Dangerous Cargo

by Stewart Clyde

  Tom stared straight at Athene, wide-eyed, like he was trying to remember what he’d had for lunch. They were all quiet.

  “Alright,” the General said finally, “I think I have heard about enough. Look here, the mission is Bin Laden, and it’s Afghanistan, and it is not this.” He waved a hand at the pictures. “We can’t go around chasing spurious leads about sugar crates and cargo holds.”

  He indicated to his aide to lead her out. Athene looked taken aback, and Tom’s brow furrowed apologetically. The Aide-de-Camp led her out of the office and shut the door with a thud.

  As the door clicked shut, the General turned to face Tom.

  “Well, what do you make of all this?”

  “I am not sure, sir.”

  “I mean, who the hell does she think she is?”

  Tom waited for him to continue.

  “No, I am asking you, who the hell is she? Why is a … a Red Cross nurse,” his cheeks flushed red, “a damn charity worker busting into my office hollerin’ about tankers and terrorists?”

  “Oh, she isn’t with the Red Cross, sir.”

  The General looked puzzled and the red drained from his face.

  “I am mean, she is, but it’s her cover. She’s MOSSAD’s woman in the camp.”

  The General’s mouth dropped open, “what?” he exclaimed, “and I am only hearing about this now?”

  “Well, it’s better if we all play along, sir. I am sorry, I thought you knew.”

  “And what, you believe her? You believe this?” the General slapped the photographs with the back of his hand.

  “I don’t know, sir, if what she says is true, it is compelling. If that is al-Zawahiri, that is very, very compelling …”

  Chapter Three

  Richmond-upon-Thames, London

  * * *

  The bedside phone rang. He twitched awake in the dark and threw off the white cotton covers.

  “Soames,” he answered croakily and leaned over and clicked the bedside lamp on.

  “Gerry, it’s Tom. Tom Holland.”

  Soames checked his wristwatch and grunted.

  “Hi Tom, what’s going on?”

  “You said to call, sir, if I ever found anything,” Tom said.

  He sounded faint down the line.

  “Well, I think I have found something.”

  Soames sat up in bed, awake. He pulled on his spectacles and checked his watch again.

  “How long does it take you to get to the Clubhouse?” Tom asked.

  Gerry Soames shook his head.

  “Thirty minutes,” he said.

  “Okay,” Tom said, “I can hold on before I transmit, but you’d better hurry, if you want to see the cable before they do.”

  The line clicked dead.

  “Sir, sir! you can’t go in there!” the secretary called after him as he stormed by her desk.

  Soames heard her get up and clatter after him in her heels. He pushed into the Intelligence Director’s office. Soames looked at the back of Sir William Alexander-Young’s large leather chair, as it spun slowly to face him.

  He was on the phone.

  “Yes, yes, that’s right. Look, I am going to have to call you back, something has just come up,” he nodded silently as the other person spoke, and then gently hung up the receiver.

  William looked at some papers on his desk. His secretary stood in the doorway and waited for his reaction; when there was none, she pulled the door shut and it closed with a crisp click.

  Soames felt the awkwardness of the silence, but pressed on, held his breath and stuck out his chin.

  “Sir, there is something you should see,” Soames said, he stepped forward and held out a file.

  “Where the hell have you been the last few days?” Sir William asked.

  “Getting my head around a situation in Djibouti,” Soames said.

  Sir William opened his hands and shook his head, and Soames felt the need to explain further.

  “I was following up on some intelligence from the Horn of Africa, sir.”

  “What is it, Gerry?” Sir William said and checked his watch.

  “I have it verified. MOSSAD and the CIA. This morning. An informant on the ground in Djibouti alerted us about a ship that we believe is part of the ‘phantom fleet’.”

  Sir William’s eyes narrowed.

  “Remind me,” he said and leaned back in his chair. He left Soames standing in the middle of the carpet.

