by Alan Porter
‘We thought you’d see it that way.’ He tapped an icon on the iPad’s screen. A phone rang and when it was answered, Abu Queria began to speak.
44
‘Easy,’ the man said. ‘I’m going to let you go but I’ve got a gun on you, so don’t make any sudden moves.’ Israeli, Tel Aviv accent, mid thirties, calm and extremely well trained.
The grip around Leila’s mouth loosened and she wriggled free. She heard a key click in the lock behind her.
She turned to face him. ‘You Peretz?’ she whispered.
He was tall – six-one at least – slim but broad shouldered, with the even, balanced stance of a military man. In his left hand he held a snort-nosed pistol.
‘I said, are you Peretz?’
He nodded slightly. ‘And you are?’
‘DS Leila Reid, Counter-Terrorism.’
‘You’re not on the internal roster.’
‘I am, or I wouldn’t be in here.’
‘Maybe. How did you know I was alive?’
‘I got a message from base. They filled me in on the situation here. And that situation means you should stop treating me like the enemy. We’re the best chance these people have of surviving until the outside world figures out what the hell to do about it.’
‘What do you know of who’s behind this?’ Peretz said.
‘A lot more than they think we do. They’re a US-based group that goes by the name Black Eagle, but so far we have no idea what their objective is. They leveraged the move to Mapleton by kidnapping Prime Minister Morgan’s daughter during the bombing in Hyde park two days ago.’
‘Has she been found?’
‘No, but two people I trust are on the case. If anyone can find her, they can. We’re very close. We’ve got all the pieces, we just can’t figure out the picture yet.’
‘You think they’re planning more than just destroying the peace talks?’
‘Don’t you? They’ve got the place booby-trapped. They’re heavily armed and we’ve got no agents other than us inside the building. But they’re just sitting there. They have a bigger aim – something that only holding hostages from all three parties could achieve.’
‘So they sent you in as a one-man… sorry, one-woman, army?’
‘I’m not exactly here on official business. Let’s say I’m trying to save more than just the hostages.’
Peretz spoke again, this time a little more loudly.
‘Did you get all that?’ he said.
‘Wha…?’
Peretz held a finger up to her and cocked his head slightly. He was listening to a voice in his ear that Leila could not hear.
‘No,’ Peretz said, ‘we kill her. She’s told us what she knows.’
He listened again.
Leila had fallen right into their trap. The Black Eagle agents patrolling the corridors of the house had captured or neutralised every one of the friendly agents guarding the building… but somehow Peretz had managed to evade them? He’d done that because they already knew he was there. He was their inside man. Reporting back to CTC had been the perfect bluff to ensure that anyone else in the house would seek him out as an ally.
‘I’m not bringing her down,’ he said. ‘She’s done enough damage.’ He raised the gun and pointed it at the middle of her forehead, the tip of the barrel less than two inches away.
‘On your knees,’ he said, clicking his earpiece off.
‘Fuck you. If you want to shoot me, you’re going to do it eye to eye.’
She took a step backwards and Peretz followed. In the mirror between the windows opposite her she could see the two of them as if watching the scene on a TV screen. She took another step and so did he.
She reached the door. There was nowhere else to go.
‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Peretz took a breath. She saw his finger tighten on the trigger.
An instant before he fired, she snapped her arms up and knocked his hand aside, at the same time sliding a little way down the wall and bracing herself. The bullet slammed into the wall an inch above her head.
In the moment between the first shot and Peretz taking aim again, she pistoned her right foot out. It was a perfect hit. With her back against the door and with a distance of two feet in which to accelerate, her heel made contact with Peretz’s knee with maximum force.
The Israeli reeled sideways and Leila reached again for the door. The knob turned uselessly and the key was not in the lock. Running was not an option.
As Peretz righted himself she charged forwards, bent at the waist, head down. Her right shoulder hit him square in the gut and she kept pushing. With a broken knee, there was little he could do as she used her momentum against him. The gun clicked inches from her head as he struggled to clear a jam.
In seconds they were across the room. She just hoped the upper floors had also been fitted with toughened glass or they would both be in trouble.
At the last moment she gave an extra shove and Peretz’s back hit the curtained window. It barely moved, but he did. He doubled over, his head hitting the small of her back and the gun spilling from his hand. Leila straightened and brought her knee round against his ear. His head jerked sideways and he fell to his knees, scrabbling for the gun a few feet away.
Without thinking Leila span on her heels and kicked him squarely in the jaw. He went down, sprawled and inert.
What now? She had had only one ally in the building, and he had been no ally at all. She had no retreat, no way back out of the building. But it seemed the leader had told Peretz not to kill her. She might still have some value to them alive.
There was only one play here.
She rolled Peretz onto his side and took the door key and his earpiece. She found the mute switch, clicked it off and put it in her own ear. The wire snaked back into Peretz’s jacket collar so she crouched to ensure she didn’t break the connection.
‘Looks like your man’s not going to be killing me after all,’ she said.
There was a pause, a click and a voice spoke.
‘So what now, Detective?’
