by Rachel Lynch
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He held her hand again, and this time she let him.
‘I can still see his face,’ she said. She fought with all her will to hold back her emotion, but seeing Grant had opened a gateway to her pain.
‘Me too,’ he said.
A pit of dread formed in her stomach as it dawned on her that the compulsion she’d had to throw herself into work after Luke was merging with the need to face this moment. One relied upon the other; in her quest to forget, she’d unwittingly set herself up to fail in her goal. Of course she couldn’t forget; not as long as this man in front of her was breathing her air.
The parting had been messy, unclean, and left a gaping wound, which she’d tried to fill with the wrong things.
Her emotions muddied her thoughts, and Grant stepped away slightly. Damn, why did he know her so well.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Twenty-four hours, and then I go to Interpol.’
He smiled. They peered towards the quay and reckoned the ship would dock soon. He turned back to her.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he said.
‘More?’ she said.
‘Are you happy about the security for the summit in Paris next week?’
‘How do you know about that?’ she asked.
‘Remember Levi? We still speak.’
‘Of course you do. The FBI is in charge and they’ve got everything covered, as far as I can see,’ she said. ‘The Afghans have been invited to discuss their national security progress. Sir Conrad is representing the UK at a special round of meetings after the big guns have gone home. Our PM and the president of the USA are flying in for three days.’
‘That has to be it,’ he said.
‘What? A hit on NATO? Come on, I’ve already been down that hole and it’s too far-fetched. Five Eyes would have been on to it by now – it’s too big and Fawaz too well known,’ she said.
‘Does our intelligence know he’s here?’
‘Who?’
‘Fawaz.’
‘Here, as in France?’ she asked, shocked.
‘Europe, for sure. When Khalil has called him back on two separate occasions, it’s a European dialling tone.’
‘Holy shit, are you sure?’
‘Dead sure.’
‘But all the intelligence on Fawaz says that although he travelled recently to Madrid a few times and raised eyebrows – hence Sir Conrad getting jumpy – he’s now back in Morocco at his pad.’
‘He’s not in Morocco.’
‘If he’s here and planning something big, then it’s personal,’ she said.
‘I know that look,’ he said. ‘You know something, I can see the cogs of your brain whirring round,’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ve told you everything I know,’ he added.
‘Really?’
‘Yes!’ he said.
‘His son,’ she said.
‘Whose son?’
‘Fawaz’s son, Rafik. He was arrested in the UK and deported back to Morocco, where he died in custody, probably tortured. The body was never released to the family. I’ve read the file.’
Peter Knowles had been as good as his word and had sent the Home Office file to her this afternoon. She’d read it on the train.
‘And?’
‘The then Home Secretary is our very own current prime minister,’ she said.
He nodded again.
‘The senior civil servant who signed the extradition papers was Sir Conrad Temple-Cray.’
Chapter 42
The remotely piloted RQ-4 Global Hawk flew at one hundred thousand feet above the Sahara Desert. The Rolls-Royce engines were silent, but it wouldn’t matter anyway, given the altitude. It was equipped with high-resolution synthetic-aperture radar and long-range electro-optical/infrared and could survey an area of forty thousand square miles per day – about the size of South Korea. On-board data was sent via text message to control centres on the ground and processed by the US Airforce. With over thirty hours’ flight time, it could send a steady stream of reconnaissance data, delivering a comprehensive picture of either a large area or a prime target. As well as conducting its usual task of searching the desert for alleged training camps for terrorist cells, the aircraft had been tasked with a flight over Morocco to confirm the whereabouts of Fawaz bin Nabil. Aerial photographs confirmed that he was present at his residence seven days ago. The check-up was routine for any persons of interest who had changed their habits lately, and Fawaz had. It was how Five Eyes had come across the anomaly in the first place. The US intelligence was the shared within the Five Eyes nations, and agents on the ground confirmed the data, with Fawaz’s palatial mansion coming under further scrutiny. It had been noticed that activity at the riad had tapered off over the last couple of days, and so Secret Service operators active in Marrakech were tasked with getting close to the property to observe and report back. The ground personnel in Marrakech submersed themselves in the culture of their target for years on end, and they knew the best ways to access routes by road and sea. Inland, they used Toyota Land Cruisers, perfect for the choking Saharan sand.
