Fuelling the Fire

by Roland Ladley

  Unfortunately, she had most likely paid for it with her life. In fact, no matter which way you looked at it, there was little hope that Sam was alive. After their late-night discussions with Klaus the German, she and Frank had war-gamed all the possible scenarios. None of the versions closed with Sam Green being alive.

  That hurt Jane—so much. So much it ached.

  At least now the BfV was up with the game. Klaus had said that they had raided the industrial area where the pings from Sam and Mauning’s phones had come from. The Op went ahead at 8.10 the previous night. They had found nothing. Not a thing. Essentially, there were two large disused warehouses, one of which they assumed was “the warehouse” Sam had reported. They had searched them thoroughly, spending four hours on site, and they had found absolutely no evidence of foul play. With accompanying arc lights, they had searched the whole compound, including the adjacent container park. And had still found nothing.

  Whilst the search was ongoing, they had picked up Mauning before he had gotten home. He was still in the BfV’s custody, but he had given nothing away. Mauning’s line was that he was a qualified quantity surveyor. He had visited the warehouse complex at the request of a client—with a view to renting the buildings. Karl had said that a friend of his had conducted the interview and wasn’t happy with Mauning’s testimony—there was something odd about the man—so they had decided to keep him in their cells for a further day while they did some more analysis.

  Jane had pressed Karl for the BfV to go back to the warehouses in daylight. But Karl had refused to put the question to his team in Berlin. Searches of that magnitude were costly and manpower intensive. In any case, he assured Jane that if there had been some evidence, they would have found it in the first place.

  They had, however, left a small covert overwatch team on the warehouse complex that would stay in place for seventy-two hours.

  At least that was something.

  At that point, and with nothing else to hold Karl at Babylon, he had gone back to his hotel. He had left Jane his mobile number and had said she could call him at any time. If no new intelligence came through, he would leave for Berlin in the morning.

  The chief had popped into her office late on. They had discussed Sam Green and had spoken about informing her next-of-kin, but decided better of it. Jane had dug out Sam’s next-of-kin from the system after the chief had left her office. Sam had only designated one—and that was her uncle, Peter Green. Jane had held back tears at that point. There was no family to tell. God that hurt.

  She looked for her watch, which was on a small table next to the bed. It was four thirty. She turned on the bedside light and reached for the TV remote. She’d catch the news.

  The BBC was replaying the latest House of Commons vote to send a UK brigade to Syria. This was part of a growing list of coalition nations that were signing up to putting boots on the ground under the auspices of an emerging UN mandate. The sporadic and often uncoordinated air campaign had destroyed a good deal of Syrian territory and doubtless killed hundreds of so-called IS soldiers, along with countless civilians. But the terror campaign across Europe and the Far East hadn’t abated. In many ways the threat of attack on UK soil had increased, making the intelligence agencies’ job increasingly difficult. Syria was much more of a mess than before the air campaign had started. Various ceasefires had come and gone. In the end, it had been one bomb forward and two bombs back; and that was almost a literal interpretation.

  Jane’s firmly held view was that you could never kill enough terrorists to get the job done. One dead martyr inevitably spawned two more. Any military campaign against Daesh needed a parallel line of action to deal with the underlying causes of why there were terrorists in the first place. And that always, in her mind, came back to Israel’s role and position in the Middle East, exacerbated by well-intentioned, but ultimately failed, Western intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. This thing was going to be with them for some time.

  Jane switched to CNN. There was breaking news from Texas.

  Oh my God!

  The reporter was standing in the dark. Her backdrop was a large white sign, with the words “Church of the White Cross” on it. Jane turned the volume up.

  “So, Michael, what we have from the local sheriff’s office is that three officers have been killed and that there are an additional three suspected hostages in the church buildings which are”—the reporter turned so she could point in a general direction—“about a mile in that direction. There must be a hundred or so law enforcement officers on the ground—you can see some behind me. We haven’t got much more than the initial statement from the police chief. He reported that they went in to conduct a legal search of the premises, and three team members were taken hostage. After that, the state trooper vehicle was shot at by a bazooka of some kind. And that’s when the two officers unfortunately lost their lives. A further officer died trying to reach the two troopers.”

