Heartbreaker: Love, secrets and terror

by Nick Louth

  Wyrecliffe’s phone rang.

  ‘It’s Finn. I’ve got someone for you.’

  ‘Chris. It’s me, Cantara.’

  ‘Cantara!’ His heart leapt. ‘Oh my word! I’m so glad to hear your voice...’

  ‘Listen, Chris. There’s no time. This is very important. You had a pacemaker operation right?’

  ‘Yes, but what’s…’

  ‘It’s a bomb, Chris. Rifat’s had a bomb connected to a mobile phone inserted into your body, and he’s going to detonate it any time. He could be anywhere in the world but can see exactly where you are. This phone has a GPS tracker, he can see it on a computer. When those VIPs come into the room…’

  ‘Rifat? I saw him this morning. Now he’s not the happiest person in the world, but I hardly think it’s possible…’

  ‘Chris listen. Were you rushed unexpectedly into surgery? Do you have a large, low scar on your belly? About a handwidth across?

  ’Yes, yes, and yes,’ he whispered. ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘Chris…get out of there. You need to cut this thing out!’

  He started to get up, walking back towards the entrance of the hall. Over the public address system, journalists were being told to hand in all phones, laptops, computer tablets and electronic devices.

  Wyrecliffe had a hand to his other ear to block out the noise. ‘Cantara, I can’t just cut myself open…’

  ‘You must. You must! It can be done. I did it! I’d have been dead if I hadn’t. The only possible alternative is… ’

  He never got the next word. The phone was snatched away. An Egyptian Army security guard dropped it in a box with dozens of others. ‘No phones please. Security measure,’ he said.

  ‘Christ on a bike!’ Wyrecliffe yelled. He lunged to get it back, but was restrained by two other guards. ‘I was in the middle of an important call!’

  Wyrecliffe knew there was no point in arguing. Cantara was about to tell him something. But what? What alternative was there? Backing off from the guards, he looked for a quick exit. The main entrance was congested with hundreds of angry journalists, some scuffling with the guards who were collecting phones. A side entrance which led to the rest of the hotel was marked ‘prohibited entry’ and was barred by an armed guard. There was one other exit, parallel to the congested one, which was blocked with stacks of chairs, but would lead back out to reception. His name was now being called on the PA, but he ignored it. No time now for bureaucracy. He had to get out. He might be too late to save himself, but he might save others.

  He ran up to the chair-blocked exit, wound up his six-foot three frame, and started tossing aside stacks of metal chairs as if they were playthings.

  * * *

  13.15pm

  Rifat was watching the TV like a hawk. Al Jazeera was reporting a delay in the peace conference. They went live to a correspondent standing on the hotel’s front steps who reported that there were chaotic scenes within the auditorium. ‘This was sparked off by a new security clampdown. Journalists inside are having to surrender mobile phones and other electronic equipment,’ she said. ‘There’s no official comment on why as yet.’

  He looked across at his laptop, clenching and unclenching his fists. Wyrecliffe’s GPS signal was drifting back across the hotel ballroom. ‘Oh no you don’t. There is no way you are getting away from me.’

  * * *

  Cantara stared at the phone. ‘No! It’s gone dead,’ she said. ‘We’ve got two chances. One is to get Chris to safety. The other is to find Rifat, now I know he’s in town. ‘Finn, let’s ring the security people again.’

  The taxi had arrived at the first security post, a metal barrier flanked by rolls of razor wire and staffed by dozens of Egyptian police. Half a kilometre in the distance, the Tutankhamun hotel glinted in the sun. Two cops approached the car.

  Finn slipped a lanyard around Cantara’s neck. ‘This is Taseena’s conference accreditation, which she should have picked up this morning. It won’t get you into the conference, but we’ll get you to the start of security. So long as they don’t check the photo.’

  Finn rolled down the window and addressed the guard in Arabic. The guard looked at the taxi and wagged his finger. No vehicles. Wait for the bus.

  But there was no bus.

  ‘Come on, we’ll have to walk,’ Finn said. The guard glanced at the passes, and waved them on. The heat of the tarmac, and the shimmering road ahead were oppressive. Cantara felt faint, and thirsty, but strode out as much as she dared. Finn was through on the phone to Vonda Watson, and asked that they be met on arrival.

