by Andy Maslen
“We are fine, thank you, Blacksmith. In the room with me I have His Excellency Ayatollah Sharpour Al-Khemenah.”
The long-bearded cleric sat silently, his bony, liver-spotted hands folded on the table in front of him. His skin was papery and his eyes were deeply hooded, a feature that had earned him the reverential nickname, ’Eqab : “The Eagle.” Though nobody in possession of this knowledge would ever dare to utter the name in his presence, or that of any cleric for that matter. He looked at Razi and nodded. Just the slightest tilt of his turbaned head, but Razi had been waiting for the signal: Begin .
“You have something for us?” Razi asked, speaking into the mic, but keeping his gaze locked onto the cleric’s.
“The British Government has received intelligence, which it regards as completely credible, that the Islamic Republic of Iran is within sight of its strategic goal of developing, if not actually firing, a low-yield nuclear warhead. It has also identified Dr Darbandi as the principal architect of the technological breakthrough.”
“And?” Razi asked, maintaining a calm exterior yet fighting down a writhing sense of anxiety mixed with anger that threatened to burst free of his chest. Who had betrayed them?
“And they are moving to take Dr Darbandi off the board.”
“Stop talking in riddles. Speak plainly.”
“An assassin, General. They are sending an assassin to kill Dr Darbandi.”
Razi burst out laughing. The cleric remained impassive, although between his luxuriant beard and hooded eagle’s eyes, there wasn’t a great deal of his face left visible from which to draw conclusions about his mood. His long fingers remained motionless on the polished wood of the table.
“This is a joke, surely. How could the British even find him, let alone infiltrate an agent – an assassin! – into Iran? Why it’s—”
The voice that interrupted the general was impatient, which perhaps explained the breach of protocol.
“Entirely possible, General. My apologies, but you should prepare for the assassin.”
“Then tell me. Who is this, this assassin?”
“His name is Wolfe. He is ex-Special Forces. The SAS, General. A very dangerous and resourceful man.”
The cleric leaned across and whispered in his right ear. Razi nodded, and smiled. He spoke in English for the first time.
“His Excellency says if the British send a goorgh to us, we shall meet it with a sheyer .”
Blacksmith answered, also in English.
“A lion to catch a wolf. Almost Koranic in its poetry.”
The cleric frowned at the only word in the Englishman’s sentence he vaguely understood.
“Be careful, my friend,” Razi said, switching back to Farsi. “You are offering us a valuable service, but that does not give you the right to utter blasphemies.”
“My apologies General, and also to you, Your Excellency. I meant no offence.”
“In view of the service you are rendering, we can overlook your …” Razi paused. “… unfortunate language. We will need background on the assassin, Wolfe.”
“Yes, General. I have prepared a dossier. I can hand it over to Head of Security Gul in person here in London.”
Razi looked at the cleric. He nodded imperceptibly, little more than a one-degree tilt of the turban. The meeting was over.
The Thin Blue Line
Callie sat, head sandwiched between her hands, her cheeks squashed inwards by her palms. On her desk was a short report, detailing Stella’s preliminary findings. They didn’t amount to much.
The Mercedes had been supplied new by a main dealer in Manchester. According to the sales rep who closed the sale the customer was – the classic layman’s description – “average.” Pressed, she had admitted the gentleman might have had a tattoo on his hand.
Which hand?
The left. Or the right.
Which, Callie felt, just about covered it.
An email to the Department of Vehicle Licensing and Administration had yielded a single hard fact, but one of negligible value. The new owner was a company registered in Panama: Rovy Ltd.
Some fast-tracked forensic accounting had revealed that Rovy Ltd was wholly owned by a corporation registered in Delaware: Sarastro, Inc. And Sarastro, Inc. was owned entirely by an offshore family trust in Guernsey. The trust was administered by a firm of lawyers – Cecil, Francis, Meyrick (Partners) LLP – domiciled in the Bahamas. And the beneficial owner of the law firm was another family trust, based in the Cayman Islands whose sole trustee (name withheld) was a resident of Bahrain and a director of a firm called … Rovy Ltd.
