Defend or Die

by Tom Marcus

  ‘Islamists,’ Alex said. ‘He just needs to connect with a radical preacher in a mosque that isn’t under surveillance.’

  Ryan nodded. ‘Agreed. But he doesn’t do that, or at least that’s not where his search leads him. He ends up somewhere rather different.’

  ‘St Saviour’s,’ Mrs Allenby said.

  ‘Yes. Exactly.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘We seem to be going round in circles, Mr Oldfield.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ryan said. ‘But sometimes when you find yourself in a labyrinth, that’s what you have to do, in my experience. At least at first.’

  She didn’t look convinced, but nodded for him to carry on.

  ‘So I was trying to think like Weston, and of course I started off trawling the usual jihadi websites. Then – assuming he knows what he’s doing – I dug a bit deeper, into the dark web, where, unfortunately, the real extremists advertise themselves.’

  Alex looked bewildered. ‘But we know he didn’t find one of them.’

  Ryan pulled at his goatee. ‘Maybe he did.’

  ‘You mean St Saviour’s has a site on the dark web?’

  ‘Well, not St Saviour’s exactly. But I did come across something interesting. Something that could possibly tie in with Martindale. You remember he was studying the crusades? Quite an odd subject for a theology student.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Mrs Allenby asked.

  ‘Well, most Christians would admit that the crusades were more about making money than saving souls. And sometimes worse things than that. It’s hard to make the case that there was anything spiritual about them, when all’s said and done.’

  ‘But Martindale did?’

  ‘I don’t know. He never completed his thesis, so it isn’t logged anywhere. I’m only guessing. But maybe he was taking the very unfashionable line that the crusades could be morally justified, despite all the greed and bloodshed. Perhaps he got into an argument with his tutors at All Souls about it and that’s why he never finished his degree.’

  ‘This is all very interesting, Mr Oldfield, but what’s it got to do with the dark web?’ Mrs Allenby asked, losing patience.

  ‘The thing is, I came across a site called Tenth Crusade,’ Ryan said. ‘There were nine crusades – nine major ones, anyway, if you don’t count off-the-cuff raids and bits of freebooting that didn’t have the blessing of the Church.’

  ‘So what’s the tenth one?’ Alex asked. ‘I mean, the crusades were all about taking Jerusalem back from the Turks or Saracens or whatever, weren’t they?’

  Ryan nodded. ‘That was the justification, anyway.’

  ‘So you reckon Martindale’s recruiting an army of dossers to lay siege to Jerusalem? Not sure the IDF would take too kindly to that.’

  Ryan smiled. ‘A bit impractical, I agree. Although there was a Children’s Crusade, which had about the same chance of success. But no, I don’t think he’s planning on marching on Jerusalem – at least, not the actual one.’

  Alex tilted her head to one side. ‘So . . . what?’

  ‘There’s another element to this Tenth Crusade website.’ Ryan turned to me. ‘Did Martindale mention anything about William Blake?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Come on, you must have sung “And did those feet in ancient times . . .”’

  ‘Sorry, mate, not with you. Blake? No. He did quote someone. Don’t remember. Began with a C.’

  ‘And your point is?’ Mrs Allenby asked.

  ‘Well, Blake thought Jerusalem was an idea. That it needed to be “builded here . . .”’

  ‘“In England’s green and pleasant land”,’ Mrs Allenby finished.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Alex looked confused. ‘So . . . if Jerusalem is here, then how is the Tenth Crusade all about taking it back? Back from who?’

  ‘The Muslims, I assume,’ Ryan said.

  We all thought about that for a moment. I had to admit, it was starting to make sense.

  Mrs Allenby tapped her pencil on the table for a few moments. ‘But we don’t know if this has got anything to do with Martindale. We could be making connections that don’t exist. We can’t afford to get this wrong.’

  ‘No,’ admitted Ryan. ‘We don’t know if Martindale and the Tenth Crusade are connected.’

  ‘But there is one way we can find out,’ I said.

  Mrs Allenby sighed. She put her pen down and looked at the table for a moment. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But for God’s sake be careful.’

  33

  I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea when Alan texted. I was making a to-do list in my head: things I needed to get sorted before I went back to St Saviour’s. I had a hunch that the ‘cleansing’ process would start right away. Martindale had to have a place that was secure, where you could hide someone away for an extended period without anyone noticing – where, for all I knew, no one could hear you scream. Somewhere out in the sticks – an isolated farmhouse – would be perfect. Wherever it was, that’s where I’d be going, but how long I’d be there was anyone’s guess. Which was why I had to get my ducks in a row now. After all, there was always a chance that I wasn’t coming back.

  If Lucy called and I couldn’t answer, I didn’t want her thinking I’d got cold feet. I didn’t want her tipping back into the abyss – not because of me. I’d have to tell her I was going away for a while – but where? So far I’d managed to skirt around the subject of what I did for a living, but I wouldn’t be able to keep that up forever. I’d have to come up with a story that included a plausible reason for disappearing at short notice for an unspecified length of time with no means of communicating. I was still waiting for inspiration to strike.

