A Fatal Game

by Nicholas Searle

  It had been five o’clock in the morning when the text came to convene at the normal venue, via the messaging system they’d been told was secure. Rashid had been told never to bring his phone to meetings. They could track it, the mukhabarat. They could do all kinds of things. But they couldn’t get into the messages. WikiLeaks had demonstrated that, together with the moaning of the British government, which amplified their weaknesses. So at all other times, when they were leading that separate life, the mundane decadent English existence, they should keep their phones beside them.

  They had come here via a bewildering series of cut-outs and changes of vehicle. It was similar to one of his meetings with Jake and Leila in this respect, the toing and froing, the disorientation, but Rashid suspected the sheikh had fewer people at his disposal. The instructions had been in two halves: one held by Bilal and the other by Abdullah. Bilal had driven them in his mother’s ancient Nissan Micra to one of the city-centre car parks. They had entered Mandela Park in the half-dark of dawn, climbing over the wrought-iron fencing and, following the careful directions, left it at its opposite end, where a prepaid taxi was waiting to take them to a pub, closed with blank shutters, by the canal. There, Abdullah’s set of instructions had kicked in, to walk down the towpath and cross to the other side at a set of locks. Here the old white Transit waited for them and they’d climbed in. At least Rashid had been able to make out the registration number. He timed the journey to this place from there at twenty-five minutes.

  ‘Well,’ said the sheikh when he decided the moment had come. ‘This is a sombre moment for us all. It may be the last time we see each other, brothers. Now is the time, if any of you has reservations about what you will be expected to do, for you to withdraw and wait outside in the van. There will be no recriminations or repercussions. It must be clear to each of us that we need to feel called to take this path. You are all warriors and have nothing to prove. You can return home with pride if that’s what you want.’

  He paused and looked at them expectantly. No one moved. How, thought Rashid, could any of them do so? Each would have realized that, even if he no longer wanted to do this, to leave now would be an act of suicide.

  ‘Good. That’s settled.’ He leaned back and crossed his legs. Rashid could see the soles of the sheikh’s boots and was mesmerized by the urgent twitching of his feet in the half-light.

  The sheikh coughed. ‘This is it. This is the cold truth. The action you are required to carry out is designed to kill not tens, but hundreds. Thousands perhaps, inshallah. It will shake not just this city but this complacent country to the core. It will be the next step on the path to our caliphate.’

  ‘You have one week before you find your place in paradise. You probably know that on Wednesday evening next week there is a big game at the ThreeD. City are playing Real Madrid. They are impudent enough even to be sponsored by an Arab infidel airline. There’ll be seventy thousand people there.’

  Rashid could not help looking at Adnan who, even in midbattle when chasing the enemy down the desert road, had been obsessed with finding a mobile signal to look up the latest transfer gossip. Adnan claimed to have had trials with City but not to have made it purely because of where his parents had been born. Now, he showed no emotion.

  ‘You need to make your preparations. You need to acquire materials, to train and, most importantly, to ensure that you have done everything in this world that Allah could require of you. You need to rest, to pray and to find peace in your souls. Now, the plan. It is simple. Each of you will play an active role. You will each approach the ground at the end of the game from a different direction, as the crowd is leaving. One of you, more perhaps, possibly all of you, will carry an explosive device. It is yet to be decided. You will also be armed with other weapons. I will get hold of all of the weaponry and message each of you with individual instructions how to collect it. This will be at the last moment.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier for us to collect the weapons together?’ asked Adnan.

  ‘We must be wary. We must guard against the possibility that one of you may be detected. If that happens, the others must be free to carry out their tasks. In the meantime, you will need to acquire various items. You will need to obtain vehicles so that you can approach the area of the ground without using public transport.’

  ‘I can borrow my mum’s car again,’ said Bilal.

  The others laughed quietly, and the sheikh smiled too.

  ‘No. This must be done in a way that shields your identities. Your families and associates will realize you are no longer there, but we must make the authorities work hard. There are others preparing to take part in the next wave of this holy work, and we want the infidels to be as occupied as they can be. Abdullah, I understand you know how to steal cars.’

  Abdullah nodded.

  ‘Then you will spend the day before the mission – next Tuesday – finding four cars that you can steal and store. Before that, you need to buy sharp knives, for self-defence. You will need also, all four of you, to acquire materials with which you can make it seem as if the cars, when you abandon them near the ground, are loaded with bombs. That may well divert the police from their tasks at the ground, as well as causing panic that is helpful.’

  ‘What kind of materials?’ asked Rashid. He did not want to be the only one who did not speak.

  ‘I’ll leave that to you,’ said the sheikh. ‘You will also need to plan your approaches to the stadium and the timings. This is for you to work out as well. You have the skills. In the meantime you continue to live your lives as normal. Until the very last moment. Except …’ he left a pause for dramatic effect. ‘Except this coming Sunday. You will need to test your plan. City have a home game that day against Liverpool. The crowd will be as large, as will the police presence. You won’t have vehicles, so you will have to walk or take public transport. The next part is important. You must carry rucksacks but no offensive weapons on this rehearsal. This is critical. You cannot under any circumstances carry anything incriminating. This is to test the enemy’s security awareness. That is all.’

