Sleeper 13: The most explosive must-read thriller of 2018

by Rob Sinclair

  He came to a stop by the wall and pushed himself up against it before peering over the top and looking back along the alley to Itnashar’s building. He was prone with his head sticking up over the parapet and it’d be stupid for him to sit like that, so exposed, for the next few hours. Instead he took out the tablet computer he’d bought and the CCTV camera which he plugged into the tablet with a USB cable. He pushed the camera onto the brick ledge and used the controls on the tablet to zoom in. The picture quality wasn’t great, and he was probably twenty yards too far away to be able to make out people coming and going in great detail, but it was good enough for what he needed.

  He took out the roll of gaffer tape from the backpack and used a stretch to fix the camera into position, then he sat back against the wall to wait, his eyes on the screen of the tablet as he listened to the crackling voices in his ear.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Ankara, Turkey

  The journey from Syria and onwards to Turkey was just as horrific as Cox had expected. Well, perhaps horrific was the wrong word because there were no more roadblocks with armed combatants wielding assault rifles and rocket launchers, but the trip was nonetheless tiring and gruelling. Having arrived at the US air base in Syria in the middle of the night, Cox had to wait several hours for a flight out of the country, spending the time in a military bunker with copious amounts of crappy coffee while she scoured Nilay’s files.

  With a decent Wi-Fi signal there, and hoping they could help put some of Nilay’s findings into context, she’d fired off several emails to the SIS’s Data Ops team back at Vauxhall Cross. They weren’t exactly Trapeze, but the data analysts there were the best SIS had to offer, and they had access to – and knew how to search – vast swathes of electronic data, including the databases of many law enforcement and intelligence agencies the world over.

  Now it was just a waiting game.

  Quite literally.

  The flight from Syria into Turkey on the military jet was bumpy and uncomfortable, and gave Cox no chance for either work or sleep. She arrived in Ankara after sunrise, bleary-eyed and feeling beaten up. She was, however, alive and breathing. Which was quite a big plus point considering what she’d been through already.

  In Turkey she was taken on a much less nervy car journey from the military base where they landed, to Esenbog˘a International Airport in the nation’s capital, Ankara. As Flannigan had told her on the phone – God knows how many hours before – she was travelling civilian class back to London. That meant going through bog-standard check-in and queuing in the ridiculously long bog-standard security queue. Not quite what most people would expect for international espionage.

  It also meant she’d had to give up the guns she’d been carrying through Syria, but that was no big deal really. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be needing them on the British Airways flight.

  Several hours later, with the flight to London delayed, Cox was still sitting on a painfully hard metal chair in the departure lounge when she spotted two uniformed policemen making a beeline for her. She sat up in her seat and held their gaze.

  ‘Mrs Taylor?’ the shorter, older man said as they reached her, using the alias name Cox had travelled under.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please can you come with us.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’ she said, looking around and noticing several other passengers nearby were trying their hardest to pretend they weren’t being nosey. In fact, one or two were beginning to skulk away as though they sensed the scene might turn ugly. Cox guessed there was good reason why so many people were jittery travelling through airports.

  ‘No problem, ma’am. We just need to speak to you.’

  The man’s English was good, though heavily accented. There was no particular tell in his tone. His demand was firm, but not in any way hostile.

  ‘Sure,’ Cox said, getting to her feet and picking up her backpack.

  ‘Here, let me take that,’ the second policeman said, taking the bag from her grasp with a firm hand.

  Cox eyed him up, not quite sure what his gesture was about, but there was no further reaction from him and the older guy stepped to the side and casually indicated with his hand.

  ‘This way, please.’

  Cox followed along. The short guy in front, the one holding her bag to her side. They reached a door with a No Entry sign and the policeman in front knocked then stepped back. The door opened to reveal an identically dressed policeman on the other side, who took one look at the old guy before nodding and waving them all through.

  Inside they headed further down a warren of bland corridors, the off-white walls all cheap partitions as though the whole structure was temporary. They eventually stopped at a closed door and the old guy once again knocked and waited. The door was opened a few seconds later by a policewoman. Cox peered inside the windowless room.

  ‘Please, Mrs Taylor,’ the old guy said, waving her in.

  Cox did as she was told. Her mind was still buzzing with thoughts as to what was happening, but even if she was in trouble for some reason, she wasn’t exactly in a position to start attacking and taking down each and every one of the officers to make a miraculous escape.

  The room she found herself in was a ten-foot by ten-foot square, no windows, but with a wide mirror on one wall. An interview room. In the centre was a simple plastic-topped table and two metal chairs.

  ‘Please take a seat,’ the old guy said.

  This time Cox didn’t do as she was told.

  ‘Why am I here?’ she asked him.

  The policeman simply gave her a strange and crooked smile before he turned and walked out and the policewoman shut and locked the door behind him, then stood guard in front of it.

  ‘So can you tell me?’ Cox said.

  No answer. So she repeated the question in Turkish. Then Arabic. The policewoman briefly locked eyes with Cox but then looked away, staring back to the wall without saying a word.

