Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  On New Year’s Day in 1995, a violent explosion involving a Seat Ibiza car occurred outside the Madrid regional office of the Banco Bilbao. The car was gutted and the badly charred bodies of two men were discovered within. The vehicle was identified by the engine number as having been rented by one Ramon Jimenez in Barcelona the day before.

  The two victims (identified by Spanish counter-terrorist officers from their dental records) were Hans Dieter Maier—nephew of Carl Gustav Maier—active during the Baader-Meinhof years in the late 1970s and Emilio Luca—known to be active with the Basque separatist movement ETA.

  An examination of the scene showed that the car had not been in motion at the time of the explosion. The roof was located later on top of a nearby building some 25 metres up and 150 metres from the point of detonation. The positions of the bodies indicated that they had occupied the front seats. Parts of a hand were also found on the roof of a nearby building, indicating their close proximity to the centre of detonation.

  Examination of the vehicle revealed that the central symmetry of the hole in the floor, coupled with the intimate damage to the propelling shaft beneath it, clearly showed that detonation had occurred centrally between the two seats, a theory reinforced by the symmetrical pressure damage to the inner uprights of the seats.

  The timing spring from a mass-produced Plastia Spanish watch, copper detonator, and plastic fragments of the Arab equivalent of the timing and power unit were recovered, together with the wrist-watches of the two victims and a fragment of black/grey plastic, presumably from the housing. The Arab-originated 11-hour 15-minute timer is quite commonly used by the Basque separatist group ETA.

  Two parts of a pair of scissors were recovered from the chest and liver of Maier, and it was clear that these had been in close proximity to the explosion, due to the bent configuration of the blades. Marks on the metal showed that the explosive used was high performance and traces of Eastern Bloc Semtex were later recovered.

  Exactly at the time of detonation a coded warning was telephoned to the headquarters of the Madrid Guardia Civil. The target was not given in specifics, only a reference to the further eradication of Spanish identity. Clearly, the device exploded prematurely. ETA have never been known to issue coded warnings at any time in their history. The warning words were Tormenta Corneja—Storm Crow.

  Swann laid the sheet of paper very carefully back on the desk and felt the flesh pucker on his cheeks. For a long moment he stared at Webb.

  ‘The watch was made by Plastia, Jack. Same as the clock in the TPUs.’

  ‘ETA.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Webb tapped the sheet of paper. ‘But ETA don’t give warnings. They never have done.’

  For a few moments the silence settled like a sudden weight in the room, then Swann sighed. ‘Have we got a picture of Jimenez?’

  Webb went back into the programme. ‘E-fit,’ he said. ‘I’ll print it.’

  They were both standing by the printer as Clements came in with Superintendent Colson. ‘Have you found anything, chaps?’ Colson asked them. ‘I want to get the briefing started.’ The printer finished rolling and Swann picked up the coloured E-fit image. For a moment he stared at it and then passed it across to Colson. ‘James Morton,’ he said.

  Tommy Cairns read the morning papers and scanned the pictures of Queen’s House Mews. ‘The Antiterrorist Branch raided the premises after a tip-off concerning the recent car-bomb attack in Soho.’ Folding the paper under his arm, he went out to his car and drove over to the builder’s yard where he and the others worked. Charlie Oxley was reading the same thing in the Sun, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He looked up when Cairns came in and held up the paper. ‘That was the address on the driving licence, Tommy.’

  ‘So what? He got away, didn’t he. And nobody’s looking for you.’

  Oxley looked at him then. ‘Well, they haven’t found me anyway.’

  ‘And they won’t. If they had a really good description they’d have been round here by now. You’ve got no form, Charlie. How the hell can they find you?’

  Oxley dropped the newspaper on the floor and placed both hands on his crew-cut head. ‘We’ve still got the glass,’ he said. ‘That means they’ll want us again.’

  Colson took the first full briefing since the debacle at Queen’s House Mews, and the feeling that somebody was laughing at them was tangible. Immediately after it became clear that Morton had escaped, Swann spoke to Christine Harris and Julian Moore, who had been operational as watchers on Monday. When he told them what had happened, and that SO19 believed Morton had escaped through the attic, they recollected the estate agent’s visit.

