She would have to wait. After that evening, at the end of a dreary, damp April day, the cubicle would be the work home of Dickie Naylor for eleven more working days. Then she could have it–was welcome to it. On that Friday evening, two weeks away, he would carry his few personal items out of the cubicle, swipe his card for the last time at the main door, then hand it to the uniformed staff for shredding. He would walk away along the Embankment–sniff for a last time at the tang of the river–from the building that was officially known as Thames House, occasionally Box 500, and to him was Riverside Villas. The new regime in the carpeted suites of upper-floor offices, grander temples than his cubicle, would have marked down the title 'Riverside Villas' as a sign of an old man's disrespect for the modern world that was shortly to be shot of him. To them, it was a fine block and commensurate with the Service's fledgling importance as a front-line arm of the War on Terror. To Dickie Naylor it was a pretentious edifice.
When he went, closing the door on his cubicle, he was damned sure that Mary Reakes–who was destined to succeed him as head of section–would be on his old ground before he had reached the Underground station. But, until then, he would make her wait, right to the minute of his last departure.
She was half his age. She had sexless bobbed hair, her face was half masked by powerful spectacles, and she dressed in black trouser suits. She had a degree, which he did not, and…She did not look away. She held his eyes and challenged him. Her attitude was clear: he was a 'veteran', his shelf-life had expired and the sooner he was gone the better. The word 'veteran' would not have slipped her tongue with either affection or respect. 'Veteran' meant worthless, an impediment to progress…He smiled sweetly to her through the open door.
He had never been, and he could recognize it, the brightest star in the heavens. At best he had been conscientious, a dogged plodder, and he had probably risen a grade higher in the hierarchy than his abilities warranted. He had been thought of as a 'safe pair of hands'.
In two weeks he would see in his sixty-fifth birthday; then retirement to Suburbville in Worcester Park. There, he was Richard to his neighbours–but at Riverside Villas he was Dickie to all, from the director general on high to the basement garage guards at the bottom of the pecking order. He had long valued the familiarity as a badge of trust from the tribe he belonged to.
In the dog-days of a career that had run since his recruitment to the Service on New Year's Day 1968, he could not look back on those thirty-nine years of fielding the material that crossed his desk and point to any single moment when his intervention had altered the flow of events, which was ample cause for the resentment he harboured as Mary Reakes peered through his wide-open door, raked her eyes over his ground, the clock ticked and his work role ebbed.
He had been given, in the chaotic days after Nine-Eleven, a small department to run that was intended to search for an impending attack on the United Kingdom by foreign-based, overseas-born suicide-bombers. Down the corridor a huge, expanded section dealt with the domestic-based threat, but he presided over a backwater. And after eleven more working days he would preside over nothing.
There had been few in the crematorium chapel. And fewer had come along afterwards to the garden room of the pub. Most of the patients from the nursing-home who had attended the service had ridden back by minibus in time for lunch.
He was there because his mother had made the arrangements. He had told her that he had an hour free but no longer because after that he was rostered for evening duty. He stood close to her, and when she moved among the twenty or so who had walked from the chapel after the curtains had closed during the last quick three-verse hymn, he followed her.
His mother was a small, neat woman and David Banks towered over her.
If she had not made the arrangements, the gathering would not have happened; he owed it to her to be there–it was a son's loyalty. But the family had long split, he knew no one, and he had been by far the youngest in the chapel and was now in the garden room. He hovered a half-step behind his mother, as if he needed to guard her and she was his Principal. It was his way, not purposely but from instinct and training, to watch over her; it was unlikely that he realized his gaze played over the faces of the elderly who murmured quietly as though one of them, in a best but now poorly fitting dark suit, might threaten her. She had never remarried after his father had died and he tried to see her as often as work permitted, but it was not often enough. She lived a hundred miles from London on the Somerset and Wiltshire borders and he was locked into a life in the capital. For the last three and a half years men of his professional skills had been larded with overtime requirements and extra duties.
