No Further

by Andy Maslen

  “That’s everything we have on Darbandi.”

  Gabriel opened the folder. The first page was a personal profile including a colour photo taken through a long lens. He could see the candy-striped domes of St Basil’s Cathedral behind Darbandi’s head, like so many swirls of multiflavoured ice cream. So, taken while he was in Moscow. He wore the same facial expression as in the photo Don had given Gabriel. But did he look like a man capable of designing a weapon whose specific and stated use was to murder almost a million people and destabilise a country to the point of collapse? No. He did not. Or maybe, actually, he did. When had any of Gabriel’s missions ever been blessed with a target whose facial features or body matched their warped psychology or twisted actions? What do you want Wolfe? Vampire teeth or talons for fingernails? Strings of drool and a dead-eyed stare?

  He reflected on the men, and occasionally women, he’d killed. Most had been average-looking. A couple of the men had been handsome, a couple of the women beautiful, though that hadn’t stopped him. Would anything stop you? he asked himself. Would you kill a pregnant woman? A child? A man in a wheelchair? Someone lying unconscious in a hospital bed? Yes, of course. He had killed Marie-Louise Hubert, the corrupt and murderous director of a Cambodian children’s charity, by pumping her full of morphine while she lay in a hospital bed poisoned by a customised bio-weapon. The answer emerged from the moral fog inside his head like the spire of Salisbury Cathedral rising out of the morning mist. If Don Webster ordered me to, yes, I would .

  “Gabriel?” Eli had tapped him on his left arm. She and Tim were looking at him, he with curiosity, she with concern. Bennett was inspecting his fingernails.

  “Sorry, miles away,” he said, flipping over the pages. “This all looks great, Tim. Eli and I’ll study it before we leave.”

  “Good, good. I’m just sorry there’s not more. I have your next orders here, too, from Colonel Webster. He couriered it down here this morning.”

  He pushed over a plain white envelope.

  Gabriel smiled as he took it. Don wasn’t a colonel any longer, but his reputation and sterling work commanding 22 SAS had led many of his new contacts to continue using the title, however much Don might protest that he was “plain Mister Webster now.”

  He slid a nail along the flap to open the orders and withdrew a single sheet of paper, which he glanced at for a few seconds.

  “What does it say?” Eli asked.

  “We’re to report to Marlborough Lines tomorrow. A Captain M. Forshaw.”

  “Army HQ? Why?”

  “They have an Iraqi village they’ve built out on Salisbury Plain and Don’s had it tweaked to the layout of Vareshabad.”

  He looked up at Tim.

  “Thank you.”

  Tim shrugged his thin shoulders.

  “Just doing what HMG pays me for. Be careful out there, won’t you? We’ve an embassy in Tehran again, but it’s a tricky place to move around in. Hugh?

  Bennett began speaking immediately, as if Tim had fed a coin into a slot. An “I speak your mission” machine.

  “Your SIS contact there is Julian Furnish. Officially, he’s our Deputy Cultural Attaché. He’s been briefed on the operation and stands ready to assist you. You’ll collect your kit from him – we’ll ship it out in a diplomatic bag.”

  That appeared to be all he wanted to say, and after a moment’s hesitation, Tim resumed the briefing.

  “Thanks, Hugh. Yes, so, hopefully, everything will go according to plan. But if it all goes to shit,” then Tim blushed and he looked at Eli. “Pardon me, Eli—” She waved it away. “Well, if it all blows up in your face, either literally or metaphorically, get yourself to the Embassy and ask for Julian. He’s been briefed you’re there undercover and won’t be making contact unless you’re, what shall we say, in extremis ?”

  Gabriel was beginning to tire of Tim’s over-solicitous manner and scrupulous manners around Eli, who Gabriel knew was more than capable of turning Tim’s maidenly blush into something the colour of a pillar box. Then he rebuked himself. The guy’s only trying to be helpful. Maybe he really was a choirboy. Maybe his dad’s a vicar .