  ‘No, Vonda. I can’t vouch for her. I don’t actually know anything about her,’ Finn said. ‘Except from her name she is supposed to have died in the EgyptAir crash. Yes, she claims to have escaped from Al Qaeda and cut a bomb out of her own body. I agree, but I understand she does have the scars to prove it. My boss, Taseena Christodopoulos, can furnish the details. Well no. I can’t locate her either. The obvious start is Chris Wyrecliffe; you must have spoken to him. Oh, you can’t find him? He’s definitely in there with you. Oh are you?’

  Finn hung up and turned to Cantara. ‘The mountain is coming to Mohammed.’

  Cantara’s question was drowned out by the sound of a helicopter, taking off from the hotel. Within a minute it was above them, coming down. The downdraught of the blades blasted a dust storm into their eyes, and whipped Cantara’s abaya around like a flag. The chopper landed on the road, the door slid open and two bullet-headed American secret service agents in sharp suits jumped out. One had a pair of high heel shoes in his hand. They helped down a well-dressed middle-aged woman, barefoot, but so rigidly-coiffed that even the downdraught made no impression.

  ‘Hi. I’m Vonda Watson, State Department head of security.’ The agent passed her the shoes and she put them on. ‘I can’t let you in, but I can come out. I’ve got some big questions and need some quick answers.’

  * * *

  Leaving the Tutankhamun wasn’t supposed to be as hard as getting in. Wyrecliffe had negotiated his exit from the auditorium and was now pushing his way briskly through the clusters of milling, complaining journalists in the hotel lobby, towards the exit turnstile. Finding some space he accelerated to a steady jog. The turnstile was the only barrier between him and an airport-sized revolving door. But between him and it were a half-dozen guards with berets, crisp white uniforms, and holsters. His speed made them look up. One stepped forward and put up his hand to stop him.

  ‘Stop! Security check,’ the guard said.

  This, Wyrecliffe decided, was going to be a short conversation. He inhaled heavily, put his head down and thundered into them. With his size and rugby training, they didn’t stand a chance. They went down like skittles.

  ‘My apologies,’ Wyrecliffe muttered.

  The turnstile was waist-high, designed to stop anyone getting in. It might work automatically for those leaving, or it might not. He didn’t have time to figure it out. As he raced towards it, he put a hand on the card reader, gave a huge heave and vaulted. He didn’t exactly land cleanly, but he was still on his feet. Ahead was the hotel’s sixty-foot high plate glass front. A bomber’s wet dream, a billion flesh-shredding shards in the making. He had to get past and away from it. Well away. Beyond that were steps down onto a marble causeway which snaked for a hundred metres through the gardens down to the coachpark. If he got there in one piece he reckoned he’d be doing well.

  The automatic revolving door started to glide as he entered, and would not hurry to his pushing. Instead he turned to watch his pursuers, three of whom had made it into the next glass compartment, scowling at him as they fiddled with those carefully blancoed holsters. Nervous thoughts entered Wyrecliffe’s head. Were those holsters easy to unbutton? Did the guards practice regularly? Or were the guns really just for show? Old British army Webley revolvers, heavy and menacing and not very good? He could only hope.

  He slipped off his jacket and as the door finally cleared to let him out, he tossed it just ahe
ad of the advancing panel behind him. The door jammed instantly, and the guards crashed into it.

  The first shot rang out when Wyrecliffe was tearing down the stairs outside. Looking down, he saw huge slabs of dazzling white marble, inlaid with hieroglyphics. As he tumbled, off balance, to meet them, a press release factoid popped into his head. The stair designs were replicas of those found in the boy king’s tomb. But these had now, he noticed, got spatters of blood on them. I do hope it’s not mine, he thought, as he spun to his feet. There was wet warmth in his shoulder, but as yet no pain. Just a dizziness where he had cracked his head on falling. The water gardens, the biggest outside The United Arab Emirates, lay to his right, the snaking path to the coachpark straight ahead.

