Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  Anaïs Brunet simply nodded. “This was the plan, Daniel. You know that.”

  “I do,” he responded, gesturing to the folder in front of him. That latest communique from their asset in Molenbeek, barely an hour old. “And it was a plan I warned you against. As did your case officer.”

  “It’s a risk,” she acknowledged, putting her hands together, her fingers tented before her as she caught General Gauthier’s look.“But we can’t afford further delay. If there was to be an attack in France while we sit here, deliberating. . .”

  Her voice trailed off for a moment, the implications clear to all of them. “LYSANDER’s credibility needs to be firmly established within the network, as soon as possible. This was a way to do that.”

  “If it succeeds,” Vukovic interjected, the skepticism still clearly audible in the CIA station chief’s voice. “That’s anything but certain.”

  Brunet shook her head, steel entering her voice. “Nothing is certain in this business, Daniel. You know that, I know that. But this is the decision I have made.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Anaïs,” the American said wearily, closing the folder and handing it back to her. “Have you at least read in the Belgians on these developments?”

  Another shake of the head, and Vukovic swore softly under his breath.

  “This is a matter of extreme sensitivity,” Brunet retorted. “The circle must be kept small. Less than thirty people in this building even know of LYSANDER’s existence—what, another ten at CIA? We’re not reading in a third intelligence service until we have no other choice.”

  Vukovic threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender, pushing back his chair and rising from the conference table. “How long until the meeting in Liège goes down?”

  “Five hours.”

  10:23 A.M.

  The apartment

  Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium

  It would be just possible, Harry realized, staring at the images on the screen of the laptop in front of him. With the right amount of explosives. . .

  He shook his head, jarred by where his mind had gone.

  That he had allowed himself, even for a moment, to approach this with the same clinical detachment that had carried him through so many missions in the past. Assess the requirements of the mission. Adapt to the realities on the ground. Overcome all obstacles.

  As ever before. But this. . .this was an act of terrorism.

  But if he was going to pull this off, in the next few hours, everyone around him was going to have to believe. That his commitment to this had been total. That he’d had a plan, been prepared to see it through. To the bitter end.

  And if they were to believe, then he had to believe the lie as well. That line between reality and cover, ever so difficult to maintain.

  In an actual undercover operation, it would be the job of the other officers to help the UC maintain his perspective. His distance. Keep him from getting too close.

  But there was no one to play that part here. He was on his own. And the line was blurring.

  A knock at the door of the apartment disturbed his thoughts and he rose, closing the lid of the laptop and picking up the Beretta beside it, thumbing off the pistol’s safety.

  Holding it behind him as he moved to the door, his hand on the latch. “Yes?”

  “Ibrahim, it’s me.” Aryn’s voice.

  He unlatched the door, safing the Beretta as he opened it. “Salaam alaikum, brother. You’re here early.”

  “Is that all right?” Aryn asked, following him into the small apartment. “If you want, I can come back. I was just. . .embarrassed by yesterday.”

  “Why?” Harry asked, glancing over his shoulder at the younger man as he reached down, re-opening the laptop. The images of the viaduct coming back up on-screen, a high series of arches above fields of grain.

  “I had promised my brothers that I would be ready, and I was not. It’s not the first time.”

  Harry just looked at him for a long moment, then slowly shook his head. “There is nothing to be apologized for—your mother required your care, and you were there for her. As you should have been.”

  “Yes, I know. I love my mother, she’s always been there for me, even when I disappointed her—even when I went to jail—but I had hoped to go to Syria, to fight with the brothers there, but this has prevented me, and now that opportunity has passed.”

  “Allah knows best,” he admonished, smiling gently as he began to recite the ayat from memory, “‘Now among the best of the deeds which We have enjoined upon man is goodness towards his parents. In pain did his mother bear him, and in pain did she give him birth. . .’ It is your responsibility to be there for her now, in her pain. There is no higher duty.”

  “Not even the jihad?”

  “Allah will provide a way. Until then, your responsibility to your mother is clear.”

  A slow, reluctant nod. Then,“You have a beautiful Quranic voice.”

  “Mash’allah,” Harry replied humbly, spreading his hands. “I am only a vessel. The words are God’s.”

  “Ameen.” Aryn’s eyes fell upon the laptop in that moment, lighting up at the sight of the pictures. “What is that, brother?”

  “The viaduct near Verberie, forty kilometers northwest of Paris—it carries the LGV Nord rail line across the Oise River Valley.” Harry leaned down, tapping a command into the laptop to bring up more pictures. “Trains are traveling at nearly two hundred kilometers an hour as they cross the bridge.”

  Aryn’s eyes lit up. “If we could derail one. . .”

  “Oui,” he nodded. “At that speed, a derailed train would smash through the parapet and fall to the valley below. It’s more than a thirty-meter drop. There would be few survivors from the wreckage.”

  “Alhamdullilah,” was the reverent, almost breathless response, a fire glowing in the young man’s dark eyes. Praise God.

