A figure snapped upright in a doorway, and he swung, went Isosceles and had the safety off. His finger lay on the trigger stick, and he saw the shape of a woman, and against her chest, down his Glock's V sight and needle sight, was a life-size image of a held baby. He had not fired the paint bullet that would have 'killed' the baby and maybe the woman too.
There was stiffness in his legs and the pistol was a lead weight. He was on his own, isolated. The tribe was quiet behind him: a titter would have broken their prized code of 'professionalism', their totem god. The woman had been to his left–half-way down the Alley. To his right, a figure was thrown up in a window frame. A man: chest in the sights, finger on the trigger, starting to exert the pressure, then seeing, blurred, the man's empty hands with the palms exposed. He had not fired and the man lived. Went on, past more doors and more windows, more broken cars.
He was near the end of the Alley. Fatal, with only a few steps to the end, to relax. He summoned the dregs of his concentration. The car on the left. Two figure shapes jerking upright from either side, their bodies half hidden by the two doors. Saw, a flashed moment, that the shape–male–nearest him held a plastic supermarket shopping-bag. Saw, a lightning fast moment, the far man had a lifted and aimed handgun. Double tap. Two shots fired. A splurge of red paint on a lower chest, and second on the shoulder above the lung space and below the shoulder's bones. Two rivulets ran down the cardboard. He reached the end of the Alley.
When he looked back up it, only the instructors stood there.
He was told he had done well, that three of the others in the Delta team had killed innocents and that two more had fired on 'bad guys' but had missed their targets.
Banks went back to the range with the senior instructor. He learned that the rest of the Delta team had decamped to the canteen. He did not ask, so did not learn, whether they had watched him shoot–but he felt a small glow of satisfaction in the knowledge that three faced a possible murder charge, and two more were dead–and he knew, from that feeling deep inside his mind, that he would not, ever again, make the effort to be assimilated back into the tribe.
On the range, with the senior instructor watching over him, he made his authorization to continue carrying a weapon safe, secure. He scored forty-eight out of fifty and the senior instructor slapped his back cheerfully, then told him not to be a pillock again and waste everyone's time.
When he'd finished they weren't in the canteen. They were sitting in the minibus that would ferry them back to London. The engine kicked into life when he was barely inside, and there was no query as to how he'd done, passed or failed, but the message was there: that he was a pain for delaying them all.
He heard, said in the front, with a camp accent intended to mimic him, '…"perfectly possible that such men there"–Iraqi suicide-bombers, bloody foreigners–"are brave and principled, and though I don't agree…" What fucking crap.'
His eyes closed, Banks shut them out.
He came off the Eurostar, and was a 'clean skin'. Not that Ibrahim Hussein, the youngest and only surviving son of an electrical-goods dealer in the extreme south-west of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, knew that phrase. His knowledge of the covert world of his enemies was as limited as were the inches of rain falling in a twelvemonth on the great desert, the Rub' al Khali, the hostile expanses that he had traversed at the start of his journey and that he would not see again. The importance of keeping his identity as 'clean' as the scrubbed skin on his cheeks was beyond his experience.
What he had learned already was the extent of the tentacles of the organization he believed he now served, and would serve with his life.
He wore the same jeans and trainers as he had at the airport in Riyadh, but his T-shirt was different and showed a reproduction of Jan Asselyn's The Threatened Swan on his chest. He had been told to leave his leather jacket loosely open when he went through the immigration checks at the London terminal. It had been explained to him that the T-shirt, and its motif, created an image of European intellect. He walked from the train towards the descending escalator stairs. His faith in the organization brimmed. There were no doubts.
On arrival at Schiphol in Amsterdam, he had been met and taken by train to a town thirty-five minutes away. He had been asked by his escort not to look at its name on, the station platform, and he had not. He did not register the name of the street to which he was driven. The whole of the previous day he had been alone in an upstairs room, with just two visits to the bathroom, and his food had been left on the rug outside the door. Late that evening a voice had called for him to leave his passport on the bed when he left. Early that morning he had been walked to the town's square where a taxi waited for him. He had sat in the back and the driver had not spoken to him. The only contact had been to point out an envelope of brown paper left on the seat he was to occupy. He had found a Canadian passport in the envelope, a rail ticket that listed a return journey in nine days, and a sheet of paper describing the life history of the young man named in the document. While they drove on the highway south he had memorized his new biography. The taxi had turned into the Belgian town of Lille and dropped him at the main railway station. There was no farewell from the driver, only fingers flicking persistently until he had lifted up the sketched-out biography and handed it forward. On the train, at departure, his passport had been examined by a policewoman and returned to him without comment.
He stepped on to the moving stabs.
It amazed him how many, already, had helped his journey, and the preparation that so far had been given to that journey. He did not know that, inside the organization, more care was given to the acquisition of reputable travel documentation than to the gaining of weapons, the forging of networks and the gathering of cash resources. He descended, and between the sheer sides of the escalator, there was no escape. Ibrahim Hussein had no wish to flee–but if he had there was no possibility of it. The escalator dragged him down towards the subterranean concourse. He saw policemen, huge, their bodyweight enhanced by armour, carrying automatic weapons, but if they saw him they did not notice him.
