by Ted Tayler
“Well sir, if you could keep people safe by using a well-turned phrase, the Home Office would be the people to consult. We might as well pack up and go home if we think the terrorists are carrying out a risk assessment on their suicide missions. That statement is just bollocks!”
“Sadly, I must agree with you, old chap,” chuckled Erebus.
Colin looked towards Athena.
“Don’t look at me,” she said “we did what we could to uncover the likely source of an attack. Unless our luck changes, we will deploy as many of our people as we can spare around the Olympic venues and add our eyes to the official authorities. Instead of being pro-active, we will be reactive, that’s not the Olympus way.”
Khadim Salah had moved out of his home in the Birmingham area. His chance meeting with Shamila Javed in the café that afternoon had been a lucky break. They had been seeing one another every day. She was smitten.
Khadim had two objectives. He must convince Shamila that he loved her. This would not be a difficult task, as Khadim was an experienced lover. It was not too much of a hardship either, as Shamila was an attractive, if innocent, young woman.
His main aim though was to put distance between him and the possible scrutiny of the security services. After his return from Pakistan and those visits to the terrorist training camps, he suspected that he was under surveillance.
He had persuaded Shamila to come with him south to the outskirts of Salisbury. She was on holiday now from the university. He suggested that she might enjoy a few weeks away from the city. He told her he had to go for job interviews in the region.
Shamila jumped at the chance of spending time alone with him. Khadim rented a two bedroomed holiday cottage in Downton on the Hampshire-Wiltshire border. They arrived and got settled. Shamila was pleased to see that Khadim respected her so much, that he made sure she had her own room.
In the mornings, Khadim set off in the hire car, with the pretext of having to attend interviews. Shamila took the fifteen-minute bus journey into the ‘city in the countryside’ each day. She found plenty to occupy her mind, a thriving market, a buzzing arts scene, museums, and several of England’s finest historic houses. The old streets contained plenty of shops where she browsed clothes stores and shops where she could buy the things she needed to cook a meal for Khadim when he returned.
Khadim took the A31 that first morning and headed for Weymouth. The torch relay headed into the town at the end of the week. He wanted to see if everything he read about this resort was true. Would it be the perfect place for him? For a perfect seaside holiday, location counted, and Khadim found that Weymouth ticked that box.
With its elegant Georgian seafront, a fantastic sandy beach, and a deep harbour, it has been a favourite destination for many thousands of visitors each year, since the eighteenth century. Khadim headed first for Portland Harbour, and the National Sailing Academy. That was where they would stage the main Olympic events in a couple of weeks.
Rising behind the Olympic village was the Isle of Portland. Khadim soon realised it was an island in name only, the four-mile slab of solid limestone joined to the mainland by Chesil Beach. He spent a few hours looking around the area; it was bleak and windswept. He decided that this was not the place for him.
Spectators had snapped up five thousand tickets for the main viewpoint at the Nothe Gardens long ago. Khadim spent Wednesday morning cruising around by the Fort and then drove over to the main part of town and parked on The Esplanade. It was not practical to gatecrash the ‘pay per view’ site. It would attract too much attention.
As soon as Khadim had seen the beach front his mind was made up. Far better for them to head for the two giant screens on the beach. The hoardings advertised ‘an accompanying commentary so you will know what is happening’.
Khadim wondered what the presenters would say about his proposed change to the programme. He walked along the sands and imagined thousands of people sat around him, enjoying the summer’s warmth and the excitement on the big screens. It would be an afternoon they would never forget, that was certain. There was just the small problem of getting through the security turnstiles into the fenced off enclosure. Khadim had a few ideas on that score. He and Shamila would have no problem persuading the staff to let them onto the beach.
CHAPTER 18
On Wednesday evening, Khadim drove back to Downton. He was in a good mood. Everything was coming together. When he walked into the holiday cottage, the smells emanating from the kitchen were delicious. Shamila was ready to dish up dinner.
There was just one week to go until Ramadan. A Sindhi biryani with mutton, basmati rice, naan bread and all the trimmings, was the perfect end to a perfect day. After they ate Khadim told Shamila that he had now attended his interviews; he just had to wait to hear if either of them had been successful.
On Thursday morning, Khadim asked Shamila if they could spend the day in the city.
“Show me around,” he said, “let me see the places you discovered.”
Shamila was excited to learn that she had Khadim to herself. She naively hoped that a marriage was on the horizon. Khadim grew bored of the shops and museums and after lunch, they drove out into the country. The couple visited Old Sarum and the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge. As the early evening sun warmed them in the lee of the ancient stones, Khadim and Shamila took photos of one another, just like any normal tourists. They drove back to Downton and sat in the garden of their cottage, sipping tea until night fell. Shamila had never been more content.
On Friday 13th July, Khadim took Shamila with him to Weymouth. He did not tell her how long he had already spent there, or why. They parked by the Radipole lake and nature reserve and took the short walk into the town centre.
“It’s very busy,” said Shamila “I never expected to see so many people.”
Khadim told her of the arrival of the Olympic torch relay. The crowds lined the streets, right along The Esplanade. The torch was on its way from Lyme Regis and heading on to Bournemouth. An evening celebration was scheduled on the beach.
