Tall Order

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Peter, where are you?’

  ‘I’m stuck at Newark en route to Manila,’ said Leclerc. ‘There’s been a plane crash at JFK so air traffic control’s in a mess and I’m not sure when I’ll be leaving.’

  ‘I need you in Queens,’ said Yokely. ‘What’s Manila, business or pleasure?’

  ‘Offering advisory services to the new government,’ said Leclerc. ‘Nothing I can’t duck out of.’

  ‘I’ll text you the location. Gerry’s on his way but you’ll probably get there before him. I need you to bring full disposal equipment. There’s a guy from Homeland Security called Garcia holding the fort and a security guard by the name of Dean Martin. Be nice to them, but make sure they don’t go anywhere.’

  ‘Got you,’ said Leclerc.

  Yokely made two more calls.

  The first was to the cell phone of Karl Traynor, a senior analyst with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Traynor was based in Washington and spent most of his time sifting through financial transactions around the world looking for sources of terrorist funding. He asked Traynor to see if there had been any short selling of US airlines over the last few weeks. In the days before the 9/11 attacks, there were four times as many put options against British Airways as usual, and six times as many put options on United Airlines. Shares in both airlines plummeted after the planes hit the twin towers. The betting against American Airlines was even more severe with more than four thousand five hundred put options signed – almost three hundred times normal volumes. Whoever placed those bets made tens of millions of dollars. Financial services company Morgan Stanley, who occupied twenty-two floors of the World Trade Center, also saw a huge jump in put options between 6 and 10 September that netted the ‘investors’ more than one million dollars when the shares tumbled after the twin towers collapsed. Yokely wanted to know if something similar had happened prior to the JFK attack. Traynor promised to call him back if he found anything.

  His next call was to David Dalton, a disposal expert with a penchant for using wildlife to get rid of bodies. He was still officially employed by the CIA in their Seattle office, but more often than not he was on attachment to Grey Fox. Like many of the Grey Fox team, Dalton was former Special Forces, a Green Beret who had been attached to the CIA while based in Afghanistan. Dalton said he wouldn’t be able to get to New York that night but would be there first thing in the morning. Yokely ended the call and turned on the radio. It was tuned to a rock ’n’ roll station and he tapped the steering wheel in time with the music as he drove at precisely the speed limit, running through a mental checklist of everything he had to do.

  Chapter 12

  Present Day, London

  L ex Harper almost never flew directly into the UK. The days of fobbing off a bored immigration officer with a fake passport were long gone. The automated system used facial recognition tied in with the picture stored on the passport’s chip, but even going for a face to face involved swiping the passport. Passports had become too complicated to forge, and stolen passports were quickly red-flagged. Harper actually had three UK passports, all genuine and with his photograph in all of them, albeit with different names and dates of birth. One was in his bug-out bag, the other two were in a safety deposit box at a bank in Bangkok. They cost five thousand pounds each and were supplied by a contact in Liverpool who arranged for homeless people to apply for passports they would never use. The homeless person was paid a thousand pounds spread over two years, and the middleman took the rest. It was pretty much a faultless system, even if the homeless person died, as passports weren’t checked against death certificates.

  Harper used a passport in the name of Roger Norrie. He didn’t care if Norrie was alive or dead; all that mattered was that the passport was good. And it was. It was perfect. He flew EVA Air direct to London Heathrow and used the automatic passport reader to pass through immigration. He took the Heathrow Express to Paddington and checked into a cheap bed and breakfast a short walk from Hyde Park, chosen because it didn’t insist on payment with a credit card. They did want to see his passport, but he had no problem checking in as Roger Norrie after handing over two fifty-pound notes to the receptionist, who had a chemistry textbook open on the counter. The room was on the second floor at the rear of the building. There was a single bed, a flimsy wardrobe and a tiny windowless shower room with a noisy extractor fan that ground into life when he pulled a greasy cord to switch on the light. He dropped his bag on the bed, grabbed a handful of money and headed out.

  Bayswater was as crowded as usual, reflecting the true ethnic mix of London – he heard six different languages being spoken within a hundred yards. He bought three pay-as-you-go mobiles from three different phone shops on Queensway, then bought a coffee and a couple of plastic-wrapped sandwiches and went back to the hotel. The receptionist looked up from his textbook and smiled as Harper went by. Harper smiled back, then headed up the stairs. There were framed prints of flowers on the wall, complete with Latin names. The frames were dusty, the prints mouldy at the edges and the glass on one was cracked. The stair carpet was threadbare and stained and the flock wallpaper was peeling away in places. At the top of the stairs the carpet had been nibbled away by rats or mice and there were droppings in the corners, but Harper wasn’t planning on writing a scathing review on TripAdvisor. The hotel was perfect for what he needed: they took cash, there was no CCTV and the receptionists were generally transient and paid little attention to who came and went.

