by Andy McNab
Lying on a bed of quilted purple silk was a sabre, the scabbard leather-covered, with gold markings. He lifted it from the box and drew out the blade. He recognized it, a Tartar Ordynka, not an original but newly forged, high-carbon steel with what looked like a solid gold guard and pommel, the wooden grip covered with deep brown hide. It was impressive yet hideously kitsch. A dedication was engraved on the blade: To Vernon, for the next battle. Your friend, Oleg.
6
09.30 (07.30 GMT)
Aleppo, northern Syria
The temperature hovered around zero but Jamal could feel the sweat trickling down from his armpits all the way to his waistband. He gripped the strap of his AK with both hands and tried to keep his breathing steady by counting: in – one, two, three, four; out – one, two, three, four. Something he remembered from choir practice in Croydon, but that seemed a very long time ago, and a very long way from where he was now.
The wind whipped his face and made his eyes water. Eight of them were crammed into the back of the Toyota Hilux, in two rows of four, facing each other. Another three pick-ups followed in the convoy as it bounced through the shattered suburb towards the square where the executions were to take place, lurching and snaking across the roads in a vain attempt to avoid the numerous craters. None of his ‘brothers’ exchanged eye contact, which was just as well for Jamal. They had been told nothing, just to grab their weapons and some rations, get into the trucks and off. But they all knew. The whole district knew. And soon, if Jamal didn’t screw up, so would the whole world.
Dearest sister Adila, he had texted, God willing I will see you very soon. I have found a way. It was a risk but telling her had made it more real. He was going home. All he had to do was get through the next three hours, keep his side of the bargain. And if he was found out? He shut the thought out of his mind.
He looked ahead at the pancaked buildings sliding by on either side, as if trampled by an angry, vengeful god. The place was a wasteland now, and all for what? Stumps of trees along what had once been an elegant boulevard in an upmarket suburb, the boughs either blasted away or chopped down for fuel in the perishing winter. Jamal had thought England was bad in winter but he had never experienced it without gas or electricity.
The residents with any sense had left long ago, for Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey. Some lucky ones had gone to America and Canada. Those who had stayed were made fools of by their courage. He saw them on the sidewalks, a hint of their past affluence shown by a leather coat or some tattered high-end trainers. But mostly they had now become indistinguishable from those who had rushed in to occupy the vacant properties of others who had fled, families from the villages convinced that Paradise on earth awaited them in the empty suburbs cleansed of corruption. What would his father have done? Would he have stayed or gone? Jamal didn’t know, because he barely knew his father.
The pick-up slowed and squeezed through the gap between a bus on its side and a van with crude armour cladding, wreckage from one of last night’s skirmishes. A crowd was picking through the spilled cargo from the bus’s roof rack – the cases and bags of some group trying to flee the city. A child let out a whoop and held up a baseball bat, only to have it snatched out of his hands by a bigger boy.
Jamal’s father was very devout. Growing up had been a constant struggle, trying to reconcile the values of home with those of school and the outside world. His father had had such high expectations. ‘You’re his first-born,’ was his mother’s explanation. ‘He wants you to be an example to the others.’ Jamal had won some battles, like playing football for the school, which had meant going away with the team, once as far as Wigan. But there always followed a long interrogation, not about the match but what had happened on the trip, even who he’d sat with. His father was so easily disappointed, it had become his default mode. Jamal’s good grades and glowing reports were only to be expected, as far as he was concerned. ‘Always room for improvement,’ was his usual comment. Staying out late or meeting girls was strictly forbidden. Jamal’s friends ribbed him for being so obedient.
The atmosphere in the house had got more oppressive. His brothers had told him he was making it worse for them, but their father was not so hard on them. In his last year at school Jamal rebelled – went clubbing, got drunk, smoked weed and even partied with some girls. But he never truly enjoyed himself – it was all just a fuck-you gesture to his father. His sister pointed this out to him. Adila knew him so well. She urged him to be patient: soon he would be going to college. How he wished he had listened to her. But his patience had run out. Going to Syria had been a last resort, a dramatic gesture to prove what a good Muslim he could be, prepared to give his life to help other Muslims, in accordance with Allah’s desires.
In the wing mirror he caught sight of their commander, Abukhan’s black eyes staring back at him. He told himself not to look away just yet. Above all else, show no fear. Give nothing away of his intentions. But he had come to hate those eyes. Four months ago he had looked into them for courage, for certainty, for reassurance of the rightness of their cause. All he saw now was hatred. Abukhan, a soldier since childhood in Chechnya, claimed to have made his first kill when he was six. He had never known peace, had no concept of it. His war was for its own end, a never-ending battle waged against any available enemy. The commanders higher up the ISIS hierarchy respected his appetite for killing – they even deployed him against their own, to dispatch other leaders who had resisted the call to accept ISIS’s authority, or to exact vengeance on any who had strayed from the group.
