by RJ Bailey
So I wasn’t surprised I had the scalpel in my hand even as he was pulling back the bolt on the automatic rifle. And it made no sense not to plunge it as hard and as deep into his neck as I could manage.
The blood sprayed onto the sandy floor, pitter-pattering in spurts rather than an even gush.
I stepped back as he turned, the handle of the scalpel still stuck into the flesh, the smaller crimson droplets seeming to dance away in the sunlight.
I had the good sense to move to one side as he raised the rifle because I knew what was coming next – the bullet that would really take him out, fired from the Browning of a quick-thinking young lieutenant. So I didn’t actually kill Latif. But I started the process.
‘Are you feeling all right?’
I glanced in the mirror, suddenly back in the BMW, back in the moment. Behind me was Mrs Sharif. She was leaning forward.
‘I’m fine, Mrs Sharif. I was concentrating on the traffic. Sorry, did you ask me something?’
‘Only that you pick me up at four p.m.’
‘Of course.’
Shit. I had been thinking back on the last time I had gone to pieces. After I had stabbed Latif I had suffered from nightmares, especially when I found out that insurgents had taken his mother and sister and forced him to carry out a close-quarter shooting or they would be . . .
Well, they were, and they probably would have been anyway. Their mutilated bodies were left outside the camp one moonless night. I suspected Latif knew how it would play out. Run, he had said. Why? We had no special bond. Maybe because I was a woman and he was thinking of what would happen to his own female relatives.
I took a deep breath. Back in the army I had the luxury of being able to wallow for a few days. Now, I didn’t. Now I had a spy telling me that I was duty bound to work for them.
As I took the roundabout at the top of Muswell Hill and down Dukes Avenue, I looked again at Mrs Sharif. She had her head down, thumbing through a copy of Vogue, and I wondered if what Swincoe had said was true. That somewhere inside their lovely home was a cancer. That her husband, for all the whisky and conviviality, had some link to Blade of Islam. The outfit that had murdered Paul.
He said he would tell me more that evening, at a venue to be decided. In the meantime, I had to proceed exactly as normal and certainly not offer the Sharifs any clue about what he had said.
The Blade of Islam.
What on earth could the beautiful fashion-mag-reading, Victoria Beckham-wearing woman in the rear of the BMW have to do with a misogynist bunch of ISIS-loving fanatics? She was as secular as me, and doing a better job of bringing her daughter up in this world. After all, it was hard to imagine the level-headed, quietly ambitious Nuzha cutting herself in secret.
I pulled over outside the health club and reversed, careful to make sure I couldn’t be blocked in. I wasn’t that distracted that I had forgotten every last precaution. You always park facing outwards, never nose-in. Gives a cleaner, faster exit. I looked down the line of cars before I said: ‘You’re clear to go. Four o’clock then, ma’am,’ I added, checking the dashboard clock. A little over two hours.
‘And we’ll pick up Nuzha on the way back and you’ll have the rest of the day free. Thank you.’
She slid out, grabbed her nappa leather gym bag and walked off towards the entrance. I watched her go, the physical manifestation of a poise and style that, right then, seemed to come from an alien place.
I exited the car park and, out of habit, started a slightly different route back. The emotional punch that hit me within a few metres drove the breath from my body. I pulled over and pressed a hand to my chest. I thought for a moment I might vomit as the iron-tinged stench of blood on sand in the bright morning sun came back to me and then another smell, that of sawn wood and beeswax.
I knew what it was and I had to ride it out. The hammer blows would come thick and fast – Paul, Jess, Matt, Bojan, boom, boom, boom – but like a tsunami victim, I just had to hold on. I put my head on the steering wheel for a second and let the tears come.
And as I did so, I missed something really, really important.
‘I thought you spies liked to meet on bridges.’
