by Rachel Lynch
‘Ask if their reward includes money to look after their families,’ she said into her mic. ‘Say their names,’ she added.
The officer did so, listing the various members of each man’s family back home in Morocco. The demeanours of the men shifted, and they fidgeted, and Farid put his head in his hands. Now for the master stroke.
‘DNA from Hakim Dalmani was in the car that was seized at the flat where you stayed. This woman identified you both as driving it. How do you explain this?’
‘I reached inside to steal a wallet,’ the cockier of the two replied, before his lawyer could stop him.
As Helen watched and listened, she scanned the files of the two men again, looking for a way in. She found it. She brought up another screen: it was Ahmad Azzine’s file, and a thrill of excitement rushed through her. She spoke into her mic.
‘Tell them we find it impossible that they don’t know Ahmad Azzine because they grew up in the same village in Morocco, and all three worked at the same canning factory for two years between 2005 and 2007.’
Silence.
The men looked at their lawyers, who asked for a break.
Chapter 35
Mid-air between Lyon and Marseilles, Grant used the sat phone to speak to his contact in Algiers. Levi Drum informed him that he was sitting in the lounge of the Marriott Hotel, in Algiers, sipping a genuinely good Singapore sling.
‘It’s simply the best in the city, with just the right balance of grenadine, lime juice and Angostura bitters. It’s not Raffles, but it’ll do.’
‘Thanks,’ Grant said, staring at his orange juice.
He owed Grant a few favours, which had stacked up over the years they’d served together in the military. The old boys’ network compromised no moral code; it was simply another layer of investigative usefulness. Over the years, Grant normally asked his old pal for details about potential employers or who might hold certain roles in local government.
They’d hooked up again when Grant got the Algeria job with Khalil Dalmani. Then, there’d been nothing to divulge about one of the richest men in Africa. He was unambiguously clean.
Levi had made it clear to Grant that all anyone was talking about at the embassy in Algiers, where Levi now worked as the deputy defence attaché, was the abduction of Khalil Dalmani’s son in Paris. Grant had confided to his old friend that Dalmani had launched his own investigation to find his son.
‘Anything for me, mate?’ Grant asked now.
‘I’ve heard from Paris that Sir Conrad Temple-Cray is getting twitchy. Is it true that Interpol’s inquiries are focusing on the movements of Fawaz bin Nabil?’ Levi asked.
Grant evaded the question.
‘We’re concentrating on the bodyguard. Were you aware that Helen Scott is helping Interpol with the inquiry, in fact, she’s heading the team?’ Grant asked.
‘Yes, why?’ Levi replied.
‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’ Grant asked.
‘I just assumed you’d know. Interpol usually aren’t at all obstructive like that,’ Levi said. ‘You two haven’t seen each other in years, anyway.’
‘They haven’t been obstructive, I was just not informed until recently. No, I haven’t seen her in years,’ Grant conceded.
‘You still got a flame for her, mate?’
‘No.’ The answer came too quickly and Grant knew it.
‘Right. You want me to call her?’ Levi asked.
‘That might look suspicious – she’ll know we’re still mates. I don’t need to compromise her – I reckon I’ve got more than she has, anyway,’ Grant said. ‘Besides, she’ll know soon enough because I flew here with Dalmani and she’ll have his passenger lists examined every time he moves.’
‘So, do you think she’ll call you?’ Levi asked.
‘Not interested, mate,’ Grant said. Again, the response was too speedy. ‘What are you up to?’ Grant asked, aware that his friend was shuffling about.
‘I’m going outside for a ciggie.’
Grant changed the subject. ‘I wondered if you’d seen any unusual activity around the port there in Algiers. Intelligence sharing at the moment is strongly focused on the possibility of either drugs or immigrants getting over the Mediterranean, but I wondered if anything different had reared its head?’ Grant asked. He had the contents of what he’d found in the two flats in his mind – one in Paris and one in Lyon – and what his Signaller pal had told him about drones.
