by Rob Sinclair
By the time he left the cafe the thumping of his heart in his chest was growing faster, the whoosh of blood in his ears getting louder. Nervousness was a state rarely experienced in his adult life, not after what he’d been put through, yet the simple first task ahead had him both anxious and terrified.
He turned off a small shopping street and as he looked down the residential road ahead, a rush of memories hit him and he wobbled, his legs feeling like they might cave in. Off to his left was the sparse recreation ground. A plain strip of grass with one corner taken over by a small children’s playground. Swings, slide, seesaw. He heard the sounds of memories in his head. Giggling, shouting, crying. The oomphs as footballs were booted about the place. The clicking of oiled chains whizzing round the cogs of pedal bikes. Sounds of children being children. They were almost exclusively happy memories, yet they were irrevocably tarnished.
In contrast to the grimy buildings surrounding the play area, all the equipment looked new. Not how he remembered it at all, yet the strength of the memories of being there – the happiness of them – was still real and vivid as he stared.
Across the road sat the four-storey red brick row of apartments: a step up from the 1960s concrete monolith towers that dominated much of the London skyline, but no doubt still some of the cheapest accommodation available in the vast city. He was only three years old when he and his family had first moved there, and the apartment had seemed new, luxurious even. Looking at it now he felt immense sadness that the whole street had been left to slide downward so severely. Many of the windows were boarded up. Front yards were filled with rubbish and unusable cars and discarded broken and soiled and mouldy furniture. Unreadable graffiti covered front walls.
He walked right past 12c and kept on going. Net curtains filled the windows so he couldn’t see inside, but he noticed a light on in the front room. He headed further down the street and then turned into the recreation ground through an open gate.
He doubled back and walked across the grass. He found a bench, close to the children’s play area, and sat and looked back to the road. Beside and behind him toddlers were screeching happily while mothers with their laden strollers chattered. The sounds of innocence and joy were quite alien to him and after a short while it made him feel uneasy.
Two young ladies pushing prams walked past in front of him and they both glared as though they could sense his awkwardness, only making him feel further out of place.
He didn’t move – he just sat there, lost in his own world, staring across the grass to the door of 12c. Finally, the door edged open. When the doddery figure appeared in the doorway it was as if his heart had lost its rhythm. He could barely breathe as the woman emerged, a headscarf covering her hair and neck, but face perfectly clear. Even at that distance he knew it was his mother.
He was part ashamed and part saddened to see her like that. To see that she still lived in that place. That neither he, nor his sister nor his father had helped her to prosper.
Gritting his teeth, angered with all three of them, even his dead sister, he watched as his ragged mother closed the door then hobbled along, back hunched, head down, to the stairwell. Out on the street she moved off to the right. Aydin watched her until she was out of sight. Then he got up from the bench, and headed for his childhood home.
TEN
Aleppo, Syria
A strong gust of wind smacked Rachel Cox in the face, battering her with tiny specks of sand that made her cheeks sting. She battled against the wind as she walked along the alley, the tall stone buildings on either side of her concentrating the force of the air flowing through. The height of the buildings meant there was no sunlight in the alley, and Cox felt the skin on her neck and her arms goose-pimple, sending a shiver right through her.
She picked up her pace and seconds later took the left turn onto a wider street lined by bombarded apartment blocks. She’d known the city, the area, before the civil war. Not long ago the street she was walking down had well-maintained, wide pavements, ornate streetlights, trendy shops and cafes. Now there was no distinguishing the pavement from the road at all; it was just one continuous mess of rubble and stone and broken slabs as far as the eye could see. As for the buildings . . . it was a mystery how they were still standing. Yet somehow many remained inhabited.
Cox took another turn and the contrast couldn’t have been greater. Although the signs of violence and war were still clear – bullet holes in walls, buildings missing large chunks of their structure, and that persistent smell of burning fuel from fires and bombs – there was life here. People on foot and on mopeds and in cars moved about on their daily business. There were plain-looking shops and stalls and cafes. Not exactly the old Aleppo, but a semblance of community and of desperate people trying to make the best of a terrible situation.
The breeze, away from the wind tunnel, was gentler, the sun was shining and Cox enjoyed the warmth it provided as she walked. She soon arrived at a small coffee shop on the corner of what used to be a bustling crossroads. There was only one other patron outside and she found a table as far away from him as she could. She wiped the sandy dust off one of the two chairs there and sat down. She checked her watch. Two minutes early.
Less than a minute later she spotted Subhi striding along the street towards her. In his late twenties, Subhi was tall with olive skin, thick stubble, flowing dark hair. To Cox he looked more Italian than Syrian and she could tell he knew he was handsome by the way he strutted and the smart clothes he dressed in, topped off with shining aviator sunglasses. Handsome, but not Cox’s type, despite a previous attempt by him to take their acquaintance to another level. She’d seen first-hand in others how workplace relationships in the field of intelligence were nothing short of massive volcanoes waiting to erupt and destroy everything in their path with their white-hot excrement.
