Dead Men: The Fifth Spider Shepherd Thriller

by Stephen Leather

  ‘I can never get a decent steak there,’ said Traynor.

  ‘Then you’re not trying,’ said Yokely.

  ‘Aren’t all their cows mad or something?’

  ‘Mad or not, they make great steaks. I need a favour or three, if you’ve got the time.’

  ‘FinCen is here to serve,’ said Traynor. ‘Your wish is my command.’ FinCen collected data under the Bank Secrecy Act and worked with law-enforcement agencies and Financial Intelligence Units around the world to follow money trails that led, hopefully, to the paymasters of terrorism. Much of the agency’s work was the checking of suspicious-activity reports filed by the country’s banks and financial institutions, which were now running at almost three-quarters of a million annually. The vast majority of SARs were false positives and only a very small percentage led to investigations. But once a positive lead had been generated,Traynor and his team were put on the case, following the money trail with the tail-wagging enthusiasm of bloodhounds after an escaped convict. FinCen also had access to the eleven million financial transactions that went through some eight thousand banks in two hundred countries using the SWIFT network. The agency’s supercomputers allowed it to sift through the raw data like prospectors panning for gold.

  ‘I need someone looked at,’said Yokely. ‘He uses a number of aliases, but in the UK he’s known as Hassan Salih. He’s a Palestinian, but is very well travelled. Other names he has used include Shafquat Husain, Asif Iqbal and Majid Jasim.’ Yokely spelled out each name and Traynor wrote them down. ‘I need to know about any large financial transactions he has made over the past twelve months.’

  ‘Large being?’

  ‘Six figures and above.’

  Traynor chuckled. ‘Richard, I know they tell you that size isn’t everything but six figures is not large. Six figures, no matter what the currency, is a drop in the ocean. I don’t even get out of bed for six figures.’

  ‘Remind me again what the total cost of Nine Eleven was,’ said Yokely, drily. ‘A few hours’ flight training, a dozen box-cutters and nineteen first-class tickets, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Actually, we’ve been able to track half a million dollars that was used to fund Nine Eleven,’ said Traynor, ‘but I take your point. So, this Hassan Salih is al-Qaeda?’

  ‘Almost certainly not,’ said Yokely, ‘but it’s quite possible that he’s worked for al-Qaeda members on a freelance basis. A hired gun, you might say. Can you ID any accounts he has?’

  ‘Sure. Give me a day, yeah. You can do me a favour in return. Two, as it happens. Chocolate HobNobs. Two packets.’

  ‘Can’t you get them in Washington?’

  ‘If I could, would I be asking you? Plain, not milk.’

  ‘Your cookies will be in the post.’ Yokely jabbed at a button on the console and the screen went blank. He tapped out a second number. There was a buzz of static, then the screen flickered into life again. This time a balding man in his late forties was grinning at Yokely and waving a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Dean Hepburn was a senior analyst with the National Security Agency. He was based at the NSA’s headquarters in Forte Meade, Maryland, known to the forty thousand or so men and women who worked there as Crypto City. It was practically a small town of fifty buildings half-way between Washington and Baltimore, hidden from prying eyes by acres of woodland. ‘Dean,how are the wife and kids?’asked Yokely.

  ‘Bleeding me dry,’ said Hepburn, swinging his feet on to his desk. ‘How goes the fight between good and evil?’

  ‘Never ending,’ said Yokely. ‘I need a favour.’

  Hepburn grinned. ‘Ask and you shall receive. I’m here to do your bidding, O Master.’ He raised his glass in salute and took a long slug of his whiskey.

  ‘If I give you a UK cellphone number, can you give me details of all traffic through it and positioning?’

  ‘Does the pope shit in the woods? I was hoping you might want something that would challenge me.’ Yokely knew that what he was asking Hepburn to do wasn’t remotely challenging for an organisation with the resources of the NSA. It had listening stations around the world, which monitored all phone and Internet traffic and passed it to the analysts at Forte Meade and their multi-billion-dollar supercomputers, which sifted through millions of daily calls and transmissions looking for key words or voices. Anything suspicious was passed to human experts for analysis. The NSA was a key weapon in the fight against terrorism, identifying and locating targets, then sending on the information to the CIA.