Fawaz bin Nabil was long suspected of being behind the biggest movement of hashish from Africa to Europe in the history of record-keeping. Morocco supplied one million kilos of hashish per year, most of it going to Europe, where it was worth around eight billion euros. Operation Lionfish had failed to link the transactions to Nabil Trading, but the surveillance continued at the cost of one member state with interest in where all the money was going – the USA. The superpower had been torn for decades by two divergent imperatives: the need to protect enduring American interests on the one hand – oil – and the desire to stay clear of the incumbent entanglements of the region. As a result, the American foreign policy budget sunk billions into Middle East and North Africa. The Global Hawk’s contribution was a tiny part of the overall investment.
Photographs from the Global Hawk were sent in real time to an airbase near Bedford County, Virginia. From there, they were assessed and processed by specially trained military personnel, who forwarded them to the relevant department at the Pentagon. The photos showed zero activity at the riad for over thirty-six hours.
The operator, sat in an airbase near Washington DC, deftly sent commands to the lone vehicle and dictated the limitations of the search. Only last week, the same aircraft had searched for a missing vessel off the coast of Nigeria that had been hijacked. The mission was a success, but half the crew died in the rescue operation.
The Land Cruiser on the ground was picked up by the aircraft and visual confirmed by the operator in Bedford County. The two men stopped the truck away from the road and used night-vision binoculars to assess the lack of activity. They’d been there for four hours. Their communication with each other was infrequent and usually took the form of banter about the Super Bowl, women, what they missed about home. But for the most part, they concentrated on the task at hand.
Darkness shrouded them and they felt sure that they were alone. They’d done it enough times. They knew the usual suspects who ran North Africa, and they had names for them. This one they called Bin Bin.
‘Door opening, twelve o’clock,’ one said.
‘Got it.’ The other confirmed sight.
Even at a hundred thousand feet, the thermal warmth given off by the human body was picked up on the Global Hawk, and the operator sat at a desk in Virginia watching and listening to the whole manoeuvre.
‘He’s on his own.’ The observation came from the agent on the ground. ‘Why has he no guards? He’s outdoors smoking a cigarette with no one else around.’
‘Is it Bin Bin?’ his partner asked.
‘It can’t be.’ Their range was three hundred metres, easily manageable for the L3Harris night-vision goggles.
‘Nope, it’s his body double.’ The special agent was sure. ‘Nabil is never seen carrying a phone, let alone scrolling through it and interacting.’
The operator in Virginia requested authority to enter the property. I
t was granted. The two men moved quickly and silently, like the Barbary lion sometimes spotted in the dunes. They closed in on the only two entrances/exits and split up. The man they’d seen flicked his cigarette away, got into a vehicle, on his own, and drove away from the residence.
‘Confirm, it’s not Bin Bin.’
‘Affirmative.’
They moved towards the entrances separately and approached the security fences that threatened enough voltage to kill ten lions. A quick test confirmed that it was switched off. They climbed over and worked quickly, searching each room of the luxurious residence. After ten minutes, they’d confirmed that no one was home. No security, no maids and no caretakers. The place was abandoned.
They had no record of Fawaz leaving the property and not even the US budget could spread to watching one man’s back every day for a week at the cost of ten million dollars per flight.
The fact was that Fawaz bin Nabil, or Bin Bin, was gone, and it begged the question why he’d left his body double – well known to the Secret Service duo – swinging his dick in the breeze for all to see, and his mansion in the desert unguarded. The only explanation was that Fawaz bin Nabil no longer cared.
