Empire State

by Henry Porter

  Harland didn’t reply.

  ‘For instance, did you know that before he started squiring half the available crumpet in New York, he fought in the Balkans and is very, very rich?’

  ‘He doesn’t make any secret of it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Coulson, looking slightly disappointed. ‘But we think he’s important and I know the Chief is most concerned. ’ This was a common enough ploy. The Chief wants this; the Chief thinks so and so; the Chief has placed the highest priority… It was all bullshit. When Harland was in the Service he used it often, implying to some greedy little defector that his case was under the constant scrutiny of the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service.

  ‘I’m sure he is. Even in his final days at Vauxhall Cross, Sir Robin Teckman is watching developments in a thousand intelligence arenas with the keenest interest.’

  ‘In this instance it happens to be true.’ Coulson got up.

  Two men had materialised by the booth. One of them was the unmistakably patrician figure of Sir Robin Teckman; the other was his bodyguard. Teckman placed a hand on Harland’s shoulder. ‘Don’t get up, Bobby,’ he said.

  Harland couldn’t help returning the smile. He had always liked and admired Teckman. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Chief?’

  ‘Oh, you know, routine stuff. But I must say it’s very pleasant to be in New York at this time of year. The city gives one a spring in the step. I used to love it when I was doing my time at the UN.’

  His guard dropped back to the bar and the three of them were left alone.

  ‘We were talking about the situation at the UN,’ said Coulson.

  ‘I dare say,’ said Teckman, fixing Harland with an interested gaze. ‘Bit of a mess, is it Bobby?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m glad you say that, because from the outside it looks rather as though it is. I mean, he can’t live in your office for ever, can he?’ He paused. ‘I think we ought to be open with you. This man Loz interests us. We’ve been watching him, though not as intensely as your friends in the FBI.’

  ‘Why?’

  Teckman gave him the stonewall smile. ‘Suffice it to say, we were never totally convinced by his story.’

  ‘But why would you even be aware of his story?’

  ‘We’re always interested in the Secretary-General’s friends. Loz came to our notice a year or so ago and we felt he was not quite twelve apples to the dozen. We want you to stick with him. Find out everything he knows. ’

  ‘I don’t work for you,’ said Harland testily.

  ‘But how does this compromise your position, Bobby? You would simply be doing what Jaidi asked you and letting us know as you go along. And of course you will want to keep in touch with Dr Loz because of your back.’ He let out a chuckle. ‘I hear he’s very good but I wonder whether he has done all he can for you. That would be one way of keeping your interest, wouldn’t it?’

  That thought had occurred to Harland as he had lain face down on his desk the previous evening. ‘My impression is that Loz is far too sophisticated and too successful to be involved in any kind of terrorism,’ he said defensively. ‘He’s got everything to lose.’ He wondered how much they knew about Loz’s friend Khan. Probably nothing if they hadn’t already mentioned him.

  ‘Sophistication doesn’t rule out evil. But in substance I agree with you. Still…’ He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. ‘I believe he can lead us to something very important, and I want you to let him take you with him. You won’t even have to tell us anything. Just be aware that we’ll be behind you.’

  ‘If you’re so sure he’s got something to hide, why aren’t you working with the FBI? You share intelligence on all this. Why not now?’

  ‘He’s got something to tell; not something to hide. I’m certain they don’t see the difference.’ The Chief shook his head anxiously. ‘It’s become awfully complicated, this business we’re in, hasn’t it? Now, tell me how you are.’

  Coulson got up and went to join Teckman’s guard.

  ‘Nothing much to say,’ said Harland.

  ‘Any news of her? I had heard things hadn’t been easy.’

  Harland didn’t like to talk about Eva, because it was almost impossible to utter a coherent sentence about her disappearance, especially to Teckman, who had been privy to her work for British intelligence and knew their story. Harland had been away in Azerbaijan for a few days. On his return he found that Eva had cleared out some, but not all, of her things and resigned from her Wall Street job where she’d worked on an Eastern European investments desk. No note, no calls, not a single transaction on their joint account or on any of her credit cards. So he had gone to the Karlsbad in the Czech Republic and searched for her. There was no trace. The large apartment where she had once lived with her mother had been re-let and there was no forwarding address. Eva Rath had disappeared again. No, things hadn’t been easy.

  ‘Bobby, we’d be more than happy to help on this. If there’s anything you think we can do, you know you just have to say the word.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You think she’s alive?’

  ‘Yes.’ Why not tell someone, he thought. Why not say what you actually think instead of this fucking secrecy? ‘I believe… I believe she just decided it wasn’t going to work, and rather than going through the distress of explaining, she just cut out. That’s her.’ Articulating it didn’t make him feel better.

  The Chief nodded. ‘Well, I really am very sorry indeed. You deserve happiness more than most.’ He paused. ‘On this other business, I think you understand that I wouldn’t ask you unless I thought it was of the utmost importance. It really is. All you have to do is keep tabs on this man and we’ll follow along at a discreet distance.’