As he had been told to, he headed towards the sign and the cubicles for Commonwealth passports. A kaleidoscopq., of thoughts hit the young man, who was a second-year student at the university's school of medicine, and dazed him. He had entered, almost, the fortress of his enemy: had breached, almost, their walls with the same ease that he might have entered the Old Souk of Jizan or his father's shop behind the Corniche. He was surrounded by his enemy and their soldiers, but it was as if he was invisible to them. It was where he would strike against those who abused his Faith, and would avenge the martyrdoms of his brothers…A hand reached forward, a bored face gazed into his. 'Please, we don't have all day.. Your passport, sir.'
He offered it. The page of details was scanned into a machine, then the pages were flipped.
'The purpose of your visit, sir?' A tired question.
He said, as instructed, that it was tourism.
'Well, if the weather ever lifts, you'll enjoy your stay, sir. The place is empty so you won't have to queue for the Eye or the Tower. Don't let all the guns put you off. Actually, it's pretty safe here.'
His passport was given back to him. He found himself carried gently towards the last gates by the hurrying crowds from the train. A man, whose bag struck Ibrahim's heel, stopped to make profuse apologies, then dashed on. The last gates were open, and he took the final strides to enter the enemy's fortress.
'That's him.'
'I saw it.' A dry gravelled reply. 'The Threatened Swan has flown to us.'
'Not only flown, but landed.'
'What I say, this is a moment of danger.'
'There have been many moments of danger, but you are right to tell me of it and I recognize it.'
Below Muhammad Ajaq and the man standing beside him, the only one in the whole of his world to whom he entrusted his life, was the well of the Waterloo terminal where passengers came to board the Eurostar for a journey through the tunnel
to Europe, or to leave it. They were at the top of wide steps, where their view would not be blocked. With Ajaq was the man he called, with honest respect, the Engineer. Because of the cold in the streets outside the station, and the rain glistening on the pavements, both could have their collars turned high, scarves at their throats and caps on their scalps. When they left the station they would expand their collapsed umbrellas. They knew of the cameras. Each would have been certain that his face was hidden from the lenses.
'It is good, The Threatened Swan, easy to see.'
'And good also because it has the look of a virgin's innocence, but it is defiant, which means it has determination.'
The Engineer chuckled, Ajaq took his arm and their laughter melded.
'I said to you that he walked well.'
'He has a good walk.'
'The rest were shit.'
'Shit and gone,' the Engineer said. 'Used and gone. But is it only a picture on a shirt of The Threatened Swan that has defiance? Is he determined enough? Is he strong?'
'I'll twist his arm out of its socket, or break it, to make him strong and able to walk…You've seen enough?'
'He has the shoulders and chest to take the vest…I have seen enough.'
Beneath them, the young man had dropped his bag on to the ground by his feet. He looked around him, waiting for the approach. Both Ajaq and the Engineer did the drills familiar to them. They watched for tails, for the surveillance people. To both men, the obvious and unspoken concern was that the youth who was a 'walking dead' had been identified, had been allowed to go on and enter a network. But they saw no tails from their vantage-point, no surveillance. It was this obsession with detail that had kept them alive and loose in the Triangle to the west of Baghdad.
'Have you seen yet the one who meets him?'
'No. He will be here, I am sure–but I cannot do everything.'
'Already, my friend, you have more burdens than one man should carry' the Engineer said sombrely.
They walked away, and the postcard from the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, of a painting created three and a half centuries before, of a swan with webbed claws apart, wings raised to fight and neck twisted in anger, was torn into many pieces and dropped on to a coffee shop table.
The morning was not yet finished, but the day had already been long; The meeting at the coast, the extraction of the packet from the boat's kitchen, the retrieval of monies, the settling of the matter of the boat's driver, more than five hundred kilometres of driving with the Engineer at the wheel and the return to the capital–he was drained. Ajaq needed to sleep before he met the young man. When he had slept he would have the charm and the mesmerizing gaze in his eyes that would calm the one who wished for martyrdom. And the Engineer, also, needed sleep because his fingers must be nimble and supple for the circuits and the wiring.
For part of Muhammad Ajaq there might have been, here, a sense of homecoming. Half of his heritage, his blood, was here. He hated that half…That blood had fashioned him, made him what he was.
They walked in the rain away from the station.
