He signed in on his workstation and searched for the number of trucks that had passed through the port in the last three days. To his dismay, the total came to more than 15,000 with half of those inbound. According to the graph on the screen, the number was usually higher, but the recently implemented security protocols had created a backlog that the ferry companies were struggling to clear. It was still going to be a tough ask to identify one lorry from the 7,500 that had arrived, and he couldn’t discount the possibility that the woman had come in by car or bus with fake papers. Qureshi had managed to get his hands on a false ID, so why not the woman?
What he really needed to do was positively identify the woman and retrace her steps, but the boring stuff couldn’t be discarded.
It could, however, be delegated.
He brought up a map that showed the location where the body had been discovered, then overlaid it with the national traffic camera network. There was one camera that would catch vehicles travelling north to the burial site, but the next one was over two miles away, and between them were two turn-offs that weren’t covered by CCTV. It was going to take a lot of effort to find and eliminate every vehicle, but he had the perfect man for the job.
Gareth Bailey had been with the team less than eight months, and in that time he hadn’t fulfilled the potential Harvey had seen in his training scores. His work had started off at a good standard, but recently he could have applied himself better. His reports had become sloppy, as if the initial buzz of the new job had worn off. Harvey had tried his best to give him tasks that would stretch him in an effort to recapture the excitement, but those were few and far between.
This one wasn’t going to set him on fire, either.
He called Bailey over to his desk to break the bad news.
‘I need you to check CCTV of all lorries that took the A2 past the point where the woman was found.’
‘Can do,’ Bailey said. ‘How many are we talking about?’
‘Hundreds, possibly thousands, but the cameras are too far apart to make it easy for us. Once a truck goes past the point we’re concerned with, it could take one of two turn-offs that aren’t covered. What I need you to do is, first, collate all licence plates that passed this camera on Thursday and Friday, then go to the next camera and see which ones didn’t make it there within an acceptable time frame. It should take them two minutes, so anything that takes half an hour or more is of interest to us.’
‘That could take days,’ Bailey said, his demeanour exactly what Harvey had expected.
‘In that case, you better get started.’
Bailey returned to his desk and Sarah sidled up to Harvey with two cups of coffee.
‘Aren’t you going to say I told you so?’
Harvey blew on his drink and took a sip. ‘This is one of the times I would have been happy to be wrong.’
Their disagreement over the immigration issue had come to the fore in recent days, with Harvey adamant that the other European countries weren’t doing enough to distinguish true refugees from economic migrants and terrorists. That someone had managed to get all the way across Europe and into Britain proved his point, though he could perhaps excuse the other nations for focusing on males as potential threats. He himself would not have pegged a female as a target, which was obviously why she’d been chosen to transport the toxin.
‘I’ve got her!’
Harvey almost spilled his drink when Farsi shouted in triumph.
‘Who is she?’
‘Khadija Tawfeek. At least, that’s the name she gave when she registered in Lampedusa. Her passport and fingerprint details were on the Italian SIF system.’
The Sistema Informativo Frontiere, or SIF, was the database used to collate information on visitors from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, but had been pressed into service to handle the huge numbers of refugees that had flooded the country.
Harvey walked round to Farsi’s desk and digested the information on the monitor.
‘I’m betting she didn’t come alone,’ he said. ‘Can you click on the name of the boat and see who else arrived on it?’
‘No, this is just a screenshot the Italians sent us. I’ll send a request to the AISI, though.’
‘Do it, and print out a copy of that. I’ll go and update the boss.’
As he waited for the printer to spew forth the information, Harvey hoped his counterparts in the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna worked equally unsociable hours.
Armed with the printout, he walked into Ellis’s office without knocking.
‘We have a name,’ he said when she looked up from her computer.
‘Real or alias?’
‘We don’t know yet, but given that Qureshi had an authentic-looking forged passport, I’d say it was bogus. I’ll see if MI6’s people in Syria can make some discreet enquiries.’
Going straight to Syria’s General Security Directorate would be counterproductive. They would most certainly want to know why MI5 were interested in one of their citizens, and if the name turned out to be real, the woman’s family would almost certainly be taken in for interrogation as al-Assad sought to find the people who had stolen his secret weapon. If Tawfeek were merely a hapless mule, it would put her entire family at risk for nothing.
‘Hamad is working on who she arrived in Italy with. Chances are, the other four phials travelled with her.’
Ellis read the printout. ‘I agree. It says here she had a young son when she turned up in Italy. That means someone is looking after the boy.’
‘And if they all travelled together, then the rest of the X3 is already here.’
It was five hours before the AISI got back to Farsi with the details of Khadija Tawfeek’s companions on the boat, but after extensive enquiries, they had no new leads.
None of the women had been seen since being dropped off in Ventimiglia. Harvey had instructed the team to contact all of their informants, asking them to report on any new women within the Arab community, but so far they’d drawn a blank.