  Yokely told Hepburn the number Merkulov had given him. ‘The phone belongs to a Palestinian who uses a number of names,’ said Yokely. ‘The one I have is Hassan Salih but that doesn’t count for anything. He’s in the UK at the moment, but there might be a Belfast connection. I need to know every call he makes and receives, and a location. I also need you to get a voice print next time he makes a call and run it through the computers. See if you can get a match.’

  ‘You think this guy’s active?’

  ‘Oh, he’s very active, I’m just not sure in what field. That’s why I’d like you to keep it off the books for now, until I know for sure what he’s up to.’

  ‘I hear and obey,’ said Hepburn.

  ‘I’d appreciate an SMS on my cellphone anytime you get anything,’ said Yokely. ‘I might be under some time pressure here.’

  Hepburn raised his glass. ‘See you in Crypto City some time,’ he said.

  ‘You can bank on it,’ said Yokely. He winked and ended the conference call. He swiped his ID card through the reader to get out of the secure room. The marine was still holding the cup of coffee. Yokely took it from him. ‘Thanks, son,’ he said cheerfully. ‘All’s well with the world and we can sleep easy in our beds tonight.’

  ‘Sir, glad to hear it, Sir,’ said the marine, stone-faced.

  ‘You and me both, son,’ said Yokely.

  Shepherd was lying on the sofa reading the Belfast Telegraph when his doorbell rang.

  He found Elaine, wearing dark glasses, outside. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry for what?’ he asked, genuinely confused. The flowers he’d bought for her by way of apology were on the coffee-table in the sitting room.

  ‘Snapping at you. I drank too much wine. Sorry.’

  Shepherd put his hand on his heart. ‘Elaine, I was ringing your bell this morning to apologise for the way I behaved. It should be me saying sorry.’

  ‘I was drunk,’ she repeated.

  ‘And I was an arsehole,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t open the door when you rang,’ she said. She gestured at her sunglasses. ‘I did some more drinking when I got home and my eyes look like the proverbial piss-holes.’

  ‘Can we stop apologising to each other?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Only if you let me buy you lunch,’ said Elaine.

  ‘Sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘When?’

  ‘Now, of course. Or do you have a better offer?’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘My better offer is thawing in the sink before I microwave it.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Elaine.

  She drove into the city centre and down a side road Shepherd didn’t know. She parked with two wheels on the pavement and switched off the engine. On his left Shepherd saw a line of metal railings, and on his right a brick building, whose lower windows were covered with mesh screens similar to the ones he’d seen protecting armoured cars in Iraq. ‘Where are we?’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Shepherd’s pulse raced. They were alone in the street and he couldn’t even hear traffic in the distance. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  She slid a hand round his neck and moved her face closer to his. ‘You’re not still thinking I’m a mad woman out for revenge, are you?’

  He could see his face reflected in the lenses of her sunglasses. ‘Of course not.’

  She kissed his cheek. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Come on, I’m starving.’

  They got out of the car, and she pushed open a red door that le
d into a fish-and-chip shop that looked as if it hadn’t been decorated since the fifties. From behind the counter a middle-aged man peered over the top of a pair of reading glasses and waved a spatula at them. ‘Elaine, love, how are you?’

  ‘Hungry,’ said Elaine. ‘How’s the haddock?’

  ‘The cod’s better. Sit yourself down and I’ll get you something special.’

  Shepherd followed her to the seating area – three lines of wooden booths. He sat down opposite her on a hard wooden bench. A glass salt cellar and a bottle of vinegar stood between them on the table. ‘I’ve been coming here since before I was born,’ said Elaine. ‘My mum used to have cravings for the batter when she was pregnant. My dad used to bring her in and she’d peel the batter off the fish and eat it. I still come with my parents once a month.’

  The walls were lined with wood panels and the room was bright with utilitarian fluorescent lights. A fan heater had been screwed to one wall close to the ceiling. A printed sign read optimistically ‘WE DO NOT ACCEPT £50 OR £100 NOTES’. Another sign offered garlic mayo, pepper sauce and sweet chilli sauce for fifty pence a portion. A woman in her sixties, wearing a padded anorak over a black and white checked apron, came with the food, two oval plates piled high with battered cod and chips. She put down a handful of sachets of ketchup on the table. ‘I know you like your tomato sauce, Elaine,’ she said. ‘Mugs of tea?’