  * * *

  Rifat saw Wyrecliffe’s trace emerge from the building. In a panic, he surfed through half a dozen TV channels. What was happening at the conference? Was it being delayed, is that why Wyrecliffe was moving away? No. He wasn’t just walking. The GPS trace registered 20kph. He was running. Running hard. For a moment, Rifat panicked. Somehow, Wyrecliffe knew he was a human bomb. That could be the only reason for him to run, surely. To sacrifice himself by getting out of the building. His gloved hands hovered over the mobile phone. He had no choice.

  ‘Bye-bye Daddy,’ Rifat murmured, and hit send. For a moment there was nothing. Then about half a minute later there was a boom. He heard it through the window, and in the background on the TV screen. A reporter in the hotel foyer cringed at the noise, but gamely carried on her piece to camera. Rifat looked down at his laptop. The GPS trace for Wyrecliffe was extinguished.

  * * *

  The distant explosion rocked the chopper, and blew Cantara, Vonda Watson and Finlay to the ground. When Cantara looked up, she saw a puff of smoke drift over the top of the Tutankhamun Hotel.

  ‘No, no! Oh Chris!’ Cantara fell back onto the ground. ‘I was too late.’ She pounded the road with her fist. ‘No one believed me.’

  Finlay helped her to her feet. Vonda Watson was staring at the hotel, speaking on a walkie-talkie. One of the Secret Service agents handed her a pair of binoculars. When she turned to Cantara she was smiling.

  * * *

  The Beretta was checked and loaded, the false passport in hand, the hotel bill paid in advance. Rifat, dressed in dark suit and white shirt, was packed and ready to leave as the first TV reports about the explosion at the Tutankhamun Hotel emerged. Casualties were unknown, there was no comment from the conference organisers. None of the journalists seemed to really know what was going on. Al Jazeera was reporting, oddly, that the blast had seemed to come from the roof. It was something that with more time Rifat would like to have checked. Wyrecliffe had been at ground level, he was sure of that. Rifat couldn’t see the Tutankhamun from his hotel, and didn’t have time to get close enough to check. But with the GPS trace gone, he knew he had achieved his objectives.

  There had been constant helicopter activity since the blast. He knew that it would bring the security forces buzzing all over Sharm like angry bees. Of course, he could easily have detonated the bomb from Cairo, or even from London, but he wanted to see Wyrecliffe face-to-face first, to let him know what he knew, before packing him off to Hell. It had been very satisfying. With Wyrecliffe, Taseena and Cantara all dead, there would be nothing to connect him with the explosion at the Tutankhamun Hotel. He would take the fast Hurghada ferry, an easy ninety minute crossing of the Red Sea back to mainland Egypt. It might not be possible to go today, with all the inevitable security panic, but if not he would go the next day. Once there, Al Qaeda would help him disappear, perhaps down to Somalia with Al-Shabaab.

  Rifat walked slowly down the stairs, laptop bag over his shoulder, and a small suitcase in his gloved hand. An air-conditioned luxury taxi, with darkened windows was waiting for him outside. There would be roadblocks and security, but nothing to concern him.

  * * *

  When Cantara got to the hotel, she ran straight towards the ambulance. Squeezing through a crowd of medics she rushed to see Chris Wyrecliffe, standing with a blanket around his shoulders. He was soaking wet.

  ‘Chris! Oh, I’m so glad to see you,’ she said, and flung herself into his arms. ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Likewise,’ he said, kissing her on the forehead. ‘For eighteen months, everyone was telling me that you were dead. I almost believed it myself. And like magic, here you are. Alive.’

  ‘So how did you survive?’ she asked.

  ‘After your call I ran out and just dived into the water garden. I guessed that staying up to my neck in water might stop the signal getting through.’

  ‘You’re hurt,’ she said, noticing a dressing on his shoulder.’

  ‘Less than you are, I imagine. I collected a bullet in the shoulder. They tell me I can’t go anywhere for now. Looks like I might have to be operated on here, in the ambulance. I can’t say I understand why.’

  ‘Vonda Watson just explained it to me when we were in the helicopter,’ Cantara said. ‘They knew only one sure way to stop a signal reaching a phone, and that was to take down all the local cell transmitters which could reach it. As it happened, for this part of Sharm, all the different cellphone companies share a mast on the roof of the Tutankhamun Hotel. So Vonda just ordered them to blow it up with one of the missiles that were already on the roof. That was the blast we all heard. The reason you can’t be moved is that you might get within range of another cell. The text message to detonate you is still out there, stored at the central switch. You’ve got to stay in the dead cell, where it can’t be delivered. The telecom security people are currently searching for a way to delete all unsent text messages in the local server.’