  Swann went to see the agency and they confirmed that they had not shown anyone round that day. He rechecked the list of people they had shown round since the property was put up for sale. Some of them had addresses, some of them had telephone numbers, but quite a few had only left their names. He looked for single men and found three. Single women, he found five. The name McIlroy stood out.

  It would not be difficult for someone who knew what they were doing to get a key. A flat piece of clay in your hand, asking to go back inside for another look on your own just as the estate agent was getting in his car; him waiting there while you go in, key in the clay and bingo—you could enter any time you pleased.

  ‘He had no visitors in all the time we had him under surveillance?’ Colson asked, sitting at the front with his arms folded.

  ‘Nobody, sir,’ Swann said.

  ‘Yet somebody picked him up from Moor Street in a rented Vauxhall Vectra. And now somebody has got keys to the empty property in Queen’s House Mews.’

  ‘One and the same person,’ Christine Harris suggested.

  ‘Possibly, but who?’

  Swann could sense the additional air of unease. Morton/Ibrahim Huella had known that SO19 were going to attack him. That meant he knew he was under surveillance, and the fact that on no occasion did he endeavour to use any third eye or other obvious antisurveillance techniques told them he didn’t need to. He was confident he would know exactly when they planned to scoop him up. Swann looked round the room: SO13, the best domestic antiterrorist force in the world, save perhaps the Israelis; the source agencies, Special Branch and MI5. Somewhere there was a leak. The only other possibility was the SFO team involved, but Huella’s activities, or lack of them as regards antisurveillance manoeuvres, discounted SO19. He was sure of his ground long before they got involved.

  Colson got to his feet again. ‘Storm Crow,’ he said, face suddenly grim. ‘George dug up a file that came in from Spain a few years back, an incident where a Plastia Spanish watch was used as the timing device. It was originally thought to be ETA, but the authorities received a coded warning. He looked at Webb then. ‘The codeword was Storm Crow.’

  Webb folded his arms. ‘We’ve heard the name before. We’ve never seen him here and we never wanted to.’ He sucked at his teeth. ‘I’ve only pulled that one incident so far, but the name has been whispered since 1989. We don’t know much about him or them, no one can even confirm whether it’s an individual or a group. It could be an individual. It could be an amalgam of lots of things. I know that some of his work resembles ETA, as we’ve seen today. We also know Phil Cregan pig-sticked a dummy Mk 15 at Soho, so there’s been contact with PIRA. Bombings, assassinations, nothing that can be connected with any one group or cause in particular. Bomb data lists an FBI agent called Louis Byrne as the man in the know. Apparently, he was in the Middle East in 1989 when the first incident took place. I’ll pull all the files later and brief you on everything.’

  ‘We don’t know that this was anything to do with Storm Crow,’ Christine Harris broke in on him.

  Webb glanced at her. ‘No, we don’t know anything for sure. I’m just working on hunches.’

  ‘Storm Crow incidents generally get claimed, don’t they?’

  Webb nodded. ‘Either that or a codeword. Madrid, for example. Spanish police weren’t well up on him
then, that’s why they thought PIRA may have been involved. No one gives coded warnings but PIRA.’

  ‘Cross-fertilization?’ Colson said. ‘Storm Crow some kind of joint statement maybe. We know ETA and PIRA have links.’

  Webb twisted his mouth down at the corners. ‘The only problem with that theory is most Storm Crow incidents have little to do with the specific cause of any one group. That suggests money and power are the motives. Some of the incidents have been assassinations. There’s lots of reasons to kill people and top hit men get top money. If you want my opinion, Storm Crow’s another Carlos but without the PFLP, and we all know what a nasty bastard he was.’

  ‘Innocuous little man when you meet him, apart from being carried in on a pole.’ Dave Collins from 2 Squad had been to Paris to interview the Jackal earlier in the year. For twenty-four years the Branch had wanted to speak to him over the shooting of Edward Sieff, the brother of the then chairman of Marks & Spencer. Carlos had shot Sieff in the face, after forcing his way into his home back in 1973.