Swincoe looked up at me and rose, indicating I should sit opposite him. I hesitated. We were in a side alcove in the public space of The Dorchester on Park Lane, and sitting in the high-backed chairs would block my view of much of the room. I gave the immediate area a quick once-over. I recognised a male member of the Kuwaiti royal family, dressed in Persil-bright gutra and dishdasha. Freddie had PPO’d for them in the days when she was still on The Circuit. She used to tell a story about taking the teenage girls to a cinema event, when the father had hired the Odeon Leicester Square for one of their birthdays. Only when they arrived did it become clear that, thanks to the preponderance of traditional head-to-toe burkas, all the guests looked identical to her charges. It took precious minutes when the lights went up to establish which were their princesses, as much seat-swapping had taken place. From then on Freddie had taken to spraying an IR marker on the burkas of her girls, so, with appropriate eyewear, she could spot them in a crowd.
‘Here.’
He handed me a folded piece of paper. I flipped it open. It was a series of squiggles and it took me a second to work out what it was.
‘Three possible exits from the room. One more than you get on a bridge, unless you plan on flinging yourself off. Plus Lawrence is floating, just in case.’ He again indicated I should sit. ‘That was what you were worried about?’
I took my place opposite him and smoothed down my skirt. Jil Sander, from Net-a-Porter. I was wearing my best labels – and highest heels – the sort of clothes I would never wheel out for clients. But The Dorchester and MI5? A different matter.
Swincoe pointed at his glass as a waiter appeared. ‘G and T?’
Yes, please, my brain said. ‘Mint tea,’ my mouth decided.
‘Everything OK this afternoon?’ Swincoe asked when the man had left.
‘How do you mean?’
‘With the Sharifs? You managed to act as if nothing was amiss?’
‘Put it this way, I was fairly sure I wasn’t being followed.’ I hadn’t checked the rear camera USB yet, but I hadn’t spotted anything suspicious. ‘Which made me a little more relaxed.’
‘If we hadn’t been following you and seen your Russian and Serbian friends snatch you . . .’
‘I know. You’ve made that point. And I’m very grateful. Am I now in for the “The-least-you-can-do-in-return” speech?’
He managed to feign looking a little crushed at that. ‘I’d like to think we would have stepped in even if we didn’t have an, um, interest in you staying in one piece. We are meant to be the good guys, you know.’ His eyebrows did a little dance, as if courting sympathy. It was comical enough to make me warm to him, just a little.
‘OK, give me the BBP.’ I assumed he knew that meant Basic Briefing Protocol.
Swincoe leaned forward, as if to get his drink, and allowed his voice to drop a little. ‘We first became aware of the Sharif name around the time of the Mumbai massacre. You remember?’
I nodded. In 2008 a group of Pakistani extremists had stormed the Taj Hotel, among other targets, causing more than 160 deaths and 300 injuries across the city. The response of the Indian police and elite forces was still used in colleges and on courses all over the world to teach how not to react to terrorist attacks. ‘You’re not telling me he had something to do with that?’
‘The raid was organised and funded from Pakistan. There was a figure mentioned several times by the name The Tailor. He was apparently the source of money to recruit and train the Fedayeen lads in the Chelabandi Hills and the Af-Pak border. The lads – that’s what most were, boys – had been recruited in Faridkot. It was where the Sharif family first settled after Partition.’
‘That’s as maybe. But there’s quite a lot of tailors in Pakistan.’
‘True. But we know of at least one instance wher
e a Sharif was mentioned in plain language in the same sentence as The Tailor. Plus Sharif had paid a considerable sum of money into a bank called Karachi Consolidated. It went bust. An angry mob burned its offices to the ground. The money was never recovered.’
It seemed an elaborate way to launder terrorist funds, but I had no experience of the Pakistani banking system. However, there was one thing I was aware of. ‘Sharif is not an uncommon name. And even Ultras make bad investments.’
‘Plus Sharif travelled to Paris twice in the weeks before the massacre at the Bataclan.’
‘He’s in the fashion game. It’s all pretty circumstantial.’
‘We know.’
‘And he drinks like a fish and hates all religion.’