The physical evidence was just as inconclusive.
The CSIs who had crawled all over and into the GLS had recovered multiple fingerprints from at least seven individuals. Those of Gabriel Wolfe, Eli Schochat and Stella Cole had been quickly eliminated. The remaining prints, all of excellent quality, had yielded precisely no hits in the British police database. Requests had been sent to Europol, INTERPOL and the FBI. Results pending.
Hairs and epithelial cells from the car’s interior had been sampled for DNA. Results pending.
The four bodies had been sent to front of the queue in the morgue, where the pathologist had begun work. Cause of death in all four cases had been straightforwardly established. In his usual, dry style, the pathologist gave these as:
1. Brain injury from penetration by the victim’s own nasal bones.
2. Both carotid arteries and both jugular veins torn open by sharp metallic object. Stab wound to heart, which penetrated right atrium.
3. Gunshot wound to the head. 9mm hollow-point round.
4. Gunshot wound to chest. Left lung partially destroyed. 9mm hollow-point round.
Tissue samples had been sent out for DNA testing. Results pending.
Bodies had been fingerprinted and prints sent for identification. Results pending.
The station’s armourer had test-fired all the weapons and was running tests to cross-check the striations on the bullets against police and security service databases. Results pending.
The phones had been sent to an external lab. Results pending.
A translator had been sent photos of the Russian tattoos. Results pending.
Callie had begun her career in Edinburgh. Not the world’s roughest city to be sure, but even so, she’d dealt with – and solved – her fair share of murders. But nothing like these. And what was even more infuriating, solving these killings wasn’t even her job. The, what, perpetrators? Doers? Hitters? Killers? Well, whatever she ought to call them, they were already known. One, to her personally. And apparently it was all perfectly fine and dandy.
Don, fucking – Sorry Mum – Webster wanted to know who the dead men were and that was it. Which was the real source of her anguish. Because she had nothing to tell him. Despite all those infuriating “results pending” notes, in her heart, and with her copper’s intuition, Callie could save everyone a whole lot of trouble with her own, bleak assessment. They’re ghosts.
She thought back to her latest trip to the morgue. The pathologist had revealed each man’s face in turn. Callie thought it would be a wee while before she’d forget the ruined visage of the man who’d been impaled on needle-pointed shards of his own skull. Then their torsos.
“Look at them, Callie,” he’d said. “These were fit men. Extremely fit. Very little body fat. Plenty of scars, either from edged weapons, shrapnel or bullet wounds. Plenty of tattoos. Tanned, but not from a sunbed. You can see they were somewhere hot wearing short-sleeved shirts.”
“Soldiers?” she’d asked him.
“Men of action, certainly.”
She stared at him, willing him to abandon his customary caution. He sighed and spoke again.
“In all likelihood, yes. Either current or former military personnel. Will that do?”
She muttered into the space between the heels of her hands.
“Our four corpses are ex-soldiers. Mercenaries, probably. If and when we discover their id
entities, we’ll learn that they have no criminal records, either here or wherever they came from. Their careers after leaving the army will be blanks.”
She called Don Webster. Might as well get it out of the way, then at least she could spend a little of her dwindling day doing something more productive.
“My dear Callie. What can you tell me about our four soldiers of fortune?”
“Apart from the fact that I tend to agree with you about their career choice, almost nothing. We’re fast-tracking DNA results, fingerprints and ballistics, and we’ve requests out with our international colleagues but to be honest, Don—”
“You think we’re going to come up empty-handed?”
Inwardly she thanked him for saying “we” rather than “you.”
“I’m afraid so. The car was a bust, too. It’s registered to an offshore company that basically seems to own itself through a tangle of other equally opaque entities.”
