by Rob Sinclair
‘For now, yeah.’
Her mum sounded agitated, and really she had every right to be. Cox hadn’t spoken to her for over three weeks, even though she knew her mum was an incessant worrier. She was lonely too. Just hearing her voice made Cox feel guilt, to know she was such a bad daughter.
‘Where are you, honey? I’ve been trying to get in touch for days.’
‘Still in Dubai,’ she lied. ‘I told you I’d be here for weeks yet.’
As far as her mum knew Cox worked for the British Government and was seconded to the Embassy in Dubai. That was close enough to the truth for a woman like Sylvia Munroe. She never asked questions about what work Cox did – working an office job for the Embassy was as clandestine as she could comprehend, bless her.
‘Then when are you coming home, honey? I’m really missing you.’
‘I don’t know. Is everything okay? I’m really busy here, it’s not a great time to chat.’
‘Oh, all’s fine here. I’m just on my way back to the hospital.’
Shit. Cox had forgotten all about that. The last time they spoke her mum had been for tests because of a thyroid problem. She’d never even bothered to call her to find out how that had gone.
‘I’m so sorry, Mum. Are you sure you’re alright? How did the last tests go?’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about me. Just so long as you’re okay.’
Cox sighed. ‘You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course I would.’
Though Cox knew that wasn’t really the case. Her mum hated the idea that she was a burden on anyone, Cox in particular, whom she was immensely proud of for her globe-trotting lifestyle.
‘Actually the reason I was calling was something else.’
‘Yeah?’
‘It was a couple of weeks ago now, actually, when I first called to tell you. You’ll never guess who I bumped into the other day?’
Cox grimaced. She already had an idea where this might be going. ‘Who?’
‘Greg. You know he’s met someone new now?’
‘I heard.’
‘She was with him. They stopped to chat for a minute. She’s not a patch on you. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.’
‘It was me who left him, not the other way round.’
‘I know. I’m just saying. She’s pregnant too, I could see the bump. I’m guessing it’s his, but they didn’t say.’
Cox held her head in her hands. ‘Okay, look, I really do need to go.’
‘Oh, yeah, right.’ She sounded put out.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I do want to chat, and soon, but I’m just in the middle of something.’
Just then she noticed a message ping on her mobile. Flannigan was ready to talk.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ her mum said. ‘You take care of yourself.’
‘I will do. Love you, Mum.’
Cox clicked the red button just as her mum got a final few words in. She didn’t dwell, just sent a message right back to Flannigan.
Dialling now.
Greg was going to be a dad. She was pleased for him. He was a good man. At least one of them was now happy and could go ahead living the normal life.
She tried to banish the thoughts of her estranged husband and of her mum, who might or might not be okay. Now wasn’t the time for distraction. Anyway, Cox would soon be back in England. She’d see her mum soon enough.
Then, before she got the chance to initiate the call, the name of another image file on the screen caught her attention. Wahid. Number one in Arabic. She opened it up and looked at the picture of the man inside. Actually, he was just a boy in the picture – maybe fourteen, fifteen years old. For a few second she just sat there, staring.
While Talatashar looked mild and meek and . . . lost, Wahid couldn’t have been more different. He had a large round face, wide jaw, thick neck muscles that suggested even in his teens that he was strong and lean. His dark hair was closely cropped. His eyes were piercing and beady, but despite a look that suggested a perpetual disgust with everything he saw, he was uniquely handsome, and he knew it. The picture . . . behind Wahid it just looked like sand and rocks. It must be from the Farm. How on earth had Nilay come across that snap?
‘Shit,’ Cox said to herself, realising she’d been distracted. She quickly closed the file down and dialled into the white line.
‘Cox here,’ she said when she heard the blip to tell her she was connected.
‘I thought you said now,’ came the prickly voice of Flannigan across the laptop’s speaker. ‘That was five minutes ago.’
