Empire State

by Henry Porter

  She made her way to Westbourne Grove and took lunch in a brasserie - sea bass with half a bottle of Mersault - and read the Guardian, which had a detailed analysis of the Norquist shooting and raised the possibility of a stray police bullet. She was interrupted by a man who said she reminded him of an American film actress, whose name he couldn’t quite recall. She tolerated him for a little while, admitting to herself that being complimented wasn’t such a bad experience after nearly a fortnight in the Bunker. But at length, she made her excuses and went to a department store, buying a small plastic pill container, a make-up powder brush and a thin, very flexible metal spatula.

  With these she went home to wait. In the hours that followed, she made some calls, took a nap and packed a fresh set of clothes for her return to the Bunker. At midnight, she drove her car to a road leading off Forsythe Street and parked opposite Rahe’s bookshop. At 1.00 a.m. she left the car and crossed the road. There were still one or two people about, so as she approached the bookshop door she pulled out her own flat keys and lifted them as if to unlock it. At the same time, she shook the head of the spatula from her sleeve, raised it to the door-frame and worked it in at the point where the wad of paper had prevented the lock from sliding home. One firm push and the door opened.

  She removed the keyboard from her bag and went round the desk to face the computer. As she stretched behind the box to remove the keyboard plug, she knocked the mouse. The computer whirred and the screen flashed on. Instinctively, she moved to block the light from the window, but as she did so, she noticed the aquarium screensaver appear and begin to animate. It was exactly as Dolph had described, but what interested her now was the noise coming from the hard drive. Behind the picture of the fish making their progress across the screen, something was going on. She changed the keyboards, knowing this would not affect the computer, and put Rahe’s into her bag, never letting her eyes leave the screen. A few seconds later, she heard the modem dial out. Suddenly she was looking at a web page in Arabic. She read the words ‘Ansar Allah’ - helpers of God.

  A noise came from the door. ‘Is there a problem here, Miss?’ A policeman was standing in the doorway with a flashlight.

  ‘Oh, you gave me a shock, officer.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said, moving from the door.

  ‘Just changing the keyboard - I’ve had a nightmare trying to find the right one. Mrs Rahe wanted it here by morning.’ She pointed to the ceiling. ‘We’d better keep our voices down. I don’t want to wake her.’

  The policeman looked doubtfully at her. ‘You work here? I’ve never seen you in the shop.’

  ‘I read Arabic, so I look after the stock at the back and do the re-ordering from publishers in the Middle East. I’m part-time.’

  ‘Let’s have some light, shall we? Where’s the switch?’

  ‘By the door,’ she said. ‘But I’m going now.’

  ‘It must be difficult to learn Arabic. What’s that say there?’ he asked, pointing to a card.

  ‘This? It says the Pan Arab Library welcomes you. Our staff will be happy to offer every assistance in finding your purchases - Youssef Rahe.’

  ‘Very impressive,’ said the policeman. ‘I don’t know how you manage it.’ His radio crackled with a voice and he turned down the volume. From upstairs, there was the sound of a light footfall.

  ‘I’ll just shut down the computer,’ she said. ‘They left it on.’ She got up and moved around the desk. ‘I must say it’s very reassuring to see you, officer. You hear so much about there being no police on the beat.’

  The policeman nodded. ‘Would you mind if I took a few details from you, Miss? Just as a precaution.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ she said, leaning against the door and letting her forefinger remove the pellet of paper from the lock. ‘My name is Celia Adams. I live at 340 Ladbroke Grove.’ She smiled again, this time more coquettishly. ‘You could give me a lift there.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ he said, writing in his notebook. ‘Celia… Adams. Do you have some form of identification with you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She made as if to look in her bag, but just then a voice called out from the back of the shop. She looked up to see the woman whom she’d spoken to on her second visit. ‘My apologies, Mrs Rahe,’ she said in Arabic. ‘We have woken you up. This officer was worrying about your lock but I told him there was a knack to it.’

  The woman stared at them uncomprehendingly. Herrick knew she had to make a run for it or be arrested. She stretched her hand to the door, flipped the latch upwards and jumped into the street, pulling the door shut behind her. She ran straight across Forsythe Street, dodging a bus, but did not immediately make for her car. Instead, she turned into another side street, glancing behind to see the policeman tearing towards his patrol car with his radio to his mouth. She was badly out of condition, so she took the first possible escape route, a short driveway leading to a high wooden gate. She scaled the gate and found herself in an untidy London garden. Thanking God there were no intruder lights, she negotiated a wall covered by a rambling rose, and lowered herself into the next garden. She was aware of the blue light flickering in the gap between the houses behind her, but kept going through several gardens until, eventually, she ended up in the street where her car was parked. Out of breath and feeling slightly silly but elated, she moved without haste to her car and drove off in the direction of Paddington.