  He nodded. He knew it would be more than that, but what the hell. It might pay to have some help on hand.

  ‘And this meeting hasn’t taken place. Even with our own people, you haven’t seen me. I can’t stress the importance of this too much.’ He got up, gripped Harland’s shoulder and squeezed it. ‘Look after yourself old son, and get that back better.’ Then he was gone, slipping across the stream of office workers into a black Lincoln.

  Coulson’s exfiltration skills were not required. When Harland took him to his office in the UN building, he found a note from Sammi Loz on his desk.

  I have discovered a way of leaving the building undetected. I shall be in the Byron hotel in Tirana in two days’ time and will expect you there. Before flying, take a day’s rest on your back and drink plenty of water.

  With warmest regards,

  Sammi Loz

  ‘He won’t get out of the country,’ said Harland.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Coulson. ‘After all he’s not on the watch lists and if he’s managed to dodge the FBI outside the building, they’ll assume he’s still in here. They won’t be looking for him at the airports yet.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Harland. ‘Ollins must believe he’s with me for as long as possible.’

  ‘And when they eventually demand you give up the man in your office, you can shove a surprised British diplomat out into the sunshine. That is to say, yours truly.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Herrick and Nathan Lyne took to having a drink together after a late shift, during which a kind of truce operated and they talked about anything but RAPTOR. One evening Lyne told her to hang around because a decision had been taken to arrest the suspect in Stuttgart the following morning at 1.30 a.m. local time. The man known as Furquan, the third member of the Parana group, had in fact turned out to be called Mohammed bin Khidir. His voice had been recorded while he was speaking on a payphone a few hundred yards from his apartment. By chance someone at GCHQ had compared this with samples in their archive and matched it with what was known as the Bramble video.

  Lyne explained that Mrs Christa Bramble, a young widow from Woking in Surrey, had been visiting the ancient sites of Carthage in Tunisia. At one of the sites,
she and her party came under attack from a group of seven men armed with machine guns. Twelve tourists were killed and twenty-one others, including Mrs Bramble, were injured. As she fell to the ground, she kept her finger on the record button of her video camera and captured some blurred scenes and - crucially - the sound of the terrorists shouting and talking. From these came three distinct voiceprints, one of which was that of bin Khidir. Enhancing techniques, applied by the FBI to the film, clinched the identification. One of the moving figures matched Furquan’s height, weight and gait exactly, and that man they knew to be Mohammed bin Khidir.

  Under the terms of RAPTOR, any of the suspects confirmed to have been involved in international terrorism had to be killed or taken off the street - as Lyne put it, ‘stiffed or lifted’. The former seemed a great deal easier, but they knew that a professional killing would act like a bird scarer for the other ten suspects. So a plan was developed, in which bin Khidir would be kidnapped from his apartment in the Turkish district of Stuttgart, and taken to an airfield nearby.

  Herrick and Lyne went to their desks and hooked up to the live feed from Stuttgart. There was a commentary of sorts from a van parked near bin Khidir’s apartment and they caught the clipped sentences of the armed members of the snatch squad.

  Lyne sat tensely. ‘If this fucking thing goes wrong…’ he said.

  ‘I don’t see why they’re taking him,’ Herrick said. ‘We know they’re all terrorists. Why’s he any different?’

  ‘They’re the rules we’re playing by.’

  ‘I’m not sure there should be any rules,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not a very smart thing to say.’

  Her gaze drifted to the glass box, where the operation was being run. Everyone was there - Spelling, Vigo, Collins and the nameless head of the Special Collection Agency who had flown in from Washington DC in order to escort bin Khidir from Northolt back to an unknown destination outside the United States for interrogation.

  They listened as the team gained entry into bin Khidir’s apartment without difficulty. Bin Khidir and his flatmate were drugged before they even woke and he was bundled into an airline services truck and driven to a plane waiting at the airfield twenty miles away. The plane took off for Northolt, but over Luxembourg the pilot reported that bin Khidir had come round and was proving difficult to restrain, even though his hands were tied behind his back. He was lashing out with his feet and throwing himself around the fuselage.

  Herrick picked up the summaries of Southern Group activity from that day and went to the control box. As she entered, Vigo nodded to her from the table where he sat watching Jim Collins.

  ‘Tell them to give him another shot,’ said Collins.

  There was silence until the pilot said that ‘the horse’ - the plane was normally used for transporting racehorses - had gone to sleep of its own accord. Vigo looked straight at Herrick.

  ‘I expect you understand what’s happened, Isis.’ Then, without waiting for her to answer, he turned back to Collins. ‘You’d better tell them to turn the plane around.’

  ‘Why, for chrissake?’ Collins demanded.

  ‘I think you’ll find the horse has swallowed a cyanide capsule concealed in its teeth.’

  Confirmation came in a matter of minutes. The crew had found a dribble of foam on bin Khidir’s chin.

  ‘I don’t imagine there’ll be many takers for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,’ said Vigo, without mirth. ‘Tell me, Isis, what would you do now?’ Spelling and the rest of them turned to her.

