by Iain Cameron
‘Got it in one,’ Matt said. His voice sounded thick and languid, and his jaw hurt when it moved.
‘What I would like to know is, what is HSA’s interest in us?’ His accent wasn’t heavy but with sufficient inflection for Matt to realise he was of Turkish origin. Although it was clear from his choice of words and diction, he had been in the UK for a while and he was an educated guy.
‘I thought that would have been obvious. You’re terrorists,’ Matt said. ‘We take an interest in every terrorist who comes into this country.’
‘I could get into a philosophical discussion about the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists, but I think this is for another time. I’d like to know what you have found out about us.’
Matt had to be very careful here. In reality, he didn’t know much, but if he told him everything it would mean his value to them would be diminished. Ergo, he would suffer the same fate as David Burke.
‘What I know,’ Matt said, ‘is you want to stop your prime minister from persuading the EU to allow Turkey to join.’
‘Do you think this a valid course of action?’
‘What I think or don’t think doesn’t matter. I don’t have to live with the consequences.’
‘Let me tell you, Matt Flynn, it would be a disaster for my country. We would be like you: decadent, drinking alcohol at all hours of the day and night, girls wearing next to nothing, no one working to become a better servant of God. Instead, they would all be anxious to buy the latest phone or gadget to wear on their wrist.’
‘It’s not so bad. You’d soon get used to it.’
From the side, he saw a flash and braced himself. The thing Beefy whacked him with in the chest didn’t give the blunt thump he was expecting, but a sharp sting, sucking the breath out of his lungs. A minute or so later when he had recovered, he saw the weapon being used. It was about eight inches long with a thong for a handle. It was made of rope or flex, thick strands woven together to make something every bit as lethal as the archaic policeman’s wooden truncheon or the criminal’s chib.
‘What do you know of our plans?’
‘I don’t know anything about your plans.’
Beefy flexed again and this time he went for the shins. Christ, it hurt! It stung, ached, and throbbed all at the same time. It felt like he had broken both of them.
‘You bastards,’ Matt said. ‘When I get out of here, I’ll kill the pair of you.’
‘Listen to him, Ahmed. The big tough guy. Trouble is, Matt Flynn, you will never get out of here, not alive at any rate. Just like your friend, Mr Burke.’
Even with Matt sweating heavily and pain shooting through his body like hundreds of firecrackers, he still noticed the ‘friend’ reference. In any other situation it would be dismissed as a throwaway word, one spoken loosely or in error. In here, it wasn’t. Question was, how did he know?
‘David Burke was here?’
‘Yes, in that very chair.’
‘Why did you kill him?’
‘For the same reason we will kill you. Our organisation has plans, and you and Mr Burke were intending to spoil them.’
‘How did you know about him? You’re a small organisation from another country.’
This was the main problem Matt had all along with blaming the TFF for Burke’s kidnap and murder. It had been festering in his mind for the last few days: how did they have the intelligence about his schedule, where he lived, if he was alone or lived with others? His address and telephone number, personal situation, and movements were revealed only to a few people, and not published anywhere. If HSA needed this sort of information, gathering it could take weeks and the use of many resources, human and electronic.
‘We may be very small, but we are very effective.’
‘You had inside help, didn’t you?’
Ahmed moved to deliver another blow, but a small hand movement from Matt’s questioner stopped him.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘An educated guess.’
‘Would I be right in thinking this is not a common view held by many of your colleagues?’
‘I imagine they would arrive at the same conclusion in the fullness of time.’
‘Maybe yes, maybe no. We did have help. We have many sympathisers in the UK who believe we have a just cause, some within your Security Services.’
‘Kerem,’ Ahmed said sharply. ‘Do not say more.’
Matt looked to his questioner’s face, then at Ahmed, whose pockmarked face under the mop of a bushy black beard looked annoyed at his colleague’s indiscreet reveal.
‘It’s all right, Ahmed, do not worry. This man is not leaving this basement alive. I will not name the source of our information.’
The name of this source wasn’t as safe as he believed, Matt thought. David was a secretive guy, even for an MI5 agent. Despite Kerem only saying ‘Security Services’, Matt knew he wasn’t alluding to someone in HSA or MI6, as even he, who had socialised with David several times, didn’t know that much about him. It had to be someone close to him in MI5.
‘I asked you before and you didn’t tell me the truth,’ Kerem said. ‘What do you know of our plans?’
‘The day you picked me up is the first time we have investigated your activities in Stoke Newington. All I know is you actively raise money and drum up support by visiting coffee houses.’
‘Among other things, yes, but it is a good source of revenue. In addition, our friends in Afghanistan make cocaine and heroin which the idiots in your country buy to inject into their bodies, the stupid pigs,’ he spat. ‘This money in turn funds our operations. It’s capitalism in action. I love it. What about other parts of the Security Services? What are they thinking?’
‘They all assume an attempt will be made on the life of the Turkish President, but nobody knows how or when.’
‘Your best guess?’
‘With having had David Burke in this room, I assume he told you about some of the security arrangements for the forthcoming Lancaster House conference.’
