A Covert War

by Michael Parker

  She gave a kind of so-so shrug. ‘I’m ok, Marcus, I just wish I could have done more to find David.’

  He put his hand over hers. ‘Don’t ever give up,’ he said softly.

  Susan liked the feel of Marcus’s hand on hers. ‘I won’t, but it’s difficult. Anyway,’ she said brightly, ‘why are we here?’

  He grinned. ‘I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you; it’s a state secret.’

  Susan laughed. ‘Now come on, Marcus; what are we doing here?’

  He winked at her. ‘All in good time,’ he told her. ‘All in good time’

  Cavendish came up to the table and put Susan’s coffee down in front of her. He then sat down beside Marcus. The two men were now facing her. There was still a great deal of movement and general noise around them but Susan focussed her mind on the two men.

  ‘My dear,’ Cavendish began, ‘we’ve been doing an incredible amount of work behind the scenes since we saw you last, and you haven’t been forgotten.’

  Susan sipped her coffee as Cavendish spoke, her curiosity level rising.

  ‘But first a little background before I come to the reason for asking you here.’ He glanced away for a moment and Susan wondered if he was play acting; putting on a show for her benefit.

  ‘When your brother was shot, he was working for me.’

  As a statement it carried little weight, but it staggered Susan. She almost burnt her mouth as she dipped her head and gasped. Cavendish put up a hand.

  ‘It happens, Susan; men work undercover for the State, but they are not always allowed to reveal that. Your brother was a very good field agent; it was why he was on assignment at the Mission in Jalalabad.’

  ‘I thought he was a journalist,’ Susan said weakly.

  ‘So did The Chapter.’ Cavendish arched his eyebrows. ‘Well, for a time they did. We believe it was that organisation that tried to kill him.’

  ‘So this meeting is about David, isn’t it?’ Susan asked him, feeling a little surge of optimism rising inside her.

  ‘To a point, yes,’ he told her. ‘But more importantly, it’s about stopping the organisation and their insidious business.’

  Susan looked at Marcus. He just seemed to be sitting there gazing at her with a poorly concealed smile on his face. She felt her colour come up and looked back at Cavendish.

  ‘So,’ the intelligence chief went on, ‘I’ve asked you here to put a proposition to you.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Susan asked warily.

  Cavendish shifted in his seat. He leaned closer. ‘I believe the reason you received that second letter from your brother is because someone is trying to contact me.’

  ‘You?’ Susan interrupted. ‘Why didn’t they send you the letter then?’

  ‘Too obvious,’ he told her. ‘I believe from intelligence I have received from Afghanistan that there is a problem within the organisation. I’m not too clear on exactly what it is, but I believe that there is an element of unrest somewhere in their loop, so to speak.’

  Susan was nodding her head as he spoke. She stopped and lifted the cup to her lips. Marcus watched her closely. She looked over the top of her cup at him, her eyes almost sparkling. Once again she felt conscious of her own behaviour and glanced away.

  ‘So I want to try to develop that weakness, so to speak. It might just be someone giving us an opportunity to get your brother out.’ He paused for a moment. ‘But I have a gut feeling that there is more to it than that.’

  ‘So why have you asked me to come here?’ Susan asked him.

  Cavendish studied the tips of his fingers for a while. Then he looked up at Susan.

  ‘When your brother was working under cover at the Mission, there was another agent there also, but your brother did not know. That agent has never been replaced because the risk of exposure was too great; the organisation would have known immediately. But now I think we have someone who could be ready to work for us in Jalalabad; a case of seeing an opportunity present itself and grabbing that opportunity.’

  Susan was curious and for some reason, alarm bells began ringing in her head. She stared at Cavendish with a frown gathering over her lovely, dark eyes.

  Cavendish dropped his gaze away and looked into his cup. When he saw that it was empty he wrinkled his nose in disappointment.

  ‘Do you want another coffee, Sir Giles?’ Marcus asked him.

  ‘Thank you Marcus, yes.’

  Marcus got up and went across to the counter. Cavendish turned his attention back to Susan.

  ‘As I was saying, I believe we now have somebody ready to go to Jalalabad.’

  Susan expected him to carry on with his explanation, but when she realised Cavendish had stopped for a moment and was looking directly at her, almost peering deep into her soul, she said; ‘Is it Marcus?’

  He shook his head. ‘No my dear; it’s you.’

  Marcus had returned with Cavendish’s coffee before Susan finally spoke. He was unaware that the bombshell had been dropped, although he had been warned by Sir Giles that it was going to happen.

  Susan felt a weakness in her legs. It was as though they were emptying and losing their strength. In fact, she thought she was going to faint, but because she was sitting down she was able to rely on the chair for support. Then her hands started trembling and she could see her fingers shaking. She tried to say something but her voice faltered in her throat and simply came out in a husky croak.

  She lifted her cup and took a mouthful of coffee, swallowing it down with a certain amount of difficulty. Cavendish could see she was in trouble, but he had seen the same reaction many times before. He knew that if Susan had an immediate rejection in her mind, it would have resulted in an almost certain display of histrionics and no doubt she would have walked out of the coffee house.

