by Matt Johnson
After I put the phone down, I pulled open the parcel. Like I always do, I read the card first. Jenny’s message was simple: ‘Thinking of you’.
My hands were shaking as I continued to open the box. I breathed deeply to fight back the tears. Inside was a small teddy bear carrying a placard. It read,
‘I Love you, Dad, for days and nights
You told me all you know
Those patient words to make things right
Have helped for me to grow.’
My knees buckled. Within seconds, the tears started. Good intentions, sent to reassure me that I was in their thoughts, now backfired in a major way. I sat on the floor, imagining Jenny alone at her mother’s home trying to explain to Becky where her father was, trying to be confident that she was going to see me again. I felt as if I was being torn apart. I needed to be with my family but couldn’t, not if I were to keep them safe. Had I got my priorities all wrong? Wasn’t there some other way? A way I could live in peace without having to fight for it? Without having to risk losing everything?
I pictured myself dead, saw my own funeral. I could even picture Jenny’s face. I vowed to myself then. It wasn’t going to happen. After one try at the Arab, that would be it. Monaghan could find someone else. But then what? How the hell could I make a safe life for Jenny and Becky knowing he was out there looking for me? I couldn’t. I knew that.
Hobson’s choice.
Chapter 67
Grahamslaw yelled through his open door into the main squad office. ‘My office, something’s on!’
Across the wide, open-plan space, heads turned and conversations across desks paused. But everyone knew who the order was aimed at.
Within moments, Mick Parratt was walking through the door.
‘Surveillance team has been on,’ Grahamslaw said as Parratt closed the door. ‘Finlay met with two others in Regent’s Park. One of them is a PC from Hornchurch, name of Kevin Jones.’
‘Another one who is retired special forces, maybe?’
‘You bet. For Christ’s sake how many of them are there in the job?’
‘About twenty that we know of, and God knows how many that we don’t.’
‘Well, let’s hope they’re not all involved, eh? The man that Finlay and Jones met was heavily disguised. He gave our team the slip when they had to split up to cover all three. Jones went home and then out into the Essex countryside. He visited and looked over a deserted farmhouse and then made a call from a phone box. Right now he’s back at home.’
‘We going to let them run?’
‘I’d bet the Essex farmhouse is a safe house.’ Grahamslaw’s voice betrayed his excitement. ‘They’re gonna snatch someone and then take him there.’
‘The Iranian. Or Costello, perhaps?’
‘One of them.’ Grahamslaw perched on the edge of his desk and indicated that Parratt should sit. ‘What’s the latest on Costello?’
‘Gone to ground. We have a lot of people looking for him but nothing so far.’
‘And we’ve still no idea where the Arab is?’
‘None.’
‘Shit.’ Grahamslaw pushed himself off from his desk and walked to the internal window looking onto the main office. He surveyed his large team as they worked, some on the telephone, others beavering away on computer consoles, all of them in shirt-sleeves or blouses, jackets hanging from the backs of their chairs. ‘I bet he’s their target. That’s why they were studying his picture. They’re going to grab him, find out who stole their files and then…’
‘Kill him … what else could they do? They still think that the missing files story is genuine.’ The disgust was clear in Parratt’s voice. ‘I know I keep harping on, but murder is still a crime, guv, even in the name of national security and even if the cause is noble. I still say we should bring them in.’
‘Accepted, Mick, accepted.’ Grahamslaw turned round and paced the carpet between door and window. ‘No … you’re right. But if they know where the Arab is we can use them. We’ll have the firearms teams on full stand-by from now. When they make the attempt on the Arab, we nick ’em. Coppers or not.’
‘They haven’t sussed the surveillance then?’
‘Not if this meeting in Regent’s Park is anything to go by.’
‘What about the man they met? You said he was heavily disguised.’
‘Like he didn’t want to be recognised.’
‘Or like he knew they were being watched.’
Chapter 68
I telephoned Monaghan later the same day.