Cox rolled her eyes. ‘You said you had an update,’ she said, not interested in explaining the short delay.
‘I do. But first I think you’d better tell me what the hell is happening out there.’
Despite his initial irritation, his tone was actually far more measured and sympathetic than it had been the last time they spoke.
‘I’ve think my cover’s blown,’ Cox said.
Silence on the other end.
‘Talk to me,’ Flannigan eventually said.
‘Two of my informants have been killed in the space of a few hours. It’s no coincidence.’
‘Who?’
Cox told him. When the names passed her lips she felt that lump in her throat again and for just a split second her eyes welled. She fought it off. Crying wasn’t going to help the situation. And really she was more scared than she was upset.
‘I was with Subhi when it happened. It was a sniper. Someone was waiting for me.’
Flannigan said nothing to that. She wondered if – only now that everything had gone to shit – he was finally seeing just how deep she’d gone. How close she was to something big. That’s certainly how it felt to her. Why else would Subhi and Nilay both have been killed like that?
‘It sounds like a complete mess out there,’ Flannigan said, and Cox slumped several inches. ‘You need to come straight back here for a full debrief. The extraction team should be with you within two hours. The travel arrangements are already in place. They’ll take you to a US airbase in the north, then on to Ankara, then you’re heading civilian class to London. Bring everything you need with you. You’re done over there.’
‘Just like that?’
‘You’d rather stick it out and see who comes for you next?’
‘Of course not, but you must admit I’m on to something, given what’s just happened.’
‘I know. I didn’t say I was closing your op down, just that you’re done in Aleppo. Something else has come up.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I said I had an update for you. We might not have given you approval for Trapeze but that doesn’t mean we’ve not been listening to what we can. Filtering through the noise we have what I believe is some credible intel for you.’
Cox realised she was holding her breath in anticipation.
‘You still there, Cox?’
‘Yeah.’
‘There was an alert last night coming from Rome. Well, we think that was the origin anyway, but it’s not clear-cut due to the way the traffic was routed. Anyway, to cut a long story shorter, we intercepted secure Internet message chatter discussing the need to capture a man referred to as Talatashar––’
‘Thirteen,’ Cox blurted as her brain whirred. She quickly clicked back through to the picture of Aydin Torkal. Her heart drummed in her chest as she went back to Nilay’s list of documents. She remembered seeing a file with Rome in the title. She clicked on it. ‘Wahid. Rome is believed to be the base for Wahid. He’s their number one.’
There was a moment of silence. ‘Sorry, where are you getting that from?’ Flannigan said. ‘That’s not been in any of your reports.’
‘No. It wasn’t. But I’m looking at the intel right now.’
‘Rachel, if you want me to work effectively with you then you’re going to need to give me all relevant data you have.’
‘I know that,’ Cox said, trying her hardest to keep from biting ba
ck. ‘It’s new intel. You’ll have it as soon as we’re off this call.’
‘Good. Anyway. We later intercepted traffic originating in France over a secure VoIP line––’
‘Though not secure enough, eh?’
‘Indeed. It seems whoever is looking for Talatashar honed in to a mobile phone signal coming from France, and tracked it to a location about half an hour south of Paris. But given what we’ve seen and heard, all they found was a discarded handset. No man.’
‘Any indication why they’re looking for him?’
‘No.’
‘Or where Talatashar now is?’
‘Yes to that one actually. Further intercepts we’ve listened to refer to Talatashar going home. To England. Now this is actually backward to how we found the trail, but I’ll give you the events in chronological order, as it’s not all through this op that the data’s been gathered. Early this morning a group of illegal immigrants were smuggled into Dover from Calais aboard a lorry belonging to a Scottish haulage company. The illegals were taken to a farm in Kent where one of the immigrants fought back against their Armenian traffickers, killing one in the process by crushing his windpipe with his heel. Apparently. The escapee drove off in a white Ford Transit van that was later found abandoned near Sevenoaks with five illegals cowering in the back.’