  “Hang on, Susan, we have some overhead shots now.”

  The screen switched to a helicopter view of the area. Much of the central picture was in darkness. A huge circle of vehicles with their lights on, further illuminated by red and blue flashing lights, surrounded a vast blackness. It was like a two-mile-wide, luminous daisy chain. Underneath the video footage was the banner “Another Waco?”

  “What are the police saying is going to happen next?”

  “Well, it’s still relatively early days here, Michael. I’ve just seen another six vehicles arrive—big black trucks—I guess full of reinforcements, weaponry, and other equipment. At our last briefing, forty minutes ago, the police chief said that their priority was for the three law enforcement officers in the building. And, if this were a siege situation, for any civilians in the building who didn’t want to be there of their own free will.”

  “And do we know how many civilians are in the buildings?”

  “No, Michael, we don’t. We’ve been told that, as well as a church, there are eight other buildings on the site, including some residential buildings. But there is no estimate as to the number of civilians who might be holed up behind me.”

  Jane pressed the “Mute” button.

  Blimey.

  She needed to phone the deputy director. But that would have to wait until he had had some chance to get some sleep. And she did need to check with Klaus the German, to see if there was any new intelligence on Sam Green from Germany.

  Disused Warehouse Complex, Altglienicke Industrial Estate, Berlin

  Sam felt the shower coming before she heard the tapping of raindrops on the side of the container. It had got warmer in the last couple of hours. She imagined cloud cover holding in the heat and a change of wind direction bringing in moist air, carrying with it a small, but discernible, rise in temperature. It was still bitterly cold, but as she trudged up and down the container, she no longer felt what was left of her body heat draining away.

  At the front end of the container, their entrance point, was the smallest sliver of light where the doors at the top didn’t quite meet. Anyone who wasn’t awash with time probably wouldn’t have noticed it. But she had plenty of time. Time to walk up and down the container one thousand five hundred and sixty-seven times.

  “Sixty-eight!” she said as she hammered on the door where the tiny shaft of light had proclaimed daybreak.

  She had done what she had set out to do. Walk until she dropped; she just hadn’t dropped, yet. After the first ten or twelve laps of the container she added a twist to her regime. She would bang on the door every time she got to it, shouting the lap number at the top of her voice. If anyone was around, every twenty seconds or so they would hear her cry.

  The fact that it was daylight—actually, it was seven fifteen, according to her watch—added impetus to her exercise. It gave her a reason to bang and shout louder at each turn, hoping beyond hope that someone might be at work among the containers and hear her.

  But how long could she go on? She’d been on her feet for almost six
hours. Six hours of, at times, staggering in the dark. She was exhausted to the point of falling over. And so, so hungry.

  I have to keep going!

  She had to keep going. To keep believing that someone would come. Someone would hear. She had to.

  Among the staggering, Sam had religiously taken a two-minute break every half hour to check on Wolfgang. He was alive; that’s all she could say. His breathing was shallow and his skin so cold to touch. But there didn’t seem to be any new blood on his dressing, which was a positive. Whether he would still be breathing in another thirty minutes was anyone’s guess. He seemed to be wistfully hanging on to life. She couldn’t think of anything else she could do to help him, apart from keeping herself alive. And keep banging and shouting.

  The noise of the rain turned from a patter to a ferocious knocking, as the shower became a deluge. Oh, come on! The noise would drown out her shouting. Never mind—it can’t rain for ever.

  “FIFTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-TWO!” Sam slapped the door and screamed at the top of her voice, aiming to be heard over the watery percussion. Then she turned and started walking to the back end of the container for her next lap.