  ‘It won’t be like the station?’ asked Abdullah.

  ‘Does any of us really know about the station? Who were the brothers, what were the instructions? Do not believe the Western media or their so-called inquiries. No, this is clear. This is your holy mission. It is not a copy of any other. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is purely to practise the elements of a very complex operation. If any of you is apprehended, we’ll have to think again. You must each have a cover story for your presence in the area. Think about what you will say. If challenged by the police, you must not give them any reason to take action against you. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ they all said again.

  Jake Winter was in a hurry. He’d overslept and it was already seven forty. He might just make the seven fifty-seven bus but he’d have to be quick. He’d need to buy something to eat at the supermarket on the corner.

  He felt dishevelled, though he’d shaved carefully before showering. He only rushed these things if it were a matter of great urgency. To perform well, he needed to feel that he looked and felt as good as he could. Not, he thought, that that meant much, given how little sleep he was getting. He wasn’t required at the inquiry today, he’d been told by text message, owing to some obscure in-chambers legal debate. That meant no suit was necessary but he took as much care when dressing in jeans. He needed that careful calibration of casualness and professionalism, that curious alchemy of friendliness yet distance, informality and efficiency that put his interlocutor at ease. He was dishevelled less in his appearance than in his psychological state.

  Rashid had asked for a meeting. The call had come at seven fifteen. He’d have been worried if Rashid hadn’t phoned in because, as he’d confirmed in a quick call to the ops room afterwards, the boys had met unexpectedly early that morning. A quick dash to their venue, triggered it was thought by the end-to-end encrypted
messaging service that they still hadn’t managed to get into. Rashid had texted in quickly to report but by then he was running against time.

  The surveillance teams saw the other boys going there too. Bilal was driving his mother’s car. When they all got into the car the surveillance must have thought this was going to be easy. The boys’ first mistake, perhaps. But whoever was pulling their strings knew the city well. Jake could imagine it. The leisurely follow to the northern gate of Mandela Park, closed at that time of the morning. The boys scaling the five-foot railings nimbly, dropping down on the other side and disappearing into the bushes in the darkness of an overcast dawn. The on-the-hoof health and safety assessment that prevented the team from following directly, for fear of an ambush. Cars dispatched to drive frantically around the perimeter to chase time, knowing they could never hope to cover the other three exits. What was a three-minute stroll across the park would, what with the one-way system, be a seven-minute dash in a car to the furthest exit, even through deserted streets. By the time the cars had done the circuit a couple of times and teams were combing the interior they’d have realized they’d lost them. The audio and video at the boys’ normal venue were worthless; quick scans of the CCTV coverage around the city revealed only the normal morning traffic of early workers, night buses and taxi drivers going off shift.

  It was reassuring, therefore, that Rashid had called in. Reassuring too that he’d said, somewhat breathlessly, that there was no change of plan that brought things forward but that they needed to meet today. Leila and Jake had made Rashid memorize a series of fallback RV arrangements in case the wheel threatened to come off in the form of an unanticipated impromptu attack, but each of them risked blowing the whole covert operation. Surveillance had confirmed that Rashid had gone home, changed into his suit and was on his way to work. The others had also resumed their normal routines.

  He looked around. In the refrigerated section there were some of those dreadful-looking ready-made cereal concoctions in plastic boxes, placed there for people just like him. In the end he decided on a banana and a cappuccino from the machine and took them to the till.

  ‘Mr Masoud not back yet, then?’ he said.

  The young man, Mr Masoud’s nephew, so he said, looked up from his newspaper. ‘The inquiry, innit?’ Jake looked at him as if he had not the slightest idea what he was talking about. ‘He goes to the inquiry every day. Doesn’t miss a minute, him and Mrs M.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s hit him hard, this has.’

  ‘Understandable. How long is it now since it happened?’

  ‘Three and a half months. Three and a half bloody months.’

  ‘It’s not long,’ said Jake. ‘Give it time.’

  ‘True, true. Take a lot longer to get over something like that.’

  ‘You expecting him back anytime soon, then?’

  ‘No idea, man. Doubt it. Maybe six months, maybe longer. Maybe never.’

  ‘Well, pass on my regards if you see him, won’t you?’

  ‘You always say that, man. I always do.’

  A day off. He’d taken the phone call from the lawyer’s office before they set off. It’d been the clerk; the man himself obviously had better things to do. There was some procedural stuff being sorted today between the counsel and the Chair. ‘Give yourself a day off,’ the clerk had said.

  What did he know? A day off? There’d never be a day off from this. He’d only been trying to make conversation, the boy, but still. Mr Masoud’s silence had made the end of the conversation awkward, he’d known that, and he’d felt the urge to call back and make amends. But no, he realized he hadn’t the heart or the will.