As he had suggested, I used a phone box, a different one from that which I had used before. My plan to tell him about the affidavits blew out. As soon as he had given me the information I needed, he hung up. It was going to have to wait.
The Iranian was due to be staying in the St Pancras hotel at Kings Cross. He was using the Selahattin Yildrim identity and a Turkish passport. Of key importance was the fact that there was no surveillance on him yet as the Anti-Terrorist Squad had not yet learned his location. Our instructions were crystal clear. Yildrim was to be captured, taken to the farmhouse and then Monaghan would be out to see us within a day. It all sounded straightforward. Too simple, in fact. The simplicity of it worried me. Operations like this required planning. Contingencies needed to be covered, mishaps allowed for, problems anticipated. We had less than twenty-four hours to kidnap a terrorist, drive him to the remote Essex countryside and then start to interrogate him. And there were only two of us. If the Iranian was armed, and it was likely he would be, he might put up a fight. We couldn’t kill him, as that would defeat the object. We needed a plan.
That evening, over a take-away coffee, Kevin came up with one. A black cab. The front door of the hotel opened up onto a taxi rank. Kevin would act as driver. I would intercept the Arab as he came out the front door, bundle him into the cab and then drive away with him.
‘Just like in the movies,’ I said, and it would have been. In real life it would never have worked.
So we modified the idea. Figuring that Kevin’s plan could only work if the Arab appeared when we were ready, I suggested we went in and persuaded him to come outside. I would pretend to be from MI5. If I bluffed Yildrim into thinking he was surrounded, he should come quietly. Then we’d get him into the taxi. No rough stuff, just a threat in case he should decide that he didn’t want to come. Before we reached the outside, I’d have to find somewhere to search him. The lift would do. Then I’d walk him out to the taxi rank. Inside the cab we’d plasti-cuff his wrists and blindfold him. The more we talked it through, the better I felt. It could just work.
Chapter 69
I was still watching my back. It was driving me crazy, but after what Monaghan had said, I really felt there would be some form of surveillance on me. In Grahamslaw’s shoes, it’s what I would have done.
Driving away from town, I watched the cars behind me and then described them to myself out loud. It was an old technique. Using short-term memory, I might just notice if a car appeared behind me more than once on the journey.
As I approached Potters Bar, I turned down a lane that was a dead end. Parking at the end, I stopped and waited for ten minutes. Nothing appeared. I checked the sky for a helicopter. Again, nothing.
Speeding back down the lane, I headed for the A1. Nothing attempted to keep up with me. As I got onto the A1, I put my foot down and pushed the car to over a hundred. Still, nothing tried to keep up. It looked good. If I was being followed, I didn’t know how.
The light was starting to fade as I reached the cottage. There was no time to waste. I jogged down the garden, into the field and past the old oak tree where my kit lay hidden. The damp grass felt slippery beneath my feet.
In the hedge at the bottom end of the field, I started looking for an observation point. It’s where I would have hidden to keep watch on the cottage. Keeping it as casual as I could, I started checking through the places where a man could lay hidden. I tried to make it look as if I were having a walk, en
joying the late-evening air.
When it came to setting up covert observation, the police had come on leaps and bounds in recent years. Nowadays they employed specialist CROPs officers – trained in Covert Rural Observation Point surveillance and issued with the latest equipment. I knew they would be hard to spot, even though I had a good idea what to look for. If I was lucky, I might hear a cough. But any specialist worth his pay would lie perfectly still as I walked passed. He would keep his breath slow and shallow and trust his camouflage. I knew, I’d done it myself.
Beneath the hawthorn hedges it would still be stiflingly hot. Anyone watching me would need to have taken steps to deflect the anger of disturbed insects. Horse flies were the worst. For some reason, cammo cream seemed to attract them. The little buggers would bite at the worst possible moment. Many a time, I had winced as the fly’s mouthparts stabbed into my flesh and then had to move my hand ever so slowly to squeeze the life out of their tiny bodies. Any sudden movement was strictly a no-no. On observation in open country, movement more than anything was likely to give away your presence.