  “Of course, Sir William. As you know, since the attack on the Twin Towers, American, British and Norwegian intelligence networks have been tracking and trying to trace about twenty merchant vessels known as the ‘phantom fleet’. There was at the time, some uncorroborated intelligence that terrorist factions were planning on using cargo ships, with effectively free movement across the world’s waterways, as the next weapons of war against the west.”

  Sir William lifted his gold fountain pen and tapped his front teeth with the end, “yes, I remember the scenario, it was dismissed wasn’t it?”

  “For the most part sir, but it seems it may have been dismissed too soon. As attention swung away, to finding Bin Laden in the mountains, we seem to have narrowed our gaze, too … err, narrow. Now, al-Queda have been successful in planning, and indeed we believe carrying out, as complicated, but many, many times more destructive an act than nine-eleven.”

  Sir William sat forward. Soames saw his pupils dilate, and he loosened his tie.

  “God, spit it out will you please Soames. I can’t work out if this is important or not. All this waffle. What the hell are you saying?”

  Gerry was taken aback. He straightened himself and stood tall.

  “A ship sir, a cargo ship!” Soames opened the file that lay on Sir Wiliam’s desk and took out a telex, “the MV Nisha slipped out of the Horn of Africa and is rapidly approaching the British coast, bound for London.”

  Sir William put out his hand, and Soames gave him the telex. He took it and then studied it.

  “Go on Gerry,” he said, “in the same manner, if you please.”

  “We have it on good authority that Bin Laden’s brother, and new CEO of the Saudi BinLaden Group, was in Djibouti the day unauthorised cargo was loaded into the hold.”

  “Bakr is not a person of interest …” Sir William said.

  “Yes, sir, but the Egyptian Doctor and Osama bin Laden’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri is.”

  Sir William looked up and put the telex down. He rubbed his eyes with his palms.

  “And you are sure?” he asked with his hands still over his eyes.

  “We have an image, the CIA have verified it as authentic and ‘highly likely’ to be a match.”

  “Highly likely?” Sir William scoffed.

  “Yes, well. I suppose it’s about risk appetite, isn’t it, sir?” Soames said, “I know I wouldn’t want to be the one who had the telex on his desk and did nothing the day a crude nerve agent exploded and dispersed destroying half the City of London …”

  Sir William looked at his inferior, and shook his head.

  “Fuck you, Gerry.”

  He picked up his desk phone.

  “Miriam, get me the Chief,” he said, hung up, and glanced back at Soames, “if this is what you say it is, God help us Soames, but if it is, the Chief is going to need to brief the Prime Minister.”

  The desk telephone rang. Sir William picked it up without speaking.

  “Okay, put him through Miriam, thank you,” he said, and paused, and then, “yes, Richard, I have Gerry Soames in my office and he has some compelling intelligence, verified, that there is an imminent and credible threat to the United Kingdom, and I think we need to brief the Prime Minister.”

  An hour later, Gerald D. Soames sat in a leather chair, at a long rectangular boardroom table in 70 Whitehall, at the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBRA). He sat near the back of the low-ceilinged room, next a large flatscreen television. People from the cabinet office filtered in and nodded silently to one another as they placed th
eir notepads and took pens from their suit jackets.

  The Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service sat next to Soames. He patted Soames on the arm, and said, “Gerry, when the Prime Minister comes in, she is going to ask me ‘what the hell is going on?’ you’re the point man on this, so I will bring you in. Keep it short and sharp.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gerry said.

  Gerry was an old hand at this spy game. His combed-over grey hair and double-breasted pinstripe suit painted him, to younger, more technology savvy intelligence service recruits, as from another, long gone era of international espionage. Gerry was in his prime when the Cold War settled and then melted away, like ice on the kitchen counter. He’d also seen the rise of a new breed of threat. The build-up to September the eleventh; the embassy bombings, the freezing of regional power struggles, and the sparks of insurgency around the world. And, he had seen his influence and perceived usefulness in this climate recede like a spring tide. But, he kept a resolve that some things could not be taught, only learned as he had learned them, through painful and painstaking experience. In this his drive and resolve to win at this spy game never wavered.