  Colson paced round the table. ‘What about TATP? The last time that was used was against the Israeli Embassy.’

  ‘Triacetone triperoxide,’ Webb stated. ‘Crystal form, a base explosive about as volatile as it gets. Friction sets it off. Makes pure PETN and lead azide look stable. Normally used in the Middle East. Hamas have been making home-made grenades out of it for years, not to mention car and suicide bombs.’ He shook his head. ‘In felt-tip pens—takes some bottle just to put it in there.’

  The briefing broke up. Swann and Webb wandered back to the fifteenth floor and bought coffee from the machine. Swann sipped his, leaning against the window in the exhibits office looking out over Buckingham Palace. Webb stood next to him. Both of them were silent. Then Swann said, ‘Nobody mentioned it, did they.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s there all the same, though.’

  ‘Maybe. No doubt Colson and the old man are talking about it.’

  Swann looked sideways at him then. ‘It’s either Box or SB or us, Webby.’

  Webb nodded grimly. ‘It could be other things, Jack. If this is Storm Crow, then we know from the files just how clever he is. Surveillance is surveillance, isn’t it. All he had to do was clock one of the footpads, do a bit of covert antisurveillance and he’d know. Then he could locate the OP. That’s not difficult if you know what you’re looking for.’

  ‘What about the hit, though?’

  Webb chewed his lip. ‘That’s the hard bit, I grant you.’

  ‘Timing and everything.’

  Webb nodded. ‘He could’ve clocked their recce. Phones, wasn’t it? If he’s that clever he would have contacted BT and asked the question.’

  Swann made a face. ‘He could, I suppose. He was so fucking cool when I spoke to him. GCHQ have no record, though.’

  ‘Out and about, Jack. He could’ve used a call box. Mobile, loads of ways he could check.’ He picked at his teeth with a matchstick. ‘Should’ve bugged the car.’

  ‘Tell you something else,’ Swann said. ‘The way he’s set this thing up—the car bomb, the hire car, address and everything. Passport and not driving licence. It’s as if he wanted us to find him.’

  ‘But then he got away.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That could take care of your conspiracy theory, Jack.

  If he wanted us to find him he’d know the drill, in which case he could figure out when we were going to hit him.’

  ‘But why should he want us to find him?’

  ‘I wish I knew, Jack. I really wish I knew.’

  Together they went back to the Bomb Data Centre and printed a selection of documented Storm Crow incidents going back to 1989.

  4 July 1989, US Ambassador—Tel Aviv Said Rabi Brigitte Hammani

  On Friday 4 July 1989, the US Ambassador to Israel, Theodore Welford-Jennings, was travelling back from a function given in honour of US Independence Day by several members of the Israeli Cabinet. The ambassador was returning to his residence, guarded by a joint Mossad and Diplomatic Security Service convoy, when a grenade was thrown from a Citroën Dyane car, idling at the intersection with a side road. The grenade exploded and there was fragmentation damage to windows and several of the cars. The ambassador’s car received only minor damage to its rear section. Two people fled from the scene on foot (a man and a woman), leaving the Citroën, which was later found to be booby-trapped with a small device containing half a pound of the Russian-manufactured explosive Ammonal.

  Israeli Secret Service officers pursued on foot and the man was cornered and shot six times, being fatally wounded after entering a courtyard in a residential area and firing on his pursuers. The woman was never captured.

  The device in the Citroën was rendered safe by means of a controlled explosion. No trace of any other device or weapon was recovered, but the car was registered to one Brigitte Hammani—unknown to the security forces before the incident. The deceased man was Said Rabi, a member of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, who had recently fallen foul of the leadership. The grenade was home-made, using tri-acetone triperoxide. Two hours after the ambassador returned safely to his residence, a phone call was taken from a French-speaking male and the attack was claimed in the name of Tempête Corbeau—Storm Crow.

