Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  “As I told my young friend,” Harry began, his lips creasing into a smile which never reached his eyes. “I do not know you. And it is dangerous, in these times, for the servants of the Prophet—peace be upon him—to trust those whom they do not know.”

  “Ibrahim,” he heard Marwan begin behind him, but neither he nor the older man paid him any mind, regarding each other silently over the intervening couple meters of ground. Then:

  “You are the German?”

  “So I am called of my brothers,” Harry replied evenly, his gaze never leaving the man’s eyes, “but it has been many years since I considered that apostate land my home.”

  There was something in the man’s eyes—was it a flash of approval? But he merely nodded. “You may call me Said. It is said that you were in Syria?”

  Harry smiled. “Many things are said. And if a man is wise, he is careful whose ears they reach. You understand?”

  A nod, but Said’s body language hadn’t relaxed a bit, tension still pervading his form. Clearly waiting for Harry to make the first move. To ask the question.

  Was it a trap? It was difficult to tell whether Said’s caution was that of a jihadist fearing apprehension by the law if he was the first one to broach the subject of the weapons. . .or an undercover officer not wishing his “sting” to be compromised by a defense of “entrapment.” It could be either.

  And he had to be certain, if he was to carry out his plan. If he was to see this through.

  “We should talk,” he said finally, gesturing over his shoulder through the trees toward the large building housing the island’s aviary. “Away from your men—and mine. The two of us. And perhaps we will come to trust one another.”

  A long moment, as Said seemed to consider the proposition from every side. “Very well then. After you.”

  2:13 P.M. British Summer Time

  HMP Belmarsh

  Thamesmead, Southeast London

  “It certainly has, Phillip,” the prisoner responded, meeting his eyes for the first time. A bitter smile ghosting across his face. “Have to say, you’re the last person I expected to visit.”

  The man had aged in two months of confinement, Greer thought—his eyes ringed by dark circles, his face worn and pale. Two months, and his trial was yet in the offing. He almost felt pity for the man—almost.

  He was a traitor, after all.

  “I’m afraid this isn’t a personal visit, Alec,” Greer said coldly, stooping to retrieve his briefcase. “I’m here on official business—from Thames House.”

  A nod. “I imagined as much. I–”

  “Mr. MacCallum,” his lawyer interjected, cutting him off, “as your legal counsel, I have to warn you that this is a conversation you should not be having. Anything you say here, to this man, could be used as evidence against you in your trial. We–”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dakyns,” MacCallum said, mustering up some remaining measure of dignity. “But I will talk with him.”

  “He’s not wrong, Alec,” Greer announced calmly. “On the other hand, any cooperation you would be able to offer would be taken into account as well.”

  “My client would need that in writing,” the lawyer stated, interrupting once more.

  Greer shook his head. It was a promise he had absolutely no intention of keeping—there was no sentence which even could be handed down which would begin to atone for the harm this man had done to his country. To his service.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he replied, the chill re-entering his voice. “And I will have to ask you to leave, Mr. . .Dakyns. You are not cleared for the materials I need to discuss with your client.”

  “But I am his legal representative,” the man responded, shaking his head. “It is imperative that I–”

  “You can leave,” MacCallum announced, looking up at his lawyer. “Please.”

  He looked between the two of them again before acquiescing in exasperation—the door closing behind him with an audible click.

  Leaving the two men alone, looking at each other over the table.

  “What’s this about, Phillip?” MacCallum asked after a long, awkward moment. The former Security Service branch head looking gaunt in the harsh glare of the overhead light. Haggard.

  They had been equals once. Before the fall.

  “It’s about your employer,” Greer responded, unlatching his briefcase and retrieving a folder. “Arthur Colville.”

  MacCallum shook his head in disbelief. “You won’t believe me, will you? I had nothing to do with that man—with his attack on the service.”

  “You’re right, Alec,” the counterintelligence officer replied, not looking up as he leafed through the folder for the file he was looking for. “I won’t believe you. Because every traitor says they’re innocent—and the evidence says you’re as guilty as Cain.”

  He extracted a single printed sheet of banking information, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose as he slid it across the smooth surface of the table. “So what can you tell me about this. . .”

  3:18 P.M.Central European Summer Time

  Parc de la Boverie

  Liège, Belgium

  “It feels strange,” Harry mused, looking around him as the two men walked through the gardens to the south of the park’s aviary.

  “What does?”

  “All of this. . .the peace that fills a place like this,” he responded, gesturing around at the roses, blossoming in the summer sun. The trees, shading the verdant grass to the west. “One could almost allow oneself to forget that our world is at war. That the faithful are under assault by the Zionists and their crusader allies, wherever one looks. That this is, itself, the Dar al-Harb.”

  The House of War. The only existing alternative to the Dar al-Islam, in the Manichean worldview of the jihadists.

  With us or against us.

  “Almost,” Said replied, something of a smile touching the man’s lips for the first time. “But we must never allow ourselves to forget the plight of the Ummah, no matter how comfortable our own lives may have become.”