“Hmm, mm-hmm. Is there anything at all you can give me? I appreciate that I did rather spring this upon you.”
Callie sighed and ran a hand through her hair.
“The facts, such as they are, are these. The offshore company is called Rovy Ltd. It’s registered in Panama. The man who originally bought the car had a tattoo on one of his hands. The four DBs downstairs have a lot of ink, too.”
“What sort?”
“You know, the usual. Naked girls, skulls, guns, a couple of tribals, yin and yang, the usual shit. Oh, and one of them has some Russian words and a rather well-executed picture of Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square.”
Don paused. Mm-hmmed again in that breathy way Callie had learned meant he was thinking.
“Thanks, Callie,” he finally said. “Let me know if anything turns up from your tests, but please don’t worry if nothing does. I have a feeling the gentlemen I sent you were very carefully selected for their anonymity.”
He ended the call. Callie stared at the screen until it faded.
“Bloody spooks,” she said.
Then she picked up her phone again.
Never Discuss Religion or Politics
Gabriel checked his watch: 8.30 a.m.
“Bit colder in Iran than I’d been expecting,” he said to Eli, with a grin.
Five minutes earlier, they’d climbed out of an army-supplied Land Rover that Gabriel had parked beside two identical vehicles on the outskirts of a village of dusty, white houses. They walked to the central square, where an army officer in battle dress and a second man dressed in chinos and a lightweight summer jacket with open-necked shirt were standing talking to a woman dressed in a sea-green hoodie and boot-cut jeans over a pair of turquoise and grey Converse baseball boots. Sam.
As they drew closer, Gabriel recognised the man in civvies. It was Hugh Bennett, their SIS liaison. The officer, a captain, introduced himself as James Gaddesden.
“Aha!” Sam said, a smile lighting up her heart-shaped face. “My favourite Department operator. Ever ready with an original quip about magnetic watches and invisible submarines. And you’ve brought a friend.”
Sam turned to Eli and stuck out her hand. The two women shook.
“Eli Schochat. Late of Mossad.”
Gabriel noticed Gaddesden’s lip curl fractionally. But Eli was asking Sam a question, and he refocused on his partner.
“What did you mean about magnetic watches?”
Sam smiled.
“Gabriel here, and your boss Don Webster, added their names to a very long list of people who visited me in the Quartermaster’s room in Vauxhall Cross and thought it amusing to make James Bond jokes.”
While the two men looked on, grinning, Gabriel held his hands up in surrender.
“Guilty as charged. But you have to admit, Sam, you do have the best toys. It’s just we both felt you were keeping the really good kit back.”
Sam prodded Gabriel in the chest, hard, though she was still smiling. The skin at the corners of her eyes, which were the colour of wet slate, crinkled with good humour.
“One, they’re not toys.” Prod.
“Two, I seem to remember you took some of my really good kit with you.” Prod. “Or are depleted uranium pistol rounds not sufficiently exciting for you?”
“No, no. The DU rounds performed brilliantly. I apologise. It won’t happen again.”
Hands in pockets, affecting a casual pose, Eli spoke.
“So if I can ask a question, Sam?”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
“When Gabriel and I go over to Iran …”
“Yes?”
“Will we both get jet packs, or only him?”
Sam’s mouth dropped open as the other two guests guffawed. Gabriel joined in and was amazed at Eli’s poker face.
“You’re just as bad as he is! Jesus! I’m going to have a word with Mr Webster the next time I see him. I’ll send his next lot off with spud guns and a catapult.”
Bennett interrupted.
“Hilarious though this all is, I wonder whether we might make a start?”
He phrased his words as a question, but there was no mistaking the implied rebuke. We didn’t come up here to listen to a pair of off-the-books comedians bantering about secret agent s.
Collecting himself, Gabriel nodded. Gaddesden began. He told them he worked in what he described, vaguely, as “Strategy.” Thinking that during his own service, he and his mates would have regarded Gaddesden as a “desk jockey,” Gabriel asked him what his job entailed.