  ‘Lovely, thanks.’ Elaine picked up her knife and fork and grinned at Shepherd. ‘Tuck in, and tell me it’s not the best fish and chips you’ve ever tasted.’

  ‘I’m still getting over the image of your mother picking off the batter,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘The fish wasn’t wasted. My dad took it home,’ she said.

  Shepherd cut off a piece of fish and popped it into his mouth. The batter was crisp and the fish perfectly cooked. ‘Excellent,’ he said. As he chewed, a large man in a brown trenchcoat appeared in the doorway. John Maplethorpe waved and came over to them.

  ‘You’re not following me, are you, John?’ asked Elaine, standing up to kiss him on both cheeks.

  Maplethorpe nodded at Shepherd over her shoulder. ‘Now, why would I be doing that?’ he said. ‘What’s with the movie-star shades?’

  ‘Hangover,’ she said. ‘Join us.’

  ‘I’ll just have a mug of tea, but I won’t eat,’ said Maplethorpe, squeezing on to the bench seat next to her. ‘Good to see you again, Jamie,’ he said.

  ‘And you,’ responded Shepherd.

  ‘I saw Elaine’s car outside so I thought I’d stop by for a chat. This place hasn’t changed in … how many years?’

  ‘More than I can remember,’ said Elaine. ‘John, Robbie and I used to come in at least once a week for lunch, if I could drag them out of the office.’

  Maplethorpe patted his expanding waistline. ‘Those were the days when we used to burn off the calories as fast we ate them,’ he said. ‘Now they go straight to my gut and stay there.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Elaine. ‘I’m still wearing the same size jeans as I was back then.’

  The waitress came back to their table, notebook in hand, and looked disappointed when Maplethorpe only ordered a mug of tea. ‘Tell you what, bring me cod and chips as well,’ he said, ‘but make it a small one.’ As she walked away, Maplethorpe rested his arms on the table and interlinked his chunky fingers. ‘You heard what happened to Gerry Lynn?’ he asked Elaine.

  ‘Good bloody riddance,’ she said.

  ‘Here’s to that,’ said Maplethorpe.

  ‘Do they know who did it?’ she asked.

  Shepherd sipped his tea as he watched Elaine carefully. The question seemed genuine.

  ‘It happened in the South so the Irish cops are handling it, which probably means they’ll never find out,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘The Garda are the original Keystone Cops,’ he said to Shepherd.

  ‘We saw it on the news,’ said Shepherd.

  The waitress returned with Maplethorpe’s fish and chips and a mug of tea. Maplethorpe groaned when he saw the size of the fish, which was several inches longer than the plate. ‘It’s put the wind up Noel Kinsella, I can tell you that much,’ he said. He speared a chip on his fork and stuffed it into his mouth.

  ‘Good. Maybe he’ll go back to the States with his bitch of a wife.’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘According to the guys babysitting him, she wants to get the hell out of Belfast.’

  ‘Please tell me you’re not protecting that slimy bastard,’ said Elaine.

  ‘Not me personally, but the Intelligence Branch is,’ said Maplethorpe.

  Elaine put down her knife and fork. ‘Noel Kinsella murdered my husband, and now his former colleagues are protecting him?’

  ‘No one looking after Kinsella had worked with Robbie,’ he said. ‘None of them were with Special Branch back then.’

  ‘What about you, John? What if they asked you to bodyguard him? Would you?’

  ‘Like hell I would,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘But I’m leaving anyway so there’s nothing they can do to me.’

  ‘John, this is so bloody unfair. That bastard got away scot-free and now you’re protecting him.’

  ‘It’s not me, Elaine. It’s the system.’

  ‘Why can’t the British police look after him? It’s the Brits who’ve sold out to the terrorists.’ She flashed Shepherd an apologetic look. ‘No offence, Jamie.’

