SOFT TARGET III Jerusalem (SOFT TARGET SERIES)

by Conrad Jones

  Chandelle was ten years younger than Boris when they’d married. She had been a career woman since leaving school and aspired to continue in her chosen profession after getting married. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned. She became pregnant almost immediately and lost her position at work as a result. The pregnancy was a nightmare. She not only suffered from morning sickness but afternoon, evening and nighttime sickness too. Her blood pressure sharply increased and she had to spend extended periods lying on the sofa, resting with her feet up. Chandelle was an energetic, active young woman, and the long periods of inactivity made her feel trapped and resentful. Things didn’t get any better once Kenneth was born. She suffered from terrible postnatal depression, and lost her enthusiasm for sex, her child and life in general. Her husband was constantly at work and was no help or support to her. Boris always seemed to be frustrated by her apathy, disappointed in her generally. Chandelle hid her sadness well, not wanting to be seen as a bad mother by her family and friends, and she began to eat. By the time she fell pregnant the second time she had ballooned from a fit size twelve to a tight size eighteen. Being fat made her even unhappier, and being unhappy made her eat more. Her mental health spiralled out of control and she was prescribed a cocktail of anti depressants, which turned her into a fat zombie in a space of two months.

  Boris couldn’t cope with the pressures of work and the constant battle to keep the children well looked after at home. Chandelle just couldn’t cope with the housework and her depression. He had noticed that his wife was feeding their children nothing but frozen ready meals, fish fingers and chicken nuggets, which according to the packaging had never seen either a fish or a chicken during production. The final straw occurred when he arrived home late one evening to find his wife in bed and his sons alone in the kitchen, arguing over the last remaining beef and tomato pot noodle. The cupboards were empty. In the end, Boris put his sons into boarding school, explaining to the family that it was for the best. Privately educated children were a fashion accessory in the circles that Boris and his family moved in. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary to pack them off to school, in fact it was seen as the, done thing.

  Losing her children was the last straw, instead of just eating for comfort she started drinking for comfort too. The atmosphere at home became unbearable, as Boris arrived home late from work, he’d find his wife lying in her own vomit and faeces, comatose from the cocktail of drink and drugs that she swallowed every day. By the time, she woke from her drunken stupor Boris had left for work, and the cycle started again. He started spending more time at work, staying overnight more than he needed to, just to avoid going home. He became desensitised to her feelings and she became fatter and more depressed. She felt that she had lost her career, her identity, her looks, her figure, her children, her husband and finally her dignity. Eventually, she’d thrown herself from the platform of her local railway station, and Chandelle was cut in half underneath the nine fifteen from Euston to Manchester.

  Boris waited three months before telling his sons that she’d died from a heart attack. They were devastated by the news and Boris was destroyed by their grief in turn. When they returned to school, the other pupils got wind of what had happened. The truth soon came out and they were taunted by school bullies about their mother committing suicide. Boris then had to tell them the truth, which just compounded the situation tenfold. He’d taken them from their boarding school and found them another, which was situated hundreds of miles away in the north of Scotland. The boys felt isolated and alone, and Boris was racked with guilt. He made a pact with them that every holiday they would go away for a few days. Kenneth and Fernando settled into school life, the discipline and work ethic was exactly what they needed to carry them through their troubled teenage years. They joined the schoolboy scout troop and developed a liking for camping and mountain walking. Boris kept his word, and every holiday they headed for the Cumbrian Lake District or the Welsh Snowden range.

  On the day of the first attacks, Boris woke at four in the morning. The dawn chorus was in full swing and it sounded like every bird in Snowdonia was perched on their tent. Dawn had broken but the rain was still pouring down. Their tent was holding firm against the deluge for now, but if it wasn’t for his promise, he would be at home now safely tucked up in bed with a milky coffee and a good book. The indigenous Welsh mountain sheep joined the birds announcing that another day had dawned and he heard his sons rousing from their sleep, rustling around inside their sleeping bags. He climbed out of his pit and switched on a single gas ring to boil a kettle full of water. His boys would want their morning pint mugs of tea when they woke up.

  A Honda motorbike turned into the campsite slowly, the rider spotted the number plate that he was looking for, and then he revved the machine, parked up and waited.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Abdul

  Abdul groaned loudly as he climaxed, his brains clouded over for a precious few seconds then the sensation was gone along with his lust. He pushed the Egyptian woman off him and reached into his bedside cabinet drawer for his money, he paid her the equivalent of her full week’s wages, farted and climbed out of the huge bed. There was a full-length mirror fixed to the wall at the edge of the bed, it was framed with an ornate brass frame. Abdul turned sideways and breathed in, making his fat potbelly disappear for as long as he could hold the breath, which wasn’t very long. He breathed out and his potbelly swelled to its normal size.

  “You are still very sexy Mr Ahmed,” the woman said as she gathered her clothes from the floor next to the bed.

