long way to come for just a few days. What’s the purpose of your visit?’
‘My cousin is celebrating his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I would like to stay longer but I have a business to run back home.’
‘How will you be supporting yourself during your stay?’
Qureshi pulled a roll of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and handed them over. The man counted them and made a note of the amount on his computer, then handed the cash and Qureshi’s passport back.
‘Enjoy your stay.’
Qureshi picked up his hand luggage and followed the signs for the baggage reclamation area, where he picked up his small suitcase and headed through customs.
The decision to fly on a Turkish passport had been a wise move. Getting a visitor’s visa had proven no problem, and he would attract a lot less interest than if he had used his Syrian documents.
Outside the terminal, he took a coach to London Victoria station, where he put his suitcase in a locker. It contained nothing he would need for the next forty-eight hours, by which time he would be on his way back to Aleppo via Turkey.
He took the Tube to Aldgate East, the house he was looking for a twenty-minute walk from the station. As he walked down the street, he looked for signs that he was being watched, but all the vehicles he passed were empty, and there were no suspicious figures lurking in any of the upstairs windows.
Qureshi found number thirty and knocked on the door of the two-storey, terraced house. Curtains in the bay window twitched, and a minute later the door opened a crack, a chain crossing the small gap from which a woman’s face studied him.
‘I’m looking for Imran al-Hosni,’ Qureshi said. ‘Please tell him his cousin Habibah gave birth to a baby girl.’
The female face disappeared to pass on the introductory message Qureshi had been given by Nabil Karim. The previous day, he’d spent an hour with the leader, listening to the instructions he would now pass on. He’d been forced to recite them over and over, but his eidetic memory hadn’t let him down. He’d been able to repeat word for word the contents of the sheet of paper, which had then been thrown on a fire. When Qureshi closed his eyes, he could see the writing as if he was holding it in his hands.
There were a dozen ways Karim could have passed the message to al-Hosni, but his distrust of phones and email ruled out all forms of electronic communication. Qureshi knew that he was only one of several messengers Karim used, and this was his second visit to England. The first had been three months earlier, when his brief had been to pass on details of where the latest fundraisers should send the money they’d gathered.
The woman returned to the door and removed the chain, then opened it fully and stepped aside so that Qureshi could enter. He walked down a short hallway and into the living room, where a man sat on a sofa.
Imran al-Hosni was in his late forties and had a greying beard that reached down past his chest. The imam’s head was covered by a kufi, or prayer cap, and the salwar kameez consisted of a light grey top over baggy white trousers.
‘As salam aleykum.’
‘Wa aleykum as salam,’ al-Hosni replied, and motioned for Qureshi to sit.
The woman reappeared with a tray of tea, then left and closed the door behind her.
‘What news do you bring from Nabil Karim?’
Qureshi recounted the first part of the message exactly as it had been written, and when he’d finished, he waited for a response.
Al-Hosni removed his glasses and wiped them on his shirt before replacing them on his nose. ‘This is going to require a great sacrifice,’ he said.
‘That is not for me to know,’ Qureshi said. ‘I have been instructed to take back a simple answer. Will you do this, or not?’
‘Of course I will do it!’
Qureshi put up his hands in defence. ‘I was told to ask that question. Now that you have accepted, I can give you details of what Nabil expects from you in the coming days.’
It took another fifteen minutes for Qureshi to impart the remainder of the message, and once he was sure al-Hosni understood every aspect, it was his turn to gather information.
‘I have been instructed to take certain details back with me. I don’t expect you to have them all to hand, so I will meet you again in a few hours. And please, do not use the telephone or internet. You must meet with these people in person.’
He told al-Hosni what information he needed to take back to Syria, and when he was sure his host had committed his instructions to memory, he thanked him for the tea and walked to the door.
‘It is better that I do not come back here. Let us meet up again at the mosque on Allen Street in four hours.’
Qureshi walked out into the street with his mission only partly accomplished. Al-Hosni’s was only one of the messages he’d been ordered to deliver. He now faced another hour on the London Underground in search of the second man on Karim’s list.
Dave Lucas let out a yawn and looked over at his colleague, who was engrossed in the game he was playing on his phone.
‘You should try this,’ Stewart Toner said. ‘It helps keep me awake.’