  ‘What about Rifat?’

  ‘Good question. We’ve got one way of tracking him down that is nothing to do with electronics.’

  * * *

  Rifat’s taxi was held in a queue at a police checkpoint in the centre of Sharm el-Sheikh, the last one before the harbour. Identity documents were demanded. When his taxi rolled forward, the driver lowered his window and passed out his own documents, and the Saudi passport which Rifat had handed to him. The officer examined them. Unable to see Rifat through the tinted rear window, he tapped to get him to lower it. The officer, a small man with a neat black beard, stared at him, and Rifat smiled back.

  He flicked through the olive green booklet, examined the royal scimitar crest, and the embossed plastic covering the picture. Rifat was confident that it was a good forgery, his own photograph but a false name. Only a very experienced official, only a Saudi who knew the kingdom’s passports intimately, would notice the white thread binding, when it should have been a twill of green and white. Other discrepancies were more minor still.

  Finally, the officer smiled and offered Rifat the document. Rifat reached out of the car window, his black-gloved hand ready to receive it. The officer saw the glove, froze momentarily, then whipped out a whistle from his tunic pocket and blew a shrill note.

  * * *

  Rifat’s first silenced bullet cut the note short, leaving the officer spread-eagled on the floor. He bundled the taxi driver out at gunpoint, slid in to the driver’s seat. The car screamed into a sharp U-turn before the other cops could respond, and roared up a sidestreet away from the port. There were warehouses here, and industrial units. It was a Saturday, and there was no one on the streets. He turned left at the first block, then right at the next. Spotting an unshuttered delivery bay to his right, he turned into what seemed to be a textile warehouse. Time was short. The cops would not be far behind. He jumped out of the car just as a young man of about his own age appeared from an untidy office, which displayed the latest women’s fashions. He was a slim man, in a white shirt and darkish trousers.

  Rifat pointed the Beretta at him, the silencer a long accusatory finger. ‘Close the shutter, quick.’ The young man, eyes wide with terror, pointed a remote at the gate, and a steel gate slid down.

  ‘Is there an exit on the other side?
/>
  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unlocked?’

  ‘The keys are there.’ Shaking uncontrollably, he pointed to a desk.

  Rifat took off his gloves. ‘Put them on,’ he demanded. He then forced the young man into the driver’s seat of the car. ‘Now, recline the seat, lean back, head horizontal. Now close your eyes.’

  The man was sobbing and trembling. Rifat could already hear sirens. Leaning into the vehicle, he slotted his own real passport into the man’s shirt pocket.

  ‘Open your mouth.’ He pushed the silencer into the quivering mouth and fired. The rear windows of the car were sprayed crimson. The man’s trembling continued for a second, then ceased. Rifat’s gorge rose to see how little of the face was intact, but was pleased that the gore had not come his way. He carefully wiped the gun’s handle and trigger, then placed it in the dead man’s gloved right hand.

  He took the warehouse keys, and headed for the exit opposite. But as he got there he heard sirens outside. On both sides of the warehouse. He then retreated among the bolts of cloth and the packing containers, finding and then climbing a staircase which led up to an office above.

  * * *

  The local anaesthetic was beginning to wear off by the time that Wyrecliffe and Cantara got back to the Majestic Hotel. His abdomen was aching where the device had been removed. Accompanied by a short and fat police inspector, they made their way slowly along the corridor to Taseena’s room. Sombre-faced police and hotel security guards were waiting outside, and there was blue and white tape across the open door. Wyrecliffe was given a glimpse inside. The fear that he had been harbouring since he learned of Rifat’s intent was now made flesh. Taseena, in death still beautiful, her hair spread wide over the floor, her eyes open wide in shock. The woman in whom all his dreams had grown, but now merely a sepulchre for his love. After a few seconds to confirm the identity, the police soon shepherded them away. It was only a few minutes later, while sitting in the lobby, that the inspector took a long call on his radio. After taking the call, he turned to Wyrecliffe.