The Black Madonna

by Peter Millar

  ‘I’m not wholly surprised. It’s an Israeli checkpoint at the northern end of the Gaza Strip.’

  12

  The man behind the wheel of the black Mercedes cursed under his breath. It was not in his nature to blame others but he was sorely tempted. If anything went wrong he would take the retribution alone. He was in charge and failure was not suffered gladly.

  When his older colleague had pleaded the need to relieve himself, it didn’t seem like much of a risk. He would only be a minute or two and would go into the seedy-looking hotel itself and make discreet enquiries at the same time: find out which room they were staying in. The girl and her big friend, whoever he was, had only just arrived. They would not be leaving immediately. They were probably rolling together in carnal lust already, the old man had spat, although the note in his voice was more of envy than disapproval. The girl was a looker all right, and obviously a hussy.

  But barely seconds after the old man had gone into the hotel, the girl herself had emerged, looked briskly up and down the street and climbed into a taxi. He had had no choice but to set off immediately in pursuit; the risk of losing them in the London traffic was too great. He had taken the cab’s number automatically, but the streets were full of them and if it gave him the slip, finding the same cab again would be not so much like hunting a needle in a haystack as searching for a particular straw.

  At least the traffic was moving slowly. He tried his colleague’s mobile and got a ringing tone but no answer. He wondered if the old fool even knew how to work it. The taxi edged forward and through the traffic lights ahead of him. Damn! If it turned right into the one-way system around Russell Square Gardens, he would have to guess which exit it might take. Where on earth could the woman be going?

  She appeared to be carrying the same baggage – a ridiculous rucksack – that she had arrived with. Perhaps they had a lovers’ tiff and she had walked out on him. He wished he knew who the man was, but he had no idea, had been given no warning that she would be met at the airport. He had filed away a mental description: tall, well-built, Anglo-Saxon in appearance, English probably or just possibly American although he seemed neither smartly nor sloppily enough dressed for that. Fair to mid-brown hair, and he walked with just the hint of a limp in his left leg. Not that he mattered now. The orders were to follow the girl.

  For the moment the taxi was still visible in the traffic ahead. Then it turned the corner. The lights changed. He pressed the accelerator and took off after it. His mobile burst into life as he turned the corner; the old fool had obviously emerged from the Gents and found out how to work his phone. He ignored it.

  The taxi was still ahead but turned left at the edge of the square, then took a left into Montague Street, the long road that ran down one side of the great neoclassical bulk of the British Museum. Of course, why hadn’t he thought of it. She was an archaeologist. Where else would she be headed but the home of one of the greatest collections on earth? On impulse he grabbed his still ringing mobile from the seat next to him, hit answer and told his perplexed partner to grab a cab, cut around the back of the museum and get out at the main entrance. That way there would be two of them again, enough to tail the woman properly without both having obviously emerged from the same vehicle. Sometimes God indeed moved in mysterious ways.

  Sure enough, he watched with satisfaction as the cab’s indicator signalled right at the end of Montague Street. He slowed at the corner and turned right into Great Russell Street. The museum’s monumental portico and colonnade ran the length of the block, the steps behind the railings crowded with summer tourists, but there was no sign of a taxi in front of him. It wasn’t possible. There hadn’t been time for her to stop and settle up. Unless she had cut and run. But why? And there would have been an outraged cab driver in the middle of the road.

  Nor could they have shot on ahead of him: a little further on the road became one-way in the opposite direction. He edged forward and glanced down the narrow road on his left to see a black cab turning right at the end of it. The same one? He couldn’t make out the number, but it had to be. He had been wrong about her destination. He accelerated to the end of the street and saw it again stopped in traffic edging towards the lights at the end of Bloomsbury Way.

  It made no sense. In a moment they would be back at Southampton Row, which was where they would have ended up if they had not turned at Russell Square. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Could she have realised she was being followed? It was not impossible; he had been as discreet as he could under the circumstances but then the circumstances had been far from perfect.