He was a detective constable, an authorized firearms officer, in demand to the extent that most evenings he went back to his bedsit in a west London attic reeling from exhaustion. But he tried, moving in her wake, to smile with warmth when he was introduced to distant relations of whom he had heard vaguely but never met. He shook hands, was careful not to squeeze hard and heartily on skeletal fingers. The talk drifted around him but he heard little of it. His mind was away, the funeral of Enid Darke subsumed by thoughts of where he would be that evening and the previous day's briefing on the risk to the Principal posed by the man's presence in the capital on a three-day visit.
An old man came to his mother's side–and it was the policeman's reflex that he stiffened because a stranger had approached her. Banks ground his fingernails into the palm of his hand as if that might relax him.
He could not hear them but sensed the earnestness of the man's words to his mother, and she had leaned closer to hear better. Nor could he see what was passed from the jacket pocket into his mother's grasp. The man did not draw breath, and talked with a faint, whistling reediness. And then he was gone, tottering in the direction of the bar and the steward, and Banks saw him grapple shakily with a further schooner of sherry. His mother held what she had been given in both hands, turned to her son and grimaced.
'What was all that about?' He spoke from the side of his mouth, his eyes roving again.
Her voice was low, confidential and conspiratorial. 'Rather interesting, actually. His name's Wilfred Perry. He lived next door to Great-aunt Enid in some ghastly tower block in east London–he's still there. Eight months ago, or whenever she was moved out and taken to the nursing-home, she knocked on his door early in the morning. She couldn't look after herself any more and needed care. She told him that she had only one item that was precious and she wanted it taken care of, then passed on in the family. She gave it to Mr Perry–why not to one of her family he doesn't know, and I don't. If he'd fallen off the twig before she did, God knows what would have happened to it. Anyway, I've got it. But it's for you–why you? Someone must have told him that you were family, but also that you were a policeman.'
She passed her son a small leather-covered notebook.
He took it. 'What am I supposed to do with it?'
'Read it, I suppose, and keep it. It's family and it's history, so he said–and Great-aunt Enid had made him promise that it would be given to the younger generation of the family. He's done that, fulfilled his obligation.'
The leather had been black once. It had long lost any lustre, was chipped at the edges; across the open side of it a dark stain had smeared down and on to the paper sheets. An elastic band, wound over it twice, held it together. He peered at it and saw the faintness of what had once been gold-embossed lettering. 'So, who was Cecil Darke?'
'According to Mr Perry, Cecil was Great-aunt Enid's elder brother. Sorry, David, I haven't heard of him. She gave it to Mr Perry with that elastic band round it, and he never opened it, never looked to see what was inside.'
Banks saw, across the garden room, that Wilfred Perry–the man who had kept a promise–had set his empty schooner back on the steward's table, and was reaching for another, which was filled. He looked at his watch. 'I have to go, Mum, in a couple of minutes. You'll get a taxi? It's something I can't be late for.'
'You'd better open it, David. I mean, on her funeral day, you should see what was important to her.'
'Yes, Mum–but I can't hang about.'
He peeled off the elastic band, and the spine of the notebook cracked as he opened it. He saw handwriting, barely legible, on the cover's inside…Gad, but he did have to shift himself…and he read aloud but softly so that only his mother shared with him: 'To Whom it may Concern: In the event of my death or incapacity will the finder of this Diary please facilitate its safe delivery to my sister, Miss Enid Darke, 40 Victoria Street, Bermondsey, London, England. Many thanks. Signed: Cecil Darke.' There was a date on the facing page, then close-set writing. It would take his full concentration to decipher it. He snapped the notebook shut, twisted the elastic band back over it and dropped it into his pocket.
'Got to dash. Good to see you, Mum, and you look after yourself.'
'Thanks for coming. You will read it, won't you? I suppose it's part of us.'
'I will, when I've time.'
