Patriots

by Kevin Doherty

The bald man was on his feet. He was looking straight ahead, as if something beyond the hedge had caught his eye. Then he turned and looked directly at Ibraham. His right arm lifted in a leisurely, almost slow, movement.

  Ibraham saw the pistol. He saw the dull orange gleam of the street lamp on its metal.

  He ducked low and made to throw himself into the hedge. But the white Sherpa van had pulled up behind him. He hadn’t heard it coming. As he turned for the hedge it shot forward, cutting off his escape. The bald man moved towards him and he heard the van door fly open and feet clattering on the road as someone jumped out.

  He braced himself for the bullet that was surely coming and submitted himself to the will of Allah. But the bullet didn’t come. Instead the bald man held the pistol to his head while the other, a thin-faced man, jerked up his tracksuit top. A bony arm encircled his neck, holding him motionless. He felt a sharp jab in the flesh near his spine. Some seconds passed, then the hold was released, leaving him gasping. The thin man walked to the rear of the van while the bald one kept the gun pressed to Ibraham’s skull. He seized Ibraham’s arm and began walking him towards the open rear doors. Ibraham found that his legs had turned to jelly, as if he’d run too far. His vision blurred and he felt dizzy. He recalled the European students’ descriptions of the effect of alcohol and wondered if this was what it was like.

  By the time they got to the rear doors the bald man’s grip on his arm was the only thing that was keeping him on his feet. The hand let go and he folded over on the van’s scratched metal floor. His legs and feet were pushed in after him and the bald man climbed in beside him. His wrists and legs were tied quickly to some steel brackets on the floor. The last things he felt and heard were a clang as the doors were fastened shut and a sharp lurch as the van accelerated away.

  His fear had gone; he no longer felt any alarm. Just a very deep sense of peace and an irresistible need to sleep.

  *

  Buckinghamshire

  Forty minutes later the Sherpa approached Aylesbury from the west on the A418 and skirted the town to pick up the A413 to Stoke Mandeville. A mile or so along this road it turned sharp left to cut through a modern housing estate. It crossed a couple of roundabouts and turned left onto a back road that wound through farmland and over the canal before rejoining the A418.

  The thin man got to the T-junction with the A418 before he realised that he’d gone too far. He switched on the courtesy lamp and looked more closely at the hand-drawn map on his lap. The bald man slid the curtain behind them open a little and flashed a torch over Ibraham. He was still out cold.

  No other traffic had drawn up behind them, so the thin man reversed the Sherpa until he found a place to turn and take the van back the way they’d just come.

  They found the lock-up garage on their right, close by a small hamlet of houses before they got back as far as the canal. The wooden owl that was supposed to be their marker was there above the doors but they’d missed it in their concentration on the winding road.

  The bald man got out and undid the padlock on the garage. He threw its doors wide and waved the Sherpa back until its rear end was inside by a couple of feet.

  The garage contained a Yamaha RD350 motorcycle with a distinctive red and white fairing. Folded on its pillion was a set of black racing leathers; on top of them sat an all-in-one helmet and tinted visor. The helmet was in the same red and white as the machine’s fairing. A pair of tall black boots and a set of gauntlets were on the floor beside the bike. A stout plank was propped against the wall.

  The men hooked the plank to the rear of the van for a ramp and manhandled the Yamaha up it into the loading bay. The bald man climbed in to tether it upright to the brackets on the van’s side while the thin man loaded the leathers, helmet, boots and plank in after him. Ibraham never stirred.

  Two minutes later they were on the road again; even if someone had been watching from the nearby houses, they’d have seen nothing.

  *

  An hour after that the Sherpa was in north-west London. It came off the North Circular at Neasden and picked up Walm Lane, following it all the way from Willesden Green past the church where it became Chichele Road. It turned off left before the Broadway and chugged through the network of little streets where Irish, Eurasians, Jamaicans, original English and a dozen other nationalities rubbed amiably along together.