I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. Everywhere I looked, the grass was untrampled and the ditches empty. Although the trees and shrubs were full in leaf, which made seeing into and out of the undergrowth difficult; if someone was hiding from me, he was good.
After about twenty minutes, I gave up. There was no sign of any observation or anywhere that might have been recently in use. I really did expect Grahamslaw to have me followed. The fact that he wasn’t could mean something or nothing. I wondered if he didn’t suspect me, or maybe he did but didn’t want to pursue it. It was possible he was under orders to let me run. Maybe someone higher than Grahamslaw was pulling the strings. All these maybes … and no answers.
I could only guess.
Chapter 70
That night, I didn’t sleep well.
The air was hot and humid, and my thoughts were full of ‘what ifs’, ‘whys’ and more ‘maybes’. I’d made it through the tears. Now I just felt numb. I was having trouble filtering the confused thoughts and emotions that occupied my mind. I knew there had to be more to what was going on than met the eye, but I couldn’t work out what.
I hadn’t called Jenny. If the telephone was bugged, which by now it ought to be, our conversation might hint that something was on for the next day. I didn’t even dare send her a text message. If the shit hit the fan, Special Branch would know where to come looking. Grahamslaw could guess as much as he wanted, but so long as he couldn’t prove it, I was relatively safe. If we got the Arab away quietly, the Anti- Terror Squad wouldn’t even know that anything had happened.
When the alarm wrenched me awake at seven, it was as if I’d only just dropped off. I felt like death. A hot shower warmed life back into my body but, with no appetite, I gave breakfast a miss.
Kevin and I had picked Potters Bar rail station as our meeting point. It was closed while workmen did some repairs. As a result, the car parks were much quieter than normal. We parked at the rear of the station and quickly moved all the equipment into the boot of Kevin’s car. There was a lot of kit. I’d planned, or so I thought, for every eventuality. Hoods, equipment belts, boots and respirators. Two pistols, spare clips and about two hundred rounds. Shoulder holsters and some stun grenades. There was rope, plastic handcuffs and some chloroform. Kevin also had an MP5 with him. Everything we needed was in two bergens to make it easy to carry and in case we were picked up by a CCTV camera somewhere. I hoped we wouldn’t need it.
We’d done our best to plan for the ‘what ifs’. If things went wrong, it was important that we both knew what to do. If we were compromised at the hotel, we ran. If we were ambushed on the road, we went to ground, kitted up and separated. If we were compromised at the farmhouse, we might have to shoot our way out or surrender. That last scenario scared me the most.
As we left the train station, the words of General Norman Schwarzkopf seemed to echo in my ears. Words he spoke before the land offensive against Iraq in 1991. They filled me with foreboding.
‘No plan ever survives contact with the enemy.’
Words that often proved to be right.
Chapter 71
‘What do you mean you lost them?’ Grahamslaw stood up angrily. His face felt hot. The veins in his temple throbbed, painfully.
Mick Parratt spoke quietly to the two Special Branch officers who now stood in front of the Commander’s desk. ‘You’d better tell us exactly what happened,’ he said.
The younger of the two men cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed by the failings of his team. ‘It was a classic move, sir. They caught a black cab. We tailed them into one of the big cab hire depots at Tottenham. They were in the back of the cab as it went in. About five minutes later seven or eight cabs came out together. They all appeared empty and we couldn’t follow all of them. The three we picked had no passengers, as we might have expected. The targets must have been in one of the others because we sent a black cab of our own into the hire garage a few minutes later. They’d gone.’
‘And have we any idea where they were heading?’
‘No.’
‘Great, just great,’ said Grahamslaw. ‘Still, if they’ve gone to such lengths to lose you they must have guessed you were there.’