‘I’m going to do what I came here to do: stop you.’
‘You think you’re just going to be allowed to walk out of here and carry on your crusade?’
‘Not at all. I’m on my way down to the conference room…’
‘No!’ The voice was muffled, distant, but she recognised Prime Minister Morgan instantly.
‘If you can all hear me,’ Leila said, ‘this will be over very soon. The security forces have the building surrounded and we’re very close to bringing down the people who are behind this.’
‘You’d better come down then,’ the voice in her ear said.
‘Keep your men back. You give me safe passage to the conference room, you’ve got yourself another hostage. Agreed?’
‘Come and find out, Detective Reid.’
Although she had little idea of the internal layout of Mapleton house, there was no doubt where the conference room was. Immediately outside the room’s double doors was a broken marble statue and a lot of dust and rubble. The door itself was barely dented. Beside the statue were two large pools of blood. Droplets arced up the left wall. The assassin had killed his prey with a single deadly swipe of a blade across the throat. They were saving ammunition.
At the far end of the corridor a man dressed in black t-shirt and jeans stood with a pistol pressed to his chest. He watched her but did not move.
The door opened as soon as she knocked. She stepped in and it was locked behind her.
‘Leila Reid,’ a voice said. In the relatively bright light of the conference room, she was momentarily unable to see who had spoken. She never did discover his name, but Eben Kriel’s voice would haunt her for the rest of her life. Any South African accent would be forever linked with the horror into which she had just stepped.
Aaron David and his two aides sat with their backs to her; Richard Morgan’s group sat at the head of the table; opposi
te her was Abu Queria and one of his party. At the end of the table a woman lay face down in a pool of blood that spread out over the polished surface and dripped onto the cream carpet. One Black Eagle agent stood against the main door, another beneath a large LCD screen on the front wall. His foot rested on a black box. The man who had spoken was on the far side of the room.
‘Congratulations, Detective Reid,’ Kriel said. ‘You evaded us at every turn. For two days you slipped through our net. Clever to use a bomb hoax to outrun the man we sent to find you. You even pretended to leave tonight, though we had already seen your biometrics logged into the entry system.’
‘Well if I’m what you wanted, let these people go.’
‘All in good time.’ He stepped up to the table and tapped a few lines into the iPad. Leila drew breath to speak but he held his hand up to her. He read the reply on the screen and turned back to her.
‘You have caused us a great deal of trouble,’ he said. ‘Now you are going to do something for us. Balance your account, so to speak.’
‘I’m doing nothing for you. Your time’s running out.’
‘You mean Ruth Morgan? No, Miss Reid, that was perhaps your one mistake.’ He turned to Richard and said, ‘this agent of the state, an employee of your security forces has just killed your daughter, Prime Minister.’
Morgan made a sound that was barely human. His shoulders dropped and he visibly crumpled. All the others seated around him looked down.
‘If she’s dead, I had nothing to do with it,’ Leila said. ‘You were going to kill her anyway.’
‘That is possible, yes, but when you began looking into the background of our operation, she became a dangerous distraction. She was shot five minutes ago. Her body will be found quickly and can be given a proper send-off. We ensured she would look well in an open casket.’
‘And you still think I’m going to do something for you?’ Leila said.
‘You are about to take a drive back to London.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Not quite as we planned, but as soon as we saw you enter the building we knew we had found the perfect person for the job. In a few minutes you will drive to London to collect a prisoner from Holloway jail. You will then take her to an address you will be given and, if you do as you are told, you will go home and all this will be over. These people will be released and should they wish to continue their charade of making peace in the middle east, they are welcome to do so.’
‘Oh really? I’m going to London? You’ve got nothing left. I knew I might not make it out of here alive, and I’m fine with that. Ruth’s dead and you’ve already applied your maximum pressure to the delegates. You’ve nowhere left to go.’
‘I think you’ll do it without any coercion at all, Miss Reid.’
‘And why the hell would I do that?’
‘Because you have to know. You’ve risked everything to solve this puzzle. You’ve almost certainly made any legal process impossible, you’ve probably lost your job, alienated the only people who ever stood by you. And for what? Glory? Money? No. Ego. You have to solve it; you have to find the final piece. You will do exactly what we ask, because your ego will make it impossible for you to do anything else. Black Eagle is already more important to you than the air you breathe. And in that, you and I are exactly the same.’
‘We’re nothing alike.’
‘We’ll see. Maybe when this is over, you’ll understand.’
The iPad on the desk pinged softly. Kriel glanced down and Leila did too. A single word had appeared in a window at the top of the screen: proceed.
45
When she had entered the conference room, Leila had expected many things. What she had not expected was that she would be leaving, alive and well, less than half an hour later. She still had her gun and phone, and the keys to one of the official agency cars parked outside.
Outside, the powerful lights of two ASU helicopters were trained on the front and back entrances to the house. Shafts of blue light passed through the trees from unseen vehicles beyond the apparently useless SHIELD at the garden’s edge. Leila clicked the electronic key and scanned the parked cars. A black BMW 525 winked at her.