  The lights changed, the cab turned right again, down Kingsway, a big broad, split-carriageway road which was one of the few in London where traffic could really move. To make matters worse, there was a bus lane; the cab pulled into it and accelerated away. It was illegal for the Mercedes to follow suit, not that its driver gave a damn about the law or the possibility of a fine, but the last thing he wanted was to be pulled over by the police and in any case to have done so would have made certain she knew she was being followed. To catch up he would have to rely on the city’s most dependable attributes: congestion and badly phased traffic lights.

  They did not let him down. The lights at Aldwych turned red before the cab reached them, then green just in time to let him follow it to the left around the great one-way semi-circle. There were two options at the end of its curve: left along Fleet Street towards St Paul’s and the financial district of the City, or sharp right towards Trafalgar Square and the West End. They turned right, but when the Mercedes did likewise, it was facing a wall of identical black cabs spread across the road.

  Almost too late he spotted the one with the girl in it, pulled right over beyond the traffic islands into a left-hand lane that led not ahead but over the bridge. He braked too slowly to avoid being sucked along with the traffic flow down the Strand, and watched the cab turn the corner as the lights changed. Almost immediately the cab was out of sight; he revved the Mercedes hard and threw it at the line of raised kerbing marking the central lane division. There was an agonising scrape of metal on stone as the big car bumped over, and a flurry of blaring horns as he ploughed across the next lane and shot the red lights. He had no idea what damage he might have done to the undercarriage, or whether there would be a police car on his tail any minute. To his right as he shot out onto Waterloo Bridge the great Ferris wheel of the London Eye rotated majestically, transporting its pods of tourists ogling the Palace of Westminster beneath them and distant St Paul’s, but he had eyes for one thing only: the black cab approaching the roundabout at the other end of the bridge.

  Waterloo, he suddenly realised. Was she heading for Waterloo. A train out of town? Or to somewhere in the southern suburbs? The centre of the roundabout was taken up with the great cylinder of an Imax cinema, blocking the view and as he rounded it once again his field of vision filled with black taxis, but most of them were emerging onto the roundabout from the station pick-up area. The obvious thing was for her cab to have merged in with them on the station approach. It was off-limits to ordinary cars, but he would have to take the risk. And then at the last minute, glancing left to take account of oncoming traffic, he spotted the number plate he had memorised stopped on the right-hand side of the road just beyond the bus stop down Waterloo Road. Facing towards him. The driver had done a typical London cabbie’s U-turn in the middle of the road. Someone was getting in! A pre-arranged meeting? And then there she was, on the pavement, her brightly coloured rucksack standing out from the crowd. For a moment he breathed a sigh of relief, before a wave of angry frustration overcame him as she disappeared into the Underground.

  There was nothing to be done. Even if there had been two of them, it would have been a problem. There were four lines passing through Waterloo. She could have taken any of them. He muttered a few words into his headset in response to the babble of his panicking colleague, and then turned it off. He swung the Mercedes out into the traffic and back onto the
roundabout, heading north and east, to Finsbury Park.

  He would have to make his report. But first he would have to say his prayers. Oh yes, he would definitely have to say his prayers.

  13

  ‘Believe me,’ Dr Heidi Wenger said, ‘it’s not exactly what we were expecting either. And before you ask: No, I’ve no way of explaining it. At least not one that makes any sort of sense.’

  ‘Then how do you know …?’

  ‘Take a look at this. Not that it’s going to help with any of the questions you want an answer to,’ and she handed the bemused Kriminalpolizei lieutenant a sheet of paper. It was a printout of an email message, though he noticed that the headers had been blocked out with a thick black indelible, and impenetrable, marker.

  ‘It’s a translation of the official Israeli report of the incident,’ she said.