  But she was still there.

  ‘It would give you an opportunity to look for your brother,’ he told her.

  Susan cleared her throat. ‘What on earth makes you think I could work for you in Jalalabad? I have no training, no qualifications, nothing.’

  He smiled almost patronisingly. ‘You have all the qualifications you need; your brother’s welfare.’

  ‘But I have a job,’ she protested. ‘I couldn’t just walk out.’

  He shook his head. ‘Of course you couldn’t. But it has already been taken care of.’

  Her mouth fell open. ‘You’ve spoken to my manager?’ She could hardly believe it, but then, Cavendish seemed to do whatever he wanted.

  ‘Not quite. Let us say that his superiors have been apprised of a situation that has developed in your life, the need for discretion on his part and the need for a certain amount of shall we say; laissez faire? so that you may travel to India in search of your brother. I can assure you that your job is safe and will be there for you when you return.’

  ‘You told them I was going to India?’

  That certain kind of smile slid across his face. ‘I couldn’t tell them the truth now, could I?’

  ‘What makes you think I want to go anyway,’ she asked him haughtily.

  ‘Because you haven’t said no.’

  Susan looked away from Cavendish and could feel tears welling up at the backs of her eyes. Suddenly she was being given a chance to do something to help her brother, but at the same time she was almost certainly being asked to risk her own life. She thought of Cavendish’s remark that the previous agent had been killed by the organisation. It made her fearful that her own inadequacies might result in her death too.

  But as rational as her thinking might be, and as obvious to her as it was that she was not properly trained for such a task, she knew she could not turn down the opportunity to at least get close to her brother.

  ‘What about Marcus?’ she asked, glancing across at him.

  ‘Later,’ was all Cavendish said.

  ‘Your previous agent was murdered?’ she asked warily.

  Cavendish nodded but said nothing.

  ‘Was the agent a woman?’<
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  He nodded again.

  ‘Who was it?’ she asked knowing already what he would say.

  ‘It was Shakira.’

  ***

  Shakira had arrived in Jalalabad shortly after enjoying a holiday with her parents in Mumbai, India. She had told them that she had managed to get a job with The Chapter of Mercy; a charitable organisation that took in orphans and unwanted children at their orphanage known as The Mission in Jalalabad. And because of the traditional bigotry against infant females, there were many young girls growing up at the orphanage.

  Shakira had no problem getting used to the customs and way of life in Afghanistan. Because she had Indian parents, Shakira might have been expected to wear the traditional Burqa or Chadiri to give it the correct name, but she chose to dress as a westerner because that is where she had been raised while her parents had lived in England before returning to India. Her only sop to tradition and culture was to wear a headscarf at all times.

  Shakira’s first day at The Mission was spent being introduced to the children, of whom there were many, and to the staff of course, who were mainly nuns of a local order. The office where Shakira was to take up her duties had not been used for a few weeks, and it was clear to her that tidying it up was her responsibility.

  It took Shakira about a week to settle in to her job which was Programme Development Co-ordinator. At first she wasn’t really sure exactly what was expected of her, but it soon became apparent that the nuns had little time for administration because they were either battling away with the children by tending to them, playing with them, nursing them, feeding them and bathing them. After their devotions there was little time left for anything else.

  The Mission was situated on the north east approaches to the city about ten miles beyond the well- defined city boundaries. A dirt road wound its way up through the foothills, following a river course for a short while before rounding a sharp bend and leaving the river behind. The Mission overlooked a valley lush with vegetation and vineyards, and each morning the sun would lift its head above the ridge between two adjacent hills and shine down like God’s eternal blessing.

  In the winter the sun could be a blessing, but in the middle of summer, it was more of a curse which plagued the lives of the young and old who lived and worked at The Mission.

  Shakira knew she had to juggle two jobs at once: one was the job she had been employed to do by The Chapter of Mercy, and the other was to feed information back to Sir Giles Cavendish at MI6 whenever she had something to send and whenever she had the opportunity.

  Her brief had been short and without too much information, but she had been told by Cavendish that the organisation known as The Chapter of Mercy, usually shortened to The Chapter, was actively taking young children from The Mission, the majority of who were in their very early teens, and passing them on to another group who smuggled children into the Western countries for use in prostitution and also to be used by paedophiles rings.

  The child smuggling was merely an addition to the core business of The Chapter, which was the smuggling of drugs out of Afghanistan and the import of arms into that country. Shakira had to put faces to names and then attach blame and guilt. It was a tall order but she was a trained agent. She was also very clever and with a great intellect. Shakira had an honours degree in ancient Greek, which established in the minds of people like Sir Giles Cavendish that she was capable of compartmentalising problems in such a way that she could get right down to the meat on the bone, and leave out the trash.

  Shakira had been at The Mission for one week when a visitor turned up and demanded to see the nuns. When Shakira pointed out that she was the Programme Development Co-ordinator, her visitor laughed and brushed past her, calling out for one of the sisters.

  Shakira was annoyed to say the least, but in a way, not surprised. Her visitor looked quite brutal, and she was not about to invite an argument, particularly as she was only supposed to observe and report. She kept her temper and asked who he was.

