by Simon Conway
Miranda squeezed herself in, thankful for the years of yoga that had made her supple enough to fit into small spaces. The girl also squeezed in and pulled the door closed behind her. They sat in the darkness, with only their breath to give them away. The girl rested her head against Miranda’s shoulder.
Beech was dead. Monteith was dead. She was being framed for the death of Monteith and, who knows, maybe also for the death of Beech. She had lost Esme’s dog. Now it might not be enough to just run.
She walked as carefully, as full of composure, as she could manage, out of the tower block and past the swings. There was a man still standing by the van. He was smoking a cigarette and paid her no attention. She was wearing a full niqab, her face and body covered in shapeless black cloth; a shape only, invisible in plain sight.
She crossed the car park and turned the corner. Then she was running, bent almost double, through rain and darkness, away from the flats. She stripped off the robe, leaped down a slope and waded across a thundering brook, while blackened cloud-stacks raced across the sky and rain dashed against her in gusts. She stumbled onward. Reaching the road, she flagged down a truck driver who gave her a lift into Glasgow.
THE STREETS OF LONDONISTAN
September 9, 2005
Within minutes of leaving Glasgow, most of the passengers were sleeping with their heads resting against the gently vibrating windows. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the soft hiss of the air-conditioning. Miranda’s fellow passengers were entirely foreign: migrant workers, students and budget tourists. She slipped easily into their midst.
She was heading for London, but she carefully avoided a direct route. For the first leg, she sat next to a Nigerian business student who tried to chat her up, and for the stretch from Newcastle to Birmingham next to a Slovak beautician who tutted over the stubs of her nails.
In the toilets at Digbeth coach station in Birmingham, she took a penknife to her hair, hacking at her thick curls and discarding them in the bowl. She had not worn her hair this short for twenty years, not since her days in the Lion’s Den. Afterwards she sat for an hour, waiting for her connection in the vast hangar-like garage. She ate a stale cheese savory sandwich from the station kiosk and glanced intermittently at the phone box. She bit her lip, steeling herself.
She had to. She walked over to the phone booth, fed change into the slot and dialed the number. It was answered on the third ring.
“It’s Miranda.”
“Where are you?” Flora demanded. “Why did you just disappear?”
“What did the police say to you?”
“That there had been a sighting of Beech near Dover.”
“They’re lying or they’re being lied to, Flora.”
A bad pause.
“What do you mean?”
“Is there somebody you can go to? A neighbor. A friend. Somewhere safe.”
“What are you trying to tell me, for fuck’s sake.”
She told her. “Beech is dead. He’s in the rocks up on the hill. I’m sorry.”
She had no idea whether Flora was hearing her. She thought she heard a door slam and the sound of something crashing. “Flora?”
A further pause.
“Flora?”
After a while she ended the call.
She called BBC Television Center from a phone booth on the concourse of Victoria station as soon as she arrived in London, gave a name and was immediately put through to Newsnight.
“Saira speaking.”
“Hello. It’s me, Miranda.”
Silence. Saira was mystified. “Miranda?”
“From Sarajevo …”
“Ah, that Miranda.” There was a pause. “The cold-hearted Miranda.”
“I’m in London.”
“The prodigal returns …”
“Are you all right?” Miranda asked.
“I’m just tired,” Saira told her. “I’ve been working flat out since the 7/7 bombings. How much trouble are you in?”
“Plenty.”
“So nothing’s changed, then.”
“Nothing’s changed,” Miranda acknowledged.
They arranged to meet in a couple of hours at the Frontline Club in Paddington. Miranda hung up and stepped out on to the pavement. She paused for a moment, feeling oddly confused and guilty all of a sudden. Guilty because she had walked out on Saira several years before without so much as leaving a note and confused because hearing her voice down a phone line had revived a very specific physical memory of lying naked, more or less sated, in a hotel room in Sarajevo.
She walked slowly north toward Hyde Park. She kept looking down, but there was no dog at her heels.