Jamal and the three others who had travelled with him from Croydon had carried with them such conviction; they were liberators, come to save the people from their oppressors, to carry out the holy orders as defined by their teacher, Emil, who had arranged their passage. Emil, the self-appointed cheerleader for the Syrian rebel cause, who rarely strayed beyond the street in Croydon where his barber’s shop was yet claimed to have links with jihadis from Kazakhstan to Nigeria. The man seemed ridiculous to him now, which was a measure of how much Jamal had changed. What he had seen in Syria went way beyond anything they had been led to expect. And today would be no exception.
As they neared the square, he saw the people who had gathered. Another detachment was already there, holding them back. He could hear a strange keening coming from the women. As the pick-up slowed, he scanned the crowd, his heart hammering so loudly he was sure it could be heard outside his body.
The vehicle lurched to a halt. As Abukhan stepped out of the cab the sound died away. The crowd fell silent and stared. With his black headdress and long black robe under his parka, he was unmistakable.
Abukhan turned to them and beckoned. ‘Come.’
7
08.00
Westminster, London
Tom spotted Phoebe slipping into her office. She shut the door behind her but he opened it and followed her in. She should have alerted him that Rolt had left the hotel last night. ‘You’re trying to avoid me.’
She sighed and shook her head. She looked knackered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry’s not good enough.’
MI5 had put her into Rolt’s office several months before Tom, and it was she who’d been instrumental in his recruitment. Things had worked well and they’d watched each other’s backs. But when Rolt’s election campaign had got going, and he had insisted on having her almost constantly at his side, her dedication and stamina were tested to the limit. Woolf, their Security Service handler, was delighted, but the strain of being constantly on duty was clearly taking its toll on her. She was worn out and there were now tiny lines around her eyes.
But Tom was in no mood for dishing out sympathy. He shut the door abruptly behind him. ‘So what the fuck happened?’
She came up to him and put out a hand as if to place it on his chest. He folded his arms, forcing her to retract it. He had last seen them together at the celebration party at around two a.m., after Rolt had delivered a perfunctory thanks to his election
team. ‘He whisked me away before I had a chance to warn you. I’m so sorry.’
‘For all I knew he was in that hotel room – and possibly you.’
She looked sheepish, the implication hanging in the air. She reached out to him as a drowning woman might to a rock. ‘Please, Tom. It’s got really difficult these last few days. He’s hardly left me alone for a second.’
For all these months Tom had been the only one she could let down her guard with. They had made a good team and had thought they had every corner of Rolt’s life covered. It had brought them closer but he knew better than to get involved with someone on the job. Not only had she been disappointed, it had left her all the more vulnerable to Rolt’s persistent attentions.
‘A text would have done the job.’
Her shoulders sagged and she looked as if she was about to crumple, as if all her training had deserted her. Of course she should have told him that Rolt had left, but maybe she genuinely hadn’t had a chance. And she couldn’t have known that two other people would take the opportunity to use his room.
‘Come on, Tom, you know what it’s like. A moment’s suspicion on his part could put my cover in jeopardy. I have to minimize that risk.’
Something about this didn’t convince him. He had warned Woolf but kept the pressure on her to shadow Rolt’s every move. Woolf wanted to know about everyone Rolt spoke to and, during the election campaign, the names of everyone of significance beating a path to his door, and his celebrity status had mushroomed. As Rolt’s role in the election had become decisive a steady stream of influentials had sought him out, either to be seen and photographed with him or privately to express support. She could barely keep up. And when Rolt started showing her even more attention, Woolf was thrilled: it proved how well her cover was working, and he urged her not to hold back. The implications were not pleasant, for either Phoebe or Tom.
‘Rolt was adamant he didn’t want anyone to see us leave. He was in a really weird, jumpy mood. How could I possibly have known some lunatic was going to break in and—’ She pushed a tear away with an index finger, then let her hands fall to her sides. ‘Okay. So I lost my phone.’
Woolf had issued them with encrypted phones. Losing one got you a big black mark. If she really had run out of reserves, it was time to throw her a lifeline. There was nothing to be gained from giving her a hard time. He took the hand she had let fall. She trembled, almost flinched.
‘Probably it would still have played out the way it did. Either way, Randall would have to be dealt with.’
She looked so relieved it was almost pathetic. Some of the light came back into her eyes. ‘So what did Rolt say?’
‘About what?’
‘Randall.’
‘Just indignant that it was one of his own men. But he wasn’t as freaked out as I’d expected. It was as if in his mind he’d already left Invicta behind.’
Phoebe frowned. ‘It was the weirdest thing, but when the vote came through, he actually looked frightened.’
‘What happened after you left the hotel?’
They heard someone coming up the stairs. He put a finger against her lips until the footsteps had passed.
‘We went to his flat.’ She swallowed hard. ‘He said he needed to be away from all those people. I think it had only just hit him, what it’s going to mean – after all those years of playing the outsider.’
‘What did you talk about?’
She shrugged. ‘We hardly said anything. He kept checking his phone as if he was waiting for a message. Then he was on a call for quite a while in the next room.’
‘Who to?’
She gave him a blank look.
‘You don’t know?’
‘People in the Party, piling in to congratulate him.’
All her answers were vague. If fatigue had got the better of her, it would start to be a problem.
‘And after that?’