Swincoe raised one eyebrow, as if surprised I would fall for that old trick. ‘You know about righteous sinners? Those given dispensation to walk among infidels, to act like them, if the cause is holy. But you are right. It’s not watertight by any means. Which is why we can’t spare the manpower to put a whole surveillance team on him. Not with another sixty-odd ongoing serious and confirmed threats in London, Birmingham and Bradford. That’s sixty we know are some way along to lethal action against British citizens. The trick is knowing when to scoop them up, making sure you have enough to put them away for a long time. Get that wrong, and we’ll be hung out to dry. It means we are so stretched, we’ll take whatever we can get.’
‘And that will be me, will it?’
‘Mint tea, madam?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Shall I pour?’
‘Please.’
We both sat back and appraised each other while the delicate china was filled with tea.
‘No,’ he said, once we were alone again. ‘That’s not you. You have a military background, much like my own. I know you are security conscious . . . yes, letting yourself be snatched was a, um, slip-up. But we know you are usually up to snuff. And as I said, you are family. No, “Take what we can get” means we infiltrate however we can. Look, at best MI5 can manage perhaps six hundred field officers at any one time. And bear in mind, it takes more than one-on-one to execute a worthwhile surveillance. And that we have close to ten thousand on our primary watch list.’
He let that number sink in. ‘What about GCHQ, phone taps, all that? I thought you chaps could read every email we send.’
He tugged at an earlobe, irritated now. ‘You think the enemy don’t know that too? Look at the way the newspapers spilled the beans on how attacks in France, Belgium and Germany were thwarted by phone intercepts. I think we are beyond assuming our enemies can’t or won’t read the Western press.’
I wasn’t ready to reclassify the Sharifs as ‘enemy’ just yet, so I kept quiet.
He took a breath and modulated his tone. ‘Besides, the American internet companies are less willing to play ball with us since that silly bastard Snowden blew the whistle. To cut a long story short, the Indian Intelligence Bureau picked up traffic about The Tailor again. Thinking that another Mumbai was on the cards, they made some arrests and, using techniques we would probably frown upon, established that The Tailor is in the UK. Planning something similar to Mumbai or Paris. Possibly another luxury hotel or shopping street.’
Ah, that explained The Dorchester. I’d thought it was an odd choice for a spy. He was trying to demonstrate how vulnerable London would be to a group of armed fanatics. I instinctively sat up straight, transferring my weight so I could stand in one smooth movement. I felt a desire to check out those exits he had scribbled down, just in case. ‘Even a Muslim-owned one like this?’
‘There were plenty of Muslims who died in Mumbai and at the sites in Paris. Once you start the process, you can’t control who lives or dies. But London has no shortage of other choices not owned by financial arms of Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Qatar. The Ritz, perhaps. Claridge’s. The Lanesborough. Perhaps they would hit Bond Street or Sloane Street or an arcade. Perhaps there would be multiple targets, like Paris.’
Despite myself I shuddered at the thought of AKs being deployed on the streets of my city. ‘So you need to establish if Sharif and The Tailor are one and the same?’
‘Yes, but our options are limited. As I say, financial and manpower constraints mean a full surveillance is out of the question. We can’t plant bugs because, like most businessmen, Sharif has his house swept on a regular basis. There is a new one that turns itself off when it detects a sweep, but it’s the size of a paperback book at the moment. There are ways around this, however. For example, if you would agree to be miked up—’
‘Tell me about Paul.’
The interruption threw him off his pace. ‘What?’
‘Paul. I’m family, apparently. Tell me what Paul was doing when he was killed. And don’t give me all that national security bollocks.’
The face seemed to shut down a little and he stiffened. ‘I can’t reveal—’
I was on my feet before he had finished, the mint tea untouched.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Where does it look like? Home to my daughter. My au pair is already on triple time. You are costing me a fortune and wasting my time.’
I could feel eyes on me as other hotel guests wondered what was occurring, but I stood my ground.
‘Very well, I’ll tell you about Paul. Now will you please sit down?’
I did so, and sipped my tea.
‘The Blade of Islam is not a single group, but a loose umbrella of cells, each acting independently. Think of it as an evil version of the Spar shop chain.’
