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

by Rob Sinclair

  Her little trick had worked – Aydin was intrigued. But only because he knew she was barking up the wrong tree, and because he sensed that he could still break through to her, much like she was still trying to break through to him. Of course he didn’t want to end up in that bunker in Algeria, even though he was prepared for that to be his fate if there was no other way.

  ‘Which locations do you think?’ she said. ‘Nothing you’ve done so far has stopped your people at all, has it? London, Paris, Bruges, Rome, all of the places you went to, the attacks are still going ahead regardless.’

  ‘You think I went to those places to stop the attacks?’

  ‘No, I think you went for your own selfish reasons. You could have stopped the attacks already, but you chose not to.’

  Aydin fell silent. What she’d said was true, but it had never been his job to stop them, no matter how responsible he now felt.

  ‘And we also know about Barcelona, Berlin and Budapest now. Seven locations. Seven attacks.’

  Aydin shook his head. MI6 had got absolutely nowhere. The clock was ticking, his brothers had disappeared into the ether. None of the police forces or armies or security services in any of those countries would find them now. Not until it was too late.

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About everything.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  She pulled the door further open and took a step into the doorway.

  ‘London, Paris, Bruges, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona, Budapest,’ Aydin said. ‘Anything strike you about those locations?’

  Cox stopped. She wasn’t facing him, but he could imagine the look of hesitation on her face.

  ‘I did wonder why Bruges was among those,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a good reason actually. But what else?’

  ‘Five capital cities,’ she said, turning her head to look back at him. ‘Tens of millions of people between them. Maximum impact.’

  ‘You’re partly right. Five capital cities. Some of the world’s most important monuments. Some of the world’s most important politicians, and royal families. Celebrities. And money and power. What does every city need to look after all those . . .?’

  He left it hanging. Cox got it more quickly than he’d expected. She turned round fully and shut the door again. Her brow was creased – part anger, part because she was deep in thought.

  ‘Security,’ she said, finishing the sentence.

  ‘I imagine that each country has moved their security threat to the highest level now, expecting the worst,’ Aydin said. ‘Extra police on the streets, perhaps military too. Round-the-clock security for government officials and diplomats.’

  The look she was giving Aydin was one of pure hate, though he didn’t believe it was directed at him entirely.

  ‘The plan isn’t to attack those cities at all, is it?’ she said.

  ‘Why attack targets that are so heavily protected?’ Aydin said, as though it should have been obvious all along.

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘No country has the resources to protect every single city and town, every home and every person. How many towns and cities across those countries have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to target?’

  ‘Tell me, Aydin!’ Cox shouted, her anger getting the better of her. ‘Where will the attacks take place? You have to tell me.’

  ‘When did you say they went dark?’

  Cox’s eyes narrowed. ‘Midnight, Central European Time, nearly two days ago.’

  ‘Then you still have time,’ Aydin said. ‘But not much.’

  ‘How much, Aydin? Please!’

  ‘The plan was always for sixty hours. Enough time to finalise equipment, get to the locations and go through final checks. But maybe it changed.’

  ‘And then the attacks begin? All at once?’

  Aydin didn’t answer that. ‘Worst case, you’ve got not much more than twelve hours to go. My original offer still stands.’

  Cox was fuming. Just like when she’d first stormed in, Aydin again expected her to come for him at any second.

  She didn’t.

  After a few seconds she simply opened the door and walked out.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  ‘He’s bluffing,’ Flannigan said, though it was clear to Cox that he didn’t fully believe his own words. ‘There’s no evidence whatsoever that the attacks will take place anywhere other than the locations we’ve already identified.’

  ‘Evidence? There is no bloody evidence of what they’re going to do!’ Cox was standing next to him, glaring angrily at the CCTV screen. Aydin glanced up to the camera. Flannigan was still seething. ‘Sorry,’ Cox said.