  He let himself into the room, sat down on his bed and used one of the throwaway phones to send a text message to the number that Button had given him: The eagle has landed.

  He sipped his coffee and ate an egg and cress sandwich as he waited for her to get back to him. The phone rang within minutes.

  ‘Eagle?’ she said. ‘I always had you in mind as a jackdaw. Or a crow.’

  ‘That’s racist, Charlie. Or at the very least, birdist.’

  She ignored his attempt at humour. ‘What’s your hotel like?’

  ‘Not salubrious,’ said Harper. ‘But there’s no CCTV and the receptionist usually has his head buried in a book.’

  ‘Even so, I think I’d rather be outside,’ she said. ‘Are you near the park we met last time?’

  She was being more careful than usual, Harper realised. ‘Sure.’

  ‘See you there in an hour,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll carry a red rose and a copy of the Financial Times.’

  ‘A Mars bar and a copy of the Sun, more like.’

  She ended the call and he had a quick shave and showered before eating another sandwich and finishing his coffee.

  Chapter 13

  Present Day, London

  P atsy Ellis kept Shepherd waiting for more than an hour in her outer office. The longer he waited, the more convinced he became that she was going to fire him, but when her male secretary eventually said he could go through he opened the door to find her walking towards him, hand outstretched, all sweetness and light.

  ‘So glad to finally meet you,’ she said. She shook his hand and waved him to a straight-backed chair. ‘And so sorry to have kept you waiting. It’s all hands to the pumps, obviously.’

  Shepherd took his seat as she walked back behind her desk. She was tall, even in flat shoes, wearing a dark blue skirt suit, a white blouse and a pale blue loosely tied scarf. She looked tired. There were dark patches under her eyes and her skin was dull and lifeless. She had tied her greying hair back, which emphasised the lines around her eyes, and she sighed as she dropped down on to her chair. She forced a smile. ‘So, Charlotte always speaks highly of you,’ she said.

  Charlotte Button was Shepherd’s former boss at MI5. She had left under a cloud after Jeremy Willoughby-Brown had exposed her for using government resources to wreak revenge on the men who had killed her husband. It was a messy business, but at least she was still alive and well and working in the private sector.

  ‘It’s been a while since I’ve seen her,’ said Shepherd, choo
sing his words carefully.

  ‘That’s understandable, considering the circumstances under which she left,’ said Ellis. ‘But I know she always regarded you as a valuable member of her team.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘And I know you’ve been doing sterling work at the facial recognition unit,’ she said. ‘Your memory is a definite asset. You’re picking up jihadists at a very impressive rate.’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘I think I could be better used,’ he said.

  ‘Undercover work, you mean?’ She flashed him a tight smile. ‘I understand that there isn’t much in the way of an adrenaline kick sitting in front of a computer all day, but results-wise, it’s time well spent.’

  ‘I’d rather be out and about,’ he said. ‘Given the choice. I was never one for desk work.’

  ‘Duly noted,’ said Ellis. ‘But at the moment, it’s your memory and recognition skills that we need to make use of. I’m aware that you were at the stadium yesterday when the bomb went off. I gather you did what you could to help?’

  ‘It wasn’t much.’ He shuddered at the memory of the carnage he had witnessed. There were times when his near-perfect memory was as much a curse as a blessing. For the rest of his life he would have to live with the image of the dead boy lying on the ground while his father cried out for him. ‘I was looking at the feed from the concession area not long before it exploded and I didn’t see anything remotely suspicious.’

  ‘You weren’t there to spot potential suicide bombers,’ said Ellis. ‘The intel we had was that jihadists were getting together for a meet, nothing more. What happened took everyone by surprise. I’m putting you on the stadium bombing. We don’t believe for one minute that Ali Naveed was a lone wolf. The device he used was very sophisticated and placed for maximum impact. A lot of thought and planning went into that attack. We need to find out who was helping him, and we need to move quickly.’ There was a cup of tea on her desk and she reached for it and took a sip. ‘Everyone who entered the stadium that evening had to go through a metal detector. There was no way he got in wearing a suicide vest. Someone had to have given him the vest once he was inside. We’ve got all the CCTV footage inside and outside the stadium and it all has to be gone through. The Met has agreed to put the Super-Recogniser Unit on it full time for the next week, and we’ve agreed to fund whatever overtime is necessary. We have photographs of every member of the stadium staff and we need to see if Naveed met anyone outside the ground, or inside.’ She passed him a thumb drive. ‘All the photographs are on there and we’re arranging for the CCTV feeds to be available in Lambeth.’