The only certainty was that they would have to have the X3 removed from their bodies at some point, and it would most likely be sooner rather than later. Whether it was done by a skilled surgeon, or simply hacked out of their lifeless bodies, was another matter entirely. He’d informed all police forces and hospitals to report any bodies matching the women’s descriptions as soon as they were discovered, but he was really pinning his hopes on finding them alive. If the women were dead, the trail would disappear. The only real chance of finding the X3 was to bring them in for questioning.
Bailey had made little progress identifying the vehicle that they were suspected of arriving in. More than a thousand potential trucks filled his spreadsheet, and Harvey had taken three other team members off their assigned duties to help, but it was a time-consuming task, and every passing minute meant more time for the X3 to be weaponised.
Harvey checked up on Sarah, who looked as tired as he felt. She’d spent most of the day sifting through the electronic data gathered by GCHQ on their prime suspect, Imran al-Hosni.
‘There’s been nothing,’ she told him, ‘and that’s really worrying.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When I say nothing, I mean no phone calls, emails, Skype, anything. It’s as if he’s abandoned all forms of communication apart from face-to-face meetings.’
‘That is worrying,’ Harvey agreed. ‘What about his known associates?’
‘Same story. Everyone’s gone offline.’
‘Then what about human intel? Have our operatives reported anything?’
‘Lots of meetings have been taking place, but always at short notice, and we haven’t been able to listen in.’
It certainly sounded to Harvey as if al-Hosni were up to something, but they didn’t have anywhere near enough to bring him in. While his actions were highly suspicious, making no phones calls was hardly a criminal offence, and neither was abstaining from surfing the internet.
Harvey jumped when Elli
s put her hand on his shoulder.
‘Go and get some sleep, both of you.’
Harvey checked his watch and saw that it was almost one in the morning.
‘I mean it. They’re unlikely to get up to anything at this hour, and the night shift can alert us if they do.’
Harvey agreed. You couldn’t overestimate the value of a rested mind. After a while, facts and figures start to blur, and the decision-making process suffers.
‘Okay, we’ll be back in at nine.’
He shut down his terminal and put on his jacket. Sarah wasn’t far behind him.
‘I hate leaving when I’m in the middle of something,’ she said as a yawn escaped.
‘It’ll still be here tomorrow, but Veronica’s right. We need some sleep.’
They rode the elevator to the underground car park and Harvey took the wheel.
‘I’m worried that we won’t find it in time,’ Sarah said as he pulled out onto a near-empty street.
‘We have to.’
The thought of an X3 attack in London was enough to banish any thoughts of sleep. The death toll would be staggering, and any blame would fall on MI5 for failing to prevent it. That’s how things worked, and Harvey knew it. John Maynard would use the opportunity to unseat Ellis, and he couldn’t let that happen.
Ellis might look like she would be more at home leading a Fortune 500 company, but her heart was with the service, and her loyalty to her staff was legendary. True, she could be blunt at times, but there was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect her people from any flak.
As section lead, Harvey knew his own job would be far from secure, as well.
He tried to put such thoughts aside. People always slipped up, be they street muggers or criminal masterminds, and al-Hosni’s time would come. When it did, he would be there to pounce.
‘We have to,’ he repeated, ‘and we will.’
CHAPTER 17
Monday, 14 August 2017
Within minutes of arriving back in the office, it seemed as though he’d never left. The only difference was that he felt more alert, and Ellis didn’t seem to mind that he’d skipped his morning shave.
Gareth Bailey and his three helpers had already eliminated half of the trucks that had been near the woman’s grave, but it would be another twenty-four hours before that task would be completed. There’d been a flurry of excitement when one truck had taken more than an hour to drive the three miles between cameras, but it turned out to be a false alarm. The driver had reported an overheating engine, and the breakdown service had confirmed his story, as well as placing him a mile away from where the body had been found.
Harvey was about to give Ellis her hourly update when Elaine Solomon called his name.
‘Andrew, we’ve got a hit!’
Gerald Small, the resident technical wizard, had set up repeating SQL query statements that constantly polled myriad governmental databases, and it appeared they’d come up trumps.
‘Who do we have?’ Harvey asked her.
‘Ramla al-Hassad and her son and daughter. She registered an asylum claim a few minutes ago.’
It was the break they’d been looking for.
‘Send a team to her address and pass along the photos we got from the Italians,’ he told her. ‘Once we pick her up, we’ll get her to tell us where the others are.’
‘Will do. Hang on . . . we’ve got another. Malika Ali and her son.’
‘In that case, cancel the first order. Get on to Lunar House and tell them to hold the women until I arrive. Get them to conduct a fake interview, anything, but they’re not to leave.’
‘Understood,’ Solomon said, picking up her phone.
‘And give them the names of the other two. Chances are they’ll be turning up today, too.’
Sarah was already at the exit by the time Harvey had updated Ellis.
‘I called the Met,’ she said. ‘They’re sending a couple of vans and an armed unit will be standing by, just in case.’
‘Better let Social Services know, too. Someone will have to look after their kids while we question them.’