  Flannigan looked at his watch and sighed. ‘By the time we land in Algeria we’ll only have a few hours.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Cox said. ‘We can’t possibly protect everywhere, all at once. We have to know more.’

  ‘Or is this exactly what he wants? Each country diverting its efforts away from the known locations.’

  ‘I honestly believe he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘He has no reason to do so.’

  ‘But he does. He wants to help. He hates them. I sense it. They killed his mother and sister. He wants revenge, but he wants it on his terms.’

  ‘We’ve been through this before. We are not letting him out of our custody.’

  ‘But that’s not the same thing as keeping him locked up, is it? There must be a way. We take him where he wants to go, under our watch. I know he’ll lead us to Wahid. All we need is a failsafe that we can use should he deceive us.’

  ‘Like a tiny explosive device that we can inject into his neck to track him and then remotely detonate the second he tries to run. Sorry, Cox, but you’ve been watching too many movies.’

  ‘It was you who said all that, not me.’

  ‘The point is, there is no magic, fool-proof failsafe. Whatever situation we try to set up in the next few hours, if Torkal is out on the streets he’s nothing more than a liability.’

  ‘No, he’s an asset!’ Cox shouted. ‘You might not like him, but you need to start seeing him for what he is. We don’t have to see eye to eye with him, but he has useful and credible knowledge, and that makes him an asset. What have we got to lose here in treating him that way?’

  ‘Other than him turning on us and running free while his friends blow hundreds, possibly thousands of people to smithereens?’

  ‘Yes, I agree, that’s the worst case here: he double-crosses us, runs away and the attacks still happen. But right now, those attacks are going to happen anyway, so all we’d have lost from this current situation would be one man. Him. We won’t break this in time any other way. There’s a very real chance that he could help to stop everything. Could you live with knowing we didn’t even try? Because I’m not sure I can.’

  Flannigan seemed to me mulling it over as he looked at his watch again. Then his phone chirped with an incoming message. He pulled it out of his pocket and frowned at the screen.

  ‘I’ve expedited the extraction,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here in ten minutes.’

  Cox slumped. ‘Sir, have you listened to anything I’ve been saying?’

  ‘Yes, Cox. I’ve listened to it all.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it’s a no. And that’s absolutely final. I don’t want to hear another word of it. We go ahead as planned. We’re heading to Zed site, and when we get there we’re going to make this fucker wish he’d never been born.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  Cordoba, Southern Spain

  Wahid and his brother Itnan strolled through the cool interior of the arcaded hypostyle hall of the Mezquita, passing under horseshoe arches held up by columns of jasper, onyx, marble and granite. Exiting the open doors of the centuries-old hall, they settled on a bench in the shade of the many trees in the Court of Oranges, a sweet citrus smell wafting through the hot air.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Wahid said to I
tnan, looking back to the complex and uneven structure, put together in pieces over hundreds of years. His brother turned to him, looking a little surprised by the comment. ‘Oh, come on, you have to admire great architecture, even if you don’t like what it stands for.’

  ‘I’m not so sure I agree,’ Itnan said.

  ‘I know it’s hard to see it today, but this used to be one of the greatest mosques of the Moors,’ Wahid said.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Wahid took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the fresh, orange-scented air. ‘I like to imagine what it must have been like back then, when this was a place of worship for Islam. Before the infidels came and butchered it.’ He stared up at the tower of the cathedral, the traditional Renaissance-style nave erupting from the centre of the old mosque. A sight which told Wahid much about the centuries-old fight between Muslims and Christians. For hundreds of years his people had been persecuted – it was time to turn the tables for good.

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’ Itnan asked, looking uncomfortable in his surroundings.

  The answer was multi-layered. For one it was a good, busy place where they could talk without fear of being overheard. The buildings and the gardens gave them cover from drones or satellites above, and they’d left the apartment without any electronic equipment on them at all should any of their devices somehow be compromised. They were entering the final few hours before the attacks began and Wahid wanted to be absolutely sure that he and the others remained undetected.