She hadn’t explained the situation to Subhi quite like that. The fact was, she was happy to string him along if it furthered her position.
Subhi took the seat next to her and, arms and legs spread, slouched back in his chair nonchalantly to look out onto the world, like an A-list film star might.
‘Have you ordered?’ Subhi said in English. Cox could speak both Arabic and Persian fluently, but she regularly spoke English when out and about. Despite her conservative attire – relatively speaking – and her wearing a headscarf, there was nothing she could do to hide her pale features and the line of freckles across her nose that marked her out as a Westerner. That was fine, though. Her cover in Syria was as an Irish news reporter and with the lanyard around her neck identifying her as such, there was nothing untoward about her being there or her sitting out in the sun drinking coffee and speaking English to a man who may or may not be a local.
‘Yeah, I ordered. Just coffee for me,’ Cox said.
‘The fattoush here is excellent.’
‘I know. You tell me that every time.’
‘One day you might cave in and eat with me.’
Cox said nothing to that and was angered by his need to talk so causally, under the circumstances. She was more concerned with the death of her informant – a friend too – than entertaining his lame attempt at flirting. He hadn’t known Nilay personally, but he knew of her, because Cox had asked him to keep an eye and an ear out, and to pass any intel back if it looked like she was in trouble. Fat lot of good that had done, in the end.
Still, Subhi remained a key asset for Cox in the city. She’d been in Aleppo for months, her trail of the Thirteen bringing her there just as it had Nilay. For more than two years Cox had been working on uncovering the various training camps used by ISIS and their affiliates across the Arabian Peninsula, where young boys from various walks of life were taken to be trained as jihadis. Cannon fodder, more usually. But then, just over twelve months ago, her work had taken a worrying turn. While working in Iraq, travelling to villages and towns that had been ravaged by war and seemingly never-ending conflict, she’d come across a family who’d lost their only son to Is
lamist militants some fifteen years previously, at a time when the Americans were busy strong-arming their way around the country.
The ageing and beleaguered mother claimed her son had been kidnapped aged eleven and taken to a secret training camp in neighbouring Iran. She had no real tangible evidence of who had taken him, or why, or even where exactly he’d gone to, but some years later she’d received a letter, in his handwriting.
The single piece of yellowed paper, frayed and blotchy from the number of times it had been read and the number of tears spilled on it, told a horror story through a young boy’s eyes of a training camp like none Cox had heard of before. A group of fifteen boys imprisoned in the most harsh and extreme environment. Not just being force-fed violent religious doctrine, and trained to fight with guns and knives and bombs like so many others, but they were being very strategically educated in all manners of science and engineering too. Cox had sensed even back then the potential significance of what she’d uncovered. A bunch of super-smart and highly trained warriors.
The mother of the boy had no idea how the son had managed to smuggle a letter out of the facility where they were kept, but a few months later she’d had an even more agonising delivery. His severed hands, and a picture of his dismembered and decapitated corpse. Punishment for him having broken the rules by communicating with the outside world.
Since that visit, Cox had made it her mission to uncover the truth behind the site. She’d travelled through Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan in search of answers. She’d found some. Other stories of boys being taken, stories of a place known as the Farm. She’d never doubted its notoriety, people talked about it in hushed tones far and wide, but it had taken her a long time to convince her bosses that the place really existed, and that the boys who’d trained there were likely to pose a significant threat when they were unleashed on the world.
Cox firmly believed that remained the case. Her intelligence had led to her identifying more than half of the boys that were believed to have made up the thirteen who’d trained at and survived the facility, though she had no active intelligence on where they now were.
The trail, though, had brought her to Syria, where she’d met Nilay. Her brother was possibly one of those thirteen boys. At least he had been a boy. Now he was a man, and very possibly a potent weapon for the terrorist organisation.
The waiter came over with Cox’s espresso and she snapped out of her thoughts. Subhi ordered himself a coffee too.
‘What have you found?’ she asked when the man disappeared inside.
‘It’s definitely her. I was at the morgue this morning.’
Cox put a hand to her head but quickly pulled herself together. She couldn’t deny that she was feeling emotional about the young woman’s death, but she had to think about the situation objectively. This was her operation, she had to keep going.
‘They’re still trying to trace someone to formally identify her,’ Subhi said.
‘What do you think?’
‘You mean the bomb?’
‘It can’t be a coincidence that she was there.’
Subhi just shrugged.
‘Did she have anything with her?’ Cox asked.
Subhi’s eyes narrowed. ‘Just a phone and her purse.’
‘You saw those?’
‘Yes. The phone is destroyed. It’s just a lump of melted plastic and metal. The purse was badly burned too. Some pieces of credit cards, notes, but nothing else.’
Cox looked away and across the street, her mind thinking through Subhi’s words. Did she really trust his answer?
‘Were you expecting her to be carrying something else?’ Subhi said as the waiter came back out with his coffee.