Chapter 43
Thirty miles southwest of Lyon in the city of Saint-Étienne, Fawaz peered out of the window of a stone townhouse, once owned by a mining family, across the dark Loire river to the cathedral, which was lit brightly in the night sky. The journey through France had gone without incident after the episode with the cyclists. He was quite confident that he looked pedestrian enough to be forgettable: just a Basque gentleman making his way to his farm in the mountains. His French was excellent and, after all, he’d likely saved the man’s life. The poor cyclist’s memory of the gentleman in the truck would be a positive one that would not conjure anything sinister in the men’s minds to make them suspicious, even when Fawaz’s profile was inevitably spread across the European media. And if it was, it would be too late.
‘How is the boy?’ asked the guest.
Fawaz turned to him, beckoning him to sit and eat. They’d get around to specifics in good time. The luxury of a clean bed, a shower and fine French food had been a shock to his system at first. He’d become used to the grime and dirt of the road. The table was laden with simple peasant fare: local cheese, artisan bread, charcuterie, pâté and jams and chutneys made from local Anjou pears and greengages. The butter was pale and salty, and Fawaz felt at home, in a way. He found the French at once the most despicable invaders, but also the most civilised and cultured nation on Earth and their gastronomy was testament to that.
‘Let’s eat. Pour some wine,’ Fawaz said.
They sat and filled their plates.
‘He’s unharmed.’ Fawaz finally answered the question. ‘Mustafa has delivered the merchandise we need,’ he added.
‘Can you trust him?’
‘Who, Mustafa? Of course.’ Fawaz laughed. ‘You are jumpy, my friend. You don’t trust anyone, do you?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Good question. No, you shouldn’t, except for me. Your father trusted everyone and look what happened to him.’
Fawaz noticed Jean-Luc wince at the mention of his baba. Fawaz knew that it was a painful subject. Jean-Luc’s father had grafted all of his adult life, after fighting for the city of Algiers in 1957, which had ended with thousands disappearing to be executed or tortured and never seen again. Basem had been lucky to survive but independence would take another five years. Two million Algerians fled the country, but those who chose to stay won their freedom and set about rebuilding their homes, and their lives. That was what his own father had done, along with Khalil Dalmani’s.
In little more than two decades, the Dalmani family rose to prominence in government, commerce and law. And all of this on the back of people like Jean-Luc’s father.
‘Your father should have been respected more,’ Fawaz said.
‘He would have been had he worked for your family and not the Dalmanis,’ Jean-Luc said.
‘He made his choice in good faith,’ Fawaz said. ‘You’ve proven your loyalty and everything is arranged for you to leave.’
‘And my mother?’ Jean-Luc asked.
‘We still don’t know where she is. Relax, she’ll be unharmed, you’ll see. To my knowledge, she was interviewed by the police and they had her under house arrest, but she isn’t there now. This was released yesterday.’ Fawaz showed Jean-Luc the appeal for the public by Interpol to report the whereabouts of Marie Bisset to authorities.
‘If they don’t know where she is, and she hasn’t contacted me, then where is she?’ Jean-Luc was becoming irritable and his emotions bubbled to the surface.
‘Calm, now. There is only one explanation. This Englishman, who Khalil so trusts, you think he would be the obvious choice for your job?’
Jean-Luc nodded. The mention of Grant Tennyson, a foreigner, heightened his anxiety. The fact that Khalil bestowed such honour on him was shameful and only strengthened his resolve that his betrayal was justified.
‘I have knowledge of his history,’ Fawaz said. ‘He’s ex-military and there’s only one reason that Khalil would employ somebody with such a background: to pretend that he is clever enough to outsmart me. He’ll have your mother, but he’s playing a desperate game. He thinks he’s being shrewd, to get leverage for his son, but the opposite is true. I will tell him to release your mother, or his son dies.’ Fawaz popped a large chunk of crusty bread topped with cheese into his mouth.
Jean-Luc looked away.
‘Don’t be weak, Jean-Luc. Hakim was your ward and nothing more. A spoilt brat who took you for granted. My son died at the hands of the enemy and so will Khalil’s.’
Jean-Luc nodded and half-heartedly spread pâté onto a slice of bread.
‘I can’t leave without her,’ Jean-Luc said.