‘Conversations here always revolve around what comes in and out of Africa. With twenty thousand miles of coastline to consider, it crops up a lot, but I’ve heard nothing specific directly. In fact, the border force at the port has been recently commended for the excellent job it’s doing working with Europe to control its entry and exit points,’ Levi said.
‘And the border with Morocco?’
‘Watertight. No one in their right mind would chance the land mines, bandits and guards charged with making the crossing utterly impossible.’
‘And if you had enough money, and you couldn’t go by sea or air?’ Grant asked.
Levi exhaled. Grant knew that Levi was impressively familiar with North Africa. Not only did he take an interest in the country where he worked, but he’d also travelled there extensively as a student before meeting his wife. That was back in the day before the war, when the border was open and the Sahara had been a safer place. They’d both been drawn in by the dangerous allure of the continent. It was something they discussed over Singapore slings when Grant was in town.
‘If you can’t fly – and I can’t imagine why, if you have enough money – and you can’t take the ferry to Spain because you can’t enter Europe, then the only other way is via Mauritania and Mali, which is crazy, as it’d take four or five days.’
‘Assuming one couldn’t fly because then they’d have to declare the goods on board,’ Grant added.
‘Goods?’ Levi asked. The penny dropped. ‘You want me to take a look at AlGaz’s shipping lanes?’
Grant didn’t answer straight away. And when he did, he changed the subject.
‘Do you know anyone in the military attaché’s office in Paris?’ he asked.
‘Of course, Colonel Palmer is the current defence attaché, and a friend of a friend works in his office. In fact my wife wants me to transfer there so I can take her to tea in the sodding garden.’
‘Christ, Palmer? How the hell did he get promoted so quickly? How is he a colonel now?’ Grant remembered Palmer’s oily face and slippery fat hands as he tried to charm Helen, as many fellow officers did.
‘Yes. The slippery pole is easier to climb if you can cling on for long enough,’ Levi said.
‘Can you ask your contact in his office to see how Helen Scott ended up working for Interpol?’ Grant asked.
‘I already know the answer to that question, mate,’ he said. ‘She was sent to Paris to conduct a security review of the embassy for the NATO summit at Versailles. So, I guess she was conveniently available when Interpol requested a close-protection specialist. Sir Conrad sent her to Lyon.’
Grant couldn’t help himself swell with pride: she was doing well.
‘One more thing,’ Grant said.
‘Go for it,’ Levi replied.
‘If I email you a close-up of a man, can you try to identify him for me? I suspect he’s on some database somewhere,’ Grant said.
‘Send it over, mate,’ Levi said.
‘Thanks. How’s Algiers?’ Grant asked. ‘I miss happy hour.’
‘I’m sitting outside on the balcony now.’
‘You avoiding going home?’ Grant asked.
Levi sighed and puffed on his cigarette. ‘Yup. You did the right thing, never marrying, mate.’
‘Speak soon,’ Grant said, and they hung up.
Chapter 36
The man was in his late sixties, with grey hair covering his head. His fingers worked meticulously and rhythmically. He had tiny glasses perched on the end of his nose, and his body was hunched over his computer, turning t
o the side and wheeling himself over to the other corner of the desk, after checking something. He scanned documents and checked measurements, before picking up a small circuit board and tweaking it with tiny tweezers. His spectacles magnified everything and, occasionally, he’d forget that they were on his face and had to remove them to see ordinary items around the room, like his teacup.
He sipped the hot liquid and placed the cup down on any available space on the work surface, which was minimal. The tables near him were covered in gadgetry, circuits, nuts, bolts, antennae, mini-propellers and brightly coloured wires. He was testing different configurations and worked quietly.