  The meeting concluded a few minutes later. Tim offered to accompany them down to the ground floor. As they waited for the lift, Gabriel turned to Tim.

  “Did you join the Service straight from university?”

  “Yes. Would you believe I was recruited in the old-fashioned manner? A tap on the shoulder during a seminar on Middle East politics.”

  “If it ain’t broke …” Gabriel said.

  Tim laughed.

  “Exactly! Although I believe you can now download application forms from the web.”

  “So is it a family thing?” Eli asked. “Serving your country?”

  Tim shook his head, and a ghost of an expression flitted across his face before Gabriel could read it.

  “Not really. Unless you count working in a university. My parents are academics, just a little to the right of Karl Marx. They don’t really approve of my being a, you know …” He leaned closer and whispered theatrically, “… a spy! ” He straightened. “How about you, Gabriel? Does service run in your family?”

  “My father was a diplomat in Hong Kong.”

  “So you didn’t really see too much of them, I’m guessing. What with all the functions and so on?”

  Gabriel thought back to his childhood. He hadn’t spent time with his parents. Not after Michael died.

  “I left home early. I was what you might call a rebellious boy. I was brought up by a friend of my parents from the age of nine.”

  “Was that OK?” Tim asked.

  “It was good. Great, in fact.”

  “Is he still with us?”

  Gabriel shook his head. Offered a tight-lipped smile.

  Tim was clearly enough of a diplomat himself not to press further.

  A bleep and a pleasant female voice telling them to “Please take lift number four” interrupted the small talk, which was threatening to become big talk.

  Reaching the ground floor, the trio stepped out of the lift and Tim shook hands with them both, Eli first.

  Back in the car, Eli spoke.

  “I didn’t know men like him still existed.”

  “Oh, there are still a few with manners, even in SIS.”

  She laughed.

  “OK, so back to Shoreditch then off to Army HQ tomorrow.”

  Inside the green-glass-and-sandstone building Gabriel and Eli had just left, the analyst with the beard and moustache was talking to Tim.

  “Were they those bloody people from The Department?”

  Tim looked mildly surprised.

  “Well, they were from The Department, Faroukh. I’m not sure they deserve to be called ‘bloody people.’ They’re just doing their job like we all are.”

  “Where are they off to now, then?”

  “Marlborough Lines. Training.”

  “Huh. All right for some, isn’t it? Poncing about on Salisbury Plain while we’re stuck inside staring at bloody computer screens all day.”

  Tim shrugged. He was about to reply when a flicker of grey at the window beyond Faroukh’s shoulder made him turn. A bird of prey had landed on the window ledge. It perched there, unable to see the spooks through the shielded plate glass, its head tilted to one side.

  “Look!” Tim said. “A peregrine falcon. Falco peregrinus . They’re roosting all over London now. It’s a miracle.”

  Faroukh snorted. “I’ll tell you what’s a miracle, Tim. That we get any work done with all these interruptions.”

  Later, at his flat in Shepherd’s Bush, Faroukh pulled out a cheap mobile phone and made a call.

  A Matter of Faith

  TEHRAN

  Although only a thirteen-year-old boy at the time that the Shah was deposed, Abbas Darbandi had been brought up on stories of that glorious moment in Iran’s history. His father was a devout Muslim, his uncles both Imams, and his older brothers both served in the Army. They filled the impress
ionable young boy’s head with the glory of the armed overthrow of the Shah’s corrupt, Western-facing Iran. And what of its successor? The brutal, theocratic, Islamic Republic of Iran? Naturally, they were in favour. Despite its total power at home, the newborn country needed enemies to bolster its population and distract them from their privations and loss of personal liberty. And what better enemy than Israel? The Jewish state to their west was a puppet of the USA, an affront to Islam, an interloper in the Arab world, and had to be destroyed. The young Abbas swallowed the rhetoric at home, at school and at the mosque as if it were mother’s milk.