  Ten minutes later, she parked under a street light, placed the keyboard on her lap and unscrewed it with infinite care. She prised it apart and began to stroke the inside surfaces with the make-up brush, gathering the dust and strands of hair that had worked their way down through the keys, and sweeping it all into the pill container. She wasn’t surprised at how much matter had accumulated in the keyboard, for she had once unscrewed her own to repair a jammed key and found a mass of hair and a couple of dead insects. After a few minutes of brushing, the bottom of the box was covered with a few millimetres of debris. She closed the box and placed it in an envelope that bore the address of an establishment in South Parks Road, Oxford. This she fed into a nearby postbox, then drove home.

  Next day, Isis got to the Bunker early and passed through the numerous security checks to find that her place at the archipelago of investigation desks was taken. Nathan Lyne saw her and rose. ‘We have some business, you and I, in the conference room,’ he said, jabbing his finger over her head.

  Vigo and Spelling were ranged on one side of the table. Lyne took up a seat at the end, leaving her standing.

  Spelling didn’t look up. ‘We understand you broke into Youssef Rahe’s shop last night. Can you explain why?’

  How did they know? Surely the bookshop couldn’t still be under observation. ‘I wanted to take a look at his computer,’ she said. ‘His role in all this still seems unclear.’

  ‘Unclear?’ said Spelling. ‘In what way unclear?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem sensible to put all this effort into the eleven others without trying to work out what happened in Lebanon: why Rahe fell for it; who the other man on his flight was. We’re missing something.’

  The room was thick with pious male complacency. Spelling finally looked up, his reading glasses magnifying the anger in his expression. ‘I specifically instructed you not to press your personal inquiries further, for the very good reason that if these people understand we know Rahe is dead, they’re very likely to conclude their entire operation is compromised. I assumed you had grasped this elementary point and yet you go off on your own, break into the premises and provide the police and Mrs Rahe with a very good idea of what you look like. What if you had been apprehended and charged? How would you have explained your presence in the shop?’

  ‘But I wasn’t caught.’

  ‘Don’t be bloody stupid. I’m talking about the risk you took.’

  Vigo shifted in his chair. ‘We were extremely lucky,’ he said. ‘The local police were aware of our interest in the shop and alerted Special Branch about t
he break-in, so we were able to acquire the film from the security cameras outside the adjacent premises.’ He slid a photograph across the table. She looked down and saw herself moving from the door with the plastic carrier bag in her arms.

  ‘What was in the bag?’ he asked, fixing her with utterly expressionless eyes.

  ‘I took a keyboard. You know, to look as if I had some business being there…’

  ‘A little amateurish for you, I would have thought,’ said Vigo. ‘What would anyone be doing mending a computer at that hour?’

  ‘It nearly worked,’ she said. ‘If Mrs Rahe hadn’t come down, I would have been okay.’

  ‘That’s beside the point,’ said Spelling. ‘Your actions threatened RAPTOR. It was exceptionally irresponsible of you.’

  She held her temper and spoke deliberately. ‘I concede that I may have been a bit rash. But I don’t agree that my actions jeopardised anything.’

  ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ Spelling shot back. ‘Mr Collins and I believe you’ve forfeited our trust and therefore your place in RAPTOR.’

  Lyne clenched his hands together and turned them out to click his knuckles. ‘Look, gentlemen, we all agree this was very dumb of Isis, but in her defence I’d like to point out that she’s easily one of the best investigators we have - you saw how quick she was the night before last. Hell, she really gets it. I’d hate to lose her.’

  Herrick tipped her head in thanks.

  ‘What were you hoping to find on the computer?’ asked Vigo. ‘You know we had all that covered. Did you imagine we had overlooked something?’

  ‘To be honest, yes. I feel we’re all missing something. I’ve told Nathan this, countless times.’

  ‘I can vouch for that,’ said Lyne. ‘She’s been a real pain in the ass.’

  ‘And you think that because you spotted the switch at Heathrow, you have some superior insight into this operation? ’ said Vigo.

  ‘Well, at least my personal inquiries achieved something on that occasion.’

  ‘So you felt you had the right to go off piste again?’ said Spelling.

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘And did you see anything on the computer that interested you?’ asked Vigo.

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes, it was in sleep mode and when I touched the mouse it automatically logged on to an Islamist website. I didn’t have time to read much, but it struck me as interesting that the messages were still coming through to a man they knew was dead. I wondered whether his wife had knowledge of the way the screensaver operated as a gateway. I wondered about the site I saw. The internet address showed it was based in Malaysia.’

  ‘The screensaver - did you know about it before?’

  ‘I made it my business to find out as much as I could about Youssef Rahe. I still feel he’s important.’

  ‘But where from?’ demanded Vigo.

  She returned his stare and gently shook her head. ‘My sources,’ she said defiantly. Damn Vigo: he’d still be selling second-hand books if it hadn’t been for her. He owed his resurrection to her. She turned to Spelling, determined to get off the subject of the computer for good. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong, and if you don’t mind, I repeat that we are ignoring an essential part of this case. What happened to Youssef Rahe?’