Saira poured her a large glass of wine and then filled her own glass to the brim. They were sitting on the red leather sofas in the club room at the Frontline.
Saira was sitting with her legs curled under her on the sofa, wearing jeans, dark suede shoes and an open-necked white silk shirt that was so crumpled it seemed likely that she had been wearing it for days. She was tall, and her cheekbones were high and handsome. It was easy for Miranda to remember why she had found her so attractive.
They had met in Sarajevo, during the siege, when mortars and shells could fall anywhere and at any time. It was a period when you ran into people. You drank together in mobs. You drank so much and then by accident ended up in bed with someone; with men, and very occasionally with women. It just happened that way. Saira was working as producer for BBC World Service and Miranda was following a rumor of her husband Bakr. It was Saira who had taught her the Sarajevo walk: relaxed when protected by the cover of buildings or barricades, brisk and alert when crossing streets, and breaking into a sudden sprint when crossing open ground, cobbled squares or crossroads exposed to sniper’s rifles. They had met in the warren of lanes around the old Turkish Bascarsija market. You couldn’t miss Saira, she was as tall as Miranda, head and shoulders taller than most other woman, with skin the color of a cinnamon stick. They were the same waist and shoe size. The similarities didn’t end there. Saira’s father, like Miranda’s, had been an opponent of the Siad Barre regime and had had to flee Somalia. Both their families had been forced into the peripatetic existence of political exiles—constantly on the move as the regime concluded deals with countries to prevent its opponents from settling. Saira’s family had lived in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya before finally settling in Cardiff, Wales.
For a while Saira and Miranda were lovers and had shared a room at the Holiday Inn. There had been a couple of chance encounters since then, in Peshawar and Grozny.
“So what brings you here?” Saira asked.
“I’m looking for someone,” Miranda replied.
“You’re not still …?”
“No. Someone else.”
Saira studied her warily. “Did you find Omar?”
Miranda bit her lip. She really didn’t want to burst into tears. “Omar died in 1991. He was dead all the time that I was looking for him.”
“I’m so sorry,” Saira said.
Miranda took a deep breath. “I found out just over two years ago.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“What can you say?”
“What have you been doing?” Saira asked.
Walking, she thought, walking on the moor, and drinking vodka and fucking Jonah. I got up every morning and saluted the sun, even when it was overcast, in the hope that one day it might scorch me off the face of the earth. “I’ve been living on an island in Scotland,” she said. “I met someone.”
“You always had someone,” Saira observed with a sigh.
It was true. She had never left a man without abandoning him for someone else.
“He’s gone missing,” Miranda said.
“Missing as in disappeared?” Saira asked skeptically.
Miranda nodded.
“That’s what happens to your men.”
“He was in Peshawar and then Amman,” Miranda told her. “After that, nothing.”
>
“Who is he?” Saira asked.
“He’s a spook. Military intelligence. A retired agent.” She paused and stared at her wine glass. “At least, I thought he was retired.” She leaned forward. “I need you to arrange a meeting for me with someone at the House of Lords.”
“I can get a peer’s number in no time. You can give them a call and make an appointment. It’s not difficult. Who do you want to speak to?”
“Norma Said.”
Saira sat up slightly and her eyes narrowed. “Baroness Said sits on the Intelligence and Security Committee.”
Miranda gripped her knee. “I need you to go to Parliament and speak to her. Tell her that I am a friend of her son.”
Miranda had raised her interest now. “Norma Said’s son is a spook?”
“Yes. And he’s in trouble.”
“Why can’t you go to Parliament?”
“I can’t.”
Saira frowned. “Why not?”
“There are people looking for me.”
Saira rolled her eyes and leaned closer. “Don’t tell me the police are looking for you?”
“I need your help.”
Saira gave her a resigned look. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
They walked down Praed Street towards the Edgware Road.
Saira’s two-bedroom flat was on a corner opposite the tube station.