Cox shook her head in disbelief. ‘He’s headed to London.’
‘Potentially.’
‘And you think this was Talatashar?’ Cox said, opening up his picture again.
‘A young Arab male, yes, according to the smugglers and illegals who’ve been detained by the police, but we’ve not pinpointed any CCTV capture of him at Sevenoaks station, or in London or anywhere else to confirm his appearance or identity. Nor has there been any electronic or telephonic communication that we can match to the man himself since arriving in England. It’s certainly possible this Talatashar is now in England, but if he is then he’s currently dark.’
Which wasn’t good at all. For months Flannigan and Miles had failed to take Cox’s theories on the Thirteen seriously. Now it looked like one of them was in England’s capital. It was very possible that an attack on home soil was imminent.
But then why did it also appear that his own people were hunting for him?
‘That’s all I have for now,’ Flannigan said. ‘But I need you back here to sift through this mess.’
‘I think I have a picture of him.’
‘Talatashar?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. Well I think the best thing to do is to end this and for you to just send everything you can.’
‘I’ll do it now.’
‘Speak later.’
There was a click as Flannigan left the call.
Cox was still sitting in the same position, hadn’t got up at all, as she scoured through Nilay’s files over an hour later. Her focus was finally taken from the laptop screen when she caught sight of movement on the CCTV screen off to her right. She looked over and saw the two men coming up the stairs to the seventh floor. Both were squat and bulky and were casually dressed, but there were enough tells that they were both armed. Whether they were SIS or contractors or even military, Cox didn’t know, but she knew they were the extraction team. She jumped up from the chair, shut the laptop lid, bundled that, her phone, the gun she’d acquired earlier into her bag. She quickly moved into the bedroom and opened the safe, taking out the money she had, the three passports she’d brought with her and the other gun. She put those and her handbag into a small holdall just as she heard the rap on the door.
‘Miss Cox. Time to go,’ she heard the gruff male voice call. An American accent.
Cox slung the holdall over her shoulder. The information she’d been reading was still swimming in her head. Aydin Torkal – Nilay’s brother – was Talatashar. He was now in London. Wahid, number one, was in Rome. Was he the leader?
It didn’t sound like much, but these were real tangible leads to go after.
After everything she’d already been through, the last thing she wanted now was to be stuck at Vauxhall Cross for the next few days while Flannigan and Miles and whoever else gave her a grilling over how she’d lost two assets in Aleppo.
Was there another option?
She looked to the window. On the other side was a metal fire escape that led down to the back street below.
More knocks on the door: harder, angrier now. Could a knock on a door be angry?
‘Miss Cox. We need to go,’ came the raised voice. ‘Now.’
Yes, definitely angry.
‘To run or not to run,’ Cox muttered to herself.
Talatashar going home. The words rang in her ear suddenly.
There was always a third option, she realised. She didn’t necessarily have to go back to London on Flannigan’s terms . . .
Concluding she’d play along, Cox moved out of the bedroom, up to the front door. She paused for just a second before she snaked her fingers around the handle and pushed down.
TWENTY
Cox looked over the shoulder of the driver to the speedometer. The dial was ticking over a hundred km/h. Not massively fast if they’d been on decent roads, even for the heavily weighted Land Cruiser, riding low due to the extra armouring. The 4x4 had a beast of an engine that in low gear revved freely, but one hundred kilometres an hour certainly felt fast on these roads.
Roads. A loose term really for the pitch-black dirt tracks they were following across sandy desert. The natural undulations of the land meant that every second or two there was a huge clunk as the hulking vehicle smacked down on its already over-worked suspension. Each time it did so a fierce jolt rushed through Cox’s spine and she wondered how many pieces her vertebrae would be in by the time they finally reached the airbase.
‘How much further is it?’ Cox asked neither of the men in particular as the beams from the vehicle’s powerful headlights raked across the hilly terrain.