  Back on the Broadway the pubs were closing, though the Galtymore Dancehall was still going strong, when the van arrived at the terraced house in Olive Road. The thin man got down and walked around to the van’s nearside door. He opened it and gave his bald friend a hand with their other friend who seemed to have had more than one drink too many. He was a young man in a tracksuit.

  They manoeuvred Ibraham between them and got their arms about him so that they could help him walk to the front door. There was some jocular laughter as they did this, though none of it came from Ibraham. He stumbled a lot and in fact so did they, as if none of them was completely sober. The young man called something out once or twice. But a few blocks away the Galtymore was blasting Irish showband music into the night and his words were lost.

  It was a common enough scene for that area on a Saturday night; not the sort of thing that would attract anyone’s attention.

  *

  But the pretty woman with the crew-cut black hair saw it all. Across the way and a few doors down, she sat at an upstairs bay window and noted everything.

  She was very still apart from her fingers, which occasionally tapped in time with the showband music. All afternoon and all evening she’d sat there, watching. On a tripod beside her was mounted the camera. Again it was loaded with infrared film; tonight it was also fitted with a 300mm zoom lens, precisely aligned with a neat hole in the net curtain that screened her from the road, and focused on the Sherpa and the flat.

  She had tracked the bald man coming and going during the afternoon, popping in and out of the van with his colleague as they worked in its loading bay, and setting off with him in the early evening. The camera was recording them returning now with the young man in the tracksuit slung between them. Its motor whined almost non-stop as they went up the path, such was the woman’s interest.

  Behind her the door opened and her friend came in. She tossed the Volvo’s keys on the table and went off to make coffee. When the lights went out in the ground-floor flat across the way, the black-haired woman undressed and climbed into bed. She was asleep by the time her friend had settled herself in the chair at the window, coffee mug in hand. The thump of the dancehall music became her lullaby.

  25

  Knight dragged himself slowly from the deep well of sleep and struggled to bring his mind and senses into focus.

  Sunday morning. Six thirty. Still dark. The steady drip of rain outside. Like a conversation; or an interrogation. Question, answer, question, answer.

  Yesterday. The Kunaevs.

  ‘Viktor Kunaev,’ he muttered, now fully awake as memory returned. ‘What the hell am I to do with you?’

  Sumner had taken over the debrief as he had requested. In the evening, when all of them had been packed off to Stratfield Saye and Knight was alone again, he had listened to the recording of their exchange.

  Kunaev: The information about the Spetznaz unit is only one reason why we have come to you at this time. Even without it we would have to make our move now. Yasyenevo have decided to recall me. My father died last month. He was my only family in the USSR and the people in Moscow must always have someone to hold as security.

  Sumner: Tell me your father’s name. Tell me a little about him.

  A long pause. Finally:

  Kunaev: His name was Genrikh Genrikhovich Kunaev.

  Sumner: What did he do, what was his work?

  Another pause.

  Kunaev: He held the rank of major.

  Sumner: He was a military man?

  Kunaev: Why do you need to know this?

  Sumner: It all helps us to verify if you are who you say you a
re.

  It was true, but only partly. Kunaev had blundered into the mention of his father; the reluctance in his subsequent responses made that clear enough. Sumner would have been a poor examiner not to pursue it.

  Sumner: I said, was he a military man, Mr Kunaev?

  Kunaev: He was a major in the KGB. He was in retirement at the time of his death.

  Sumner: I see. What was his area of operation prior to his retirement?

  Again silence.

  Sumner: Please answer the question, Mr Kunaev.

  Kunaev: He held a post in the First Chief Directorate.

  Sumner: Can you be more specific?

  Kunaev: It was merely a minor teaching post.

  Sumner: Teaching what to whom?

  Kunaev: He kept the matter of his work very much to himself. I do not understand why you ask this. It is I who wish to defect, not my father. My father is dead. All I want – all I and my family want – is peace in a free country.

  ‘Silly man,’ Knight said aloud, and got up.