  The chairs were now filled with the highest ranking Government Ministers, and representatives from the emergency services and Armed Forces. Gerry straitened his tie. The door swung open, was held open by a policeman and the Prime Minister Angela Langdon stepped in, followed busily by an entourage. Everybody stood as she entered. She walked to the head of the table and dropped a leather folder.

  “Right, Richard, you’ve gotten us all here, what have you got?”

  The Clubhouse Chief stayed standing, and everyone else sat down.

  “Yes, Ma’am, well,” he said and put his hand on Soames shoulder, “I dare say we have a bit of an … international flap floating just off our coastline.”

  An aide pulled the Prime Minister’s chair out and she sat down, and waved her hand for him to continue. Richard looked down at Soames. Soames stood, and Richard sat.

  “Ma’am, how do you do,” Gerry said.

  “Yes, and who are you?”

  “I will be delivering your briefing ma’am. Gerald D. Soames. We found the intelligence which led us to the meeting here today.”

  “Right, well get on with it please,” the Prime Minister said.

  The screen flicked on with a picture of a rusted old cargo ship.

  “This is the MV Nisha,” Soames said. “Unremarkable name, but a fairly remarkable recent history. She is a tramp steamer, in that she is used to tramping all over the world, from port to port, depending on the nature of the job. This makes her very hard to track and very hard to get a fix on. And the perfect foil for an organisation like al-Queda to deliver a weapon of mass destruction onto our door step. And she is currently steaming towards the Tate & Lyle factory packed to the brim with twenty-six tons of sugar, and we believe, an enormous bomb, and packed full of nerve agent.”

  A deathly hush came over the room.

  “You’d better go on, Mr …”

  “Soames, ma’am,” he said, “several months ago the Mauritius Sugar Syndicate advertised for a cargo of sugar that needed to go from Port Louis to the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery in Silverton, east London. For some time now, there has been a storm brewing in the once peaceful tropical paradise of Mauritius. The authorities there, finally, had to declare that terror cells linked to al-Queda were operating on the island, and requested our help because of plans to attack government buildings and Christian churches.”

  The Prime Minister had her hands clasped in front of her mouth and nodded.

  “We have been tracking her since a stop in Djibouti,” the image on the screen changed to a grainy picture of a bearded man, and a crisp one of a Saudi with a wisp of a pencil moustache in traditional headdress, “on the morning of her departure from Port Louis to London, Mauritian Security Services reported to the local CIA handler that a large quantity of Sevin, a pesticide had been bought by al-Queda operatives. The pesticide and the terrorists subsequently disappeared. We believe it was loaded onto the MV Nisha.”

  “I am not sure I quite understand,” the Prime Minister said.

  “Yes, ma’am, you see, Sevin is a brand name for a pesticide called Aldicarb. It comes from a class of chemicals called carbamates. And they are nerve poisons. This kind of poison was first discovered by German scientists in the nineteen-thirties, and developed by the Nazis to make nerve agent, like Sarin, which was the gas they used to murder millions of Jews. As we all know, ma’am, Sarin is very poisonous to human beings.”

  There was a very still silence in the room. Someone stifled a cough.

  “What we have, essentially, is an improvised chemical weapon, with an improvised explosive device as a delivery system,” the Chief said from his chair and gestured back to Soames.

  “Yes ma’am, we believe that onboard the vessel now steaming towards London, is a bomb the equivalent of an eight kiloton nuclear device, which will use the sugar and the chemical agent to weaponise this highly toxic material, and contaminate the air we breathe.”

  “But how … “ one of the Generals said, then stopped and shook his head.

  Soames continued, “the only way of doing this over a large area is by dispersing the chemical as an airborne cloud so fine that the wind would blow it on target. This would cause widespread terror, injury and death. And the sugar onboard the MV Nisha would burn with a fierce heat, allowing all this to happen. And happen very quickly.”

  A map flicked up on screen.