  “However,” Harry continued, mastering himself with an effort, “there are nearly thirty trains crossing this bridge every day. There’s no way we can displace the rails manually, not in the intervals between trains. It will require explosives.”

  “The kind of explosives Marwan’s contact can provide us?”

  “Insh’allah.”

  11:37 A.M. British Summer Time

  The Russian Embassy

  Kensington Palace Gardens, London

  Over the years, you allowed yourself to forget what it felt like to be a traitor, Litvinov thought, staring past his computer at the blank wall of his small office. You let yourself relax.

  He hadn’t felt this keyed up in nearly thirty years. Since those first months following recruitment—looking behind him everywhere he went. Fearing at every moment that he would feel a hand on his shoulder.

  But he’d been young then. Young and disillusioned, with nothing to lose. Betrayal, his way of lashing back at a crumbling system which had betrayed him.

  And now he was old, and had everything to lose, he realized, his gaze drifting to the picture of his daughter sitting on his desk, a candid shot taken last summer at a resort on the northern shores of the Caspian—her own little girl holding her hand as they walked through the sand.

  She was married now, and expecting—again. And he knew his own employers too well to be assured that retribution would end with him, if they knew.

  If.

  Greer could well be lying, as well he knew—spreading dezinformatsiya of his own for an as-yet-unknown purpose. Sowing seeds of distrust.

  And yet the potential for it being the truth. . .his fingers trembling at the very thought, was far too dangerous to ignore. As Greer would know.

  If his countrymen were running operations of this magnitude in the UK without reading him in—it could only mean one thing.

  They knew.

  1:09 P.M.

  Thames House

  London

  Calm down. Focus. Simon Norris forced another crisp into his mouth as he finished typing up yet another report, his entire body
seeming to tremble with a kind of nervous energy. Half of his sandwich still lying neglected on his desk.

  He’d been possessed by a mad desire to run away, after parting with the Russian in the park. Get on a plane and leave the country—leave everything behind.

  Anything to avoid committing the ultimate betrayal.

  But running took money—hiding more so, and at the end of the day, he was a civil servant.

  It wasn’t the line of work you went into out of a desire to get rich. You did it to serve your country, as he supposed he himself had, once upon a time.

  There was a bitter irony in the realization. If he had never set out to serve his country, he would never have been led to betray it.

  Because that’s what this would be—he could allow himself no illusions about that. No more hiding behind the kind of justifications he’d used in his dealings with Colville. The rationalizations he’d used in pinning his crimes on his former supervisor, Alec MacCallum.

  No, it was all out in the open now—naked and ugly. This was about him. About not having to pay the price for his sins.

  Because that price. . .was far higher than he’d ever dreamed. He was going to have to give the Russian what he wanted, he thought, glancing around the floor of the Security Service’s Operations Centre. As if expecting that his fellow officers could see his guilt already written on his face.

  He had no other choice. . .

  2:37 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  Belgium

  Harry leaned back into the seat, glancing out the window of the Flixbus as it sped down the highway toward Liège, feeling naked without his gun. The Beretta, cleaned and loaded, left back in Molenbeek—tucked beneath the cushions of the couch on which he slept.

  It was better that way, he thought. A gun couldn’t save him now.

  Not with what he had planned. His eyes growing reflective as he stared out the window—the landscape a blur as it sped by. The farm fields of Belgium, their grain slowly ripening in the summer sun, just visible through the gaps in the dense screen of trees lining the road.

  Liège. A century earlier, these fields had borne silent witness to the advance of young men clad in the muted feldgrau of the Kaiser, the bare-knuckled fist of a massive right hook aimed at France’s flank.

  Erich Ludendorff had been here then, long, bloody years before his name would ever become associated with the rise of national socialism. Of Hitler. Leading his men against the massive forts guarding Liège, his personal bravery responsible for the capture of the city.

  A recipient of the Pour le Mérite for that action, distinguished for courage, even in that last great twilight age of heroes. But he hadn’t known when to quit.

  Did you? A voice within him asked, surprising him with the question. So many times, so many places over the years he could have turned aside—gone another way. Left it all behind him.

  And his life would have been so very different.

  But you only recognized those moments looking back—those choices you could have made little more than an illusion, a mocking ghost. Fate.

  Nothing for it but to keep moving forward, as he always had. One foot in front of the other.

  He was calm now, an icy chill pervading his body despite the humid warmth of the bus. The road, once more plain before him. And it was time.

  He cast a brief glance over at Yassin before leaning forward over the back of the seat in front of them, putting a hand on Marwan’s shoulder, his voice low as he asked, “How much farther?”

  There was a brief flicker of surprise before the young man recovered his composure. A tell? Harry wondered, ever aware that he could be playing them all.

  “About eight minutes out from the city. We’re to get off at the second stop within its limits—his shop is less than a ten-minute walk from there.”

  “We’re not going to his shop,” Harry announced, feeling the sudden tension in Marwan’s body, hearing the gasp of surprise as Yassin looked up. He gestured to the phone in the young man’s hand. “Send him the message.”