‘No,’ she said when the man was once again out of earshot. ‘But I do need to get into her apartment. Have the police searched it yet?’
‘Yes. They had to, to look for evidence of who she was and who to contact about her death.’
‘Have you been there too?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. It’s just an apartment that looks like a young woman lived there. I know she was helping you, but the truth is she’s just a charity worker.’
Though the way Subhi said it made it sound as though he wasn’t quite sure about that, that he realised there was much more to Nilay than her job, which had been little more than a convenient front.
‘Did the police recover anything?’ Cox asked.
‘Not that I know of.’
He gave her that look again.
‘Are the police still there?’ she asked.
‘No. There’s no need for them to be. She’s not a suspect in anything and it’s not a crime scene.’
‘Okay. Then I’m going there now.’
‘Now?’
‘I don’t have time to sit around getting a sun tan.’
‘But it might suit you.’
Cox wasn’t quite sure how to take that, and the awkward look on Subhi’s face suggested he knew his quip hadn’t worked.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘In case you hit any problems with the locals.’
By locals she knew he meant either police or possibly even a roaming militia.
‘I know how to deal with the locals,’ she said.
‘I’m sure you do, but I’m coming anyway.’
She wanted to say no. There was a very good reason why she didn’t want him rummaging around Nilay’s apartment with her, but she also didn’t want to make him overly suspicious by saying no.
‘Fine,’ she said.
Subhi smiled and threw some coins on the table for the coffees as they left.
ELEVEN
It took them thirty minutes to navigate through the largely destroyed city streets to where Nilay Torkal had lived for the last three months. Nilay was a university graduate from London – twenty-three years old – who’d come to Aleppo working for a not-for-profit called Believe. And her work with that charity really was genuine, it was no bullshit cover story. Having attended the London School of Economics, Nilay had given up the chance of a glittering graduate position back in England to help those less fortunate than her. She had quite the hidden agenda for doing so, but she wasn’t a paid intelligence agent like Cox. Nilay Torkal’s ulterior motivation for heading to Aleppo had been much more personal than that.
When they reached the heavily weathered wooden door to the apartment building, Subhi stepped forward in front.
‘Let me go first,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’
Cox said nothing. She wasn’t sure if he was just playing a power trip on her, given his relative position with the locals, or if he was genuinely being chivalrous by wanting to put himself in the firing line for her should there be an unlikely threat inside.
Subhi turned the handle and pushed the door open, its rusted hinges squeaking and the frame creaking as he did so.
‘Good security,’ Cox said, to no response.
They walked up the dark and dusty stone staircase to the second floor where there were doors to four apartments. Cox had been there several times before, and her eyes were already on Nilay’s front door as she came up the last few stairs.
‘Is that how you left it?’ Cox said, spotting that the door was ajar.
‘No. It’s not,’ Subhi said, reaching behind him and drawing a Beretta pistol from the waistband of his khaki trousers. Cox wasn’t carrying today. She had a gun and some magazines that had been provided when she’d first arrived at the current safe house, but she’d not yet had to use the weapon, or even felt the need to carry it around regularly. The day that happened was the day something had gone badly wrong with her undercover mission, as far as she was concerned.
Badly wrong? she thought. Well what the hell do you call the murder of one of your lead informants?
She caught her breath for a second. Subhi turned round. She gave him a plain look and he turned back to the apartment and used the tip of the Beretta’s barrel to inch the door further open.
&n
bsp; Nilay’s apartment was what in modern terms was called a studio. A simple open-plan space with a small en suite off it. Cox would more readily have called it a large cupboard. The home was modest to say the least, the furniture cheap and functional.
‘Shit,’ Cox said, when she saw the state of the place inside.
It was clear even from the glimpse she had standing in the doorway that the apartment had been ransacked.
‘I’m guessing that’s not the police’s handiwork,’ she said.
Subhi didn’t answer. Just moved further into the apartment, whipping his gun this way and that until he seemed satisfied that no one was hiding in there ready to take potshots at them.
When it was obvious the coast was clear, Cox moved in and shut the door behind her.
‘Any ideas?’ Subhi asked.
‘As to who or to why?’ Cox said.
‘Both.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘No.’
‘You really trust me that little?’
Cox didn’t answer that. ‘Why don’t you go speak to the neighbours. They may have seen someone. It may even have been your own people who did this.’
‘I think what you’re trying to say is, Subhi, please leave me alone so I can retrieve what I hope the ransackers didn’t find.’
‘You know me too well.’
Subhi didn’t move. Just stood there, gun in hand, looking at her. After a few seconds passed an eeriness crept through her. She glanced down and noticed his knuckles were white from holding the Beretta’s grip so tightly. What was going through his mind?
Perhaps today really was the day she should have brought the damn gun.
‘Please?’ she said, her mind now swimming with different possibilities – mostly horrible – about how the situation could go south. She’d always felt she could trust Subhi, but really, few people living in such constant danger like he was were incorruptible. If the right people put the right pressure on him . . .
