by Nick Louth
‘We found the man with the gloves. He committed suicide. Passport found on the body gives his name as Rifat ibn Juluwi Aziz al Khalifa. That’s him, isn’t it?’
Wyrecliffe and Cantara looked at each other. He put an arm around her shoulders.
‘We need some formal identification. Just to be sure,’ the inspector said.
‘I knew him well,’ Cantara said. ‘I can do it.’
‘Are you next of kin then, Miss?’
She shook her head.
‘In theory, I am,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘I’m his biological father, though I’ve only met him a few times. It was his mother that he shot. The family who brought him up live in Saudi Arabia.’
‘If you’re his father, that’s perfect. It’s top of the preferred list for the paperwork. It’s a pretty grisly sight, but we can clear up the scene pretty quickly once we get a formal identification. I shall leave it to you to contact the rest of the family.’
* * *
Sunday
Chris Wyrecliffe and Cantara al-Mansoor, dressed in dark clothing, stood arm in arm in the shadow of the loading bay of the chartered cargo jet. Next to them was Nico Christodopoulos, still clearly in shock. The warm wind whispered across the apron as two ornate coffins, draped in the Saudi flag, were removed carefully from the hearse and winched aboard. Mother and son. Going home.
Just as the tailgate closed and the engines started to roar, Wyrecliffe noticed a police car travelling at speed along the apron, sirens blaring. The cargo aircraft had taxied away by the time it arrived. The fat police inspector levered himself out of the seat, and pointed to the aircraft, now stationary.
‘I’m sorry, we’ve withdrawn permission for the flight.’
‘Why on earth have you done that?’ Wyrecliffe asked.
The policeman mopped his brow with a dirty handkerchief. ‘There’s been a mistake. It’s probably not your fault, but we now believe the body isn’t that of Rifat al Khalifa. It could be the office manager of the textile warehouse, who seems to have gone missing.’
‘So where is Rifat?’ Cantara asked.
The policeman shrugged.
* * *
Sunday
The water was calm and clear as the 11am ferry slid out of Sharm el-Sheikh. The Sunday journey to Hurghada on the Egyptian mainland would take an hour and a half on the sleek high-speed vessel. The incoming boat had been crowded with construction and hotel workers arriving for the start of the Islamic working week. But the departing vessel was almost empty bar a few tourists. Having waited twenty-four hours, hiding overnight in the warehouse before travelling, Rifat noticed the security presence on the dockside seemed a bit more relaxed than the day before. The bomber had been found, so the TV said, though they were still looking for accomplices. But they didn’t have any descriptions.
Rifat didn’t yet dare take off the niqab and abaya he had found in the warehouse. Amongst all the female clothing, he’d found plenty of material to bulk himself out in the right places, and a consignment of ladies shoes. None were large enough. He took the biggest, and with textile shears cut the uppers away from the sole. These he stapled to the front and sides of his own shoes. Only the toes ever protruded beneath the hem of the abaya. He’d also found some free samples of women’s eye make-up, and had spent half an hour in the bathroom learning how to put it around his big brown eyes. He was surprised how feminine he looked, with his long mascara-tipped eyelashes. Tall for a woman, but quite elegant.
The only nervous moment was after passing the police, when presenting the ticket on the gangplank. The inspector had looked him straight in the eyes and asked brazenly why she was travelling alone. Where was her family?
‘I am a widow,’ whispered Rifat, turning away. The man nodded, and passed back the ticket. Rifat took it in gloved hands. White cotton ladies gloves, that fitted him perfectly.
Epilogue
One year later
Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, Lebanon
Chris Wyrecliffe sat in the shade of the hibiscus, sipping mint tea and watching Walid and Fatima al-Mansoor fuss over the wedding arrangements. Cantara looked gorgeous in her traditional white dress, embroidered in red and blue, with a headdress sewn with coin decorations along the hairline. Her female cousins, wearing the latest fashionable khaleeji-style hijabs looked on admiringly as she rehearsed the procedure for tomorrow’s ceremony. She even practised a little dancing, moving with an ease and grace which belied the surgery she had undergone just twelve months ago.
The doctors at Sharm el-Sheikh had indeed done a good job on them both. Cantara had miraculously avoided serious infection from her self-surgery, while he had discovered that he did not actually require a pacemaker at all.
There was less now to unsettle his heart, after all. The west London terror cell had been closed down in its entirety, though only the surgeon, Qaladar Tanoli had willingly confessed to his part in the plot. Bram Malik had disappeared abroad, thought to be either in Morocco or Algeria. Irfan Tiwana was still in Belmarsh Prison, protesting his innocence, while evidence was being assembled against him. As for Rifat, Wyrecliffe’s intelligence sources said he was either active in Syria’s growing civil war, fomenting discord in the ranks of the rebels, or back in Yemen, now that Anwar al-Awlaki had been killed in a drone strike. Some said that he was a natural leader for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular.