  “As you can see,” Soames said, “in order to get to the sugar refinery, the vessel needs to travel up the Thames, it only has to meander slightly further up past the factory, to the Isle of Dogs, and it will be right next to London’s,” he looked away from the screen and at the Prime Minister, “and indeed the world’s, financial district. Which is also home of the capital’s tallest building, and I don’t have to remind anyone …”

  “Oh my God,” the Prime Minister cut him off and now covered her mouth, “it’s nine-eleven, all over again.”

  Soames put down the clicker.

  “I am sorry ma’am, but ‘no’,” Soames said, “this has the potential to be much, much worse than nine-eleven. This would be hundreds of thousands dead, possibly a million. Billions upon billions of Pounds of damage. Total and severe disruption to the global financial markets. Emergency services would very quickly be overwhelmed. People would be literally defecating, choking and bleeding to death in the streets.”

  A silence clamped down like a vice.

  “Where exactly is it now, the ship?” The Prime Minister asked with quiet determination.

  “We have Royal Air Force Nimrod - a surveillance aircraft - shadowing her off the French coast,” Soames said, “she will be in London in less than twenty-four hours.”

  Chapter Four

  Poole, Dorset

  * * *

  Stirling groaned as the face of his mobile phone flashed on and off and buzzed and rattled next to him. He picked it up and the backlit screen read three forty-five, and heard the icy December wind and rain batter away at the windows.

  “Captain Hunt,” he answered.

  “Oh, thank God,” came the voice down the line. “Alright boss? It’s Spinks.”

  “How are you, Sergeant Major? How can I help?” Stirling said and rubbed the sand from his eye with his palm.

  “I’ve just had a gypsies from Northwood. We’re getting stood to.”

  The line was quiet.

  “You alright Spinks?”

  Stirling sensed the weight of the news becoming evident to the Regimental Sergeant Major.

  “What’s the Op?”

  “Not a hundred percent sure yet. We’re on a raid.”

  “Bloody hell, the day before Christmas. Most of the blokes are in the sand or on leave … you couldn’t make it up, Spinks.”

  “You’re one of the only ones left on camp …”

  “You know me, I can’t get enough of the place,” Stirling
said dryly.

  The truth was that even if he had wanted to get off camp, he had no family to spend Christmas with. And flying back to Zimbabwe wasn’t an option for counter-terrorist specialists on a short notice to move period. He heard Spinks grunt.

  “And, I’m supposed to be deploying to Afghan in a few days,” Stirling said.

  “Too right,” Spinks said, “I’m to corral as many of the scroungers as we can get. We’ll need an intelligence briefing and a set of Battle Orders.”

  “When are we going?” Stirling asked.

  “Tonight,” the RSM replied.

  “I’ll get on it. Don’t worry Spinks, I’ll take care of it. Where are you?”

  “Heading to headquarters now.”

  “Okay. I’ll meet you there.”

  Stirling hung up and switched on the light. His first thought was to get over to the Headquarters and start getting the boys back from Christmas stand down. One thing they had drilled over and over were phantom call-ins. The Special Boat Service (SBS) always rushed the men back to base for mock counter-terrorism operations. Something was different this time though, this was no training exercise.

  Stirling punched the code into the Regimental Headquarters building.

  He yanked at the door, but it clattered and shook, and didn’t open. The wind was icy and gusting and water rained down as the gutters overflowed. He punched the numbers again and this time the door swung open. He bounded up the stairs two at a time and went straight to the kitchen. He flicked the kettle on and the Company Sergeant Major came in just behind him. Spinks wiped himself down and shook out his working dress waterproof jacket.

  “Brew?” Stirling asked.

  “You read my mind,” Spinks said.

  Spinks rubbed his hand back and forth though his thinning blonde hair and shook the water out of it. Stirling handed him a steaming cup. He respected Spinks. He was lean, his eyes darted around with a knowing intensity and his body moved the same way, every action done for effect. The CSM was a Londoner, used to bellowing on the Parade Square in his earlier years, and he knew how to use the force of his voice to get his own way, when required. The kind of man who could make you laugh, and then ask you to go over-the-top, and you’d do it with a smile on your face.