‘You assume right.’
‘In which case, I imagine an armed attack will take place or a bomb will go off at some point during the Lancaster House meeting. I don’t know for sure, and no one else does either, how this will happen, or where, or when.’
‘Why do I think you are lying to me, Matt Flynn?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t care if you do or you don’t. I’ve told you all I know.’
Kerem nodded to Ahmed, who lifted his arm and whacked Matt on the chest with the corded weapon. He didn’t stop this time, but carried on whacking him, on the chest, arms, and legs. Matt blacked-out.
He came to, hoping he was alone, lying on his side, tied to the wall. Instead, Kerem was still standing in front of him. Every part of his body ached and he felt drained of all energy.
‘I will ask you once again, and if you continue to defy me, I will make sure Ahmed strips all the skin from your bones.’
Matt said nothing, not able to speak.
‘Tell me what you know of our plans.’
He summoned up the strength from somewhere. ‘I told you, I know nothing,’ he said in a slow and deliberate voice he didn’t quite recognise. ‘There’s nothing more.’
Ahmed lifted an arm, poised to strike, but Kerem’s raised hand stopped him.
‘It is useless. He has told us all he knows,’ he said. ‘Tie him up again, Ahmed. We kill him tonight.’
THIRTY-ONE
‘The target building is located in a residential area,’ Rosie said, ‘hence the decision to wait until dark.’ Some murmurings came from the assembled raid team; not their earlier grumbles about a woman from another agency telling them what to do, but self-satisfied noises about all the overtime they would make.
‘There are two entry points, here, and here,’ she said pointing to the screen showing a schematic of the inside of the building. ‘I want four men on each. When I give the signal, we bash both doors down and enter. These men are terrorists
and lethal force is permitted. They may be wearing suicide vests, and unless you can be sure they are not, you must not risk your own life or the lives of your colleagues. You are authorised to shoot them in the head.’
‘Makes a bloody change,’ Sergeant Bob Graham, one of the eight men in the room, said. ‘Most other times we’re given warnings about preserving life.’
‘I’m expecting them to have a captive, an HSA agent by the name of Matt Flynn.’ She put a photo of Matt up on the screen. ‘Take a good look and there’s a copy of this picture in your packs. He’s one of the good guys, so on no account do you shoot him. I repeat, do not shoot him.’
She looked around the room, fixing each man with an unflinching gaze, her way of showing them she meant business. ‘That’s all I have,’ she said. ‘Do you have any questions?’
‘How good is the intel making you think this place is a TFF location?’
‘During another related surveillance operation we put a tracker inside a bag of explosives. That bag is now at this target house,’ Rosie said tapping the board behind her for emphasis.
The murmurs in the room suggested they were convinced too.
‘What do we know about the interior of the building? Does it contain flammable material, for instance?’
‘No idea is the honest answer.’
‘Will the opposition be armed?’
They’re terrorists, of course they bloody will, she thought but didn’t say. ‘Assume the worst: knives, handguns, explosives, automatic rifles.’
‘What?’
‘We know for sure the TFF are equipped with them. Whether they have them at this location…’ She shrugged. ‘Nobody knows.’
She looked around; no more questions. Thoughts of facing down some zealot armed with an AK47 or M16 set to auto and spraying a full magazine into their path had subdued the mood and smothered any attempts at black humour.
‘Right, let’s get kitted up.’
They trooped out of the briefing room, a shabby meeting area two floors up inside a police station in South London. Several key things were included in the thin portfolio they had been given: a map showing the location of the target building, a detailed diagram of its interior, and Matt’s photo. She hoped they would all take a good look at each one.
‘That was a tough crowd,’ Joseph said, walking beside her. ‘I think, on balance, you made an impression on their granite hearts.’
‘Wallets more like,’ she said as they headed out of the room.
‘I don’t think the antagonism we saw at the start of the briefing was about a ‘woman in a man’s world’. I think it had more to do with them being asked to do some of HSA’s dirty work.’
Rosie looked at him quizzically. ‘You don’t think sexism exists in the police? Or, in fact, across the security services as a whole?’
‘Of course, it does, and I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of it.’
‘Why not? A lot more women are coming into the service and are doing a job equal to, and in some cases better than, the men. Surely things are changing. It would be a sad indictment about the state of society if it wasn’t.’
‘I don’t share your optimism, Rosie. Many serving officers still regard physicality as one of the biggest assets a cop can have, and I don’t see that ever changing.’
They arrived at Rosie’s car and, from the boot, extracted protective gear and checked their weapons and magazines. This was a job to be done at the police station and not at the destination. It was dangerous and foolhardy to arrive at the target only to find your gun magazine was almost empty, or you’d forgotten to pack your stab vest.
‘I grant you physicality was a great asset in old-style policing,’ Rosie said. ‘In those days, with bobbies on the beat and no PACE rules to govern the handling of suspects, it allowed a large and intimidating individual to clock up a disproportionate number of convictions. The job has changed irrevocably since then. Now much of the work done by the police, HSA, and other parts of the security services is all about intelligence. You don’t need big biceps or pecs to do any of that. A smart brain and a computer are all we require to get results now.’
