by Finn Óg
“Sir?”
“You are in front of a computer, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get on Google and look up Helnan. What type of place is it?”
“I’m not sure that—”
“It’s ok. I shall explain to anyone asking – or listening – that I’m ordering you to take a look for me.”
He could hear the operator typing. Then a pause.
“It is a resort, sir.”
“A beach resort?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it an upmarket beach resort or a downmarket beach resort?”
“Ehm … I do not know, sir. There are images of huts on the beach and, eh, it looks quite nice.”
Waleed breathed out in frustration.
“How much does it cost to stay there?”
He heard the keyboard batter.
“Ok, sir, I see what you mean. There is a backpacker’s hostel there that is cheap.”
“So what does that suggest to you about the phone call that was made?”
“Perhaps the call was made by a backpacker?”
“Perhaps it was,” said Waleed, trying not to take his irritation out on a lowly operator who was just following a script. “Can I kindly request that we monitor unusual phone signals from the area?”
“I believe, sir,” he could sense her bristling, “that this is the only unusual phone signal that was made. And the description of the Nuweiba Port attacker was that he was white and English, which is why I think this was noted and relayed to you, sir,” she added curtly.
Waleed adjusted himself in the seat. The operator was clearly bright and ballsy. He quite liked that.
“Ok, you make a point. Please see what you can determine from the content of the phone call.”
“Perhaps, sir, someone may have already made that assessment.”
Waleed tensed. The operator’s tone had changed a fraction. He got the sense she was telling him something. Waleed thought on that for a moment but his mind was cluttered with questions. He’d come back to it.
“Can you do something else for me quickly?”
“Yes, sir,” the woman said.
“Look up Islamic jihadists in Ireland, please.”
“On our database?”
“On Google, please, eh … what is your name?”
“Tiye, sir,” the operator said, unsure as to whether she should be saying anything beyond her notes.
“Ok, Tiye, I don’t have a computer as I’m driving, so if you could look that up for me we’ll see if you might be right about this being significant.”
“I don’t know if I’m authorised—”
“You’re smart, Tiye,” Waleed cut in, “I can hear that. So have a look for me, tell me what you find.”
Waleed heard the woman hammer at the keyboard. He waited on the line for a few minutes listening to her breathing and reading, and then typing some more. He didn’t think she was taking notes, which was wise, as there would no doubt be inspections of their workspaces and searches of their bags as they left. The GID was nothing if not cautious about possible infiltration.
“Ok, sir?” she began, checking Waleed was still there.
“Go on, Tiye, I’m listening.”
“There have been only two arrests for Islamic jihadist-related activity in Ireland, and one loosely related case. There was a woman from Northern Ireland, which appears to be part of the United Kingdom, who is related to a jihadist, but she moved to England many years ago.”
“Ok,” said Waleed, dismissing it as unlikely. “Go on.”
“There was a man arrested ten years ago for researching how to make bombs. He was sent to prison. Again, Northern Ireland.”
“And the call that was made from Nuweiba was to the Republic of Ireland, wasn’t it? That’s kind of a different country?” Waleed wasn’t entirely sure.
“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” said Tiye.
“So is there anything from the Republic of Ireland?”
There was another long pause as Tiye read.
“Sir,” she said, frustrated and unsure. “There is really very little. One half-Turkish man was convicted recently of raising a few hundred euro for Daesh, but that’s all. There does not seem to be any sort of radicalisation happening there. No indication of it anyway.”
“Ok,” said Waleed, his mind drifting away from any notion of a complicated plot. He thought back to the hint that Tiye had given him earlier and decided to press his luck.
“Tiye, can you elaborate on the calls made from Nuweiba – is there any further information on record?” Waleed formally stated to help the operator out in case the call was being monitored by her superiors.
“Sir, let me seek authorisation,” she said.
Of course she has to, Waleed realised. Why his own agency wouldn’t volunteer everything at first ask remained a mystery to him. As usual it felt like some sort of insane control freakery.
He was placed on hold for an interminable period before Tiye came back.
“Sir, I have authorisation to play you what we have of the second call. We do not possess the conversation in its entirety.”
“Why not?” Waleed asked, although he was eager to hear the audio.
“We do not have capacity to record all calls. Where an unusual communication is detected, it can take a few moments to place a track across the transmission.”
“Ok,” said Waleed.
“Stand by, sir.”
There came a thump and a click and then – relayed through two poor speakers – Waleed could make out a woman and a man speaking in English.
“… sank a ship with a hatchet. You’ll be off to paint your remarkable personal development on the inside of a cave this afternoon. You know, how you’ve evolved so far in the last few years from trained killer to, oh wait, trained killer.”
“Nobody died, Áine.”
“I take it all back. You’ve clearly become cultivated. Make sure you capture that in your cave art.”
“Will you text me the hotel details?”
“Fine.”
Waleed was astonished at the recording. His English was good but not good enough to catch it all. It seemed like an odd conversation.
“Can you send me that file please, Tiye?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you understand it?”
“Some, sir. I have some English.”
“What were the accents?” he asked.