A woman came into the room and brought him more tea, and he thanked her in French. Marseilles had been their home for almost fifty years. She was his childhood sweetheart, but they’d been forbidden to marry because she was of lower class. They left Marrakech as teenagers and he hid her under tarpaulin in the back of a lorry bound for Tangier. He’d spent every penny he had on taking her to Europe with him. Passage back then, in the seventies, was much easier. The lack of technology, fewer predators looking to make a profit, lax border controls and little communication between border forces meant that migration from Africa was not as controlled. Europe was glad of the labour then; not like now, where gangs of immigrants and asylum seekers terrorised the imagination of delicate white sensitivities. Yes, they were useful back then, when France and Britain wanted foreign workers to clean their toilets and drive their buses. But now they made a difference in elections and brought their own sense of culture to the forefront of modern politics, they were seen as a threat: the biggest threat to Western civilisation since Hitler one newspaper had said. It made him chuckle. To think that his people had the politicians shaking in their boots.
They’d settled in an immigrant neighbourhood upon reaching France and had never left. They felt more comfortable among their own people. They were looked down upon by pure French and spoken about on TV as if they were carrion or some type of inferior beast. It still pained him after all these years.
His wife, no doubt about to admonish him for hunching over, came to him, resting a hand on his shoulder blade.
‘Mustafa, what are you thinking about? You look perturbed, like you do when you lose money on horses at le hippodrome,’ she said. He stopped what he was doing and looked at her over his glasses, thanking her for the tea and placing it among the plethora of equipment. She tutted and collected cups in various stages of abandonment. She counted eight.
‘When was the last time you tidied this desk?’ she asked. It was the same conversation they had most days when she came into his workshop.
His first job in France was at the docks in Marseilles. France’s second largest city had always been sneered at because of its uncomfortable proximity to Africa and its working-class population. That was what kept Mustafa and Fatima there. They refused to climb upwards socially as a result of his success. Instead, they stayed where they had grown a family. They still heard on TV the familiar but ancient joke: ‘What is the first Arab port the Paris–Dakar passes through?’ Answer: ‘Marseilles’. Of course, the Paris-Dakar Rally never passed through Marseilles, and had now been transferred to South America anyway, but the derogatory assumption was that Marseilles was more African than Africa itself.
‘You know me too well, my love. I tried that strap you ordered for my back, but I’m afraid it’s too old and bent now for it to work.’ He referred to his spine not the contraption she’d bought to rectify his terrible kyphosis. She rubbed his back where it hurt, and he groaned with appreciation. His work involved him hunching over his inventions like this for hours without rest or movement, and ergonomics was a relatively new innovation (he wished he’d patented it). But they wanted for nothing. Despite the humble location of their apartment, it was lavishly decorated, and a brand new Mercedes sat in the garage underneath the building. His engineering degree and his aptitude for vision saw him quickly become sought after as one of France’s most eminent structural designers. And the man who’d made all of it possible by paying for his education in the first place was also an innovator of great reputation.
Mustafa’s gratitude was infinite, and that was why this job wasn’t one that he would be charging for. It was extra to his other work, which was winding down now. He no longer needed the money, just enough work to keep him alert. He mostly gave lectures and advice to industry specialists. He could charge five thousand euros for an appearance at a dinner, where he would speak to the glitterati of the design world in Europe. It was very dull and Fatima never accompanied him, which is why he rarely went now: nights away from the family weren’t worth it.
She smiled at him and continued to rub. ‘It’s so bad, Mustafa, look, you need to put this on!’ She put the cups down and grabbed his harness and attached it to his back. It made him sit upright, but the pain was so unbearable after an hour at his desk that he knew he’d give up. He smiled at her and thanked her for her tenderness.
‘What are you up to now?’
‘A hobby,’ he said. ‘Fawaz asked me.’
‘Fawaz? You spoke to him? How is he?’