“I was here on the seventh of July, on the day of the bombings. It was supposed to have been a day off. I got up late. I stood outside the tube station all day and all night with a cameraman,” Saira said, walking briskly down the street, “the same station that I’ve been using for years. Some people were asking why Muslims would bomb a tube station in the heart of the largest Arab Muslim community in London. But it was bloody obvious, it was because the Edgware Road is takfir, it’s a symbol of everything the bombers despised. They targeted it because it proves that Islam as a religion and Muslims as a community can thrive here in the West. Come on.”
They climbed several steep flights of steps to Saira’s flat. She paused with the key in the lock. “I share with a journalist from World Affairs. Luckily for you, he’s overseas at the moment, so you can have his room.”
“Thank you.”
She sat on the sofa and unlaced her boots while Saira made her tea.
“Parliament is in recess so Baroness Said is unlikely to be at Westminster,” Saira called to her from the kitchen. “I think she lives in Sussex. I’ll ask some questions at work tomorrow. I’ll speak to her office. I’ll see if I can find out what her schedule is. Perhaps we can get her alone for a few minutes.”
Saira returned and handed her the cup. “You look exhausted,” she said.
“I’m OK,” Miranda told her.
“I really need an explanation.”
Miranda told her everything in detail. About Jonah’s departure. About the policemen Mulvey and Coyle. About Mark Mikulski and Richard Winthrop IV. About the Department. About Nor’s confession. About Alex Ross. About Beech’s murder. About the ginger-haired man. About the bomb factory. About the death of Monteith. About her fingerprints on the murder weapon. She spread the items from her pocket across the carpet: a postcard from Peshawar, a printout of the Sheerness tidal gauge, the diagram of an unnamed ship with a set of coordinates, and Inspector Coyle and Mark Mikulski’s business cards.
As soon as she started, Saira lit a cigarette. It took five cigarettes for Miranda to finish. Once she had finished, they sat in silence for a while.
“You really do have a capacity for getting yourself in trouble,” Saira said, eventually.
“I need your help.”
“I’ll make some inquiries in the morning. Check elements of the story. But I warn you, if I get anywhere with this I’m going to have to go to my editor. He’ll want you to give an interview. I don’t need to tell him that you’re here or how I know you, but I’ll have to give him something.”
“I understand.”
“You knew that when you called me.”
Miranda nodded. “I did.”
“Is that what you want, to go public?”
“I’m being set up. I’m going to try to speak to Norma Said but I don’t know whether she can help me. I don’t trust the police. You’re the only friend I have. What else can I do?”
“You did the right thing,” Saira assured her. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.”
There was a freshly made double bed and beside it a pile of dog-eared reference books, a pair of Levi’s slung over a chair and a guitar propped against a wall.
Miranda sat on the bed.
“It’s good to see you,” Saira said, pausing in the doorway with her long, slender fingers resting on the frame. “It’s been too long.”
IN THE NEWS
September 10, 2005
Miranda woke suddenly. Momentarily she was panic-stricken. Something was terribly wrong. And then she realized that for the first time in ages she had not been woken by the dog’s paws prodding her through the blanket.
She swung her legs on to the floor, ran her hands through her hair. She looked up and stared out of the window at the imposing tower that was Paddington Green Police Station, and beyond it the directionless gray sky. She knew that there were underground cells at Paddington Green used for the questioning of terrorist suspects and it reminded her of the complications of her situation. The forces against her seemed too great for her to succeed. She decided to get up and go out, giving it as little thought as possible
Walking into the lounge, she found that Saira had left her a spare set of keys and a note with her mobile phone number, telling her to make herself at home and help herself to anything.
There was a time, in Afghanistan, when she had found oblivion in the five daily prayers, in the succession of physical movements and recitation called the rak’a. But she’d never been able to stick at Islam. She’d never been much of a joiner. Now she found a kind of mindlessness in the sun salutation, its succession of coordinated postures and breaths.