“I do not know, sir. Ireland, maybe?”
“Yes,” said Waleed. “Maybe Ireland. You know what I want now, don’t you, Tiye?”
“Yes, sir. I shall make contact again when that information becomes available.”
Sam stared at the map. He didn’t like it one bit. There was only one road to the place he needed to get to. Either side of that, nothing – sand, stones, sunshine and exposure. Nowhere to hide, he imagined. No cover. No water. If he became compromised on the short trip north, there would be few options beyond a fight, and he was ill-equipped. He hadn’t even kept the hatchet. Still, the journey needed to be made otherwise the whole trip was largely pointless, so he looked around for a car to break into but discovered that such deviant behaviour wasn’t required. Apparently nobody locked their vehicles in Egypt.
Sam found an old Merc at the edge of the port sitting among others identically dusted and exhausted. He chose a silver one because its tyre pressure looked better than the others, which meant more speed and less chance of accidents or punctures. There were a few people around, handing over goods, blethering at a million miles an hour. With the exception of one they all looked preoccupied.
Against a white Toyota van leaned a man who looked as shifty and out of place as Sam. He had a crisp white shirt on with smart trousers creased down the front. Those two elements would have been enough to distinguish him from the bartering sandal-footed Arabs to his left and right, but his shoes put the lid on it. They were fine slip-on articles with small tassels, handmade. Sam generally had no time for p
eople who wore such shoes. In his experience they tended to be exceptionally posh and dismissive. Whoever this bloke was, he wasn’t some Arabian version of the white van man. Sam remained wary of him, suspecting him to be a police or customs officer. He stood and watched as the man’s eyes darted around the port apparently hunting for something. Sam began to worry that the man may be looking for him – after all, someone had sunk a ship in the port in recent days, so additional security was inevitable.
Sam kept his distance, observing the van. After about fifteen minutes the man straightened his back, his eye having caught something. The crisp shirt was dusted off as a larger van trundled towards him. It drew to a halt, nose first, amid a following fug of dirt and dust. The driver didn’t acknowledge the man in the shirt but went immediately to the rear of his vehicle and began, Sam imagined, to lower the loading door. Sam struggled to see what the cargo was but caught glimpses of carpet between the two vehicles. He was losing interest until he caught a familiar name: AVON. A piece of rubber languished out the end of a rolled carpet bearing the name of an old but well-respected manufacturer of rubber dinghies. Sam had seen hundreds of such dinghies in his years working on boats but none recently. The ‘O’ in the logo was a red dot and so distinctive that he was absolutely sure that the carpet had been wrapped around an inflatable boat.
Of course, that didn’t amount to a row of beans, Sam reminded himself, but that the boat had been concealed in a carpet intrigued him. Seconds later the van and the lorry drew away in opposite directions leaving Sam in peace to pinch a Mercedes.
“Sir, we have the text message as ordered.”
“Requested, Tiye, requested.”
“Yes, sir, requested.” She almost giggled.
“Well?”
“The hotel is named as the Hilton in Taba, sir.”
Waleed’s heart plummeted. He knew it well, at least he knew of it. It had been all but destroyed some years ago in a terror attack that had killed a few dozen tourists. The bombing had been instrumental in his own deployment to Sinai. He’d been appointed in the aftermath to shore up intelligence gathering in counterterror. Bad thoughts began to float through his mind: was this Irishman about to attack the hotel or was he just seeking a place to stay? The recording of the phone conversation had been far from clear on any matter other than that the man had been responsible for the sinking of a ship and was, apparently, a trained killer.
Waleed had only just arrived in Nuweiba after a long, sweaty drive. He bought a bottle of water, took a long piss against his own rear wheel and set off again north, to Taba; the edge of Egypt where his country met its nemesis, Israel – and its troublesome cousin, Gaza. On the way he called in reinforcements and ordered the hotel to be surrounded with a ring of security. There would not be another attack there, not on his watch.
Twenty One
Sam couldn’t find the handbrake. He’d never driven a Mercedes before, so he just left it in gear and made the last leg of his journey on foot. The hotel hadn’t been hard to find, although Áine’s text had been typically curt: Hilton, Taba. He’d thought a little about her hostility towards him on the drive north and knew that much of it derived from a protectiveness of her twin sister. He could almost admire that, but it was exhausting nonetheless.
Sam had no idea what he would do when he got to the hotel. All he had was an indication that a GPS device similar to the one used by a known people trafficker had undergone a software update on the premises. Sure the locations matched a broader picture, but as leads went it was as flaky as week-old sunburn.
In the event, he needn’t have worried about deciding his next move. Ten feet from the gate he found himself surrounded by soldiers.
Sinead was pacing. Her sister was reassuring.
“He’ll be grand. He’s always grand. He’s kind of … indestructible.”
It was probably the nicest thing Áine had ever said about Sam.
“Then why can’t you find him?”
Áine was staring at a computer screen. Her sister had asked her to track Sam’s phone, which had gone dark five hours before.
“Maybe he ran out of battery or switched it off to get some sleep,” she said.
“Don’t do that,” Sinead said.