Sarah made the call on her mobile while Harvey took the wheel and merged into morning traffic. What should have been a fifty-minute drive turned into an hour and a half as roadworks hampered their progress, but on the upside, Solomon had called to say all four women were now at the asylum registration centre in Croydon.
Harvey found a space in the car park at Lunar House and saw that both police vans and a couple of squad cars were already waiting outside. After introducing Sarah and himself, he asked four officers to accompany him. Inside, he went to the reception desk and asked for the person Solomon had spoken to earlier.
‘Mr Shaw is expecting you,’ he was told. ‘Down the corridor, turn right at the end, third door on the left.’
Harvey found the room and was greeted by a tall man with a military bearing.
‘Where are they?’ Harvey asked.
Shaw led them to the stairs and up to the first floor. ‘One in each of the first four rooms,’ Shaw said, and Harvey knocked on door number one and entered, with Sarah in close attendance.
A Home Office official was sitting across a table from a young woman who wore a hijab, and Harvey’s first thought was that she was stunningly beautiful, with dazzling eyes and perfect skin. On her knee was a young child, fidgeting and clearly bored.
Harvey picked up the piece of paper the official had been writing on.
‘Malika Ali?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you speak English?’
‘She’s very proficient,’ the interviewer said.
‘In that case, I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
The man closed the door on his way out, and Harvey stood behind the empty chair.
‘My name is Andrew, and this is Sarah. We work for the British security services. Do you know why we are here?’
Malika shook her head.
‘I think you do,’ Harvey said. ‘I’m going to leave the room for a moment, and I’d like you to show Sarah your stomach.’
Harvey saw Malika’s eyes dart to the side and knew he had the right woman.
‘Alternatively, you can save yourself the embarrassment and admit that you had something concealed inside you when you entered the country.’
Malika remained silent, her eyes on the desk in front of her.
‘Suit yourself.’
Harvey nodded to Sarah, then walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. The four police officers, two of them female, were awaiting his instructions.
‘We’re going to be taking them to Thames House rather than the station,’ he told them. ‘We’ll complete the handover paperwork when we get there.’
The door opened and Sarah joined them in the hallway.
‘She refuses to show me.’
Harvey sighed. ‘Then we’ll have to do it the hard way.’ He turned to the officers. ‘Be careful. She recently had surgery, and she has a young child with her.’
He let them in and watched from the doorway as one female officer took the boy from Malika and another read her her rights.
The prisoner said nothing. Instead, she looked at the child with longing, a tear forming in the corner of her eye. Harvey saw the motherly instinct kick in, and filed it away for later use.
They took Malika down to the van in handcuffs, and the little one was placed in a child seat in the back of a police car. Once both were strapped in, they went back upstairs to repeat the process with the other three women.
Half an hour later, the vans and cars were full, and Harvey led the convoy back to Thames House. Sarah called ahead and asked that the interrogation suite be readied for their arrival and the holding cells stocked with everything the women would need for what promised to be a long stay.
CHAPTER 18
Monday, 14 August 2017
‘What have you got out of them so far?’ Ellis asked when Harvey reported to her office.
‘Nothing yet. Clearly,
they were instructed to stay quiet. It could be that they’re just mules and someone’s holding their families back in Syria to make sure they deliver the goods, or they could be doing this for idealistic reasons.’
‘Either way, we need them to talk.’
‘The obvious approach would be to use the kids as leverage. How do you feel about that?’
‘Uncomfortable,’ Ellis said. ‘But if we have to hurt their feelings in order to save thousands of lives, it has to be done.’
‘I’ll get on it. Sarah is downstairs with them now. I’ll fill her in on our approach.’
Harvey rode down to the sub-basement, where one of two armed officers seconded to them from SO15 was guarding the door. Harvey showed the man his ID and was given permission to swipe his way inside.
He entered the newly built corridor, where two more armed officers were stationed. There were five doors set into the left-hand wall and another on the right. Harvey took the one on the right and entered a room with a large one-way mirror that gave him a good view of the interrogation chamber. Inside he saw Sarah sitting across a metal table from one of the prisoners, whom he recognised as Malika.
Elaine Solomon and Gerald Small sat at a desk, watching the two women. Small was monitoring a screen that showed telemetry from the sensors placed on Malika’s head and chest, as well as the probe on her right index finger.
‘Has she said anything?’ Harvey asked.
‘Not a word,’ Solomon told him.
Over the speaker, Harvey heard Sarah asking another question, but Malika simply stared blankly ahead. They were getting nowhere fast, and an urgent change of tack was needed.
He swiped his way into the interrogation room and stood next to Sarah.
‘Malika, you’re facing the rest of your life in prison,’ he said. ‘It’s in your best interest to co-operate with us.’
The prisoner remained silent, head bowed.
‘If you help us,’ Sarah added, ‘we can ensure that the courts go easy on you, and you’ll be able to see your son again. What’s his name? Jalal?’
Malika looked up. ‘Where is he?’
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