  I’d violated my probation and was going back to jail? Or volunteering for rehab? I owed money to a loan shark and the blokes with baseball bats were after me? None of these really fitted with what I’d already told her, though I’d told her so little it probably didn’t matter. Or, if I was being honest with myself, was the real reason I didn’t fancy any of these scenarios: what they would make Lucy think of me?

  People do funny things when they’re grieving. I knew that as well as anyone. Someone stops you from topping yourself and you can end up thinking they’re an angel sent down from heaven especially for you, that it was meant – any kind of bollocks. So if you then find out they’re actually a jailbird, or a junkie, or a gambler, that could jolt you back into reality and make you realize that your knight in shining armour was just a fantasy. It might be enough to make you think you were right the first time and decide to have another crack at suicide, this time with a bit of practical experience under your belt. Or it might just make you wonder what the hell you thought you were doing getting mixed up with such a lowlife.

  You might just come to your senses.

  And perhaps that was what I was really afraid of.

  So, I had to find a way of telling Lucy I was going away for a while. I couldn’t tell her where or why, she wouldn’t be able to phone or text, and I didn’t know when I’d be back. But not to worry, and whatever you do, don’t decide you’re probably better off not seeing me again anyway.

  Yeah, that was going to work.

  Which left me with two options: either I could tell her the truth, that I was a former MI5 surveillance officer now working for an unofficial and totally deniable covert organization that occasionally murdered people and frequently broke the law; that I was currently engaged in an operation involving submitting myself to a brainwashing programme that might well compromise my already fragile mental health, not to mention risking my physical safety, and that even if I came out of that in one piece, I had a strong suspicion that two other members of the team had been murdered by person or persons unknown and the rest of us might still be under threat.

  Or I could come up with a clever cover story that explained my falling off the grid for a while without making her think there was anything dodgy going on. On paper, that was definitely the best option, but however hard I
tried, so far I hadn’t got any further than the first line, which went something like, ‘Lucy, you might find this hard to believe, but . . .’

  Which meant Alan’s text was actually a welcome distraction.

  Might have some news on that Interflora delivery. Call me.

  I pressed his number.

  ‘Alan, mate. What’s up? Where are you?’

  ‘Um . . . in the office.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘You on your own?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, you know, this and that. I like to keep things tidy, you know.’

  It sounded a lot to me like Alan had lost his nerve, that he was scared to leave the office. I wondered how long he’d been camping there and felt a tinge of guilt: I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems, I hadn’t really spared a thought for how he was handling things.

  ‘You want to meet somewhere?’

  A pause. ‘Well, I don’t know . . .’

  ‘OK, mate, I’m coming to get you, and then we’ll sort something out, all right?’

  I could hear him wheezing down the phone, like he was having some sort of asthma attack.

  ‘All right.’

  Thirty minutes later I was walking past the Clearwater Security building, checking the vehicles parked on the double yellows and residents’ bays on both sides of the street. No occupants, as far as I could see. Apart from the cars, the street was empty. I turned the corner and ducked into the doorway of a wine shop. Alan answered on the first ring.

  ‘I’m on the street, mate. You OK to move?’

  ‘You not coming up?’

  ‘No, that makes me visible, yeah? I’m just going to be watching. What I want you to do is leave the building, run a pattern, and I’ll see if I can spot anything that isn’t kosher, OK?’

  ‘How far behind me you going to be?’

  Bloody hell, he was twitchy. ‘Don’t worry, close enough, mate. We’ll go round the houses a couple of times and then it’ll all be hunky-dory, no worries. Outside in four minutes, yeah?’

  He said OK but he didn’t sound happy. I walked briskly round the block and into the newsagent on the corner. Two minutes later I saw Alan walk past, swaddled in a dark raincoat, while I pretended to scan the tabloid headlines. I waited another two, fiddling with my change, to see if anyone else went by. All clear. I walked out with a Mirror tucked under my arm and headed back towards the Clearwater building. Two blokes – twenties, beards, casual clothes – passed me. My antennae didn’t twitch, but you never know. I increased my pace, crossed over and started walking back the other way, twenty yards behind them. It wasn’t exactly out of the manual, and if there was a bigger team, my one-eighty would have been spotted for sure, but as long as it was just these two, I reckoned I should still be in the clear.

  When they got to the end of the street they stopped and turned.

  Shit.

  I put my head down and kept going. They crossed the road over to my side and I had to slow down to let them pass. One of them gave me a hard look, and I stopped, breathing steadily, making sure my hands were loose, maintaining neutral eye contact and keeping the second bloke in my peripheral vision while I waited for them to make a move. The way these things usually worked, it would probably be the quiet one, while the aggressive one kept your attention, but I was taking no chances.

  ‘Cheers, mate.’ The second one gave his mate a playful shove in the back and flashed me an apologetic smile as they went past and dived into the pub on the corner.

  ‘No worries.’ I let out a breath and walked past.

  I quickly looked round to make sure I hadn’t missed anything while this little sideshow was going on. An old geezer in a flat cap was crossing the road towards me and I pretended to look at my watch, waiting to see which way he went, but he definitely had the look of a man who desperately needed that first pint, and confirmed my guess by ducking into the pub too.