  *

  At the convent, cars already lined both sides of the lane up to the small chapel. The Mass was just starting as Knight stepped inside. Old Jod, expecting no further customers, had closed the inner and outer doors and gone to his usual place in the rear pew. He glanced around and grinned toothlessly at Knight as he slipped into the pew beside him.

  Father Hugh, who glared at his congregations if their responses weren’t sufficiently loud or convincing, was extracting some hearty chanting this morning. Jod slid a Mass card along the pew. Knight wouldn’t have dared not to take it; he glanced down to find the place and let the ritual sweep him along.

  He noticed some of the sisters among the worshippers, kneeling in a group near the front. From behind, one looked much like another and he couldn’t tell if Marie-Thérèse was among them or not. The children occupied four or five of the pews next to them.

  He didn’t take communion and left as soon as the Mass was ended, before Old Jod could catch him.

  When he got home he called Stratfield Saye. One of the Protective Security officers came on the line.

  ‘Has Matt Parrish arrived?’ Knight asked him. Parrish was a specialist interrogator from PsyOps Branch.

  ‘Yes, sir. He got here shortly after breakfast. Him and Mr Sumner. They’re at work now with our house guest. Did you want to speak to either of them?’

  ‘Don’t disturb them. I’ll leave it.

  As he prepared lunch he switched on the television in the kitchen for the news magazine programme. The presenter’s voice was speaking over the opening graphics.

  ‘Oil prices continue to hit new lows, last week dropping to half last month’s levels. That brings them to a third of what they were in 1980. In real terms, oil is the cheapest it’s ever been since the 1970s. But yesterday, in a spectacular move timed to coincide with this week’s OPEC meeting in London, Saudi Arabia declared its decision to double its output. This will drive prices down even further; just how low is anybody’s guess. Today we ask …’

  Knight looked at the screen and saw that the presenter’s next words were also the title of that week’s edition, appearing on the screen as he spoke them:

  OPEC – what price peace?

  Apart from William Clarke’s death, Knight had missed the rest of the previous day’s news. Now he paid attention. The screen changed to a long shot of the presenter in the studio. He looked up from his notes and spoke directly to camera as it closed on him.

  ‘Yesterday’s surprise move by Saudi Arabia, which was almost certainly engineered by Sheikh Yamani with the blessing of King Fahd, has angered many in the Arab world. Later we discuss its implications. But we start with a look through OPEC’s troubled history since its emergence in the 1970s as a major force affecting world economies.’

  Library footage paraded glimpses from OPEC meetings of previous years: leading figures, usually Arabs, stepping from limousines outside the world’s premier hotels, being mobbed by press and television crews, giving off-the-cuff interviews or formal media briefings.

  Knight watched closely, his lunch forgotten. He saw Yamani in the early days: sleek, black-haired and Westernised, conspicuous in his business suit among the Arab dress of his OPEC colleagues: the very picture of the sophisticated, Harvard-trained lawyer.

  He was a man who had served three kings in succession. The footage showed him in company first with King Faisal, then with Faisal’s successor, Khaled; last of all, the ample frame of King Fahd sometimes accompanied him. Always, somewhere in the background, would be other Saudis; all that Knight retained of them was a general impression of flowing robes, dark skin and trim beards.

  There was one exception. He began to observe a man that the camera often captured at the periphery of scenes. Unconsciously he began looking out for him. He was a tall, imperious Arab, about the same age as Yamani, with a hooked nose and full goatee. Always he wore traditional robes and headcloth. He was never to the foreground; but once Knight became aware of him his presence brooded over every scene in which he appeared. Sometimes he was slightly out of focus but Knight still recognised him. He wondered idly what it was about him that had compelled his attention. As the footage progressed, he realised: it was the way in which he seemed always to be watching Yamani or Fahd from his unfathomable eyes.