  Webb looked up at Swann. ‘First recorded incident.’ He passed it over and Swann read through it. Webb flicked through the screen and something else caught his eye. ‘One more,’ he said, ‘then I’m going to phone the FBI and talk to this Louis Byrne.’

  28 June 1995, Alessandro Peroni—Paris Pier-Luigi Ramas

  Tal-Salem

  On 28 June 1995, Alessandro Peroni was in Paris for a conference on the convergence criteria for European monetary union. He was there in a dual capacity as adviser to the Italian government and chief economist of Banca Di Roma.

  At 8.30 a.m. he left his hotel and walked the short distance to a waiting taxi. As he opened the door, another man, also apparently waiting, pushed him into it and the taxi sped off. The taxi was later found abandoned with Peroni still inside, fatally wounded, having been shot five times with 40-calibre shells, possibly from a Beretta.

  The concierge of the hotel was able to give good descriptions of both the taxi driver and the assailant. An E-fit image was created and the information circulated internationally. The men were identified as Pier-Luigi Ramas and Tal-Salem, a tandem hitman team wanted in Germany by the BKA.

  At 6 p.m. that evening, the offices of Le Figaro were telephoned from a call box outside Paris. The caller was Spanish or South American and the assassination was claimed in the name of Corneja Tempestad—Storm Crow.

  8

  TAL-SALEM SAT ON the balcony of a rented apartment in Javea, southern Spain, a glass of beer at his elbow. He was watching topless girls on the beach, out of slightly glazed eyes. Between forefinger and thumb he held a long fat joint, the effects of which were working their way steadily through him. Those who had gone before him, long long ago now, had eaten theirs in cakes. Behind him the telephone rang and he looked at it for a moment before answering.

  ‘Hola.’

  ‘Hello, old friend.’

  Salem smiled. ‘A long time since I hear from you,’ he said. ‘Que pasa?’

  ‘Nada.’

  ‘Nada is not what I hear.’

  The voice on the other end of the phone laughed then. ‘Your Spanish doesn’t get any better.’

  ‘Neither does my English.’ He sat on the arm of a chair. ‘So, how is London in the summertime?’

  ‘Better than in the wintertime.’

  ‘Is what I’m hearing correct?’

  ‘It is. Once again we share an employer.’

  ‘The way of the world, my friend. When the work you do is good, the right people remember.’

  For a moment neither of them spoke, then the caller said: ‘And our other old friend. How is he?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘He’s with you?’

  ‘No,’ Salem said. �
��He is only ever with me when we’re working. Right now he is in Rome. His favourite city in summertime.’

  ‘I thought that was Paris.’

  ‘Paris is OK, but he prefers the girls in Rome.’

  ‘Can you contact him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then do so. August will be a good time to be in London.’

  ‘August then.’

  ‘We’ll speak again.’

  ‘You are aware that the price has gone up.’

  ‘Inflation, a terrible thing.’

  ‘So I read in the papers.’

  Tal-Salem went back out to the balcony. Late afternoon, the sun was moving steadily closer to the sea. Some of the girls on the beach had already put their clothes back on, yet the heat of the day still burned his face. He picked up the beer, slightly warm now, and swallowed. Then he went back inside and made a phone call to Rome.

  The airplane was only half full. At midday the man in the dark suit left business class and went through to the toilet. He moved up the economy cabin, smiling at the flight attendant, and settled in an empty seat. He unclipped the phone from its housing, ran his AT&T card through, waited and dialled. It was late afternoon in London. She picked up the phone after three rings.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.’

  ‘Of course not. It wouldn’t be good business if you knew when I was going to call.’

  She did not reply.

  ‘Everything going as planned?’

  ‘Yes. I have the pictures back.’

  ‘Pictures? Oh, the pictures. Good. Good.’

  She paused. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Just one.’

  ‘Is it you that I meet?’

  For a moment he was silent and then he said: ‘In the cathedral? Westminster Cathedral, such a beautiful, awe-inspiring place. Did you know they have closed-circuit television there? Make sure you don’t get caught on it.’

  ‘It is you, isn’t it.’

  ‘Is it?’ He could hear the lightness of her breath.