The driver, who’d introduced himself as Jensen, caught Cox’s eye in the rear-view mirror, but didn’t say anything.
‘About an hour and a half,’ Hayes said from the front passenger seat.
Hayes’s accent was English – Yorkshire to be precise. Cox had thought about asking where he was from, being a Yorkshire girl herself, but hadn’t yet bothered. Jensen on the other hand sounded like he came from the north-eastern seaboard of the United States. Cox didn’t know exactly who the men were or who they worked for, though. Not much point in asking questions she knew she wouldn’t get a straight answer to. Cox guessed that was the same reason they had talked to her so little.
‘You don’t think you could find a motorway for us to drive on instead, do you?’ Cox said, just a split second before the Land Cruiser hit a massive pothole that sent her lurching forward until her seatbelt hauled her back again.
When she’d recovered she caught Jensen’s eye in the mirror again.
‘I always thought it was more fun this way,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘But seriously,’ Hayes said, ‘this is the safest route.’
‘Except if you have a helicopter,’ Cox said. ‘Budget cutbacks, eh?’
‘Not much difference,’ Hayes said, straight-faced. ‘It’s not that hard to shoot a chopper out of the sky. There’s no such thing as safe travel around here. This track will take us most of the way there, but we do need to hit the main road for a few miles, there’s no other way.’
The tone of Hayes’s voice suggested that wasn’t a good thing, and Cox’s nervousness grew at the thought of what was ahead. But then, why would the threat be ahead and not behind? So far on the journey there was certainly no indication that anyone had followed them out of Aleppo. Behind them, she saw nothing beyond the churning dust, which glowed red in the vehicle’s lights.
But, technically, the whole bloody country was a war-zone. Just because there wasn’t a hit squad chasing them out of Aleppo didn’t mean there wouldn’t be other threats to encounter.
Which was exactly what Co
x’s immediate thought was several minutes later when they came over the crest of a hill, the headlights catching a plume of smoke that trailed up into the air from beyond the next ridge of sand.
‘It’s coming from the main road,’ Jensen said, looking to Hayes.
‘Give it a wide berth,’ Hayes said.
‘I’ll try. But we have to get on the road here anyway, there isn’t any other choice.’
‘Why not?’ Cox asked.
‘Because two miles dead ahead of here is the next town. And you really don’t want to be driving through that place. There’s a road that takes us right round it, though, just on the right side of the red line.’
‘The red line?’
‘The border between the definite bad guys, and the not quite the good guys,’ Hayes said, ‘but the ones that are normally better than the rest.’
Jensen huffed in agreement. He turned the wheel to head right, away from the smoke, and moments later Cox caught sight of the blacktop road winding through the sand. When they hit the tarmac it was like they’d found the eye of a great storm. Gone was the boom of the tyres that had been ever-present as they crunched across uneven and unstable ground, replaced with a soft roar and what felt like a velvet-cushioned ride. Jensen put his foot down and the engine growled as the Land Cruiser picked up more pace.
Initially Cox saw no other vehicles on the road, but as they snaked around, she realised they were edging closer and closer to that trail of smoke.
Cox sensed the mood in the cabin becoming more edgy as they got nearer. As they rounded the next corner, the source of the smoke was finally visible up ahead.
‘What the––’ Jensen said, easing up on the accelerator.
A hundred yards ahead both lanes of the road were blocked. What looked like a small cattle-truck with an open-air trailer was on its side. The smoke was coming from its crumpled bonnet. There was also an old open-topped Jeep whose front end had taken a serious prang, together with a people carrier whose rear now looked like a concertina. Several people were dotted about in front and to the side of the vehicles: an old man with shrivelled skin and drab clothes and wiry hair who looked to be the farmer. A young woman in a niqab with a baby in her arms. Two other women, less conservatively dressed, who were standing and seemed to be arguing with a second man. A third man was on his knees with his back to them all.