  So Tawfiiq had come around. He’d expressed his gratitude and they’d sat in the dining room with the door closed. His wife had raised her eyebrows in that way and continued with the housework.

  He could talk to Tawfiiq, the young man whose expression was always watchful but never displayed even the smallest impatience with Mr Masoud’s rambling commentary on life and its evils. His hands remained still and he simply watched. He never betrayed emotion which, Mr Masoud guessed, would make him a good spiritual leader.

  ‘You’ll be a fine imam one day, Tawfiiq,’ he once said.

  ‘Thank you, Abu Samir. If it be Allah’s will.’ He smiled non-committally.

  They’d been there half an hour or more when the doorbell rang. The door-stepping journalists had become less frequent. But there was still the occasional one prepared to chance his or her arm. He looked at the display from the security camera hidden near the front door.

  Zaki Ibrahim. No, please, no. He’d avoided Zaki since it had happened. The worst kind of prurient, prying gossip. The man purported to be of the faith but showed the worst of Western excess. And that sports car. Zaki Ibrahim was a businessman of sorts, known to have mixed with the wrong people and rumoured to have been involved in the drugs trade at one point. Word at the mosque had it that he’d cleaned up his act, but you never knew.

  These were, Mr Masoud realized, uncharitable thoughts and unworthy of him, even in his present condition. Zaki Ibrahim was, after all, just another human being with human frailties.

  Mr Masoud had parked the car on the drive this morning in preparation for going to the inquiry. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t at home. If he failed to open the door, Zaki would know he’d been shunned. Both would lose face.

  ‘Will you be opening the door, then?’ asked his wife, who had just come into the room.

  ‘It’s Zaki Ibrahim,’ he replied, a plea in his voice. He looked at Tawfiiq and saw reflected: nothing.

  ‘I must go,’ said Tawfiiq, and stood.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Mrs Masoud.

  Tawfiiq and Zaki exchanged greetings, Zaki effusive, Tawfiiq blank as ever; and then Tawfiiq was gone.

  Zaki Ibrahim sat on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward, one large hand in the other, as if in supplication. He looked up as he spoke. ‘Abu Samir, I’ve not had the chance to speak to you properly since the funeral. I’m sorry, I should have made the time.’

  ‘It’s all right, Zaki. We’ve been rather … preoccupied.’

  ‘Of course. But I wanted to come and pay my respects.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to do so.’

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened. Your son and granddaughter. Beautiful people.’

  Mr Masoud was not aware that Zaki had ever met Aisha in her five years of bountiful life. The thought of her again made his eyes prick. Who was this man, with his silly sleek hairstyle, his shiny suit and black shirt and those ridiculous boots, to comment on Samir and Aisha?

  He said nothing, but continued to hold a banal half-smile on his face. It was that or burst into tears once more.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ said Zaki.

  ‘That’s kind,’ said Mr Masoud.

  ‘These terrible, terrible people.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they call themselves good Muslims.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘These boys. Who knows how many more there are in this city, and elsewhere? The community is anxious, Abu Samir. The city is in turmoil.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve not kept up with …’

  ‘No. Of course not. But who knows what will happen next? No right-minded Muslim condones what happened. Your family and other Muslims are direct victims of this. Yet the community feels under threat.’

  ‘Is there something you wish me to do, Zaki?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘Because I wouldn’t feel capable of making a statement or doing an interview or anything like that, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. I wasn’t suggesting that. I was only expressing my feelings.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s a sense of frustration we all feel. What can we do, as a community, as individuals? Your friends at the mosque, this Tawfiiq, what use are they? I fear for us.’

  ‘It’s natural. I’m no wise man, Zaki
. I have extreme difficulty getting through each day. I don’t think we’ll ever understand what these people are thinking. If they believe they can find justification in the Quran for their actions, by taking its words out of context and distorting them, why are they seeking such justification in the first place? What has caused their hearts to be so full of hate? What are their aims? They cannot truly believe that this worldwide caliphate can ever be created. But I’m simply repeating what so many others have said. I think all we can do is to wait. All things must pass. We need to have hope and to be as kind to others as we can be.’

  ‘These are sage words, Abu Samir. You are wiser than you give yourself credit for.’

  ‘Thank you. It wasn’t false modesty.’

  ‘In fact we do know what these people wish to achieve,’ continued Zaki Ibrahim, ‘better than the Westerners, at least.’

  ‘We do?’

  ‘The Westerners think they get it but they don’t understand the seriousness of it. Its literalness. These people simply want to annihilate everything this civilization is made of. Every scrap of it. They don’t need to create anything, they simply want to destroy everything and everyone. This is what Westerners don’t see. They can’t believe these people really do want to kill everyone and to destroy everything. They think there must be some deal to be done, somewhere down the road. I know how to do deals and even I can see there’s nothing to trade. Who can blame these people in a way, when you look at society here, its hopelessness, its lack of respect, its decadence?’

  ‘Are you saying that you believe in some of what they’re doing?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m simply saying that there are huge injustices and immoralities inflicted on Muslims both here and in the lands from which our forebears came.’