  Cox stayed where she was, at the other side of the table, not bothering to take either of the seats. Several minutes passed, Cox’s brain not once letting up during that time. She was trying to recall all of the times she’d been through the country. Had she made a mistake in the past that was now coming back to bite her? Had she been rumbled because of the identity she was using? Joanna Taylor. She didn’t know whether she’d used that passport in Turkey before, or why doing so this time would have triggered any sort of alert.

  Or was this somehow connected to the problems in Aleppo? Was that possible?

  The longer the wait went on, the more nervous Cox felt. She looked over to the policewoman again. She had a sidearm in a holster by her hip, just like the other police officers had. Cox felt sure she could easily disarm her. And the door was only locked with the standard latch that the policewoman had turned from the inside. This didn’t exactly feel like maximum security. Which meant Cox could comfortably make a run for it.

  But was that the point? This place wasn’t maximum security because there wasn’t a threat.

  There was a rap on the door and Cox stiffened as she was shaken from her thoughts. She looked over at the police officer, who calmly turned and looked through the peephole then released the lock and opened the door. Once again on the other side was the old guy. Except standing beside him now wasn’t his colleague, but another man.

  Henry Flannigan.

  ‘Bloody hell, sir,’ Cox said, without thinking.

  He raised an eyebrow then came into the room and shooed out the policewoman before closing but not locking the door.

  ‘Bloody hell, what?’ he said, taking a seat at the table and slapping down a bundle of papers.

  ‘For starters what are you doing here? I thought I was about to be handed over to MİT so they could take me to some dark site and string me up.’ Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı. The Turkish intelligence services.

  Flannigan snorted, a mix of incredulity and amusement. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’

  ‘Why do you thi
nk! You could have told me you were coming.’

  ‘But I didn’t know I was coming last time we spoke.’

  ‘So what changed?’

  ‘Why don’t you take a seat.’

  Cox did so and sat forward in the chair while Flannigan stared at her.

  ‘I heard what happened on your way out of Aleppo.’

  Cox just shook her head at that, not sure what to say.

  ‘I’ve spoken to people on the ground,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to suggest they were targeting you in particular.’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter much whether they were or weren’t. They would have kidnapped or killed us either way.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe,’ Flannigan said without any real feeling.

  He rifled through the papers on the desk. He found the one he was looking for, slipped it out and passed it across the table.

  ‘This is the man you referred to as Talatashar,’ he said.

  Cox stared down at the black-and-white picture. It was the same one she’d come across in Nilay’s files, all of which she’d passed to Flannigan before she’d left the safe house in Aleppo.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Number thirteen.’

  ‘There’s been a development.’

  Cox frowned. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  Flannigan let out a long sigh. ‘We discussed the possibility that this Talatashar is now in London.’

  ‘Yeah. And?’

  ‘And the data you sent me suggested that Talatashar’s real name is in fact Aydin Torkal. Now that boy hasn’t been seen for over fifteen years.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Until yesterday. When he paid a visit to his old family home. His mother still lives there. Lived, actually.’

  Flannigan pushed some other papers across. The first was a colour photo of the same man, a candid of him sitting on a park bench. The other was a gruesome crime-scene photo showing the bloodied body of a middle-aged woman.

  ‘What happened?’ Cox said, feeling revulsion as she looked at the sorry image.

  ‘That’s Torkal’s mother. We think he killed her.’

  Cox found herself shaking her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. Why––’

  ‘Of course it makes sense. The man is deranged. It was you who told me about these people. Trained from nine years old to be some sort of unhinged, unfeeling jihadi warrior. He’s left a trail of destruction from Paris to London and three dead bodies in the process.’

  ‘It just doesn’t––’

  ‘It is what it is. Whatever the story, you need to help find him.’

  Cox felt a hard-nosed resolve break out into her face. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘But I still don’t understand why you came all the way here to tell me this?’

  ‘We haven’t got an active trail on Torkal, but we believe he smuggled himself onto a container ship at Felixstowe. My guess is he’s already skipped England for his next port of call. It could be anywhere on the damn continent.’

  ‘Germany,’ Cox said, putting the pieces together in her mind.

  ‘Germany?’

  She bent down and lifted the laptop out of her bag. She flipped the lid and, using the weak 3G signal in the airport, she scrolled through to the news reports she’d been scouring while waiting for her London flight to board. She turned the screen round for Flannigan to see.

  ‘Roman Asrutdinov,’ Cox said. ‘Recognise the name?’

  Flannigan’s eyes narrowed. Cox thought she could see the flicker of recognition.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Flannigan said. Asrutdinov had, after all, been an SIS asset of sorts, delivering intel to the West about North Korea’s Internet espionage. ‘But everyone believes it was a hit by the North Koreans, or if not them then the Russians.’

  ‘Maybe it was,’ Cox said. ‘And probably under any other circumstance I’d agree. Except this also happened in Berlin, two days ago.’

  Flannigan’s eyes flicked about as he read the report. ‘Six dead bodies in a burned-out van outside an abandoned warehouse?’ he said, sounding even more sceptical. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Cox? You think this is the work of Torkal?’

