Guy Fawkes Day

by KJ Griffin

  Chapter 13: Oxford: October 15

  Toshi Yokochi was a name that couldn’t be matched to a face, or, could be matched to too many faces. He was a name that carried someone else’s passport. The sort of people who knew Yokochi usually thought he was someone else; the sort of people who were looking for Yokochi usually found someone else. It was said that he was the founder of the Japanese Red Army; had masterminded nearly every terrorist attack against the West since the early Seventies; now lived in Manila, Beirut, Aden, or Los Angeles.

  Omar Al-Ajnabi felt he could be pretty sure that he was getting the real thing when he watched Hasan swish the dark-blue Jaguar with tinted windows onto the gravel at the front of his Folly Bridge mansion.

  The two men walked purposefully from the car, through the colonnaded entrance, and up to the first-floor reception room where Al-Ajnabi was waiting, scrutinizing a map of Great Britain that lay stretched out across a walnut table. He looked up to acknowledge his Japanese visitor, offering him a cautious welcome. Both Hasan and Yokochi joined him at the table, while Hasan called Mousa for refreshments.

  ‘Were your trips successful?’ Al-Ajnabi asked while Yokochi squinted taciturnly at the map.

  Yokochi restricted himself to a nod, absorbed straight away in the red circles on the map. Al-Ajnabi sneaked another glance at him, admiring the complete anonymity of the man. Yokochi was the perfect grey man. Neither tall nor short, fat nor thin, handsome nor ugly. The gold-rimmed glasses that Hasan had described as Yokochi’s only distinguishable feature were missing, probably replaced by contact lenses. The Japanese planner was the sort of man who filled queues, made the ghostly cupboard opening and closing noises from the adjacent hotel room, neither frowned nor smiled when babies dribbled on him on train journeys.

  ‘So I can assume that you have made all the arrangements’ Al-Ajnabi asked.

  ‘I have made all the arrangements according to the outlines I was given in the meetings with Mr Hasan in Egypt, Italy and Yemen.’

  ‘Good. And you have received all the agreed funding?’

  Again, Yokochi nodded, producing a laptop, which he booted and placed on the table in front of Hasan and Al-Ajnabi. There was a good deal of fiddling with codes and passwords before Yokochi had Hasan close the shutters and help him set up the projector. With the beam trained against the blank white wall opposite the door, the Japanese began to run through the presentation in his mesmerizing drawl.