The cops on this operation were now filing out of the police station and heading towards their van. For a few minutes, Rosie had a final confab with the sergeant to confirm the route they would take, and the procedure they would follow once they arrived, before they set off.
The target building was only a couple of kilometres away from the police station in Lambeth. The streets were quiet, as Joseph predicted they would be, with so many popular television programmes airing around the same time: Strictly Come Dancing, Love Island, and for sports fans, El Clásico from Barcelona. Also, this part of Lambeth wasn’t much of a tourist area, with few popular bars, clubs, or food markets to attract the young at night.
‘I was talking to Kingsley Walsh this afternoon,’ Rosie said. ‘Although he didn’t say it in so many words, I think he’s angry with Matt.’
‘Kingsley’s got a lot to learn about what we do, and I think his reaction is another example of his inexperience. In his world, the way you mitigate risk is by having a bigger and better-armed squad, and as much information as you can gather. That doesn’t work with us. Deploy too many people, and we’d stand out like sore thumbs and put ourselves in danger, and if we spend too much time gathering info, the target will be long gone.’
‘I agree,’ she responded. ‘I was thinking about Matt’s approach, and wondering if we were to do it again, what could be done to mitigate the risks. My first thought was to engage another two-man team, but if they were hanging back so they wouldn’t be connected with Matt and Jamil, the kidnap happened so fast that by the time they reached their car, the van would be nowhere in sight.’
‘I don’t blame Matt at all,’ Joseph said. ‘It’s often the only way to obtain good information, I just hope Matt doesn’t pay for it with his life.’
They parked a short distance from the target building. Rosie had decided to stop for a few minutes to allow everyone to take in their surroundings: the weather, the streetlights, passers-by, and the lights and activity in the house they were watching. When complete, they exited their vehicles.
The target was an end of terrace house with vehicle parking to one side. Most of the houses in the area had been converted to flats, but this one remained as it had been built, on four levels, with the addition of a basement. They knew from housing records the TFF, through an intermediary, had rented the house on a long-term agreement.
With little preamble, one team was positioned at the ground-floor door, and the other, including Rosie, at the basement door. On her signal, the doors were bashed open.
Rosie rushed in behind the armed officers. With the adrenaline coursing through her veins and her eagerness to find Matt, she would happily have gone in first. The room was sparse, empty except for one corner with a rug, bed, and light. A guy was lying on the bed, dressed in grubby shorts and t-shirt, obviously listening to something loud on the over-sized headphones clamped to his skull. He clearly wasn’t wearing a suicide vest so they didn’t shoot him. Instead, one of the officers walked over and stuck the barrel of his rifle in his face.
He jumped up, startled, but before he could leg it out of the door, the officer dumped him face down on the bed and applied the cuffs. A quick search of the room revealed it was nothing but a bedroom for this guy, a lad aged about eighteen.
She left the officers to question him while she walked outside and climbed the stairs to the main part of the house. In the lounge, three men were sitting on the settee, their hands tied and their expressions glum. She approached Sergeant Graham.
‘Status?’
‘We’ve checked all the rooms upstairs, ma’am. No sign of your missing agent.’
‘You didn’t find any outhouses, lofts, or anywhere else they might be holding him?’
He shook his head. ‘Nope, this is it, and they,’ he said nodding to the guys sitting on the couch, ‘are the house’s only occu
pants.’
Rosie took a look around the house herself, not because she didn’t trust the cops. She knew she wouldn’t find Matt, but she hoped to find some evidence of his presence. Downstairs, she searched the lounge, kitchen, and another small room, designated as the television room.
Upstairs, she found three bedrooms and another larger room built into the attic space. She didn’t find any trace of Matt: no leg bindings, food bowls, discarded clothes, blood stains, and no evidence of a scuffle. She knew Matt, and he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
The team did discover what appeared to be a TFF armaments store, however. It included the sports bag first seen at the Hackney house, and some battered and scratched AK47s, ammunition, and a variety of handguns. To Rosie, it looked as though the AK’s had first seen service in Vietnam, then the Afghan war against the Russians, before being deployed once again during the allied invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though looking no better than museum pieces, with a touch of oil, a bit of cleaning, and some TLC, they would still be capable of serving the deadly purpose they were designed for.
Despite finding no trace of Matt, the raid had been a success, and would be hailed as such by the Assistant Chief Constable of the Met when all the captured weapons would be put on display. They had dented the TFF’s ability to undertake terrorist acts, but Rosie didn’t feel much like celebrating.
THIRTY-TWO
Following his interrogation and beating, Matt had blacked out, but for no more than a couple of minutes. By the time Ahmed had finished tying his legs to the ring in the basement wall, and the two men had left the room, he was awake and able to sit up.
Some of his pained reaction to Ahmed’s blows was faked. Ahmed was slow and ponderous in his delivery, giving Matt time to brace himself for the chest blows. It reduced some of the impact, but unfortunately not all. He could do little about the shin whacks; they hurt like hell for a few minutes before gradually tailing-off.