  ‘Probably not. He was still in London when these deaths occurred. But Germany was hinted at as one of the locations for the Thirteen in Nilay’s documents. I’ve included details in the information I sent to Data Ops, and maybe Germany is where Torkal has gone now. You said yourself he could be anywhere on the continent. Most likely he’ll be in one of the twenty-six Schengen countries still, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘At this stage, yes. He’d need more time to go anywhere else, both geographically and logistically.’

  ‘Then I think it’s worth taking a closer look at these deaths in Berlin.’

  ‘I’m not sure I get how you think this is linked?’

  ‘Preparations. What if they were working with Asrutdinov? They’ve got what they need from him now so they’ve dispatched him.’

  ‘And the six dead bodies in a van?’

  ‘Still unidentified so it’s hard to say, but the circumstances aren’t exactly normal. It was no accident. If we can identify the corpses, it’ll tell us a lot more.’

  ‘I can’t help but think you’re making too much of this.’

  Cox glanced at her watch. ‘I already checked and there’s a flight to Berlin leaving in less than an hour. I can be there by early evening. If it turns out to be nothing I can be back here, or wherever else you want me next, in the morning.’

  Flannigan mulled over that one for a few moments. Cox knew it was a long shot, but it didn’t feel like there was much else to go on. Yes, she could go back to London as planned but they both agreed Aydin Torkal had more than likely already left. Perhaps he wasn’t in Berlin either, and never had been, and she would just end up chasing more shadows. But unless Flannigan had a better idea . . .

  ‘Okay,’ Flannigan said. ‘We’d better see about getting you a new ticket.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  London, England

  Obbadi had picked the car up from a prestige rental company five miles outside Heathrow airport. It was the first time he’d taken a commercial airline for months, and would most likely be the last for quite some time. This, though, was a hastily arranged trip and there hadn’t been enough time to properly organise all of the paperwork to charter his private jet. Sometimes it was easier to just travel like everybody else.

  That didn’t mean, however, that he couldn’t still have some fun. Hence the car. A very nearly brand new Bentley Continental GT. He was in England after all. The V8 engine – he’d opted for that model rather than the slightly more powerful W12 simply for the more racy noise – growled happily as he pushed his foot down and the two-tonne beast lurched forward at speed. The quiet and twisting A-road he was travelling down with neatly trimmed hedgerows either side gave him ample opportunity to test the machine’s capability. And work out just a little bit of the tension in his mind following the ongoing problems with that imbecile Talatashar.

  It wasn’t long before he hit the upmarket town of Burnham in Buckinghamshire, where he’d arranged to pick up his companion and guide for the trip. He spotted his brother standing outside the town’s post office and pulled the Bentley over to the side of the road. Arab’ah – number four – opened the door and sunk down into the damson leather seat. He snorted.

  ‘Nice,’ he said.

  Obbadi put his foot down and the engine revved freely again as the car shot away.

  ‘Very nice,’ Arab’ah said.

  Obbadi said nothing, just carried on driving. Only once they were out of the town and back travelling at a heady speed did he decide it was time to get back to business.

  ‘How is our brother?’ Obbadi said, referring to Hidashar. He’d suffered two cracked ribs in the fight with Talatashar in London, though really Obbadi knew Hidashar was made of steel. It took a lot more than two broken ribs to stop him.

  ‘I think his pride is hurt more than his body.’

  Obbadi huffed
in agreement.

  Arab’ah gave the directions as they carried on the journey through the lush English countryside. It was the first time Obbadi had been to this part of England – his presence required to ensure the preparations were in place and satisfactory. Not that he doubted Arab’ah’s planning, who was as meticulous as anyone Obbadi had met.

  They’d been travelling for well over an hour when they turned onto narrow and even quieter roads.

  ‘Okay, if you take the lane on the left here, it’s just a few hundred yards further down.’

  Obbadi turned in, moving from tarmac onto a dirt track that had two wide grooves either side of a run of green grass. The low-sitting car bounced and banged across the uneven ground. When he spotted a secluded turn-in he pulled the car over.

  ‘Maybe we should just walk the rest of the way,’ he said. No reason to beat up such a nice machine.

  Arab’ah just shrugged. Obbadi turned the engine off and they both stepped out into the murky and humid afternoon. When Obbadi had arrived at Heathrow the sun had been shining, but it now felt like a rainstorm was imminent.

  Welcome to England, he thought.

  ‘This way,’ Arab’ah said, moving off and further up the track.

  Obbadi followed and they soon came to a large metal gate beyond which was an old red brick structure – two storeys tall and fifty yards wide – that was clearly now abandoned, evident by the severely overgrown grounds and the cracked and missing windows in the stone frames of the building. The gates had a thick and rusted padlock holding them together but there was a gap about a foot wide between the left gate and the wire fence that trailed off from it – easily enough to slip through.

  ‘This place was built in the Victorian times,’ Arab’ah said as he squeezed through onto the weed-filled grounds. ‘It was one of several pumping stations needed to take raw sewage from the towns, but these places haven’t been used for years. All the modern equivalents are underground.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Obbadi said. ‘I don’t really want to be wading through shit today.’