  As soon as he was old enough, he went to university to further refine his already prodigious talents in mathematics and physics. His professors spotted the young man’s abilities, and his fervent espousal of the ideas of a radical Shia sect committed to the hardest of hardcore Islamic philosophy: the immediate, total and irreversible destruction of the state of Israel, by whatever means necessary.

  Messages were sent to representatives of the security services. Interviews were conducted, in which the young man proved himself a willing, enthusiastic and determined servant of the Republic. And Abbas Darbandi was sent to Moscow, and from there, Beijing.

  Alongside his formal studies in Russia and China, Darbandi acquired a thorough grasp of revolutionary politics. Coupled with his flair for nuclear physics, and still brightly burning religious fervour, it made a potent mix.

  He returned to Iran with a single, all-consuming idea. To design, build and launch a nuclear missile that would strike at the heart of Israel. So strong was his fervour, he would have been only mildly disappointed to learn that he was at best only the joint author of the idea. That his co-authors were agents of the state, who had spotted his academic talent around his thirteenth birthday.

  He worked long hours, returning to his new wife each evening to lecture her on the evils of Israel and its Zionist supporters in America and Europe. And how he, Abbas Darbandi, was going to redraw the map of the Middle East. Over dinners of home-cooked lamb, roasted aubergine and saffron-scented rice, she would nod and smile, asking questions she thought appropriate for a woman to ask her husband, and praising his work.

  In time, she bore him five children, two daughters and three sons. And they became part of the audience for his nightly bulletins on his work. He did not entirely forget his role as a father and husband. From time to time, when work permitted, he would take the family to the coast up at Chalus to play on the beach, fly kites and eat delicious picnics of cold grilled chicken and salads dressed with his favourite blend of pomegranate molasses, lemon juice and olive oil.

  On the drive back to Tehran, he would always detour through Vareshabad, stopping outside the gates of the facility.

  “That’s where Daddy works,” he would intone. “One day very soon, he will finish the …” How he yearned to say it out loud – the bomb! “… project that will mean great fame for Daddy and a new respect for Iran in the world.”

  The children, yawning from the hot day at the seaside, would clap and his wife would lower her eyes as she looked at him from beneath her long, dark lashes.

  Late at night, after he had taken what was rightfully his from his properly submissive wife, he would leave the bed and go out onto the balcony. Looking over the dark streets of Tehran, he would indulge in a delicious fantasy. That he was, Whisper it, a Jew! Living in Jerusalem . A distant siren would sound. He would look to the horizon in a panic. And there, streaking down from the heavens, trailing a plume of holy orange fire, would be a missile. And another. And another and another and another. The mushroom clouds would blossom like rose bushes all over the city. Red fireballs would boil upwards from ruined streets, squares, alleys and parks. Everything obliterated, everything burning. And the blast wave would rush out from the centre of the city and destroy everything in its path. Men, women, children, pet cats, zoo animals, stray dogs, the beasts of the land, the birds of the air – all would become ashes, blown away on the burning wind.

  Sometimes the fantasy would produce a state of sexual arousal, and Darbandi would return to bed to wake his wife. Others, it would leave him as sated as if he had already taken her. But of one thing, he was sure. This was his destiny. His God-given destiny. And nothing must be allowed to stand in its way.

  Tipoff

  DOCKLANDS, EAST LONDON

  High above the rectilinear layout of roads and manicured green spaces comprising the Canary Wharf financial district, three men sat at a glass-topped boardroom table. The men were rich. The phrase “obscenely rich” might have been coined just for them. But these men were not captains of industry. Their families had not acquired their wealth by laying railways across undiscovered lands, excavating harbours or throwing up skyscrapers. They were not media moguls or tech entrepreneurs, transforming whole markets or disrupting traditional industries with a single app. Nor were they financiers, or not in the traditional sense. Had anyone been foolish enough to inquire as to how, precisely, they had acquired their billions, he or she would have been met with a thin smile.

  “We are in the influence business,” they might say. Or, “We work with governments, facilitating global trade.”