‘I’d stake my life they didn’t see us. What they did was a classic anti-surveillance trick. They knew that we wouldn’t be able to follow all those cabs. They took a good chance and it worked.’
‘Clearly,’ said Parratt. The annoyance and sarcasm in his voice was evident.
With a wave of his hand, Grahamslaw dismissed the two Branch men. He sat down heavily. ‘What do we do now, Mick?’
‘Worry about your blood pressure?’
‘Be serious.’
‘I am. You’ve always had a bit of a temper, but lately … well, let’s just say that people are noticing.’
‘Noticing? Noticing what?’
‘You. Everyone here respects you, Bill, but it’s hard not to notice the number of times you seem to be losing it lately.’
Grahamslaw found himself lost for words for a moment. He stared at his old friend with his mouth open. ‘I’ve had things on my mind,’ he said at last, shaking his head.
‘Anything you want to share?’ Parratt asked.
‘Not really.’
‘How’s things with Emma?’
‘Christ, Mick. Are you bloody psychic or something?’
‘Something happened?’
‘Yes … if you must know, she wants to end it. She’s decided to settle down with hubbie and have kids. There’s no longer a place for me in her life.’
‘That a quote?’
‘Just about. She rang me a few days ago and now she’s not answering my calls. I knew it was on the cards but maybe not quite so soon. I miss her already.’
‘Your wife’s still none the wiser?’
‘That’s right … and Emma’s old man doesn’t know about it, either. At least that risk is gone now.’
‘True … look, it’s none of my business but, trust me, it’ll soon pass and it was never going to last. Emma’s still young, she’s going to want different things out of life than old bastards like us.’
Grahamslaw smiled grimly. ‘I know. You’re right.’
He swung his chair around so that Parratt couldn’t see his face, and stared out of the window for a moment. From where he sat all he could see was sky, the vast, cotton-wool cumulus clouds looking like they would be perfect to sink into for a long, untroubled sleep.
He sighed and closed his eyes, then turned his chair back with a business-like spin and laid his hands flat on the desk. ‘OK … let’s get back to what we were talking about. Tell me some good news.’
‘Well, this is their first serious attempt to lose the surveillance. So, either they were tipped off or something is on for today. I think it’s the latter. If it goes wrong, we’ll hear about it and if it goes right then they may well turn up at the Esse
x farmhouse.’
Grahamslaw cupped his chin in his hands as he thought. ‘The farmhouse is covered?’
‘Yes … as are the approach roads.’
‘Right, so the options are simple. One, let them get into the farm house and take them there; or two, take them on the approach road.’
‘That’s about the sum of it.’
‘But if they’re not tooled up and they don’t have this Arab with them, we’re snookered.’
‘If they’ve got the Arab they will certainly be carrying,’ said Parratt.
‘So, what you’re saying is, wait until we see the Arab and then take them?’
‘I think so, yes. We will have to watch the doors of the farmhouse, see them go in and then talk them out. They’ve both got too much to lose to risk not complying.’
‘You assume that there are still only two of them involved in this? What if there’s a whole army of them? I don’t want to start a war with the SAS.’
‘There is nothing to suggest that’ll happen. Apart from the older man at Regent’s Park yesterday, we’ve only ever seen two.’
‘But we only found out about Jones yesterday, there might be more of them.’
Grahamslaw was beginning to get a bad feeling about the whole operation. He raised his hand as Parratt went to speak. ‘Sorry Mick, I think it’s more than time to go upstairs on this one. Call the Cabinet Office liaison at the Home Office. I don’t want an international incident falling in on my lap, and I don’t want a blue on blue with MI5 or the SAS.’
‘You want a COBRA meeting called?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Grahamslaw knew the game they were now in was for higher stakes than the capture of an outstanding IRA bomber. Kidnap and murder of Arab nationals spelled major repercussions. If the Arab turned out to be a diplomat, it would be much worse. He had no choice but to pass this one up the line.