  Chapter 20

  SIS Headquarters, Vauxhall, London

  Jane was tapping away on her keyboard. She had two documents open that needed constant updating: Op Glasshouse, which, after tonight’s forthcoming rescue attempt, she would hope to close in the next day or so, and Op Greyshoe—they had decided to use the same operational name as the Americans—which, with nothing further materialising from the BfV, looked like it could also be closed pretty soon. Op Greyshoe had subsumed Op Umbrella—David’s poisoning. Jane agreed with Sam’s original analysis—one was a subset of the other.

  Both she and Frank had undertaken extensive research to see if they could find a sister organisation to the Church of the White Cross in the UK, but there didn’t appear to be an equivalent on British soil. Both the Met and MI5 had dug around and found nothing. Nor were there records or links in the UK to the German “Famous Five,” the ex-Stasi officers Sam had uncovered. And whilst SIS had history with Manning and Bell, Jane couldn’t find any evidence to associate them with a Christian organisation in the UK. From a UK perspective it was a collection of dead ends. That was, in some ways, a good thing.

  Assuming that Sam was dead, Op Greyshoe didn’t seem worth the throwing in of further manpower or resources. She would follow German developments keenly and press the BfV and local German police, probably via the embassy, to recover Sam’s body. Nothing would stop her from finding and bringing Sam home. Hopefully, at some point, they might uncover how and why David was poisoned. Logic indicated that it was at the hands of one of the Famous Five. But she couldn’t see any reason to spend too much more time on it. They had so much else to do.

  The city of Köln, the map, and the strange expurgated markings, played on her mind. But not enough to press her into action. The BfV had all the detail—it was their problem.

  Claire stuck her head around the door.

  “I’ve got the deputy director on the phone, Jane. Don’t worry—you look fabulous.” Claire shot a cheeky smile.

  Jane raised her hand and nodded. What would I do without Claire? When all this was over she would get her something by way of thanks.

  What time is it in Washington? She checked her watch. It was 11.30 a.m. in London. It felt like the middle of tomorrow. Her brain was only working at 50 per cent efficiency. Come on, girl. Eleven thirty here; six thirty in the morning US East Coast. She almost had to use her fingers.

  Jane picked up the phone.

  “Hello, sir. How’s it going?”

  The deputy director let out a snort of a laugh, all the way from Washington.

  “I’ve had better days.”

  “Did you get much sleep last night?” Jane asked.

  “No. Did you?”

  “Not really, sir. We’ve lost our agent, Sam Green, somewhere in Berlin, plus the German man she was working with. You may have picked up some of this detail in yesterday’s report.”

  “I haven’t had the chance to read much, I’m afraid. Lost as in lost?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re thinking the pair of them are down. Maybe untraceable.”

  The deputy director gave out a loud sigh.

  “I’m sorry about your agent, Jane. I really am. Are you convinced she’s down?”

  “Well, she was hot on the heels of Gert Mauning, one of the Five. We lost both phone signals when they got to a warehouse complex in the east of Berlin, yesterday evening. If you remember from a previous report, the church people said they were going to murder the German’s mother in a warehouse. It seems likely that they’ve met the same fate.”

  There was more than the usual delay on the phone. Jane imagined the DD with his hand on his forehead, shaking his head.

  “We lost two troopers and a local sheriff yesterday. All three were married and had seven kids between them. We have two FBI agents and an FBI media rep being held hostage in the complex in Abilene. We currently have no idea how many shooters or what weapons they have in the church. Correction. We do know that they have an Airtronic Mark 777, a US Army rocket-propelled grenade—that’s what blew the trooper vehicle to kingdom come. The only good news is that at least we now know that the Church of the White Cross is a terrorist organisation. And whilst we might lose a few more good men and women bringing it down, it’s a fight we will win.”

  The deputy director sounded really tired. Jane guessed that the thought of planning a joint Op to take out the church, involving the FBI, state and local police, and maybe even the National Guard and the US military was draining everyone over the Pond. Mix in the long lenses and critical tongues of international media and you have an event nobody would want to go wrong.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I really am. Are you going to let it soak?”