Foiling the plot to destroy the peace conference hadn’t brought the Middle East any closer to peace. Though the talks had gone ahead, with much talk of reconciliation and land for peace, detailed discussions on implementation broke down in acrimony within a week. The region was nowhere near surrendering its capacity to foil all good intentions.
Wyrecliffe thought often of Taseena. He had twice visited her grave, amid an olive grove overlooking the Ionean Sea, at Nico Christodopoulos’s country estate in Greece. There would never be anyone else, who in life and death, could so move his heart. Taseena had in the last day of her life unwittingly helped Cantara find love too. By sending Finn Finlay to bail Cantara out of gaol, she had introduced her to the man she would marry. Finn had been bowled over from the first moment he saw her, and felt the irresistible spirit within her. When his elderly relatives, not knowing the full media story, had asked how they met he would say: ‘I bought her in an Egyptian prison. And she was very expensive!’
In half an hour Wyrecliffe was going to pick up Finn from Beirut airport, and was going to take him and some of Finn’s colleagues around some of his old Beirut haunts for a restrained stag night. Kat Quinlan, now a trainee at Arab Satellite Broadcasting, had e-mailed that she and Khalil wished them well, and envied them an evening’s drinking while she was stuck on evening duty at the English language editing desk in Dubai. In future, perhaps, she would edit Wyrecliffe’s work.
Once the rehearsal had drawn to a close, and Cantara had changed, Chris whispered something in her ear. She nodded and picked up the huge bunch of carnations and chrysanthemums he had bought at the airport. They walked out of the cramped house, with its newly-installed shower and solar panel paid for by the Fouad Adwan Foundation, and walked across the rebuilt roadway with the underground sewers, paid for by the UNHCR. They threaded their way through cramped homes and narrow alleyways, exchanging greetings with people who came to their doors to watch them, until they came to a hedge of thorn bushes. The thorns, high and tangled to keep out the goats, marked the boundaries of a cemetery, the only open space in Ain al-Hilweh. Passing through a wicket gate, they climbed a slight incline past many hundreds of rough hewn headstones which marked the dead of seven decades of exile. Finally, they reached the three graves they were looking for. Fouad Adwan, Cantara’s father. Hakim Adwan, his only son. Abu Saleem, Cantara’s grandfather. They knelt by the graves and carefully laid the flowers by each. Cantara cried a little, and Wyrecliffe too felt his eyes smart. But as he looked down at the small embossed picture of Fouad Adwan, Wyrecliffe was finally able to say to himself that, in the end, he had fulfilled his pledge to the
man who had risked and lost his life to help bring us news.
END
Afterword
I have been helped by many people for this book. I am indebted to Dr Stuart Hamilton, one of Britain’s foremost forensic pathologists, for his patient explanation of medical procedures. Dr Arthur Holman of the British Heart Foundation was an unrivalled source on early heart pacemakers, and his colleague Dr Mike Knapton steered me through the intricacies of epigastric surgery . Richard Sambrook offered very helpful guidance on BBC practices and the changing nature of TV production from the 1980s to the present day. Hester Russell did a very diligent job of steering me through police legal procedures. I cannot name the security sources who assisted me, but they know who they are, and I thank them. In all cases, any errors remaining are my own. I’d like to thank all the editorial staff at Harriman House. I’m indebted to Jackie for proof-reading. In Cairo and Alexandria, I’d like to thank the Egyptian people who were kind enough to let me share their hopes and aspirations, and hope that they are one day fulfilled.
Above all I’d like to thank Louise for her love and support throughout this three year project.
Have you read...?
Bite by Nick Louth
Tomorrow should be the greatest day of Erica Stroud-Jones’s life. The brilliant young British scientist has found a revolutionary way to beat a deadly tropical disease.
Millions of lives could be saved, a Nobel Prize beckons.
She is in Amsterdam. Tomorrow she presents her secret research to a scientific conference. Watching her will be sceptics and rivals, admirers and enemies. Erica's own eyes will be on sculptor Max Carver, her new American love, to whom she wants to dedicate her achievement.
Tomorrow never comes.
Erica vanishes during the night. Max, a tough former coast guard, is determined to find her. As he digs for clues he finds jealousy, malice and cunning. But even he is shocked by the dark terror he finds at the heart of the woman he loves.
Not only a page-turner, Bite gets to the core of the debate about pharmaceutical ethics.
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00H9H7R1M
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