He pecked her cheek and was gone. He ran through the thin rain across the car park, and the notebook bounced in his pocket lightly against his hip. Later, when he was working his shift, a Glock 9mm pistol, with a loaded magazine of eleven bullets, would–should he run–be flapping against that hip.
Chapter 2
Thursday, Day 1
When he saw them loaded into the two pickups, Ibrahim felt a sense of loss. He had been with them since the previous evening. He did not know their names, where they had come from, what they would be leaving behind them, but in those few hours of chaotic trauma–for all of them–they had been his brothers.
New masters had selected them and now determined into which of the pickups they should climb. The fighting men, those who had made the choices and had seemed to weigh their value, barked instructions and gestured them forward. None was helped over the tail gates: they were left to struggle up. When they were all on board, crouched and half hidden by the sides of the vehicles, Ibrahim fought the stiffness in the joints of his legs and stood. The engines had started, and he heard the clatter of the mounted machine-guns being armed–an alien sound–and he wondered if he should wave in farewell to them.
Their laughter came to him over the gravel roar of the straining engines, as if now they were old friends, but distanced from him who would not travel with them.
None looked at him, none noticed him, so he did not wave.
The farewell that was seared in his mind was in front of him. The fighting men left the engines running and the machine-guns armed, and walked briskly to the man Ibrahim thought of as the Leader, his leader. Each in turn hugged him and their lips brushed the cheeks obscured by the balaclava. Those men had no joy, no happiness, and the kisses were perfunctory, without cheer or laughter. He sensed the difference between the fighting men, and his new-found leader, and the brothers crushed close in the pickups. They broke away, but each held the Leader's hand tight for a moment longer than was necessary, as if that farewell was more meaningful, as if a little of the danger and threat, risk and uncertainty was communicated between them. The pickups edged away across the sand, like the dhows going from the harbour at the end of the Corniche. Then, as the dhows did when they were outside the harbour wall, they increased speed, and the engines throbbed with power.
He watched them go.
For a few seconds the vehicles were lost behind the walls of the building. When he saw them again they were moving fast. He saw them bounce across the raised heap of sand where the single strand of barbed-wire was buried. To the right and to the left, the wire was raised and hung from rusted posts of iron, but at the point Of the track it had been lowered. The wire was the frontier. He did not know, when they were taken into Iraq, why he had been left behind. He watched the two billowing clouds of sand thrown up by the back wheels of the pickups for as long as he was able, long after his eyes failed to find them, and long after the sound of the engines had dispersed in the quiet of the desert.
He felt the chill of the coming evening. He had not noticed it the previous night because then the bodies of his brothers had been pressed close to him.
The Leader was a remote figure, pacing in the sand and staring back often into the last of the light from the sun's setting. Often, he peered in the gloom at the watch on his wrist, then looked up to scan the far horizon where a quarter of the sun's circle, blood red, teetered on the desert's limit. Ibrahim did not dare to interrupt him.
Instead he thought of his home and his family.
Ibrahim Hussein's father sold electrical goods from a business one street behind the Corniche in the town of Jizan. His father, and Ibrahim recognized it, was dominated by melancholy. His wife, Ibrahim's mother, had died four years before from peritonitis; she should not have done–but the incompetence of the medical staff at the clinic, and their panic in crisis, had killed her. His father was a prosperous man in his community and drove the latest model of Mercedes saloon, but inescapable depression ruled his life. Ibrahim, the medical student at university, had identified his father's symptoms as readily as he knew of the incompetence at the clinic when his mother had died unnecessarily. Like a lost man, with only the ignored company of his daughters, his father padded the corridors and living room of the family home, forswore his fellow traders and spoke only of the profit and loss from the business in the street behind the Corniche. Before Ibrahim's mother's passing, his father had mourned two Sons.