  Spelling rested his chin on his hands, then removed his glasses. ‘That will be all,’ he said.

  Twenty minutes later the three men emerged, and Lyne came over to Herrick. ‘You’re off the team,’ he said. ‘They’re sending you to Tirana. A suspect is being held there, and we think he’s interesting.’

  ‘Why me? We’ve got our own people at the British Embassy. Why can’t they give him the once-over?’

  ‘The resident officer is ill - cancer. His stand-in is too inexperienced and besides, he’s not in on the big secret. Maybe the suspect has something to tell, and if he does, I want you to be there to hear it. There’s a really good case for going. I was arguing for them to send you before you started burglarising bookstores. Hell, Isis, this is a reprieve. They want you back in a couple of weeks. Jim Collins thinks you’re shit hot.’

  ‘I wish you could persuade Spelling of that.’

  ‘I think he’s already there. But Christ, you’re a fucking handful. You know that?’

  She smiled sheepishly. ‘By the way, thanks for sticking up for me in there. It’s not everyone who would do that.’

  ‘That’s okay. You’re flying out tomorrow morning to Zurich, then Mother Teresa airport, Tirana. Spelling says you’ll have the usual diplomatic status, but they don’t want you mixing too much at your own Embassy, so you’re to stay at the Byron - it’s Tirana’s only good hotel. You’ll see a lot of the guys at the US Embassy, but again, I don’t have to tell you to stay off the subject of RAPTOR. Some of them may have got wind of it, because of the involvement of so many personnel, but you’re Garbo - right?’

  ‘Who am I reporting to?’

  ‘Me - this is an officially sponsored RAPTOR tour. Just see the guy interviewed, turn in a report and bring your butt safely back here in a couple of weeks. It’s a piece of cake. You’ll probably end up with a beautiful tan.’ He paused and placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘But you be careful. There are some bad, bad people out there.’

  ‘Then I’m going to need a story. That requires a little preparation. I don’t know if I’ve got enough time. ’

  ‘You got all day. But make it better than the keyboard story. That was bush-league stuff, Isis - just terrible.’

  She stayed for a further two hours to read the file on the Tirana detainee and draw some money - $7,000 in hundred-dollar bills - from a character who came from the US Embassy and stressed that every last cent was to be accounted for.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Around five-thirty in the afternoon, the public areas of the Hotel Byron in Tirana began to fill, mostly with Albanian gangsters who left their bodyguards out in the car park. They moved through the bar to a crescent-shaped area bordering the gardens, trailing an air of listless menace, and sank into the Lloyd loom chairs to drink, smoke without pause and fiddle with their cell phones. There were some foreigners too; insanely risk-averse businessmen, low-level diplomats and a few edgy American evangelists sipping soft drinks and wearing hiking gear, as if the mere fact of being in this godless, chaotic country required rugged clothing.

  The tableau was not difficult to decode, and as Herrick waited on her second evening for Lance Gibbons, her contact from the local CIA station, she realised that more or less the same groups appeared and seemed to settle at regular tables. Bashkin, the driver who had attached himself to her at Mother Teresa International airport, told her the Albanian men were mostly engaged in drug trafficking, prostitution rackets and smuggling people, cigarettes and fuel.

  Gibbons arrived late, a large, shambling man who quickly announced that he was a veteran of the war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, or the ‘Big A’ as he called it. After a couple of drinks, Isis brought up the purpose of her trip and asked when she could see the suspect.

  ‘Look, that’s going to be kinda difficult right now,’ he said, toying with the scarf loosely hung round his neck. ‘We have to tread carefully with the Albanians. He’s their prisoner. We’re just observing.’

  Herrick gave him a sceptical look, pulled out her phone and dialled Nathan Lyne. ‘I’m having some unexpected difficulty inspecting the goods,’ she said to Lyne. ‘I wonder if you could intervene with the local representative and tell him there’ll be hell to pay if he doesn’t cooperate. I’ll put you onto him now.’

  She handed the phone to Gibbons, who listened silently then said, ‘You got to understand, Nathan, that these goods are not in our possession yet. They’re still being held by the customs service.’

  He hung up and handed the phone back. ‘You know, that was real unfriendly of you.’

  ‘I have to see this man quickly and report back to London. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘You and your man Lyne don’t
cut any ice here. Here is dif-fer-ent. Period.’ He sipped his drink then lit a cheroot. ‘So, Isis Herrick, tell me about RAPTOR. What the fuck is going down? We hear something big’s happening. All our guys pulled in from the field. Operations suspended without warning. What’s the deal?’

  She shrugged. ‘That name doesn’t mean anything to me, but if there is something going down, as you put it, you better be sure that I see this suspect. It comes from the top.’

  He laughed. ‘The top of what - my organisation? No way. The British Secret Intelligence Service? Hey, that would be something, wouldn’t it? I’ll stand to attention and drink to Her Majesty.’

  ‘Where’s he being held?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s classified information.’

  ‘The intelligence headquarters, the prison - where?’