  Actually, in many ways, it was liberating to ditch technology and get back to basics. But that wasn’t the only reason they’d come.

  ‘This place, for all its outer beauty, represents the whole story of our struggles,’ Wahid said. ‘This was a place of worship. A peaceful place where men could come and pray, and fulfil their duties to Allah. And then the Catholics rampaged through the city. Through this whole region. They butchered the Moors – our ancestors. Not satisfied with taking power, they destroyed this place too. They sat that cathedral right in the centre of our mosque, knowing the disrespect and anguish it would cause the remaining Muslims who were mercilessly persecuted.’

  Wahid looked at his brother again, could see the anger in his eyes.

  ‘More than eight hundred years have passed since then,’ Wahid said. ‘Despite all of the evidence that remains here, of what this place once was – the prayer hall, the mihrab, all of the wonderful arches and tiles and doorways and courtyards – no Muslim has ever been allowed to pray here in all of the time since. The last two people who even attempted it, two young tourists visiting to learn about the history of this great place, were attacked by the infidel guards and thrown out, mid-prayer. Can you believe that?’

  Wahid heard Itnan mutter under his breath.

  ‘Okay,’ Itnan said. ‘That’s enough history for today.’

  ‘No, brother. You can never have too much history,’ Wahid said. ‘History is all that we are, it is what has made the world as it is today. And it will continue to define our future. We will get vengeance for all of the trouble our people have seen. We’ll return places like this to how Allah himself intended. And if we can’t, we’ll raze them to the ground, burying the non-believers in the rubble.’

  ‘We will, my brother.’

  The two men sat in silence for a few moments, quietly watching the throngs of tourists happily idling by and gawking at their surroundings, smiling and posing as they clicked away on their phones and their cameras.

  ‘Give me your update,’ Wahid said.

  Itnan smiled now. ‘I thought you would never ask.’

  ‘Always good to save the best until last.’

  ‘It’s all ready to go.’

  ‘You’ve tested the gas?’

  ‘Only in the lab. It’s not been possible to perform a . . . live demonstration.’

  Wahid had already known that, and he accepted it. The attacks in Spain, as well as using high explosives, would also include the use of phosgene – a poisonous gas they’d produced in their own lab through a chemical reaction using the more widely available chloroform. Phosgene had a rich history, being one of the first chemical weapons of modern warfare, used to great effect during World War I. Unlike other gases used in chemical weapons it was colourless and, with an odour similar to cut grass, its dispersal often went undetected until it was too late. When inhaled in high enough doses, the gas worked quickly to disrupt the blood-air barrier of the lungs, causing suffocation.

  ‘It’s going to be glorious,’ Wahid said. ‘And what about Phantom?’

  ‘Phantom has been live for nearly forty-eight hours,’ Itnan confirmed. ‘We’ve already surpassed the number of intended targets.’

  Phantom was malware, designed by the now deceased Roman Asrutdinov, which they were using to infect countless major corporations across the world – not to mention law enforcement agencies and security services. In just a few hours, when the clock struck zero, the malware would rear its head and every infected organisation would be dragged to its knees. Not only would the chaos that followed greatly assist the attacks and hamper the emergency services’ responses, but the elders would make billionsfrom the disruption from their short positions as share prices across the globe plummeted out of control. The financial upside would mark a colossal turning point in the wider war against the West.

  ‘I always knew you’d succeed,’ Wahid said. ‘And there’s no hint of any unwanted attention?’

  ‘Of course not. Phantom will remain completely undetected until the clock has run down. The code will make sure of that. And then . . .’ Itnan mimicked an explosion with his hands.

  ‘And still no fallout from Berlin?’

  ‘No. Everyone’s looking in the wrong direction, fighting over whether it was Russia or North Korea that Asrutdinov was working with. They’re blaming countless other countries for his death, too. No one will discover the truth in time. For now the trail is completely clean.’