She was in Hyde Park with her bare feet on the warm grass and her palms pressed together. She was wearing a T-shirt and jogging pants from Saira’s wardrobe, and her ankle wallet was balled up in a pair of Saira’s trainers. Ten times she raised her arms to the sun, ten times she held herself rigid in the plank position until her arms shook with the strain, before jumping forward. With the obligations of the salutation done, she ran through a succession of her more challenging postures. Sweat ran down her back and pooled at the base of her spine. For a time, she felt free of care.
Then she ran around the Serpentine, and north on the path parallel with Park Lane, gathering speed as she ran, breaking into a sprint for the final stretch to Speaker’s Corner. From Marble Arch she walked north up the Edgware Road, past the Lebanese cafés that were filled with crowds of Arabs sharing narghile pipes in the warm summer air. It was just after noon.
As she was walking, she noticed a bank of televisions in the window of an electronics store showing tanks and soldiers surrounding the Thames Barrier. Only when it cut away to armed police standing outside the Red Road Flats did she stop and stare.
No sound came from the televisions. There was footage from a bystander’s mobile phone of army bomb disposal experts in bulky green bomb suits emerging from a van and entering the building. Beneath it ran a breaking-news strap:
POLICE RAID GLASGOW BOMB FACTORY
Then the photograph of Nor from the Interpol Red Notice, his mocking smile filling the screen. Beneath it the strap:
TERROR MASTERMIND THREATENS LONDON
And then, to her dismay, there was grainy security-camera footage of a dark-haired woman with a backpack walking across a petrol station forecourt with a dog at her heels. It was her. The petrol station outside Spean Bridge on Tuesday morning—in contrast to the dark surroundings, a digital effect had been used to highlight Miranda’s face.
ARAB WOMAN SOUGHT BY POLICE
She called Saira from a pay phone. Buses roare
d past and she was forced to raise her voice.
“Are you watching it?” Saira asked.
“I’m standing in the street staring at it.”
“You’re in a phone box?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
“I guess so. I’m a bit shocked.”
“The police haven’t named you yet. And if that’s the only footage they’ve got, you’re not likely to get recognized in the street. We’re OK for now.”
“There were two policemen in my kitchen on Monday. They know who I am.”
“And if you’re right, this whole thing will be over in a couple of days. We can keep you hidden until next Tuesday,” Saira told her, in a reassuring tone. “Don’t worry.”
Miranda forced a smile. “What’s there to worry about?”
“That’s the spirit.”
“So what have you found out?”
“The police have slapped a cordon around the flats and they’re not letting anyone in or out. However, I have a friend who writes for the Glasgow Herald. His contact within the Strathclyde Police has confirmed that as well as scene-of-crime officers and the Bomb Squad, officers from Strathclyde CID’s Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Section and MI5 are in attendance. And they pulled a body out, a white male in his late fifties.”
“Monteith.”
“Looks that way. Your story holds up. I spoke with Brian Judd, our Security Correspondent. He already knew about Nor’s confession. He told me that he uses a freelancer who monitors extremist websites and tips him off if anything interesting comes to light. He forwarded the link to Brian soon after the video was uploaded. Brian made some inquiries at the MoD and at MI6 after it was posted. At first, they told him that it was a prank and then, after he dug around a bit, they slapped a DA notice on him. A DA notice means that he is prevented from public disclosure of information that might compromise UK military and intelligence operations. That was a week ago. The notice is voluntary, so he can break it, but he’s been holding back until now. He’s pretty sure that this Department of yours really exists. Or at least it did. He believes that it refers to an offshoot of the Defence Intelligence Staff called the Afghan Crisis Cell. Strictly speaking, it’s part of the Ministry of Defence, although it doesn’t appear anywhere in the armed forces budget. It’s supposed to be a group of analysts, both military and civilians with a technical expertise, who provide assessments for the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Permanent Secretary of the MoD. Actually, he thinks that’s just cover. He believes that it is in fact an arm’s-length black-ops unit run by MI6. Or at least it was. It was closed down about a month ago, just like you said. I have some information on this guy Monteith from the Army List, but it’s not very revealing. It’s the same with your friend Jonah and his friend Andy Beech. According to the army, they both retired years ago. I’m going to keep digging around.”