  “Are you still here? Shut up and get out, hurry up,” he barked at her. She scurried around trying to pull her knickers up and run at the same time. Abdul made a mental note that her arse wobbled as she rushed around, he wouldn’t be using her again, and they needed to be slimmer than that.

  He walked into the bathroom, lifted the toilet lid and peed. He bent his knees a little and forced out another fart as he emptied his bladder, the smell of the woman permeated up to his nostrils. Abdul stepped into a marble tiled shower cubicle. It was big enough to accommodate a small family saloon car. He turned on the shower and let the warm water wash the smells of the previous evening off his body. The water jetted into his face and he opened his mouth to allow it in, letting it dribble from his chin. The water gushed noisily all over him, and he only just managed to hear his phone when it rang. He turned off the water to be sure that it was ringing. Abdul grabbed a thick towelling robe and picked up the bathroom extension hand set. He caught his reflection in the mirror, and he smoothed his thick black moustache with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Sabaah Al-Khair Abdul,” the voice greeted him in Arabic.

  “Sabaah An-Noor,” Abdul returned the traditional response.

  “I think that we have found your friend,” the voice said. Abdul remained silent. He wasn’t completely sure if the caller was genuine.

  “Who is this?”

  “Who I am shouldn’t concern you, however the information that I have for sale does. You have been tracking certain illegal flights from Eastern Europe, have you not?”

  “Yes, I’m interested in the whereabouts of Islamic prisoners of war, who are being held illegally by the West,” Abdul replied coyly.

  “I really don’t care what your reasons are Mr Ahmed, I have information which indicates that your real target is being moved.”

  “My real target?”

  “Yes, Abdul your real target, please don’t insult my intelligence, you’ve been searching rendition flights out of Eastern Europe, looking for Yasser Ahmed.”

  Abdul remained silent. His stomach felt like it had butterflies in it, excitement was growing at the thought of his inspirational leader being found alive. He had to be careful that it wasn’t a set up.

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure who you are talking about, but you have my attention,” Abdul replied cautiously.

  “Check your e-mail Mr Ahmed. There is flight information
attached to a word document, which contains the details of a bank account in Zurich. Transfer one million American dollars into the account and I will send you the rest of the flight plan. Be quick Mr Ahmed they will not hang around, it’s a once in a life time opportunity.”

  The line went dead and Abdul ran into the bedroom to retrieve his laptop.

  Chapter Thirty

  Terrorist Task Force

  The information that was now streaming into the Task Force from forensics was causing growing concern. Tank called the team back into the meeting room for an immediate update.

  “The preliminary results from the Golan are in, there are two radioactive substances, that have been positively identified, cobalt and strontium 90,” Tank paused as some of the team whistled and shook their heads, shocked at the possible connotations.� �

  “So are we looking for a nuclear bomb?” asked a team leader.

  “No, definitely not,” the fat controller interrupted. This was his field of expertise. “Cobalt has been used before in the manufacture of what’s called a salted bomb. Cobalt is highly radioactive. It is in a constant state of decay, and as it decays it emits powerful gamma radiation, to a degree that it would make unprotected humans sick, just by being in close proximity to it, but it can’t be used to create a nuclear explosion.”

  “That adds up, the report mentions the condition of the sailors on board the Golan, some of them were displaying the symptoms of radiation sickness, vomiting, weakness, diarrhoea, it all fits.” Chen was reading from the report.

  “Anyone that has been close to cobalt, without protective clothing will display those symptoms within a seventy two hour window. The seriousness of the illness is dependent on the length of time the subject has been exposed to the substance,” the fat controller explained.

  “So what’s the prognosis if we are dealing with a salted bomb?”

  “Well most people know them as, dirt bombs. The fact that they contain radioactive materials causes panic. In reality it is a standard explosive material such as Semtex or C4, even artillery ordinance can be used, packed around a radioactive substance. The subsequent explosion disperses the radiation into the atmosphere and contaminates the area,” Bell continued.

  “So the actual explosion isn’t as catastrophic as a nuclear bomb?”

  “Nowhere near as bad, it’s a propaganda weapon, the idea of a radioactive bomb exploding causes hysteria,” Bell said. He stood up and removed his glasses again, and then he put one of the arms in his mouth. “Imagine a dirty bomb being exploded in a city. The initial explosion would cause physical damage around the detonation site, and then a much wider area would have to be evacuated while the radius of contamination is calculated. Shops, houses, businesses, roads, everything would have to be decontaminated over an extended period of time, during which there could be absolutely no access whatsoever allowed.”

  “How long is an extended period of time, as you put it?” Tank asked.

  “Fifteen to twenty years, maybe more. The half-life of strontium-90 is around twenty-eight years. That would be how long the physical damage would take to clean up, but then if you think about it logically, who in their right mind would go back into the area to live or work?” The room remained silent while they thought about it.