  Both explanations, though minimal, were true. Their families originally came from Russia. They had avoided the recent, and fashionable, route into extreme affluence: selling off, and repurchasing at a knockdown price, previously state-owned assets. Instead, they had concentrated on being of service. When the Soviet state, and then its gangster-capitalist successor, had needed deniable help “disposing of underperforming assets,” as their clients might put it, the men and their organisation were there to help. Of course, they had made sure that their clients compensated them for their assistance at the very highest level. And they had joined forces with other, similar organisations around the world.

  The umbrella organisation had given itself a name. Aware that they were operating in the real world, and not an adolescent film director’s fantasy, they had forgone names with blatantly evil connotations. No Kraken for them. No Octopus. No Black Circle, Widow or Night. Instead, their business cards – for yes, they did proffer them from time to time – bore the word:

  Kuznitsa

  Some years earlier, one of their senior people in the UK, known only by the code name Strickland, had been killed. The perpetrator was an unknown British security operator. The loss of Strickland could be borne, lightly, if need be. But the plan from which he had been smoothing off the rough edges could not. They had been within weeks of seizing control of a huge central African diamond field and, simultaneously, the financial, military and security apparatus of a sizeable country in that region. Now, that plan was as dead as Strickland, who’d collapsed to the ground in the middle of a remote moor in the Peak District with a five-inch combat knife embedded up to the hilt in his neck.

  “So why are we here?”

  The speaker, thickset, bearded, leant back in his padded, white leather swivel chair. The man he’d addressed his question to had just risen from his own chair and was now standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at a superyacht, his superyacht, which was moored in a basin of jade-green water between two skyscrapers.

  The standing man turned. He was six-foot tall and heavily built. Max considered himself a good dresser. His charcoal-grey suit had been made for him in Savile Row. He had paired it today with a pink silk shirt and matching tie and a pair of handmade John Lobb Oxfords. He was smiling broadly.

  “We’ve got him!” He strode over to the seated man and clapped him on his beefy shoulder. He barked out a laugh. “Our contact inside British intelligence just called me. Strickland’s killer. His name is Wolfe.”

  The third man, older than the other two, peered over gold-framed, half-moon spectacles.

  “How can he be sure?”

  Max grew exasperated.

  “He works in MI6, OK? He heard a whisper that Strickland was killed by some guy working for a group called The Department. They’re killers, jus
t like us, but part of the British Government. So he pulled the file on the operation. Happy?”

  “Is that why we’re paying for the hit instead of him?”

  Max nodded.

  “Where is he?” the older man asked.

  “He’s in London, for—”

  “London? What the fuck good’s that? London?” he shouted. “You summoned me here to be told this man we seek is somewhere in a city of, what twenty-three million people? I could have hazarded a guess at London myself, Max.”

  The tall man paled. Took a breath. When he could trust himself to speak, he did so in a quiet voice. He hated shouting.

  “If you’d permit me to continue. He is in London for a briefing with MI6. Our contact was sure on that point. We have his licence plate. I have arranged a tail. We follow him and when the moment is propitious, we strike.”

  The thickset man spoke.

  “Pro …?”

  “It means favourable,” the tall man said, inwardly regretting that his partners did not always match him in the brains department, even if they more than did in ruthlessness, cunning and a willingness to engage in extreme violence.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Forgive me. Next time I shall choose my words more carefully.”

  Mollified, the thickset man pulled out a gold cigarette case and offered it to the other two. Both shook their heads; the man to his right frowned and pursed his lips but said nothing. The smoker smiled, extracted a cigarette, lit it with a gold lighter and drew in a lungful of smoke before expelling it in a luxurious exhale towards the ceiling.

  “Ah, that’s good,” he murmured, a wide smile on his swarthy face. “Remember when all we had to smoke were papirosi , Max? Fucking cardboard tubes to hold, and filled with that stuff they called tobacco? Christ, it tasted like dried cabbage and fucking horseshit. One puff would blow your fucking head clean into the middle of next week, they were so strong. Now I smoke these beautiful Virginia tobacco cigarettes. Smooth as a whore’s—”