Khadim and Shamila stood at the railings and looked over onto the huge stretch of sand, full of happy, smiling people. Shamila thought how lucky she was. She was having a terrific holiday with the man she loved. Khadim smiled too. Not because he was in love. Because now he didn’t need to imagine anymore how Weymouth beach might look with thousands of people on it.
Meanwhile, in Wolverhampton Shamila’s parents had driven up from their home. They visited her flat, and finding it unoccupied they then went to the police to say they hadn’t heard from her for several weeks. They wanted to report her missing. Reluctantly, the officer on duty logged the request on the computer.
A photograph of Shamila was circulated to other areas and under normal circumstances that would have been that. Nothing would happen. It would be destined for the ‘twilight zone’; left to gather dust alongside many other reported incidents that the police abandon as not worth pursuing. Young people leave home; they disappear for a while without telling their parents. Big deal. A boy racer pops to his local supermarket garage, fills up and shoots off without paying; another big deal. Modern policing is about far more important things.
Fortunately, not everyone turns a blind eye to people who break the law or fit the profile for someone who might. Only four months had passed since the Home Secretary split the old Border Agency in two. This followed revelations that hundreds of thousands of people entered the country without appropriate checks. The UK Border Force had become a separate law-enforcement body with its own distinctive ethos.
A keen, young graduate had grasped the nettle. She was still filled with enough zeal after three months in post, to check out a few of the many ‘faces’ that had been logged after returning from known terrorist training areas.
In the Central regional office, Daisy Rawlings had on her desk a grainy image of a Khadim Salah. He returned to Birmingham International from Faisalabad, via Karachi and Dubai six months ago. He had been in th
e Punjab for several months. Salah was twenty-seven, had held a series of jobs, and graduated from university in the summer of 2011.
Daisy added Khadim Salah to a list of ‘people of interest’ that she intended to persuade her superiors to let her investigate further. Daisy was not the calibre of recruit the modern police service wanted; if she was allowed to ‘investigate further’ then she would follow the trail wherever it led.
Daisy Rawlings was like a dog with a bone when she had a cause she believed in, she just would not let it go.
Back at Larcombe, Giles and his crew swept the internet for any scraps of intelligence that might help to narrow the field in the hunt for suspects.
“Give me a break, please,” he muttered, as messages and photos passed across the screen in front of him.
Something alerted him. Giles scrolled back to a photograph of a young woman.
“This one’s a looker. I wouldn’t be letting her wander off without knowing where she went, that’s for sure. Who do we have here, I wonder?”
It was Shamila Javed. One of their frequent visits to the Police National Database had thrown up the picture her parents handed to the police when they reported her disappearance. Giles logged her details.
Shamila Javed was a 20-year-old student. She had just completed her first year in Media Studies. The family originates from the Punjab. Father is a GP; mother is a classroom assistant; no known affiliation with any extreme groups (political or religious). Shamila has had no contact with her parents for several weeks.
Giles contacted an agent in Solihull and asked him to visit the district where Shamila studied, lived, and possibly socialized. Who were her friends? Where might she have gone? An hour later, the agent stood outside her flat and beginning the search for clues.
Lightning rarely strikes twice. Giles went back to the screens and picked up the latest information one of his crew had obtained from a source within MI5. Last autumn a man had travelled to Pakistan from Birmingham International. The officer who talked to him had written a brief note to record that the visit was part of a gap year. An opportunity to meet with family members in the Punjab.
When the man returned two months later, the same officer had by chance been on duty. It was nothing tangible; just a niggle, that made him suspicious. The matter had been highlighted for his superiors to pursue. Now it was July and no action had been taken, but a memo from a new face in Border Force stirred the sleeping giant into action at last.
Giles read the memo, noted the Punjabi and Midlands connection and waited for the man from Solihull to join up the dots. This could be what they sought.
Two hours later, Giles got the call. The agent had talked to Shamila Javed’s near neighbours. They confirmed that she had been absent for a while. Although none of them could be sure of the last time they saw her.
“Shamila was out early, you know, for the bus in term time; she studied at the Uni.”
“She was always smartly dressed like they do, but she didn’t wear the veil or anything. Shamila was a pretty girl too, it’s such a shame.”
“I saw her in town a few times shopping and that, she always had a smile and a hello, you know, I hope nothing’s happened to her.”
“Reckon she’s gone, mate. One of them arranged marriages. Away in Pakistan married to a seventy-five-year-old doctor her Dad found I bet.”
“I saw her with a handsome man a few times. They were up there by the café on the corner. He was older than her, but they seemed happy together.”
A visit to the coffee shop confirmed that Shamila Javed had indeed had an older male companion. A customer told the agent they had been in a few times. She said they looked happy together. The girl behind the counter described the man to the agent.
Giles examined the grainy photo that Daisy Rawlings had circulated to her colleagues. He was convinced it was their man. Khadim Salah and Shamila Javed were an item. Salah had caused the border control officer to wonder why he spent two months in Pakistan. The authorities might take a while to put two and two together. Giles alerted Henry Case. Erebus and the others needed to hear this today, not at tomorrow’s meeting. Salah needed to be found and fast.