  ‘I’d get him back to his own bed, if possible.’

  ‘Which is exactly what we should do, gentlemen, though quite how they’re going to get the body off the plane is another matter. The transport arrangements only worked into the airport. We have not allowed for the return journey.’

  Herrick went to call up satellite maps of the airport on her screen, printed them off and returned to Vigo and Collins with her idea. Twenty-five minutes later the plane landed at the airport, the pilot having complained to the German air traffic control of two un-commanded aileron movements. As the de Havilland Dash taxied through the first light of dawn towards the end of the runway, a hatch in the belly of the aircraft opened and four members of the Special Collection Service, who had cut their way through the perimeter fence, sprang from the darkness to receive the body. Forty-five minutes later, they reported back to say bin Khidir was in bed and the other man was still out cold. Everything was as it should be in the apartment, and bin Khidir’s helpers would assume that he had bitten through the capsule in his sleep. RAPTOR was safe.

  ‘It will be interesting,’ mused Vigo, ‘to see if they report this to the authorities and risk the pathologist discovering the cause of death. My bet is they’ll dispose of the body and get in touch with the man running things. That provides us with an unusual opportunity.’

  Isis watched the glitter of Vigo’s eyes fade as he became absorbed in his thoughts. Then his head turned slowly to the men from GCHQ and the National Security Agency. ‘We should pay great attention to phone calls from Stuttgart over the next few hours, for we know they must deliver a message that their man is dead.’

  Next morning, Herrick went back to her house. The isolation of the Bunker and its eerily regulated conditions - the fact that it was neither hot nor cold, humid nor dry, light nor dark - were getting to her. She and Lyne were getting on each other’s nerves, which had as much to do with her bad temper as his unwavering faith in RAPTOR. She was still sure that RAPTOR was missing something in the flood of information, yet when challenged by Lyne found it difficult to be precise. At that point, he gave her a twenty-four-hour break. ‘Take off, go to a hair stylist, see a movie, get laid,’ he had said, without looking up from his screen.

  Just one of those would be enough, she thought. She booked an appointment at the hair salon opposite Rahe’s bookshop and submitted to the pleasure of a hair wash and head massage. As she had done a couple of weeks before, she moved to the seat that enabled her to watch the bookshop as her hair was being cut. This was how it started, she thought: an average-looking bloke, a bit on the chubby side, bustling from his bookstore to meet a cab and then a plane. She stared at the shop front, imagining him there in his ludicrous green jacket; Vigo’s man rushing to a terrible death in his Sunday best.

  She left the hairdresser and walked up and down the street, noticing a couple of bureaux de change, a printing shop and a Lebanese restaurant. Then she went into the Pan Arab Library - despite Rahe’s absence, the bookstore was still open and doing a reasonable trade. She stopped at the cash desk, smiled pleasantly at the young woman, and asked if the store had a book called The Balance of Power in the Jordanian Islamist Movements by Al-Gharaibeh, a title she remembered seeing on one of the Wallflowers’ desks. The woman explained she was new and wasn’t sure which section the book would be found in: she’d check the computer stock list. As her varnished nails skittered across the keyboard, Herrick’s gaze came to rest on the smears of grime on the return key and space bar - grime accumulated in tens of thousands of keystrokes by Youssef Rahe. She realised suddenly that she had found what she was looking for.

  ‘That’s a Dell computer, isn’t it?’ said Herrick. ‘I’ve had the exact same one for three years and it’s never caused me any trouble.’

  The woman looked at her oddly. ‘Yes, it seems to be very reliable.’

  ‘Can I look?’ asked Herrick, leaning over and memorising the model number. The woman was still trying to find the book on the stock list. ‘I can always come back later,’ said Herrick. ‘I’ve quite a number of purchases to make. Perhaps it would help if I brought a list this afternoon.’

  The woman seemed relieved. Herrick left the shop and caught a cab to Notting Hill Gate where she began to search the second-hand shops. Very soon, she found a Dell for sale, slightly newer than the one in the bookstore, but with an identical keyboard. She examined the socket at the back of the computer and practised pressing the plug home. Then she negotia
ted with the youth behind the counter to buy the keyboard separately. Clutching her prize in an old supermarket bag, she walked a few doors along the street and entered a large bookshop. The back of a recently published book in the politics section called Jihad had an excellent bibliography, from which she took the titles of half a dozen obscure-sounding books on the Middle East.

  This done, she returned to Rahe’s bookshop with the list and the keyboard, but the obliging young assistant at the desk had been replaced by a rather stout and ill-tempered woman wearing a hijab to cover her hair and neck, who must have been Rahe’s wife. She told Herrick to leave the list overnight and return to collect the books next day, then picked up the phone and began speaking. Herrick placed the list on her desk and moved to the door, taking from her pocket another piece of paper now nicely compressed into an oval pellet. As she reached the door, she again checked for an alarm, then wedged the pellet into the metal opening of the lock and slipped into the street.