It was a little after eleven o’clock. The night was hot and overcast, without the promise of a storm to clear the air. She made a quick detour to the red Mazda parked along the lane. She retrieved the small bag containing her tool roll and dropped it into the passenger footwell of the MI5 car. With Scaz Bones’s phone wedged into the cradle on the dash she turned around and headed out towards the main road. She dialled Lawrence’s direct line. He answered it after one ring.
‘Leila, where are you?’
‘Just leaving Mapleton House. I’m their nominated driver.’
‘For Raha Golzar?’
‘If that’s who’s in Holloway jail, yes. First, I need you to clear the roads heading north. I’m in a government registered 525, alpha-charlie-one-five golf-lima-papa. I don’t have time for roadblocks. How are we doing at you end?’
‘Leila, have you heard about Ruth Morgan?’
‘Yes. He told me she’d been executed because Phillip got too close.’
‘Phillip didn’t get anywhere. There was no mobile phone, no digital records. He drew a complete blank.’
So she had been responsible for Ruth’s execution. Black Eagle had no idea about Phillip’s involvement until she herself told Peretz. After that, they couldn’t risk Ruth being found before this was all over.
‘Leila?’
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘What can you tell us of the situation inside the conference room?’
‘I can tell you Peretz isn’t working for us, he made that very clear. Of the three men in the conference room, I’ve got nothing. No names, masks, couldn’t tell you anything. The leader’s South African, my guess would be Special Forces, but you know that already.’
‘Peretz told us they’d booby-trapped the room.’
‘They’ve got C-4 necklaces on each of the delegates. There’s a wireless connection to a dead-man’s switch on the floor under the foot of the second man. They’re all armed, but they’re casual about it. The delegates are way past any kind of resistance, if they had any to begin with. Communication is via an iPad plugged into the Mapleton LAN. He’s communicating with other agents within the building and at least one person on the outside.’
‘They’re using proprietary encryption for most of it. We can’t even get into the network let alone hear what they’re saying.’
‘Have you tried Phillip?’
‘We’re handling it from here.’
‘Mark Ross?’
‘Ross? No. That’s a whole other story.’
‘Tell me.’
‘He was arrested just after seven o’clock. Anonymous tip-off alerted Major Crime to a whole other life Ross was leading right under our noses. Sixteen rocks of crack cocaine was found in his flat, along with a gun that links back to a gangland shooting two years ago.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Leila said. Bones and his friends in Greenwich had done a good job. ‘Michael, I know you need to keep things tight, but don’t write Phillip off because he couldn’t find Ruth. He’s the only reason we’ve even got this far.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind. What can you tell us about the bombs?’
‘Half-inch thick strips of plastic C-4, small detonator at the front.’
‘How are they attached?’
‘The loops are closed with plastic cable ties at the back. They’re on tight enough that there’s no way they could be removed in a hurry. Hold on a moment.’
She had been waved through the one- and two-mile checkpoints and by the time she reached the three-mile cordon she didn’t even bother to slow. She flashed her lights half a mile from the cluster of flashing blue lights and floored the accelerator. She was doing over seventy when she whistled past the assembled armed guards on the outer limit of Mapleton Security.
Still planning for yesterday, she thought.
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br /> ‘OK,’ she went on, ‘fill me in on what I’m driving into here.’
‘Everything’s in place at Holloway. There’s also CTC officers closing in on the prison.’
‘All I need is an outrider, marked car, to clear the road of traffic. They’ll be watching.’
‘OK. CTC will follow discretely. I’m going to patch Sir Malcolm Stevens into the call. He can fill you in on what Five have got on Golzar.’
There was a few seconds of silence then Stevens spoke.
‘DS Reid?’
‘Sir Malcolm. What do we know about the prisoner?’
‘Officially not much. She’s an ex-Iranian, ex-Russian, now-US citizen. According to her limited file she was killed in an assassination in West Jerusalem in April last year.’
‘Mossad?’
‘Fatah, officially. She had links to a double agent by the name of Hassan Hawadi. He set her up.’
‘No shit! So what really happened?’
‘She was picked up by SIS agents working with the CIA. Rendition was arranged via RAF Lyneham to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. But Richard Morgan had planned the whole thing: he needed her here as his ace card in the peace deal. She’s been kept at Low Newton as a maximum security mental patient since she arrived.’
‘But she’s not mental.’
‘Far from it. We just don’t have a Guantanamo Bay here. Low Newton was the next best thing. It was the perfect cover – hiding in plain sight. Her story was so unbelievable that no one was going to think she was anything other than a paranoid schizophrenic. Someone high up in the government created a whole back story to keep her away from prying eyes, and of course the CIA had to deny they knew anything about her.’
‘And now she’s being handed over to the Palestinians.’
‘Right. No one outside of the PM’s immediate circle and a handful of people in the security services knew about it.’
‘Someone knew she was at Low Newton,’ Leila said. ‘Do we know why she’s so important?’
‘We don’t know very much about her at all. SIS have opened their files to us, or at least some of them. She first appeared on the security radar when she defected to the US in 1998.’