  Weinert read: ‘Report from 1st battalion, 3rd Coy, Gaza frontier unit, IDF (Israeli Defence Force, he understood), Major XXXXX (blacked out) commanding:

  ‘The incident was logged as commencing at 00:10 hours when the duty sentries at the Israeli end of the Erez crossing point into Gaza became aware of some form of altercation at the Palestinian checkpoint some 150 metres distant. Heightened observation immediately after identified a vehicle heading for the main checkpoint fortification at approximately thirty kilometres per hour. As crossings without prior notification are heavily restricted, all checkpoint personnel were immediately put on full alert.

  ‘As the vehicle continued to approach, floodlights were trained on it and the usual warning given in Arabic, Hebrew, English and Russian. The vehicle continued its progress and warning shots were fired into the air.

  ‘With the aid of night vision binoculars, the forward watch ascertained that the vehicle in question was an early-model Honda CR-V with limited four-wheel drive capability and darkened executive windows. It was not possible to see inside the vehicle or know how many people it contained.

  ‘As is customary in the current heightened security situation, the officer commanding gave the order to fire once more into the air above the vehicle and repeat the warning, this time in Arabic only, that failure to halt immediately carried potentially lethal consequences.

  ‘Notwithstanding the vehicle continued. When it was approximately seventy metres distant, the commanding officer issued the general order to fire at the vehicle’s tyres with the express purpose of halting its progress, with permission granted to aim at the radiator grill or other bodywork if necessary but not yet at the cabin pending further, imminent instruction.

  ‘Hits were marked on the vehicle’s front radiator grill and left-side front tyre, causing it to skew but not halt. At this stage the commanding officer considered due process to have been observed and ordered blistering fire at the windshield which disintegrated, affording a partial view of a single occupant in the driving position now hunched forward presumed hit.

  ‘The vehicle however continued to advance in the face of withering fire to within ten metres of the checkpoint at which distance it was consumed by a powerful explosion presumably as the result of onboard devices detonated by the occupant. There were no other casualties. IDF forces secured the area with no Palestinian resistance. Representatives from the Palestinian Authority denied all responsibility for the incident, claiming their own security people were “distracted”.’

  ‘And you’re trying to tell me the man inside the car was …’

  ‘Exactly, the same individual whose vital organs had arrived in Altötting nearly twenty-four hours earlier. From what the Israeli forensic team pieced together …’ Weinert winced at what he was not altogether sure was an unintentional pun, ‘he was pretty high on the list of wanted terrorists. Just not their list.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Oh, they wanted him okay, as did a lot of other people. They just hadn’t expected him to turn up on their territory.’

  ‘So how did they identify him?’

  ‘By the DNA, there and then like here and now. He was on an internationally distributed database. They’d taken comprehensive samples when he was in jail in Spain.’

  ‘Spain?’

  ‘Yep. Their bits of body, just like our bits of body, belonged to …’ she consulted another piece of paper, ‘one Ahmed Abdul Rashid al-Zahwani. Moroccan by birth, last known place of residence: Algeciras, Spain. Served six months in 1999 for incitement to violence. Part-time Islamist, full-time hood, not so much martyr as materiel supplier with links to Chechen gangs and anybody else who can make holy war into a nice little money-spinner. He’s been high on Interpol’s wanted list since 2002, suspected of having sourced the explosives used in the Madrid bombings and possibly even involved in the attacks in London as well. Scotland Yard say he was suspected of being a courier between Islamist groups on the continent and in England.’

  ‘Well that certainly deals with any sympathy I might have been feeling for the dear deceased.’

  ‘Indeed, on the other hand, there’s no suggestion here that he himself was a prospective martyr.’

  ‘You mean?’

  ‘I mean that according to Interpol, and the portfolio the Spanish and British police and security services had put together on him, his personality profile does not match that normally attributed to suicide bombers. He wasn’t even one of those who goads others on to do his dirty work. He liked women – preferably not heavenly virgins – gambled heavily and drank alcohol. In short, al-Zahwani was a thug, a criminal who saw Islamic fundamentalism as nothing more than a nice little earner.’