  He told Shakira that his name was Abdul Khaliq. He said he was a regular visitor to the mission, but he only ever spoke with the nuns. His name meant nothing to Shakira, but she did file it away in her memory to add to a list she was putting together.

  Once she had taken him into the office, and he had come to understand that she was indeed running the orphanage, he agreed to sit down and state his business.

  Khaliq told her that he had found several, childless couples who wished to adopt a child from the orphanage, but who were unable to do it legally in their own countries. So, because of the way in which the orphanage operated, he asked Shakira to prepare several girls who he would pick to be made ready for their new lives.

  Shakira had great difficulty in not telling her visitor to get lost. She had to remember that he was one of the reasons why she was there and it wasn’t for her to moralise on the child smuggling; her job was to nail people like him and undo the damage his organisation was doing to countless young children.

  What appalled Shakira was the absolute gall of the man that he could walk into the orphanage and ‘order’ several children. But what she did know was that each child was prepared with the correct paperwork by the nuns to be presented to the Afghanistan authorities so that they could be released into Khaliq’s custody. Or whoever it was that came calling, which she was to discover in time.

  She also learned, to her horror that girls as young as twelve or thirteen were being brought to the orphanage as orphans and were being transferred out again within a matter of weeks. The nuns were given money provided by The Chapter every time children were brought in, but Shakira discovered that a great deal of what they received was passed on to their Order, which left very little to support the orphans.

  It was about three weeks after Abdul Khaliq’s visit that five children had been made ready for collection by the obnoxious man. Shakira had been warned by the nuns that her presence during the handover might not be desirable. They didn’t explain why, but Shakira had a good idea why, and reasoned that the nuns were really turning a blind eye to what was going on. Either that or they were being deliberately naïve.

  So on the evening of the appointed delivery, Shakira parked her car in a convenient spot down the mountain road where she could remain, unobserved hopefully, until Khaliq went by with his new charge of vulnerable children.

  The transport had arrived at The Mission just after sunset, and within an hour the Toyota Mini-bus came down the mountain road. Shakira immediately pulled on to the road as the Toyota passed by. She noticed Khaliq was not in the vehicle. This gave her some hope that the man who was driving would not think he was being followed.

  The bus motored into the town of Jalalabad, not in a hurry judging by the care with which the man was driving. Shakira followed resolutely until the bus came to a halt outside the house that served as a consulate to the Turkmenistan nation. The children were immediately taken from the bus and bundled in through a side entrance.

  Shakira waited, keeping the motor running until the driver came out. He climbed into the bus and pulled out into the sparse flow of traffic. She followed until the bus came to a halt in the car park of a small restaurant.

  Although Shakira did not smoke, she needed a reason for going into the restaurant, so she purchased a packet of cigarettes from the cigarette machine. She saw the driver order a meal, so she decided to call it a day and left.

  For the next three months Shakira followed people, whether they were innocent parties or suspect. To her it was a matter of complete indifference; she needed to build up a picture of the people who had reason to come and go at the orphanage.

  But one day, Shakira was introduced to a journalist who had been commissioned to do an assignment on the work of the orphanage. His name was David Ellis, and Shakira took to him immediately. It wasn’t long before he was telling her silly jokes which made her laugh. He had a way of making her feel energised whenever he came into her presence. He was also very interested in the work of
the orphanage and spent a great deal of time with her, particularly in the evenings when they would spend some time up on the hillside, watching the sunset and talking small talk.

  Every two or three days, after spending some time with David, Shakira would shut herself in her office and write a short report for Sir Giles Cavendish. She would encode the report and then send it with her mobile phone via the recently launched Mercury 6 British military satellite. The satellite pass time was in the region of ninety minutes, which gave Shakira plenty of time to prepare her report and send it.

  What Shakira did not know, and would never know, was that the CIA in and around the Middle East and Central Asia used that satellite as part of its overall communications cover, under the auspices of Her Majesty’s Britannic Government. And although she used a one-time pad for obvious security reasons, no one in MI6 considered the CIA posed any threat, or represented any risk as compliant sharers of that satellite link.

  But it was that very naïve thinking on the part of British intelligence that led to the murder of Shakira and almost fatal wounding of David Ellis. Since the attacks on the twin towers in New York, remembered all over the world as 9/11, the National Security Agency, the NSA, in America had eavesdropped on all communications traffic originating in the Central Asia as part of its terrorist surveillance programme. And the British intelligence authorities assumed that all their traffic would be sacrosanct, and left untouched by the NSA.

  It was this blunder that led to the CIA being made aware of short bursts of traffic emanating from the heartland of Al Qaeda and other Muslim terror groups in Afghanistan itself.

  The signals were intercepted and decoded, then passed on to the CIA in London, because this was the tracked destination of the coded messages. Ordinarily the message would have been identified as British Military Traffic and deleted, but for reasons best known to the Americans, they were filed into a dead box.

  Because the United Kingdom came within the overall responsibility of the Station CIA chief in London, the knowledge of these signals was passed to Randolph Hudson, a covert member of The Chapter.