  “What do you mean? This has been set up, this is–”

  “Send him the message. If he wants to meet, he can find us at the Parc de la Boverie. On the River Meuse.”

  Chapter 11

  3:01 P.M.

  Parc de la Boverie

  Liège, Belgium

  “This was a mistake,” Marwan swore angrily, pacing back and forth on the grass. “We had an agreement—everything was arranged. These are not the kind of men you mess with, brother. We need–”

  “And neither am I,” Harry responded coolly, breaking apart the last fragments of his slice of bread as he rose from his squat by the riverbank, tossing them toward a nearby duck. “I don’t know your friends, and I don’t trust them.”

  He cast another glance past the imposing aviary toward the bridge as he turned back toward the young men. The island of Outremeuse was a scant three kilometers in length, with the park occupying its southernmost third.

  If this was a sting, he’d forced an abrupt shift to their base of operations, off the ground they had chosen—into an area too tight for an intelligence team of any significant size to operate in without making themselves conspicuous. Particularly in the rush of relocation.

  And even yet, enough of a crowd of tourists to lose oneself in, if you knew what you were doing. He’d get away, even if his young friends didn’t.

  All that mattered.

  “For that matter,” he began, his gaze flickering between Yassin and Driss before finally settling on Marwan, “why are you so nervous, brother? What was waiting for us at that shop that you were so intent on us going there?”

  He saw surprise, anger flash in the young Algerian’s eyes, an angry retort forming on his lips. Knew he was walking a dangerous line, but safety was an illusion in this world. And if he was to maintain control, he needed to take every opportunity to drive the wedge in deeper, separate Marwan from his friends. Isolate. Manipulate.

  Destroy. Eventually, inevitably. The only possible end to this, for one of them or the other.

  The phone buzzed in Marwan’s hand just then, before he could respond, and he handed it over so that Harry could see the screen—the brief message in French. “They’ll be here in five minutes.”

  “Good,” Harry smiled—casually pitching the phone over his shoulder into the flowing waters of the Meuse as Marwan regarded him in stunned disbelief. “Now we can be certain the kuffar will not be listening in.”

  2:07 P.M. British Summer Time

  HMP Belmarsh

  Thamesmead, Southeast London

  He could still remember when this facility had been part of the Royal Arsenal, Phillip Greer reflected, the heels of his wing-tipped dress shoes ringing out sharply against the tile as he followed the uniformed HMPPS officer down one long, sterile corridor after another. A briefcase held easily in his right hand.

  Back during the Cold War, in the twilight years of what had once been known as the “Secret City”, a sprawling complex which had employed more than a hundred thousand Londoners at its peak.

  And now it was a prison. One of only nine Category A facilities in the country, housing the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists, terrorists, and. . .traitors.

  That last, his reason for coming here now.

  “Right in here, sir,” the woman announced, opening the door ahead of them and gesturing for him to enter the small, brightly-lit room off to one side of the corridor. “You’ll have thirty minutes with the prisoner.”

  I’ll have as long as I need, the intelligence officer thought, choosing instead to acknowledge her words with a nod. She was just doing her job, too low on the ladder to even warrant pulling rank on.

  The Security Service credentials in the inner pocket of his grey suit jacket giving him all the authority he needed here.

  He stepped through the door, his eyes adjusting to bright, cold light. Settling on the figure sitting behind the low table in the center of the room—clothed in a bagg
y, ill-fitting grey sweatshirt and grey jogging bottoms, his hands manacled before him, one ankle shackled to the table.

  How have the mighty fallen.

  Greer nodded briefly at the man standing a few feet away in the corner of the small room—the man’s attorney, by the look of him–before taking the seat opposite the prisoner. Setting his briefcase down by the table’s leg.

  Sinking wordlessly back into the cold metal of the chair—regarding the bowed head of the man across from him with a look of contempt.

  “It’s been a while, Alec.”

  3:11 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  Parc de la Boverie

  Liège, Belgium

  “. . .they could just walk away after this, you know that. After all the work I did setting this up. After everything–”

  “You talk too much, has anyone ever told you that?” Harry asked quietly, watching out of the corner of his eye as a small knot of men approached through the crowd of afternoon tourists. Five of them, with the exception of one older man, swarthy young men in their late twenties—older than his cell members. Casual clothes, if dressed a little heavy for the July heat. Their contacts.

  He was sure of it—had seen them several minutes before. They were out of place here, off-balance, out of their element. Exactly as he’d intended.

  “Salaam alaikum,” he announced, turning as the men came up, halting a few meters away. “My brothers.”

  The men traded awkward glances for a long moment, until finally the older man—Harry would have put him somewhere around his own age, perhaps a year or two older, swarthy and heavy-set—took a step forward from those flanking him.

  “Wa’ alaikum as-salaam,” he acknowledged, grudgingly, no trace of a smile in his dark eyes. Nothing of peace. “What is the meaning of this?”