“What?”
“Try to make me feel better by pretending you can’t track a phone even if the signal’s down. Sure, I’ve seen you do it before, remember?”
Áine sat silent. What her sister said was true. Even if a phone was powered down – even in some cases if its battery was removed – the tech existed to keep an eye on its whereabouts. Some agencies had the capacity to listen to what was being said in such a handset’s vicinity, regardless of its security settings.
“He’s a big boy, he’ll be ok.”
“He’s got a daughter to look after,” said Sinead.
“And the rest,” muttered Áine, who was heard but ignored. “Sure, you know what sort of a fella he is. He’d fight his way out of a firing squad.”
But there was no way to fight his way out of the circle of shit he’d landed at the centre of. At all points of the compass stood a man with a rifle, invariably a Kalashnikov. Sam could tell from the way the soldiers rested their fingers along the weapons that they weren’t trigger-happy excitable idiots. These were calm, well-trained professionals, possibly part of a special unit. What was more, they knew to address him in a broken, faltering but educated English, which told him immediately that they knew he was coming.
“Lie down, lie down,” barked the leader.
Sam did as he was bid.
“Hands back to air.”
Sam got the gist of the orders and was cuffed. He was struck by the nervous nature of the soldiers, as if they were confused by him. The body search was correspondingly cautious – they had scissors to hand and cut the back of his T-shirt, gently peeling the cotton away as a nurse might the bandage of a wound. The men seemed preoccupied with his torso but, eventually placated, they patted him down and checked his legs and stomach and lifted him to his feet. His phone was gently taken from his pocket, as was his passport, which wasn’t examined but handed back to him.
Something very strange was going on.
They took his pack of gum, handling it as if it might pose a danger. In reality it simply passed as Sam’s travelling toothbrush. He was shuffled into a rather opulent hotel lobby and guided to a small room behind reception where chemicals were stored on one side and the accoutrements of room service on the other. He was told to sit on the floor and secured by a second set of stainless steel handcuffs to a painted metal pipe.
There he spent two hours alone panicking that he wouldn’t be home in time to collect Isla from her grandparents. He wondered how on earth he would explain to them that in the space of a few days he’d managed to get arrested and jailed in Egypt while they’d been on a roller coaster.
Finally a dishevelled man entered the room. Despite his creased appearance and two-day growth, Sam was immediately aware of his authority. This was a confident leader accustomed to having his questions answered. Sam somehow felt he was dealing with an equal, which could be an advantage but could be a disaster.
“You sink-ed a ship,” the man stared down at him, speaking in clearly understandable but sketchy English.
Sam saw no question, so offered no answer.
“What is name?”
“Sam.”
“Two names?”
“Ireland.”
“Not country. Name.”
“My second name is the name of a country. It’s a bit odd.”
“You name is Ireland, and you also are from Ireland? Passport?” he said.
Either this bloke was good with accents or he was good at his job. Sam saw no point in lying, and rolled to his right. “Arse pocket.”
The man flipped through the pages of the passport but didn’t look up as he spoke. “Why you sink-ed ship?”
Sam felt that was a fair question but it also alarmed him. How did the man know so much about
him – that he was Irish and he’d been to Nuweiba? Sam opted for silence, so the man held out Sam’s phone and shook it a little in demonstration. He then withdrew his own mobile phone and tapped the play button on the screen. Sam heard snippets of the conversation he’d had with Áine.
“Is you, yes?” The man’s question wasn’t really a question – more of a statement. “You are terrorist in Sinai to attack hotel.” The man gestured to the salubrious surroundings of the storeroom.
“What?” Sam asked baffled.
“You are here to attack-ed hotel,” repeated the man.
“No? No!” said Sam, shaking his head furiously. He suddenly realised that the soldiers had been frisking him for an explosives vest.
“Then why sink-ed ship?”
Sam realised he was quite deep in the shit, so he had no choice but to talk. He knew that if he didn’t, the likelihood was that he would end up forgotten in an Egyptian jail and Isla would suffer.
“The ship’s captain was abusing his crew. Also, the ship was dangerous.”
“Is now very dangerous. Is sink-ed in harbour. Is not possible to move.”
“Good,” said Sam.
“You coming from Ireland to sink-ed ship?”
“Yes,” said Sam.
“Why you coming to hotel?”
“To stay. Before leaving.”
“I am not believe-ed you. This woman on phone – she tell you to come to hotel.”
He had a point. Sam sighed. “Another job,” he conceded.
“What is another job?” said the man.
“What is your name?” countered Sam, teasingly, as if with give and take he might talk.
The man stared at Sam for a few moments, then his forehead creased and his eyebrows arched a little. “Waleed,” he said.
Sam looked at Waleed, cool as a breeze, well informed and full of natural authority. He took a risk. “It’s nice to meet you, Waleed. I’ll tell you what I am here to do because you seem like the sort of person who might understand.”
Waleed stared at Sam, curious. There was something about this prisoner, manacled to the floor, that intrigued him. His understated confidence, perhaps. He shrugged, gesturing for Sam to try him.