  “Ameen,” Harry nodded as the two of them moved into the shade of the trees, truly alone for the first time. The nearest passerby, nearly fifty feet away. Their men, out of sight on the other side of the gardens. “That was how I came to leave Germany the first time.”

  “For Syria?”

  A nod. It was minor enough of an admission, given the stakes. He had to draw Said out. Draw him out, and. . .he left the thought unfinished as the man spoke once again.

  “Our hopes were once so bright.” Regret in that voice—regret at opportunities lost and passed by. Dreams now in ashes as the remnants of the caliphate reeled under repeated body blows.

  “Insh’allah, they will burn brightly once more,” Harry whispered, watching the man’s face. His remorse. . .it wasn’t feigned. He wasn’t that good of an actor. “And with them, the lands of the crusaders.”

  “Insh’allah,” his companion assented, looking over at him as they stood now on the riverbank, stone lining the water’s edge. “That’s why you returned, is it not?”

  Another nod. “The fight in Syria is over, even if the young men don’t know it, just yet. But the war continues, here, as ever before. Marwan tells me you can assist us.”

  It was Said’s turn to nod, gazing intently at Harry. “I can. Rifles, ammunition, explosives. . .whatever you need. For the right price, I might even be able to find an RPG or two, though that has become difficult.”

  A chill ran through Harry’s body at the words, the confirmation of all he had suspected. Feared, even. This was no sting. This was real.

  “Alhamdullilah,” he breathed, controlling his emotion with a mighty effort as he glanced around them. The trees failed to provide much of a screen, but the nearest tourist was more than seventy feet away, and she appeared to be asleep, stretched out on a blanket, sunbathing. Traffic, passing on the far bank of the Meuse, a hundred meters to their west. A city at peace. “It is clear to me th
at our meeting was ordained of God.”

  And the hilt of the knife was cold in his hand, the switchblade flicking into position with a faint metallic snick as he turned, plunging the blade into Said’s ribs, razor-sharp metal slicing through fabric and flesh. . .

  2:21 P.M. British Summer Time

  HMP Belmarsh

  Thamesmead, Southeast London

  Alec MacCallum’s eyes flicked over the sheets before him—looking from one entry to the next as he shuffled the papers between manacled hands, the shrewd glance of the analyst he once had been still visible in their depths. Once.

  Greer’s lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line beneath the hawk nose. Once, and nevermore. It was a risk, even showing him these, but it was one he had calculated carefully.

  The value of what he could learn, far greater than any damage MacCallum could yet do from behind these walls.

  “This is Russia,” the former branch head announced suddenly, a sharp edge in his voice as he looked up from the papers. “Their fingerprints are all over this.”

  Greer nodded.

  “If they were behind Arthur Colville,” MacCallum went on, his mind seeming to turn over the possibilities, considering each in turn, “behind, even, the terrorist attacks, you have a problem—far larger than we could have begun to grasp. But you know that, don’t you. . .that’s why you’re here.”

  Another nod. “Did you ever stop to ask yourself where the money to finance the publication of the PERSEPHONE papers was coming from, Alec?”

  He let the question hang there, watching as the analytical glint vanished from MacCallum’s eyes, replaced by an angry heat. “Or were such details simply none of your concern?”

  The prisoner swore, loudly, his manacled fists crashing into the surface of the table, sheets scattering. “How can you believe this, Phillip? Any of this? I served my country for years.”

  “Until one day you believed that the only way to continue to serve it was to betray it,” Greer observed calmly. “I can understand how you saw it.”

  He couldn’t, really, but that was beside the point. Getting someone to open up to you required them to think that you believed in their justifications. That you understood.

  And that, he was good at.

  “But you don’t understand,” MacCallum spat, “because I never betrayed my country. And if I didn’t, that means someone else did.”

  He paused, his eyes burning with a furious intensity as they met Greer’s in an unwavering gaze. “Someone you haven’t found yet. And if any of this is true. . .they’re likely working for the Russians.”

  3:22 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  Parc de la Boverie

  Liège, Belgium

  There was a look of reproach in Said’s lifeless eyes as he lay there, staring up into the summer sun as Harry removed his hand from over the man’s mouth, wincing in pain as he glanced at the teeth marks in his palm. Breathing heavily as he rose from his crouch straddling the body.

  The exertion had been more than he’d been prepared for, he realized, wiping the bloody blade of his knife against his black jeans before folding the blade back in on itself, its hilt barely protruding from his clenched fist.

  And it wasn’t over yet.

  His shirt was sodden with the man’s blood, a damp, barely noticeable stain against the dark fabric as Harry reached into his other pocket for the small packet containing the pair of Bluetooth earbuds he had purchased the previous day.

  He stooped once more, one of the earbuds in his hand as he groped for Said’s left ear, cooling flesh beneath his fingers as he pressed it into the dead man’s ear canal, seating it firmly.

  Cupping the other in his hand as he rose—turning back from the bank of the Meuse. Leaving the body where it lay.

  No time to waste.

  He pushed his way past a family of four as he made his way once more through the rose gardens, past the entwined, sculptured forms of a woman and a faun cast in bronze there, amidst the flowers.