Lucas understood the impulse. The endless hours of watching nothing happen took its toll, no matter how much sleep you had the night before. He often struggled to keep his eyes open during the first couple of hours of a surveillance shift, and today was no different.
‘I’ve got better things to do with my life than crush some stupid candies,’ he said, replacing his flavourless gum with a fresh piece. He picked up his book and angled it so that he could read it while keeping an eye on the target on the six-inch monitor. The camera, atop a lamp post forty yards from al-Hosni’s house, sent its live feed to their van two streets away.
So far, al-Hosni had had one visitor all morning, and that had been the postman. It had been the same for the past three days, and apart from his twice-daily visits to the local mosque, the man appeared to have no social life whatsoever.
A male figure came into view, and Lucas was immediately alert. He knew just about all of the locals after seeing them time and again, but this was someone new.
‘We might have something.’
He used the camera controls to zoom in on the subject, a man in his late twenties who was looking at each house as he strolled down the street towards al-Hosni’s place.
‘Keep coming,’ Lucas muttered to himself, hoping the man would stop at the target house and make the ten-hour shift worthwhile. His wish was granted when the figure entered the unkempt front garden and knocked on the door.
Lucas hit a button to enter a timestamp on the recording, then another that would take a dozen still photos every second. Once the door fully opened and the man stepped inside, Lucas sent the images to Thames House, where an analyst would be given the task of identifying the newcomer.
Half an hour later, the man emerged once more, and Lucas took another set of shots for the team back in the office. After watching the suspect retrace his steps back down the street, he picked up his book and prepared to battle the next round of fatigue.
CHAPTER 11
Friday, 4 August 2017
Malika cuddled the infant as the bus took them south of Al-Hamidiyah along the Syrian coast. She knew the Mediterranean Sea was away to her right, but in the darkness it was hard to spot.
Her companions remained silent, apart from one woman who was comforting her own child. The little boy had recently fed, but was demanding more.
They had only been together for a short time, brought into each other’s lives to carry out Nabil Karim’s wishes. Ramla, at thirty-five and more than a decade older than the others, had a kind, round face. Khadija was the opposite, her thin face making her look like she was bordering on anorexia. All in all, they were a good bunch, and it was a shame that not all of them would get to live a full life.
Malika adjusted her position to take the weight off her abdomen. As promised, the pain had relented a few days after the surgery, and the painkillers they’d been given seemed to work well, but it was still tender to the touch.
She busied herself by memorising the latest information Karim had given to her prior to departure. The details were handwritten on a sheet of paper, and she read the information over and over until she could recite it without error.
The bus pulled off the road and stopped short of the sandy beach, and the driver got out and opened the sliding door on the side of the bus. A burst of cool air invaded the space, and Malika stuffed the paper into her pocket and pulled her shawl tighter as she climbed do
wn and started walking towards the water. Apart from carrying Jalal, she had a bag containing enough snacks, baby food, formula and water to feed them both on what promised to be a long journey, as well as changes of clothes and a thick, warm blanket.
At the water’s edge, she was helped into a small boat, where she waited patiently for the others to join her. Ramla, Inas, Jalila and Khadija each carried their own children, all boys apart from Jalila’s. Once they had been seated on the rough wooden planks, the boat was pushed out into the water and a small motor chugged as they headed out into the darkness. Three minutes later, it rendezvoused with a larger vessel that had no running lights.
The pilot called Malika forward and took the boy from her, handing him to the deckhand who was reaching over the side of the fishing boat. She made the short climb up the rope ladder, each step a huge effort that put pressure on the fresh wound just below her navel.
Once aboard, Malika took hold of Jalal and waited for the other four women to join her. The smell of rotting fish seemed to envelop her, reaching into every pore and clawing at the back of her throat. She estimated the boat to be about ten yards long, and there were around twenty others on the deck, huddling close to retain as much warmth as they could. Most were men, but she spotted a handful of women with children clinging to them. She knew that these people would have paid a handsome price for the journey, all desperate to get their families away from a war that had already displaced more than four million.
Once the tender was empty, the pilot tied it off to the stern while the deckhand led them into the bowels of the boat. Below deck, the women were led through a narrow gangway and shown into adjoining cabins. Each contained three bunk beds, and it was clear that they would have to sleep with their children by their sides. The rooms were cramped, and although the fishy smell wasn’t so strong here, it remained noticeable.
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