They both still felt the loss of Rafik keenly. Fawaz bin Nabil had first come into their lives when Mustafa was still odd-jobbing at the port. A shipping company employed him to labour fourteen-hour days. One day, he’d been lugging a heavy carton of goods up a staircase, to be delivered to another level because the forklift wasn’t working properly when he’d overheard two men talking about the quayside. Mustafa had stopped and listened. One of the men had begun to scold him for laziness and demanded that he return to work. Mustafa had pointed out that the design theory that the men were discussing, about expanding the quayside, could be immeasurably improved – and done much cheaper – if they used a new material resin, as well as digitalising all loading and unloading. In the early nineties, the concept of standardising anything on such a massive scale in the shipping industry was bold indeed. The man who turned to him and asked his name was the CEO of Nabil Tradings: Fawaz bin Nabil himself. From there, he’d been sent to the Aix-Marseilles University and gained double honours and a distinction. Fawaz employed him straight away. Talk of his employer dealing in illegal this and that never fazed Mustafa, and besides, he never believed a word of it. When Fawaz decided to permanently settle back home in Morocco, rather than commute back and forth, it was a sad day indeed. However, Fawaz had flown Mustafa and his family over there for reunions sometimes. Mustafa hadn’t seen him for the past five years, and so when he called, asking for his help, Mustafa couldn’t thank him enough for getting in touch. He would do anything for the man who’d given them this beautiful life.
Of course he could build drones. He didn’t ask their use and assumed it was some new innovation for delivery and communication. In fact, he spoke to Fawaz only this afternoon, telling him of the potential to transport heavier goods further than the current parameters forums and groups dedicated to such technology were stating. The trouble with engineers is that they’re not artists, he would often say. Fawaz agreed. He asked him to test how far, how low and at what weight they could function.
Mustafa was in his final stages of prototype: it was time to build the real thing. The first model was a triumph, and he was adding the finishing touches to the on-board computer (which he’d designed himself). Once he was happy with the data and had tested the real thing, the drone would be replicated and transported to a factory in Lyon and his work would be done. He felt, this way, he could repay at least some of the debt that he owed Fawaz: there was no price on improving someone’s life. Mustafa sat back and admired his work.
‘He’s well, my love, and sends his love to you, as always.’
‘What is that?’ asked Fatima, lingering with the dirty teacups hanging once more off her fingers.
‘It’s a drone.’
‘What’s a drone?’ she asked.
‘It’s an unmanned mini-plane that can fly anywhere, transport goods, deliver things, remotely repor
t back information, monitor the weather, the night sky… anything you want. It is the future.’
‘Is it safe?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean? Of course it’s safe! I built it – it’s not going to explode!’
‘No, I mean, who is in charge of it if no one is flying it? What if it hits someone?’
Mustafa laughed. ‘It’s like a remote-control car but in the air – it’s controlled by a human. It’s so safe, I would deliver you chocolate in it!’
She laughed. ‘Yes please! And what’s that?’ She pointed to his screen, where photos of people filled the monitor, to one side, next to the diagrams of equations and modules. ‘Who are they?’
‘They’re the customers. Their profiles get uploaded into the computer. It’s another safety feature. These machines are destined for very wealthy clients who want secure drones to deliver information, or that’s how I understand it.’
‘Like a fingerprint?’ she asked.
‘Exactly. Look.’ He tapped his keyboard, and a face appeared on screen. He showed her how he divided the face into almost ten thousand parts and took each one, entering data for each section until a three-dimensional profile was created. He tapped some more and an identical face popped up next to the photo, showing how it had been replicated.
‘This one’s ready – see how it recognised the face?’ he said.
She patted him gently on his shoulder with a cup. ‘You are so clever, my love. Keep that on,’ she told him, pointing to his harness. She walked away with all eight teacups jangling in her hands and closed the door. Mustafa went back to work, only slightly uncomfortable that one of the photos he’d been working on looked exactly like a man he’d seen on TV. He noticed him because his Afghan dress was so like his native attire of Morocco. The last thing Mustafa was doing when Fatima brought him more tea was looking at another photo of the man on his iPhone – he’d googled him out of curiosity. Sure enough, he was high up in the new Afghan government in Kabul.
Mustafa was no expert, but he didn’t think an Afghan warlord would need a drone to get secure Amazon deliveries.