Khadim Salah was ahead of the game. After he and Shamila had returned from Weymouth he phoned the company from whom he rented the cottage.
“Would you have something similar right out in the country? My partner and I wish to get away from it all for a while.”
“There’s a place available in Piddlehinton, sir at forty pounds per night.”
Khadim checked where the little village lay and booked it straight away. It would mean they were only twenty minutes from Weymouth and remote enough for him to get things ready for the big day, without nosy neighbours prying into his business.
Shamila was surprised to learn they were moving. She enjoyed Downton and her daily jaunts into Salisbury. She wanted to know why they were going so far away from the shops. Khadim ignored her whining and reflected on what clues they left behind if any. Shamila sulked from Downton to Piddlehinton.
Khadim had been comfortable with Shamila being seen strolling around the old city streets. He had only taken one risk, that one morning, when they had been seen together and that was only for an hour or two. The afternoon and early evening, driving around the countryside looking at old stones had been boring. But it didn’t leave too many people with a lasting impression of them.
The cottage in Downton had been in a quiet street. Khadim thought no more than a handful of locals would have seen him, and none of them saw him up close. No, there weren’t too many clues there. The agent at the rental company might say the gentleman who called was an Indian because he would believe we all sound alike from the sub-continent. The employee could not give a description. The dealings he had with the company were by email and phone. As Khadim pulled up in front of the little cottage he thought he had covered their tracks well.
Shamila was happier once she saw the new cottage. It was pretty, with roses around the door and a thatched roof.
“With luck I will hear from one or more of my job interviews,” said Khadim “I need to check out properties in the region. One bedroom flats for me to stay in during the week. Just looking at this brochure here that the company has provided, you can catch a bus from the War Memorial mid-morning. You can hit the shops in Weymouth inside an hour.”
Shamila was content. Shopping was a passion. Hearing that Khadim was hunting for a bachelor pad was not such good news, but she would make sure he wanted to keep visiting Wolverhampton at the weekends. The harsh truth was, that Khadim wanted her out of the way for a few hours. He didn’t plan on going back to the Midlands on the weekends; he wasn’t planning any further ahead than Friday 3rd August.
Khadim waved Shamila off to the bus stop at just after a quarter past ten in the morning. He went to the hire car and took a case from the boot into his bedroom. He laid it gently on the bed and opened it. He removed a collection of items and began to put into practice the skills he had learned in Pakistan. Khadim was careful to keep the vital components apart until he needed them, but there might not be too many opportunities to assemble the bomb with Shamila constantly standing in his shadow.
The explosive belt was made up of several cylinders filled with explosive. The explosive was surrounded by a fragmentation jacket that would produce the shrapnel responsible for most of the bomb's deadliness. This had the effect of turning the jacket into a crude, body-worn claymore mine. The cylinders were connected by a wire to a trigger in the middle of the chest.
Once the vest was detonated, the explosion would resemble a shotgun blast. The main killing power of any bomb is not the explosion itself. The shock wave from the small quantity of explosives used is small, but the fragments of the vest being launched in every direction by the explosion do the real damage.
Khadim Salah had selected the most dangerous and the most widely used shrapnel; steel balls that were 5mm in diameter. He had added nails, screws, and nuts to his recipe. He ha
d learned in Pakistan that shrapnel was responsible for ninety percent of casualties when a device such as his was detonated.
The loaded vest now weighed twelve kilos and despite the summer weather, he knew he would need to hide it under a suitable loose outer garment.
In Pakistan, he had watched an engineer using something he called the ‘Mother of Satan’. One glance at the two fingers missing on his right hand told him everything he needed. Khadim had decided to use TATP, the acetone peroxide, as the initiator, and ammonal a simpler, far less dangerous material as the main explosive.
Khadim had smuggled a quantity of TATP home with him in a plastic bottle hidden in his wash bag. No matter how well-trained the dogs were they could not yet detect acetone peroxide. He stored the bottle away in his sock drawer.
The sweat on his brow gathered. The clock ticked ever onward. Shamila would be getting off the bus at the War Memorial soon. He had just a few more things to do, and then he could tidy up and then shower and change.
Khadim stood in the shower ten minutes later and as the hot water battered his body he wondered how long it would be before he stopped shivering. As he dried himself he heard the door of the cottage squeak open.
“Hi Khadim, I’m back. Wait until you see what I’ve bought.”
Khadim closed his eyes in exasperation.
“Not long now; you can put up with her for a while longer,” he told himself as he quickly dressed.
Shamila displayed the sparkly tops and shoes she just ‘had to buy’ and Khadim tried to appear interested. Once the fashion parade ended, Shamila showed him the other items she had bought.
Khadim looked at the pitta bread, the hummus and the dates. He couldn’t look anymore. He suddenly realised he was hungry, but he knew he had to wait until dark before they would sit down for iftar. He chose a bottle of water from the ‘goodies’ in Shamila’s many bags of shopping and decided to go for a drive.
Khadim needed to do something to take his mind off his stomach rumbling.