  “Yes, Jane, that’s the plan. We are ready to go in at a moment’s notice if there is any indication that the three hostages’ lives are at risk. But, for now, we’re going to sit back and watch. We have a negotiator at the scene, but so far he’s not been able to make contact. This could take weeks.”

  Jane wouldn’t want to be the person to make the call to eventually go in. She guessed that might now be in the hands of the president. Everyone was making comparisons to the Waco siege of 1993. The name immediately rang a bell from her childhood, but it took the BBC news to remind her of the details. After a siege lasting fifty-one days, seventy-six members of a Christian cult, the Davidians, died after the complex burned down during an assault by the FBI and US military. What was also chilling was the similarity of how it started: four FBI agents lost their lives trying to search the establishment. The religious cult was only being investigated for simple weapons violations. A straightforward search operation had turned into a bloodbath seven weeks later.

  “Do we know if Johnson is at the church?” Jane asked.

  “No. He is still in his office. We are keeping an eye on him.”

  That’s a bugger.

  Jane thought that now might be a good time to change the conversation.

  “Do you know that we have an SAS operation ongoing in Yemen? We think we found Captain Tony James at a farm complex in a place called Shabwah. The complex appears to be owned by Ali Abdullah Sahef, Daesh’s deputy in Yemen. We believe he’s at the location as well. We have eyes on. H-Hour for the assault is planned for one o’clock in the morning, local.” Jane tried to make her voice sound as positive as she could.

  “That’s great news, Jane. Really great.” That’s cheered him up a bit. “Well, best of British luck with that.”

  There was silence again for a short time. Both of them were taking a breather.

  “You’ll let me know how that goes?”

  “Sure, sir. Of course—although if it’s a success you’ll hear about it in the press long before I have the chance to phone you.” Jane had a playful tone. She knew that Number 10 would make the best possible hay whilst that p
articular sun was shining. And why not?

  “Finally, Jane, and sorry I didn’t ask at the beginning, how’s David?”

  “Stable, sir. He’s off a ventilator as of last night, but still in isolation. The last we got from the doctors is that his body may well make a full recovery, but they’re worried about the impact that his coma and the toxic shock might have had on his mind. They won’t know that until he wakes up. And they’re not sure when that’s going to be.”

  The line was quiet again. Jane looked out of her window. It was grey and dark. Another stormy day in Vauxhall.

  “We need to get these bastards, Jane. We need to nail them. We have to take them down. They might just be an anti-Islam cult in the United States, with wings in a couple of European countries. Or they could be operating widely within the Middle East and Africa, bizarrely doing as you suggested—actively supporting Islamic extremists to fuel the fire of a pending religious war. To polarise us. To make us hate all Muslims. I don’t know. But we have to bring this to an end. Now.” The strength of conviction in the deputy director’s voice left no room for doubt. The Church of the White Cross’s days were numbered.

  “Sure thing, sir.” She wanted to add something weighty, but it didn’t seem her place. So she kept it light. “Best of luck with the siege.”

  “And you with the Op tonight.” He breathed out heavily. “By the way. Don’t give up hope on that agent of yours. It’s not over till it’s over.”

  “Thanks, sir. I’ll take that advice.”

  Incident Headquarters, Abilene, Texas, USA

  It hadn’t taken Albin long to persuade the medics that he was OK. He had a bruised rib, that was all. After a cup of coffee and six hours sleep on a camp cot in the makeshift headquarters in the Abilene Community Center, he felt right as rain. He looked for, and found, Federal Agent Ben Carmen, his boss’s oppo. Agent Carmen was surrounded by a group of agents, policemen, and soldiers. They were poring over an aerial photograph that was pinned out on a table. He was obviously as busy as hell, especially now that they had US military liaison officers in the mix. When Albin had popped to the men’s room earlier to freshen up, he had seen six armoured vehicles in the car lot. Who knew what else was on its way?