  “Would any of you work there, send your children to school there, drink water from a tap there?” the fat controller had studied the after effects of the nuclear disaster that affected Chernobyl, and the surrounding populations, most of them remained void of human life for years .

  “You would literally have to bulldoze the entire area and leave it for a generation, until people forgot.” David Bell pulled his trousers up at the waist and sat down again, putting his glasses back on and looking at everyman in the room one at a time.

  “Then multiply that by two or three cities simultaneously, it would bring this country to its knees,” Chen added. The financial ramifications of huge areas of the country’s biggest cities being turned into radioactive wasteland would decimate the economy.

  “What about the other compound, strontium 90?” Tank asked.

  “Well I’m glad you asked that, because it is still a radioactive isotope, but this one emits beta radiation, and it’s very nasty. It would have the same effect as cobalt, except the cleanup would take decades rather than years,” the fat controller smiled.

  “How easy is it going to be to find it?” Tank asked.

  “It should be relatively simple in theory, because both substances radiate a field of charged electrons, which should be visible on your heat sensors.”

  “How big would the device be?”

  “How long is a piece of string? It really wouldn’t need to be big, I should guess that a suitcase device would be enough to contaminate about five square miles,” the fat controller made a triangle with his fingers.

  The door opened and a female face appeared round the door,

  “Tank, the Prime Minister’s secretary is on the line, she says it’s a matter of national security.”

  “Put her through on the speaker,” Tank said.

  “Agent Tankersley I must apologise for the interruption, but I have some bad news I`m afraid,” Janet Walsh said. She’d been the legal secretary at number ten to a succession of Prime Ministers. Her professional demeanour and no nonsense attitude made her an asset that an incoming government did not want to lose. She was the type of woman that looked both professional and attractive in a business suit.

  “It’s not a problem Janet, please go on,” Tank said.

  “There’s been an attempt to assassinate General Bangor-Jones, We thought it too much of a coincidence for it not to be connected to Major Timms being shot,” Janet Walsh was the first point of call for all the security services, she’d analyse incoming status reports, and then filter the information to whoever needed to know.

  “Attempt?” Tank asked.

  “Yes, an attempt. His car was blown up outside his home; he’d just left for work with a driver. There are three fatalities, I’m afraid that identification is proving to be difficult, but we think they’re his wife and children.”

  The room stayed silent, most of the agents looked at the table or the floor, avoiding eye contact with each other. They worked in a violent cynical world, every single one of them was a trained killer, but every one of them had an Achilles heel, their families. Their thoughts went to Donald Bangor-Jones, the military director of MI5 and how terribly aggrieved he must be by the loss of his children. The guilt would be unbearable.

  “They’re connected, they must be. The problem I have Janet is that someone has access to not only Task Force personnel files, but also MI5 information too. They’re both encrypted, password protected and agency specific,” Tank said.

  “I’m not sure I follow, agent Tankersley.”

  “MI5 have security access to other agency files, but we don’t have access to anyone else’s information, it’s safer that way,” Tank explained.

  “I’m still not with you, agent Tankersley, what are you saying?”

  “Whoever got Task Force information must have accessed the information from MI5 computers, not vice versa, there’s a leak Janet, and the leak is in that agency,” Tank couldn’t be any more specific.

  “Ah, I see where you’re coming from now. We may have a problem there,” Janet Walsh obviously knew more than she was letting on.

  “Would you care to elaborate Janet?”

  “We seem to have lost one of our agents. Well one of our ex-agents to be more precise,” she explained. “Do you remember agent Garden?”

  “Yes, small weasel type man wasn’t he?”

  “That’s him to a tee, well he’s disappeared. We like to wipe the slate clean when someone leaves the service, but it appears Garden took a trip to Egypt a couple of months ago and never came back,” she said.

  “There are only two possibilities then, either he’s gone over to the other side and sold information, or someone’s extracted it from him forcefull
y. What level was he?” Tank asked. The higher up the food chain he’d been the more valuable the information he had. Over two hundred Western secret service agents have simply disappeared since the early nineties. No one will ever know if they defected for financial gain, or spent the last painful days of their lives in a foreign torture chamber.

  “He was a grade one; I’m afraid, top of the tree.”

  “If he’s been gone for months then we must assume that all his information has been gleaned. Has everyone been accounted for at the agency?” Tank asked. It appeared that there was more than one agency under attack.

  “No, not yet, we’ve alerted all our government agencies and the security staff from Westminster, but there are several members of staff unaccounted for. I’ll contact you if there is any more information. Have you made any headway in the investigation?” Janet Walsh changed tack.

  “We are communicating with Israeli Mossad, so far we think the attacks are coming from a West Bank terrorist cell, Palestinians, but we are waiting for definite confirmation from them,” Tank took a deep breath and carried on, “we’ve found evidence that they gained passage from a Syrian tanker named The Golan Heights, and jumped ship when it docked in Holyhead.”