  The final clip was one from the media briefing of the day before, when Yamani had made his startling disclosure of the doubled-capacity tactic. Again, there at the long table was the tall Arab, just to the left of centre, sitting two or three seats away from Fahd and Yamani. His hands were folded on the table, and he had the icy stillness of a wax statue. As ever, the eyes were on his king and the oil minister. Fahd was silent, for he spoke no English and was there only to add his authority to Yamani’s announcement; this briefing was directed at a political audience. Yamani was grey-haired now but as urbane and magnetic as ever, the power of his presence a match for any Hollywood star.

  Then Knight saw it: the look that the tall Arab flashed both Yamani and Fahd. Yamani was talking about his ‘free-fall price strategy’. Even from the safety of the TV lens Knight was chilled by that look. It was a kind that he’d seen perhaps only three or four times before in his life. ‘If looks could kill,’ was what ran through his mind.

  Then the camera began to close in on Yamani; as the distance shortened, the name card on the table in front of the tall Arab came into focus for an instant, then was off screen entirely.

  Not before Knight had seen the name stencilled on the card. Saleem Ibn Abdul Aziz Al-Saud.

  Then the footage was gone and the studio presenter was back, turning to some expert analyst.

  Knight saw no more of the tall Arab.

  *

  Apart from the OPEC development, the main item in the Sunday papers was Clarke’s death. There were photographs of the wreckage of his black Jaguar and a flattened telegraph pole on an isolated country road. The reports said that his driver had died from a heart attack; it would be for an inquest to decide whether this had been the cause or the result of the crash.

  As Knight scanned the reports he realised that he had allowed yesterday’s other events to drive Clarke’s death to the back of his mind. Now he felt guilt and remorse; he thought about Marion and the children, what emptiness there would be in their household today. He compared his own discomfiture as he had awoken this morning with what Marion must have felt, and didn’t feel proud of himself.

  He sighed. As Clarke himself had pointed out, they had lost touch. But that didn’t excuse Knight from offering what comfort he could to the man’s widow. He decided to drive up to Copperfields and visit Marion after lunch.

  *

  But a shock awaited him there. Marion Clarke’s feelings were not as he had supposed.

  ‘I hope he rots, Edmund. You haven’t come here to give me your sympathy, have you?’

  He stared at her. She was in black, but that was her only widow-like feature; and the glass of gin in her hand was certainly n
ot her first that afternoon.

  ‘The story about the car crash is balls,’ she said. ‘He was with one of his floozies. Did you know he was up to his old tricks again?’

  Knight hadn’t known.

  ‘He started up again about a year ago. Not long after he took office. I could generally tell when he’d been with one of them or when he was off to meet one. That’s where he went last night. I don’t know who she was – far less want to.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was some kind of fracas. The police think it started with the girl getting killed. They say Bill did that.’ She gulped at the gin. ‘I wouldn’t put it past the bastard. The girl’s pimp had a gun. You can figure out the rest. The car crash is just a yarn – a cover-up.’

  ‘Where were Bill’s Special Branch minders?’

  ‘Minder – there was only one.’ She laughed up at the ceiling, a short and bitter sound. ‘And he was sitting on his backside in the security room here. Take a drink with me, Edmund?’

  ‘I’d best be going. I just wanted to see how you were.’

  She walked him to the front door. As he stood on the threshold, he noted how the house and grounds were crawling with plain-clothes and uniformed policemen. He wondered about the official mentality that rushed to slap so many bolts on an empty stable.

  He made to kiss her cheek but she turned her face and brushed his lips with her own.

  ‘Don’t be such a stranger in future,’ she said.

  He looked into her eyes for a moment, then turned and walked down the steps to his car.

  Bill Clarke had been screwing around but that didn’t make him a killer. It was time to think about looking up some old contacts.

  *

  He waited until evening, then drove to London. The pub in Shoe Lane was just as busy as on week nights. Most of the drinkers were journalists or in some way connected with Fleet Street.

  He worked his way through to the bar, ordered a pint of best and a large Scotch, paid and told the barman to keep the change.