  His eyes meeting briefly those of the little girl being pushed in her stroller—innocent, full of peace. Feeling like the shadow of death in that moment. The destroyer in the garden of Eden.

  He looked up to see an oblivious smile on her father’s face, only then aware that blood still flecked his knuckles.

  The blood of the man he had murdered, not fifty meters away—holding him down as he tried to scream, to fight. To escape. The rhythmic stab of the knife into yielding flesh, again and again, blood staining the grass.

  Paradise lost.

  Said’s men were gathered in a small knot beneath the trees, their backs to him as he approached, quickening his pace.

  Driss saw him coming, recognition in the Moroccan’s eyes—recognition and bewilderment, opening his mouth to speak.

  “Ibrahim, what’s–”

  Harry put a hand on the shoulder of one of Said’s men as he came up, spinning him around—shoving the remaining earbud beneath his nose. “He was wearing a wire!”

  He saw confusion in the younger man’s eyes, heard Marwan call out. “Ibrahim, come on, brother–what are you talking about? What–”

  “You knew a man,” Harry spat, his eyes the color of blued steel as he wheeled on Marwan. Implacable. “Did you also know that he was a police informer? That they would be listening in?”

  He hurled the wireless earbud onto the turf between them, his index finger jabbing out toward it. “They heard everything.”

  “Where is Said?” one of the Algerian’s men asked, anger creeping into his voice as he began to grasp the truth. But not all of it.

  “He’s dead,” Harry shot back, feeling the switchblade cold between his fingers. Ready for use.

  “You killed him?” Marwan again, disbelief—horror in the young voice. “What have you done?”

  “Of course I killed him–as I would any such puppet of the Zionists,” he replied, eyes flashing fire. “Driss, Yassin—with me. We’re leaving.”

  The bus station wasn’t far. Just over the bridges—get there, and they’d be home free. Just. . .

  “No, you’re not,” another of the Algerians said, finding his voice at last. “Not until you give us some answers.”

  His hand groping in his waistband—coming back out, fingers clenched around a pistol butt.

  You fool, Harry thought, willing him not to draw, not to–

  Gun.

  The switchblade came out, its blade glistening in the sun as it described an arc toward the man’s belly, slashing across the veins of his exposed wrist, the gun half-way drawn.

  The man screamed, a wild, primal sound, ringing out across the park—blood spurting from his wrist as he collapsed to the turf, trying in vain to staunch the flow with his other hand.

  It was time to go. Past time, another pistol coming out—a shot ringing out across the park, a bullet searing the air past Harry’s head.

  He found Driss at his elbow, put his hand on the Moroccan’s shoulder, shoving him forward, out of the line of fire. “Run!”

  2:35 P.M. British Summer Time

  HMP Belmarsh

  Thamesmead, Southeast London

  A light summer rain was falling by the time Greer exited the prison, dismal gray clouds hanging low over the city, shutting out the sun.

  MacCallum’s parting words still ringing in his ears as he made his way through the carpark, stopping by his own nondescript silver Vauxhall Corsa. “You think you need to guard yourself against paranoia, Phillip—the eternal bane of men in your trade. But the truth is that you haven’t been nearly paranoid enough. Your traitor isn’t here, sitting before you in this chair. In prison. He’s still walking, among you. There at Thames House.”

  He opened the door of the Vauxhall, sliding in behind the steering wheel—just sitting there, leaning back against the seat as the rain continued to fall without, spattering against the windshield.

  It was misdirection, he told himself. It had to be. The efforts of a doomed man to pin his crimes on someon
e else. The oldest story in the world.

  “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree. . .”

  And yet, there had been such conviction in his voice. Greer had spent a lifetime listening to men lie, and there was something different about this.

  A nagging doubt deep within him—persistent as the tapping of the rain. If this were true. . .but no, it couldn’t be.

  The idea that there could still be a mole, in the Security Service, still doing damage—still undermining them from within, it was almost more than he could bring himself to face.

  He stopped short—chilled to the bone by the thought. Is that it?

  Had he ignored a threat because it was easier—simpler–to believe that one no longer existed?

  Because he didn’t want to confront the possibility that he could have been wrong?

  That most deadly of mistakes for a counterintelligence officer. Hubris. But was that it?

  Impossible to know—shadows within shadows. The wilderness of mirrors. Ever so lethal.

  Greer shook his head, inserting his key into the car’s ignition, listening as the engine hummed to life.

  One way or the other, he was going to have to find his way out of the wilderness.

  3:37 P.M. Central European Summer Time

  Rue Varin

  Liège, Belgium

  Breathe, Harry told himself—forcing himself to calm, resisting the urge to pace. Hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans as he glanced across the street toward the looming white facade of the Liège-Guillemins railway station. There wouldn’t be another bus for ten minutes. And he had no choice now but to wait.

  As the crow flies, it was less than a kilometer from the island to the Rue Varin, but he’d had to cross the Meuse three times in the process, first to the east over the footbridge from Outremeuse, scattered gunshots echoing behind him. Then south, he’d contemplated pitching the switchblade into the river from the walk, before deciding against it—turning back west—working his way through the maze of streets leading to the station. Sirens wailing in the distance, off toward the island.