‘Why the interrogation? Just back off a bit, will you?’ She looked away, her face reddening. She fumbled in her bag, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, even though it was strictly verboten – a small gesture of defiance.
‘There are some things you don’t have to do for your country, you know.’
She gave him a withering look, but he knew he had touched a nerve. She briefly gathered herself. ‘You forget I’ve been trained for this.’
It was true: she was a professional spook – unlike him. But it was one thing to be a mole inside Invicta, and another altogether to have to stand beside Rolt in the full media glare as he transformed himself into a politician, who thought he needed a woman at his side. Was she being groomed for a bigger role in his personal life?
Her expression softened. ‘I’m sorry, I know I haven’t had to kill anyone or – anything, but it’s been very difficult.’
He gave her a brotherly hug, and felt the fragility of her body against his as she lingered for a moment. ‘Well, with a bit of luck you’ll be out of it any day now.’
‘Woolf hasn’t said anything to me.’ Her tone changed again. ‘Anyway, never mind me. You must be feeling terrible, after what you went through.’
‘Well, it’s what I’m trained for, remember?’
She smiled, despite herself. But he hadn’t finished. ‘So, you stayed?’
She nodded. ‘When I woke up he was gone. It must have been about seven.’
Tom folded his arms and perched on the edge of the desk. ‘He was here when I arrived, about half past. And he’d already had a meeting.’
‘That’s early. Who with?’
He described the encounter in detail, including the cigarette burn, the farewell hug and the absurdly opulent gift with its mysterious note.
Phoebe blinked.
‘Mean anything to you?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, go through all the databases. See if an Oleg comes up. Go right back into his past.’
‘Maybe that’s all he was, some past business associate.’ She sat down and pulled off her boots. The melted snow had formed two small puddles around them. ‘You know how Russian oligarchs love to cosy up to the establishment, get passports for their families, their kids into Eton and so on. And now he’s one of the in-crowd …’
‘This one’s probably not Russian – the gift suggests he’s a Tartar from the Crimea.’
‘Whatever.’ She ground the remains of her cigarette into the side of a waste bin. When Tom had first encountered her she was the most dogged operator, with a ready answer for every question, desperate to make her mark. What a difference a few months had made.
‘How come he’s not shown up on our radar before? Woolf will want to be all over this when we tell him.’
Her face was now a mixture of exhaustion and dread. He would recommend to Woolf that he pull her out ASAP, before she became a liability.
‘Look, he’s about to inherit a whole new team in the Home Office. When he gets stuck into the job he’ll probably forget all about you and the heat will be off.’ Tom didn’t believe for a second it would be that simple. In the last couple of weeks he had observed Rolt paying her more and more attention. He wasn’t about to let her just melt away, not a man like him who was used to getting what he wanted. But Tom wasn’t about to add to her woes by pointing that out.
‘And with a bit of luck you can get on with your life.’ She reached up and stroked one of his lapels. He squeezed her hand and took a step towards the door. She gave him a despairing look. ‘I’m sorry I fucked up.’
‘There is one more thing you can do. The sabre – there’s no manufacturer’s mark on the thing itself, but the name on the box is “Heron”. Find out what that is and maybe it’ll lead us to who sent it.’
8
10.30 local time
Aleppo
The sun had reached its mid-morning point, a weak winter sun that shone a cold, hard light on the proceedings. In front of the shattered remains of their school the girls were lined up, eighteen of them, hands bound behind the
m, either squatting or kneeling amid the rubble, covered from head to foot in black burkas. From a distance they resembled giant crows. The building had been destroyed months ago, the teachers all executed. But some of the girls had been discovered meeting in secret to study. Now it was their turn.
At least he couldn’t see their faces yet. Let me not see their faces, dear God. But he knew he would have to soon. Abukhan, the commander, strode up and down in front of the girls, machete in hand, the skirt of his long black robe flapping in the wind. This was not by a long way the first beheading Jamal had been ordered to attend. Abukhan had required it as part of their training, a rite of passage to harden them until it became routine instead of extreme. He had taught them to fight with machetes, their training filmed for recruitment videos. The flashing blades were supposed to look more physical and appealing, even if day-to-day combat was with AKs and RPGs. When it was played back to them Jamal had been shocked to see himself in action, wielding the blade, shrieking and roaring as they were urged to do. That was the first time he realized, This is not me.
In spite of that, he had done well, the best of the British boys. Every new boy was made to carry out a beheading. They had all had to watch as poor Ziad, one of the four-strong Croydon crew Jamal had travelled with, tears streaming down his face, bore down on the neck of a shackled deserter, the knife shaking violently in his hand as Abukhan barked orders. Jamal had imagined it was done with a heavy machete, one blow and over, like in a movie. Quick, much like chopping wood. It was nothing like that. The blade was long and serrated, like a kitchen knife, and the process dreadful and unending. First the parting of the flesh, then sawing through gristle, then finding the place between the vertebrae – laborious work for the uninitiated – the blood oozing at first, then spouting in an arc as the carotid artery was severed. There was so much of it that poor Ziad had been drenched in it from the waist up.