‘Ridiculous. You leave tomorrow. Your mother didn’t raise you to be weak. You can’t be found in France when things get ugly. You’ve done your job, and now it’s time for you to start a new life, the one you deserve. You’ll go by road to the Bay of Biscay, then by boat, from La Rochelle, to one of my ships off the coast of Spain. It will dock in Tangier in a week. Arrangements have been made to meet you and to transport you to your new home.’
Fawaz finished his food and sipped red wine. He stood again, taking his glass, and went to the window once more. The sight, smell and noise of water soothed him and he wondered why he hadn’t settled near the coast. But when Rafik died, all thoughts of his own pleasure were lost. It had taken him three years to find out who’d interrogated him in Marrakech. Every man present in that cell had met with a terrible accident since and expired prematurely. Then it had taken another year to find out who signed the extradition order in the UK. He was tired. His body was drained from self-abuse, and his mind was primed for the end.
‘Don’t worry, my friend, you’ll see your mother again. She never really loved France, did she? She’ll be happier in Morocco. How forward-thinking of her to bless you with a French name – it’ll make the transition easier. You need to go and pack. Here’s your new passport should anything go wrong, which it won’t. Don’t worry, it’s just a precaution. The beard suits you.’
Jean-Luc took the document and smiled. He left the room and Fawaz watched him. Jean-Luc would never make it to Morocco. He’d served his purpose. He was just like his father: a dead weight.
He ran his fingers through his hair, which had grown shaggy. He didn’t mind: his physical appearance meant nothing to him now. When once, his prowess as a man of power – and the women that attracted – had been important to him, now, all he cared about was revenge.
Chapter 44
Grant pulled a camera from his pocket and began to take photographs. They remained on the quay, in the shadows, but had moved up a metal stairwell to a better vantage point above the docking area. From there, they could see the unloading of the vessel clearly. The flurry of movement was a combination of an end to a long journey and t
he desire to unload quickly. Men shouted and swore. Containers were lowered from decks and rolled away. Forklifts were on hand to manoeuvre tricky objects, and foremen appeared from nowhere, asserting their authority over junior labourers.
Helen had put the nagging unease that she could be seen as going rogue to the back of her mind. Peter and Sylvia both approved her trip to Marseilles, but she hadn’t been entirely transparent with them. Instead of introducing herself to the port authority, her priority had been to find Grant. It was Friday evening, and she knew that both Sylvia and Peter had gone home for the weekend. She told herself that she’d check in with them at her earliest opportunity. She had enough evidence to suggest that Fawaz bin Nabil was using the ship before them to transport goods illegally into Europe, using the containers of AlGaz. She should be calling the port authority now, but she’d made a promise to Grant. If Sir Conrad turned round, when this was all over, and questioned her choices, then she could easily say, in all sincerity, that she’d tried to contact him, but Palmer blocked her calls.
The truth was, she trusted the judgement and capability of Grant Tennyson more than any of them. Her gut tugged at her conscience, knowing that she was doing the right thing. But sometimes the right thing is not the best thing. Sometimes, the best thing is to save one’s career, to toe the line, to adhere by red tape and protocol, but right now she couldn’t help but feel that she’d have a better chance of finding Hakim with this man than a hundred Interpol officers who had no idea that Fawaz Nabil was the orchestrator of the plot. But why? She still hadn’t worked out his motives.
Was it to target the summit? More specifically, the British? It must be. There was no other explanation. She’d agreed to give Grant more time before she blew the whistle on the threat to the summit, but would it then be too late? She figured that whatever was in those containers was heading to Paris. Her brain raced: what if it was chemical or biological warfare? A missile loaded with a deadly virus, if exploded by drone over the city, could cause a global pandemic, or worse. What if Fawaz’s intentions were merely to make more money, and he was a pawn of the Russians or Iranians? Anything was possible with a man who had zero compassion or care for his fellow human beings. Money and power were always behind the actions of those hell-bent on hurting others. Otherwise, what’s the point? Only psychopaths kill for fun; clever people kill for money and power. But the elephant in the room, which was growing bigger as she got closer to the truth, was that Fawaz was plotting revenge against the system responsible for his son’s death.