  For a millisecond, I thought about following. We could have all got pissed together and they could have sorted out my love life. But I quickly shook that thought off and crossed over to the other corner instead, passing the newsagent and following in Alan’s footsteps towards the next junction. There were two blokes in suits sitting in a dark Audi, which didn’t smell right, but the location didn’t make sense unless they were part of a bigger team with multiple vehicles, so I made a mental note of the registration and let them go. All my instincts told me we were in the clear, but I stuck to the rest of the plan anyway, and ten minutes later Alan and I were in the snug of The Butcher’s Dog with a couple of pints of lager in front of us. He necked half of it before I’d even had a chance to sit down, looked at the half-empty glass for a second, then picked it up again and drained the rest. Pale and pasty had always been his style, but now his skin looked grey, his face puffy. I watched as a little bit of colour came back into his cheeks and he started to look slightly more human again. Amazing what a pint of lager could do, if you drank it quickly enough. There wasn’t anything it could do for the smell of stale sweat and unwashed clothes, though.

  ‘Better?’

  He nodded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How long you been holed up in there?’

  He shook his head. ‘Long enough.’

  I poked him in the chest. ‘You should have bloody said something, you twat.’

  He flinched. ‘Like what? I can’t be doing with all this counter-surveillance lark. It’s doing my head in. I like to be in my workshop, keeping out of harm’s way, you know that.’

  I took a swig of my pint. ‘It’ll all be over soon, one way or the other.’

  ‘Great. That makes me feel so much better. Cheers, mate.’

  I shrugged. I wasn’t going to make him any false promises. ‘Let me get you another, and then you can tell me what you’ve found.’

  The bar was quiet, and it didn’t take me long to get the barman’s attention. I put the two fresh pints on the table and sat down again. Alan took a dainty sip, the effort of not downing it in one clearly visible on his face. ‘Daisy, you said?’

  ‘That’s right.’ I felt my chest tightening. ‘Had any luck?’

  He took another sip. ‘What’s this all about, then?’

  I had to think quickly. ‘It was just something that came up when Alex was having her little chat with Ekaterina Shlovsky. Just a remark that didn’t quite make sense. A loose end, you know?’

  ‘Why all the cloak and dagger, then?’

  I took a long pull on my drink to buy myself some time. Good question. I realized that I’d been taking Alan a bit for granted. Socially awkward he might be, but he wasn’t stupid. I was going to have to come up with something a bit better.

  ‘You know me, Alan: I’m like a dog with a bone sometimes. If the Shlovskys have got any dark secrets, I want to know what they are. Just in case.’

  He peered at me. ‘In case of what?’

  ‘In case this whole thing goes tits-up and we need some leverage. What if we’ve got the whole thing arse-backwards, and Shlovsky’s not involved in any kind of terror plot after all? What if he finds out we’ve planted a listening device in his wife’s dressing room? The Kremlin might be putting the squeeze on, but he’s still one of HMRC’s most valued customers. And we know the PM is wary of pissing him off. Someone might just decide to throw us to the wolves. In which case, it’s not who you know, but what you know about who you know that counts, if you get my drift.’

  Alan looked at me quizzically. I could tell he wasn’t buying it.

  ‘And you want to keep Mrs Allenby out of the loop because . . .?’

  ‘She’s part of the establishment, mate. If it comes to throwing us to the wolves, she wouldn’t think twice. She doesn’t want us wasting time on an insurance policy, does she?’

  Alan looked down at his pint. ‘OK,’ he said. From the flat tone of his voice, I was guessing that meant, ‘OK, so you’re not going to tell me the truth.’ />
  ‘So . . .?’ I looked at him expectantly.

  ‘The word “Daisy” did come up a few times in one conversation between Ekaterina Shlovsky and Anastasia. Lots of crying involved on both ends, so it would have been hard to make out what they were saying in English, let alone Russian, to be honest, but the context seemed to be something bad that happened – something they both feel terrible about. Anastasia was the first to mention it, and that started her mother off and then before you know it they’re both wailing down the phone and it’s hard to make head or tail of any of it – especially when I reckon Mrs S had been on the sauce.’ He looked at me. ‘Does any of that make sense?’

  I thought about it for moment. ‘What was the date of this conversation?’

  ‘Er . . . September fifteenth, I think.’

  ‘And that was the only time they talked about Daisy?’

  ‘If you can call it talking, yep.’

  ‘Did any other names come up in the same conversation?’

  ‘One, yeah. Mikhail. Just the once – and that set Mrs S off on a proper crying jag. I thought she was going to do herself an injury. I almost called 999.’

  ‘Funny,’ I said.

  ‘Mikhail’s the brother, isn’t he? A couple of years older.’

  I nodded. ‘If that’s the Mikhail they’re talking about.’ But I was sure it was. And I was beginning to see what might have happened. It would help if I could talk to Daisy – see how she reacted if I mentioned the word ‘Mikhail’ in front of her. But I wasn’t going to get a chance to do that. I’d have to go with my gut and do a bit more digging.