I hadn’t heard that analogy employed before, but I got his point. It was a branded franchise of extremism. ‘So there is no single leader as such?’
‘That’s right, no one figurehead we could go after. It’s more of a multi-headed hydra. But there is a guiding council, and, after plenty of effort and not a little luck, we got an asset into that.’
‘Where does Paul come in?’
‘The council had a series of meetings to discuss a proposal from one of the cells about a scheme to blow up a nuclear plant.’
‘Which one?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Humour me.’
‘Dungeness B.’
That nuclear reactor, I knew, had had its operating life extended to 2028. It was close enough to London for any incident to create serious panic in the city, not to mention the coastal towns of Kent. But as Paul used to tell me, creating a nuclear accident from outside was easier said than done. Bad engineering and nature could do it, a man with a bomb in a suitcase or an RPG missile, not so much.
‘The cell was appealing for manpower and funding. The council had asked for a feasibility study. On the day when this was presented, we . . .’ His words tailed off as a waiter checked if he was in need of a refill. Swincoe waved him away.
‘Yes?’ I prompted.
‘We wired our man so that Paul could listen in on the discussion and assess whether it was a viable risk or simply some jihadist fantasy.’
‘And?’
‘The latter, he had concluded. But on the day of the presentation . . . our chap was rumbled, you see. As the meeting ended, they grabbed him and found the wire. He’d already turned the transmitter off, so the listening team, which included Paul, had no idea. But the council knew that there had to be ears nearby. The Blade of Islam sent out three hit squads into the surrounding streets, searching nearby flats and checking any suspicious vans. One of them found Paul, as he came out of the Transit. He’d . . .’ Swincoe swallowed. ‘It’s an easy mistake and someone should have spotted him, but he left his headphones around his neck.’ I groaned. ‘So it didn’t take even an evil genius to guess what he’d been up to. They followed him. Waited till he came out of the shop with his hands full so he couldn’t draw his weapon. You know the rest.’
I didn’t say anything for a while. Then I managed, ‘Thank you.’
‘He died doing a good job. A bloody important job.’
I wiped away
a tear and sipped some more of the lukewarm mint tea. ‘And the asset in the council?’
A small shake of the head. ‘He died doing a good job, too.’
I let out a long slow breath. ‘But let me get this clear. You want me to wear a wire in the Sharifs’, just like that asset? If he is part of a Blade of Islam cell and I am, what did you call it, rumbled?’
I let the question hang, but he didn’t let it stay there for too long. He quickly polished off his G and T and signalled for another. ‘They’ll probably kill you, yes.’
TWENTY-SIX
‘What’s the name on the cup?’
‘Starbucks?’ I offered.
The girl behind the counter answered as if she were talking to a particularly disobedient pet. ‘No, what name do you want me to put on the cup? When it’s ready to collect.’
‘Why do you need to put my name on it?’
‘So you know it’s your order.’
I looked over my shoulder. Jess was outside the coffee shop, concentrating on her phone, as usual. There was nobody else in sight.
‘But I’m the only customer.’
The young lady sighed. Her accent – Spanish? – became more pronounced. ‘We have to put a name on the cup. It is the rules.’
‘Jess.’
‘Jess. Excellent.’
Outside, Jess looked at my double espresso and said: ‘I didn’t want one.’
‘You haven’t got one.’
‘It’s got my name on it.’
‘Yeah.’ I pointed up the road. ‘Shall we?’
I was taking her to Islington for brunch. In my bag was the long-awaited letter from the school about the Indonesia trip, although Jess didn’t know it had arrived and that I had read it. Three times. She thought brunch was just a treat. Not a device for delivering news in a public place.
She’d wanted to go to Jamie’s, but that’s not my idea of a good time so I swayed her with the promise of banana French toast. I needed a coffee beforehand because of the little behind-the-eyes throb I had developed thanks to staying up half the night with a bottle of pinot going over and over what Swincoe was asking me to do. Spy on my Principal. Well, on my Principal’s father. Either way it was like breaking a fundamental PPO commandment and it left me feeling queasy, even factoring out the wine.