  ‘You’re saying you don’t believe he volunteered for this mission.’

  ‘Let’s just say he wouldn’t have had the balls for it.’

  14

  The first indication Marcus had that Nazreem had not walked out of his life as abruptly as she had re-entered it was the sound of running water coming once again from the adjoining bathroom around six-fifty p.m. Ten minutes later, promptly, there was a knock on his door.

  He opened it to find her there in jeans and a white T-shirt. Not a headscarf in sight, but not acres of bare midriff exposed either: she could have been French or Italian, a picture of understated Mediterranean sophistication. Marcus was impressed and he smiled to show it.

  She smiled back, somehow indefinably more relaxed, as if she really had spent the better part of two hours in the bath. Curious as he was, Marcus had no intention of quizzing her. If she wanted to she would tell him in her own good time, though he could provide the opportunity:

  ‘Did you get a good rest?’ he asked, trying to sound as natural as possible.

  ‘Yes,’ the reply came without a second’s hesitation. ‘I fell asleep. I’m sorry, I hope you didn’t want the bathroom.’

  ‘It’s okay, there’s one along the corridor.’ Her own good time might not be any time soon. ‘So, where would you like to go for dinner? And then you can tell me all about it.’ Or not, he thought. ‘There are several Lebanese restaurants around.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind. Maybe something local would be nice though. But not something boiled. I have heard things about English food.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it used to be. How about the national dish?’

  Nazreem looked sceptical: ‘Fish and chips, yes?’

  Marcus laughed. ‘Not any more, these days they reckon it’s Chicken Tikka Masala. Indian food, sort of.’

  She laughed back: ‘Sounds excellent.’

  ‘Good. I know just the place.’

  It was raining when they got downstairs, one of those seasonal thunderstorms that alternated with hot spells, and had recently become part of what the newspapers had started calling the ‘English monsoon season’. Marcus insisted Nazreem stay in the lobby while he went to fetch the Peugeot. He had thought of taking a cab, but the pouring rain meant there were few free and this was not the sort of hotel that had doormen in top hats who stepped out into the street to summon them. Also the Peugeot needed to be rescued from its exorbitant meter before full rates cu
t in again at eight a.m.

  As they made their way eastwards through the dark and quickly emptying streets of the City, Marcus checked his rear-view mirror carefully. There was no obvious sign of an unusually attentive black Mercedes.

  Perhaps he had been over-reacting, although he was not quite sure he believed that. He knew he should tell Nazreem what he had seen. If she was really being followed, she ought to know. But to tell her would expose her lie to him. It was difficult. The whole thing made him slightly uneasy.

  Priji’s in Brick Lane would cheer him up. It was his favourite curry restaurant in London. Maybe dinner would provide a chance for them to talk properly, for Nazreem to open up. He found a parking space in Fournier Street, by the side of Christ Church, Spitalfields, the newly restored eighteenth-century masterpiece that was one of his favourite London buildings. It had been designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, the same architect who had given All Souls its Gothic spires. It was also in easy walking distance of Priji’s.

  The rain meant there were fewer than usual of the curry touts hassling passers-by. Priji’s had been recommended to him by a South African friend of Asian extraction. The food, like most of the Brick Lane eateries, was not actually Indian but Bangladeshi, and the chef-owner, a second generation Londoner of Bengali extraction was not just a master in the kitchen but a host with a heart of gold. He noticed Nazreem looking disconcertedly at the sea of brown faces and at the street names written in both English and Bengali.

  ‘This is … like a ghetto?’ she said.

  ‘I suppose, but the word has too many negative connotations these days. I prefer to think of it as the historical equivalent of an airport arrivals lounge.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Marcus smiled. ‘Well, it’s called Brick Lane because back in the middle ages there were fields here where workmen dug the clay to make London bricks. They didn’t build houses on any scale until after the Great Fire of 1666. Once they did, because the area was so close to the docks, it became a bedding-in zone for new immigrants.