The body floated face down. It was wedged under the slats of the pontoon at the far extremity of the marina's spider legs. The pontoon rested on large plastic drums that gave it buoyancy and also prevented the body being carried by tide or current from under the pontoon. It was beside the berth of a luxury launch that, when the boating season for weekend sailors started, would be the same centre of envied attraction as it had been since the Joker of the Pack had first been moored at Kingswear. Unless a member of the marina's permanent staff or a yachtsman came along that far pontoon, then stopped and peered directly down through those slats, the body might remain undiscovered for several days. If Dennis Foulkes was not seen for a week or two that would not have been remarkable, and his absence from the Joker of the Pack would arouse no suspicion. The launch, tethered to the pontoon, was closed up and none of the portholes or bridge windows gave a view into the galley. An opened bottle of whisky lay on the tiled floor, which was stained below it. When the body was found and retrieved, and the hatches forced open, an impression would be left of a lonely man drinking to a state of intoxication, then coming on deck, losing his footing, slipping, falling–and drowning. A subsequent post-mortem would find whisky traces in his stomach tubes, and marina water in his lungs, no marks of violence on his skin. A forensic search of the launch would identify no other individuals as having been present in the galley on the night of Dennis Foulkes's death: they had worn disposable rubber gloves. The CCTV camera at the marina's gate would not show the arrival of individuals and their walk through the reception area: they had come by dinghy on a route beyond the reach of the lens. A sniffer dog, with an excellent nose, trained by the police or Customs, might have located the faint traces of explosives in a galley cupboard: the chance of such a dog being used, when the scenario of the cadaver's death was so obvious, were minimal. The killing had been done with care.
Its legs and arms splayed out, zebra stripes of light on its back, the body lay–unfound and unmourned–under the pontoon's slats, the last tied knot of a conspiracy's small loose end.
He saw him, could not miss him. The leather coat was open and the white of the swan was clear and prominent on his chest. Ramzi recognized the bird: they glided on the Derwent river, which split the city that was his home, and made nests on an island close to the bridge that linked the shopping centre to the main bypass round Derby and the county cricket field. It had been in the evening paper, last month, that white kids had thrown stones from the bridge's parapet at the swans' nests with the intention of breaking the eggs, and his mother had said it was disgraceful behaviour. Ramzi crossed the concourse, remembered what he had been told to say and came close to the young man from behind his shoulder. Ramzi said, 'Is that the work of the painter Asselyn?'
There was a short gasp, a fraction of hesitation, the turn of a brain's flywheel, then the smile. 'It is the work of Jan Asselyn…Yes, Jan Asselyn.'
He saw relief split across the young man's face. He had been told that he should use no names and that conversation should be limited to the briefest exchange. But the relief at the approach, the successful exchange of the coded greeting and the response killed his intentions. 'I am Ramzi, and I am sorry to have been late. Please, when we meet with others do not say that I was late.'
'My name is Ibrahim. I won't speak of it.'
Ramzi hugged him. Ramzi was heavy to the point of obesity but he used weights and reckoned his bulk gave him authority. He had been recruited twenty-one months before at a cultural centre in the Normanton district of the city after announcing his determination to be a part of the armed struggle against the oppression of Muslims–in Britain, Checbnya, Kashmir, Iraq, anywhere. He had been told then that his value to the armed struggle dictated he went home, never returned to the cultural centre, and 'slept' till he was woken. He had not believed that the terms of his recruitment represented inadequacy, but held the opinion that his talents would be employed in a strike of major proportions. Roused from sleep a week earlier, he had assumed the role of 'muscle' in the cell that was coming together. Once, before the call, and long ago, Ramzi had boasted that his destiny was martyrdom. In his bear grip, he felt the frailty of the young man, Ibrahim, the prominent bones of his shoulders and the slightness of his arms. For a moment he thought of their destruction.
Ramzi towered over him. 'We should go. We are going to walk. It is quite a long way but there are cameras on the buses and trains. We will seem to part now–cameras are watching us. I will be ahead of you and you will follow…'
'Why do the cameras matter?' The question was asked with simplicity, in good but accented English, and seemed to demand honesty.
Ramzi had been told by the woman–who knew everything, who had arrogance–that the cell had been woken and afterwards would return to a second long sleep. The cameras were important because after the strike the cell would disband and wait for a call to reactivate them, their identities safeguarded.
Ramzi said limply, 'It's what I was told.'
Ramzi hugged him again, tighter, heard the breath hiss from the young man's mouth. He broke away and strode off up the stairs to the station's main concourse. At the top–and he should not have–he turned and looked down. He saw the confusion and, almost, pleading in the young man's face, as if he had expected bonding within a brotherhood but was abandoned; he saw the swan on the young man's chest, between the flaps of his leather jacket–was that jacket big enough to hide a belt or a vest? It was a good jacket–and he thought of the birds that had been stoned on their nests in the Derwent river. He lengthened his step.
In that step there was lightness. He could boast of his determination to be a martyr for God, and know he was not chosen. He was in the rain, leaving the station, and his follower would be tracking behind him.
'It is what I saw.'
'But what you say you saw is impossible.'
'I saw it, I promise that to you.'
'A person cannot be in two places at the same time,' Omar Hussein said, and chuckled. 'You are wrong. He is in Sana'a.'
'I saw your son, my nephew, at the King Khalid airport in Riyadh. Omar, I have known him all of his life.'
'Did you see his face?'
'I saw his back, but I have seen him walk–from the front and the side and the back–all of his life and mine.'
'Our country has a population in excess of eight millions. Do you not consider, my brother, that one other boy can walk like Ibrahim, if seen only from the back? He is in Sana'a to see cousins, from his mother's family, and in a week he returns to go back to the School of Medicine. Is that not good enough for you?'
The Walking Dead Page 9