  Clean meaning that, once security forces uncovered the source of the malware, it would take them not to him or his brothers, but to Roman Asrutdinov. Wahid smiled at the thought of how that one would pan out for relations between the US, its allies and Russia.

  ‘Are we done here?’ Itnan said. ‘Seeing all these gurning morons is beginning to make my blood boil.’

  ‘Yes. We’re done. It’s a shame I didn’t bring a camera. It would have been nice to get a picture of how this place used to look.’

  He winked at Itnan, then got to his feet.

  SIXTY

  Ankara, Turkey

  There was no doubt that Aydin was feeling rattled when, just a few minutes after Cox left the room, two thick-set men he’d not seen before barged in, gagged him and placed a sack over his head. They rough-handed him, giving him no chance to fight back as they quickly untied him from the radiator. The shackles between his ankles and wrists remained, the short length between the two sets of cuffs meaning he had to stoop low to walk as they shepherded – well, dragged – him out of there.

  Soon Aydin found himself in an open-sided helicopter – the din of the rotors and the constant whoosh of air making his head sloppy and unfocused. It was impossible not to draw a parallel to what had happened to him all those years ago at the Farm – a thought that certainly didn’t help.

  No one had said a word to him since the men had come into the room in Ankara, though he knew Cox was on the flight too; he’d heard her voice, shouting to be understood over the noise of the helicopter, but not loud enough for Aydin to grasp anything she was saying. She and whoever else was travelling with them had earmuffs and headsets, he assumed, so they could properly communicate.

  The helicopter was almost certainly military: Aydin was sitting on a solid metal bench, there were no luxurious comforts. The chains on his ankles were tied too close around something underneath, chafing angrily at his raw skin.

  For the first time, a ripple of fear expanded and began to take hold. Not just at the tho
ught of being tortured at MI6’s black site – he believed he could handle that. Instead it was, somehow, the build-up of everything bad that had ever happened to him suddenly pinging around inside his head, like a chain reaction surging out of control.

  In the darkness, as the internal ripple continued to grow into a crashing wave, his mind forced him to relive his horrific treatment at the Farm, the killing of his sister and mother, the trials of the last few days as he’d scrambled across Europe a broken man. And alongside those thoughts, which were growing stronger all the time, was the knowledge that, within hours, his brothers – the cause of so much of his pain – would launch their attacks. Thousands of men, women and children would be slain.

  The smiling, bloodstained faces of his brothers appeared before him, the floating grins of the elders too, knowing the long game had finally paid off, and that they’d delivered such a hammer blow to their mortal enemy. Cox was right. Aydin was the only one who could still stop them.

  And there was the source of his suddenly crumbling mental state – it was the anguish of knowing that his silence, and the suffering he would endure at the black site they were heading to, wasn’t to protect him, it was in order to allow the massacre of innocent civilians.

  The gag in his mouth meant he was snorting heavy breaths through his partially blocked nostrils. As his mind flared, adrenaline coursed through his blood. Because of it his pulse was racing, his muscles twitching. Soon his breathing was struggling to keep up with his body’s demand. He was hyperventilating, as if his lungs and heart were burning, and at the same time his mind was becoming woolly and detached.

  ‘Aydin, what’s wrong?’ he heard Cox shouting. She was right next to him. Her voice gave him something to focus on, helping to take away just some of his inner turmoil . . . But he wasn’t sure it was enough. Unable to feed oxygen to his brain, he drifted.

  ‘Aydin!’

  With his head lolling and his eyes rolling, the sack was pulled from his head. A flood of white light burned into his eyes, the gag was ripped from his mouth. He inhaled deeply at the sudden release, feeling the surge of blood and oxygen to his brain through the gargantuan breaths he took. With the freedom to fill his lungs once more, he couldn’t stop himself taking bigger and faster breaths. Brain swimming now – no, drowning – it wasn’t long before the blare of white he saw in front of him faded to black.