Aged only three at the time, Ibrahim could not now recall the news coming to the family home–brought by an imam–of his eldest brother's death in the Jalalabad region of Afghanistan. Now he knew that he had been caught without cover on a track that traversed a cliff slope. Often, the image came to his mind. His eldest brother, escorting a supply train of mules, on a bare path with a cliff face above and below him, had been spotted by the pilot of a Soviet gunship helicopter: cannon fire and rockets had killed him, his fellow jihadists and their beasts.
He could remember well enough the death of his middle brother–the news had been brought to his father by the same imam. It had been on a sweltering day two months after the invasion of Afghanistan by the Americans, when every air-conditioner in the family home had been turned to full power, that the imam had reported the loss of Ibrahim's middle brother, killed near Kandahar with others of the 055 Brigade by the carpet-bombing of the giant B52 aircraft. His middle brother had followed Ibrahim's eldest brother into the ranks of the foreign fighters who had struggled to resist the invasion of Afghanistan, first by Russians and then by Americans. His middle brother had taken cover in a concrete-roofed bunker, which the explosive had collapsed; he might have been killed outright, or left trapped to suffocate slowly in the dust-filled darkness. It was not known.
A complex web of emotions had brought Ibrahim Hussein to this illicit border crossing, used by fighters and smugglers, where a track crossed from the Kingdom into Iraqi territory. At their heart was his feeling for his father, and the wish to give his parent cause for pride that would lighten his acute depression. And it was for revenge, to strike back at evil forces, and to show the world the determination of a young man's Faith…His mother had died because the Kingdom's rulers starved Asir Province of resources, and those corrupt rulers cohabited with the kaffirs, the unbelievers. His eldest brother had died in defence of a Muslim land raped and invaded by unbelievers. His middle brother had died at the hands of the worst of the unbelievers. He believed his own death, his own martyrdom, would liberate his father from melancholy.
He could barely make out the body shape of his leader against the darkening horizon. Then, far away and near to where the sun had been, he saw two pairs of pinprick lights. Now, the Leader came, shadowy as a wraith, towards him, and stood at his side. The hand rested on Ibrahim's shoulder, and he felt the reassurance of its power squeezing his collarbone and the ligaments there.
The voice was soft, the words spoken almost with gentleness: 'I told you, you were not rejected but were chosen.'
He nodd
ed, unable to speak.
'Chosen for a mission of exceptional value, for which you are honoured and respected.'
'I hope to fulfil the trust placed in me.' Pleasure coursed through him.
'It is a mission that requires from you a degree of unique dedication.'
'You have the promise of my best…'
The Scorpion ground his fingers harder on to the boy's bone. It was difficult for him, in his exhaustion, to playact either kindness or concern for a medical student who had declared himself in love with death. But it was important to hold his belief.
'It is a mission that demands of you total obedience to the instructions with which you will be provided. Are you capable of obedience?'
'I believe so.'
'Please, listen carefully to everything I tell you.'
'I will do so, my leader.'
Under the balaclava, his mouth froze out a brief smile. He heard the boy's adoration and admiration for him, but did not seek it. The boy sought praise. He could give it if necessary; however false.
'Without dedication and obedience, the mission for which you are chosen will fail. If it fails, that is a great victory for our enemies.'
'I have dedication and I have obedience. I seek the chance to demonstrate them.'
Another boy with bright eyes, his Faith gleaming…What made him different from those in the two pickups speeding across the darkened Iraqi sands towards distribution points was the ability to walk well. His judgement had been made after he had seen them stride towards him: some had been awkward or heavy in their step; some had looked to the side and flinched when they came close to him; some had been hesitant to the point of almost tripping. This boy had a good step, had not hurried, had not looked around him, had walked as he would have on a pavement at home. That had dictated the choice made by Muhammad Ajaq–the name lived only in the recesses of his mind. The name that existed in the intelligence files of his enemy, and on the lips of those with whom he fought, was the Scorpion–and now, he grimaced, he was the Leader.
The Walking Dead Page 3