“Basically, we’re war planners. Everything from getting a pallet of water to a bunch of guys in the desert to taking over a country. And, of course, everything in between. We helped reconfigure this little place to match what we know of Vareshabad. Shall we go?”
Together, the three men and two women walked down the central street, which ran arrow-straight for a quarter of a mile between low-rise apartment blocks built of the same, white-painted concrete as the houses on the edge of the village. The strategy guys had gone to great lengths to make the place feel real. Cars and trucks were parked on the street, mostly painted white and authentically dented and dusty. Here and there, children’s bikes lay on their sides against the kerb. But the absence of any other people gave the assemblage of buildings and artefacts the feel of a ghost town. Gabriel shivered despite the early-summer warmth. Absence of the normal. But what’s normal about a man working towards the destruction of a whole country, a whole people?
At the far end of the street, between a mocked-up petrol station and a two-storey dwelling, its walls pockmarked with bullet holes, someone had planted a rudimentary street sign.
< Jerusalem 1246 m
Nuclear bomb factory 4 m >
“Someone’s got a sense of humour,” Sam said.
“It’s the chaps in logistics,” Gaddesden replied. “Whenever they get a brief to create a special location, they delight in hand-painting appropriate road signs.”
“It’s because they don’t get to blow it all to shit,” he added. “Unlike you chaps.” He glanced at Eli. “And chapesses, of course.”
She smiled.
“Chapess. I like it. Sadly we won’t be blowing it to shit, either.”
“No?” Gaddesden said, the surprise evident in his voice.
“More of a surgical strike,” Gabriel said, hoping to prevent Eli from revealing the exact purpose of their mission.
“We’re going in to kill a scientist,” Eli said, smiling sweetly at the captain, and including Sam in the sunny expression.
Gaddesden frowned.
“Assassinating a civilian? Not quite cricket, is it?”
Eli turned to face him directly, keeping the searchlight-bright smile on full power.
“Cricket? No, not really. But then again, nor is blowing up a city with a nuclear missile. So tell me, Captain Strategy ,” Gabriel heard the barely veiled contempt in her voice, and he was sure the others had, too, “What would you suggest we do with him? Smack him on the wrist and ask him politely to cease and desist?�
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Gaddesden smiled back, but there was a hard edge to it that Gabriel didn’t like.
“Of course not. But you Israelis are never ones for jaw-jaw when you can go for war-war, are you?”
Eli took a step closer to the captain. Gabriel’s pulse ticked up by a few beats per minute.
“I beg your pardon?”
Her voice had lost its playfulness and even if the captain couldn’t hear it, Gabriel could. He’d heard once before the tone she was using now. The man on the receiving end died a few minutes later, his forehead neatly drilled by a 9mm pistol round.
“I’m sure the captain was joking,” Gabriel said, realising how pathetic that sounded even as the words left his lips.
“Yes, come on Gaddesden,” Bennett said laying a palm on the captain’s right shoulder. “No need for politics. We’re all on the same side.”
But Gaddesden wasn’t to be placated. He shrugged the spook’s hand off with a jerky movement. His face had paled and Gabriel could see the increased muscle tone running from the crown of his head to the toes.
“That’s just it, though, isn’t it?” Gaddesden continued, writing his own sick note as far as Gabriel was concerned. “We aren’t all on the same side .”
He put air quotes round the final phrase, and Gabriel realised with a sinking feeling that this conversation was only going to end one way. He’d already decided not to intervene unless Bennett did. Two against one – even when the one was Eli Schochat – wasn’t exactly cricket, either.
“Meaning?” Eli asked.
“Meaning,” Gaddesden repeated, as if speaking to a slow or perhaps stupid person, “that when it suits them, they’re allies, and when it doesn’t, they’ll do deals with the Russians, the South Africans, the Saudis or whoever they think can protect their precious Jewish—”
The move, when it came, was deceptively simple.