  ‘None taken,’ he said. ‘I agree with you. The British Government set Kinsella free, so he’s their problem. This wouldn’t have arisen if they’d put him behind bars where he belonged.’

  ‘Here’s to that,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know that he’s leaving Belfast so we won’t be seeing him on television or in the bloody papers. They’re heading off to London later this week and the word is that they’ll be going back to the States. Good riddance to them both, I say.’

  ‘I don’t understand that Kennedy woman,’ said Elaine. ‘How could she marry Kinsella, knowing he was a murderer?’

  ‘The Americans have always looked at the IRA through rose-tinted glasses,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘To her they’re probably twinkly-eyed freedom-fighters sitting by peat fires playing their fiddles when they’re not fighting the evil British occupiers. They’ve never really understood what’s been going on here.’

  ‘He’s a murderer, John. It doesn’t matter why he did it. He killed Robbie.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Maplethorpe. He took out a bottle of painkillers and swallowed two.

  ‘Are you okay, John?’ asked Elaine.

  ‘Just a headache,’ said Maplethorpe. ‘Stress brings it on.’

  ‘Why London?’ asked Elaine.

  ‘She doesn’t feel safe in Belfast, but doesn’t want to appear to be running away with her tail between her legs. So, they’ll spend a few weeks in London. If we don’t catch the killer, they’ll go back to Boston.’

  ‘And in the meantime the cops are bodyguarding them?’

  ‘It’s been made clear that if anything happens to the Kinsellas, heads will roll.’ Maplethorpe grinned. ‘Just hope it doesn’t happen before I leave – wouldn’t want them to have an excuse to slash my pension.’ He gestured at Shepherd with his knife. ‘How are you settling in, Jamie?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘We should have another game of pool.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

  Richard Yokely stretched out his legs and waved at Karl Traynor on the large plasma screen. The other man was sitting at a desk in the Washington secure room sipping from a mug. ‘They let you have coffee in there, Karl?’ he asked jealously.

  ‘Sure. Can’t function without a caffeine injection, you know that.’

  ‘They won’t let me have it in here,’ said Yokely.

  ‘Ah, well, rules are rules,’ said Traynor. He pushed his spectacles up his nose. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Two weeks ago Hassan Salih received a p
ayment of a quarter of a million dollars from an account at the Mashreq Bank in Dubai. It belongs to one Muhammad Aslam. The money was transferred to an account at the DBS Bank in Singapore in the name of Majid Jasim, which was one of the names you gave me. Yesterday a further two million dollars were transferred by the same route.’

  ‘Do you know who Muhammad Aslam is?’

  ‘Sadly not. He’s not on our watch list and he’s not on the list of Specially Designated Nationals. All we get from the SWIFT download are names, account numbers and amounts. We can follow the money, but we’re not in a position as yet to get the personal details of the account holders. We can apply through the Financial Action Task Force, but it takes time.’

  Yokely made a note of the name on his pad.

  ‘Now, large deposits were made into Muhammad Aslam’s account in Dubai shortly before he made the two transfers to Singapore. Four hundred thousand dollars went in two days before he sent the quarter of a million to Singapore, and two and a half million the day before the two million was sent to the Majid Jasim account. Both transfers came from the Gulf International Bank in Riyadh, a personal account belonging to one Othman bin Mahmuud al-Ahmed.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Yokely.

  ‘You know the name?’ asked Traynor.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Yokely. ‘He’s a very important man, is Othman. A very big wheel.’

  ‘We know of him, of course. He’s a fixer for several of the Saudi princes so we have to give him clearances from time to time. The way I read it is that the money is coming from Othman and that Muhammad Aslam is acting as a middle man, taking his commission before he passes the funds on.’ Traynor glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got a Treasury meeting in fifteen minutes. Is there anything else you need from me?’

  ‘How much is in the Dubai account at the moment?’ asked Yokely.

  ‘There’s the six hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ difference between what went in and what went to Singapore, plus a few hundred thousand that was already there. So, just short of a million bucks. If you want I can talk to the Office of Foreign Assets Control and get the account frozen. And I could have Aslam put on the SDN list. It might be a bit harder going against Othman as he has political connections here in Washington.’