  Shepherd took the thumb drive. ‘How many cameras inside the stadium?’

  ‘Thirty-two,’ said Ellis. ‘Plus ten covering the outside. And we’re getting council feeds from the area.’

  Shepherd forced a smile. Assuming they looked at the four hours leading up to the explosion, that meant almost a hundred and seventy hours of footage. Assuming the whole unit piled in, it would take them a couple of days to review it all.

  ‘Locating the person who gave him the vest is our first priority,’ said Ellis. ‘But we need to know who else was working with him. We need to start looking at CCTV footage from all the mosques in the Ealing area. In fact we need to be looking at pretty much every CCTV camera within a mile of where he lived. Your team needs to nail down where he went and who he met for at least the last month.’

  Shepherd’s smile tightened. What Ellis was asking made perfect sense, but it was a huge job. Thousands and thousands of hours of video would have to be looked at. But if it got them closer to the bastard who had caused the carnage, he’d do whatever it took.

  ‘The Met has agreed to draft in some of the Super-Recognisers based at stations around London, which probably means you’ll have another dozen or so at your disposal. The Met was already understaffed and with the threat level raised to critical every available officer has been called in. If the threat level drops we might be able to get you more manpower at the unit but at the moment the Met is stretched as far as it can go. Believe me, Dan, I do appreciate the magnitude of the task.’

  ‘It’s a grind, but it’s doable,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Ellis. ‘Now, as this is being run out of the Met’s Lambeth base, it is being seen as a police operation. They’ll obviously have first sight of anything you find, but I need you to stay in close personal contact with me on this, Dan. I don’t want any surprises. Anything the Met knows, I want to know.’ She gave him a business card. ‘My mobile number is on the back. Any hour, night or day. Text or call.’

  Shepherd took the card. ‘Will do,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know anything at all about this Ali Naveed?’

  ‘It’s not a name I’ve come across.’

  ‘No one has,’ said Ellis. ‘Though we’re not even sure if it’s his real name. He entered the country six months ago as an unaccompanied minor, claiming to be fifteen years old and a refugee from Syria. He was put with a foster family in Ealing and was apparently a problem from day one. One of the first things he asked for was a razor, and his foster parents expressed their concern that he was considerably older than he claimed to be. His teachers also spoke to social services querying his age.’

  ‘And nobody did anything?’

  ‘It’s difficult, Dan. What is happening in Syria is truly awful, and when a child arrives in this country claiming that his parents have been killed, what can we do? He was treated as if he was a fifteen-year-old but yes, we can assume he was considerably older. Early twenties, perhaps. Certainly, he gave his foster parents all sorts of problems. He was out all hours of the night, he stopped going to school and he was always telling his foster mother to cover her head when she went out.’

  ‘They were Muslims, the foster parents?’

  Ellis shook her head. ‘No. Non-denominational. They’re long-standing foster parents and have looked after more than a hundred children over the years. Anyway, they weren’t able to cope with him. They were looking after another child, a ten-year-old boy, and they complained to social services that Ali was bothering him.’

  ‘Bothering?’

  ‘Going into his room at night, watching him take a shower.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ groaned Shepherd. ‘And that didn’t set alarm bells ringing?’

  Ellis shrugged. ‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing.’

  ‘No one saw the warning signs, and two dozen people are dead,’ said Shepherd. ‘We should be finding out who let him into this country and putting them behind bars for a few years. If we started holding people responsible for their actions, they might start paying more attention.’ He shook his head. ‘So the thinking is that he came into this country deliberately to launch a terrorist attack?’

  ‘It seems unlikely that he was radicalised in just a few months. So yes, we think he was sent here. We need the unit to start going through all the CCTV footage in the area around the foster house. We need to know where he went in London, and who he met.’ She saw the look of disbelief flash across Shepherd’s face. ‘I know, I know, it’s a mammoth undertaking. Thousands of hours, tens of thousands of hours. But it’s the key to finding out who is really behind this. I know you can do this, Dan.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘I’ll give it my best shot.’

  She nodded at the business card. ‘Do that,’ she said. ‘And stay in touch. Anything you get, no matter how small, I need to know about it.’

  Chapter 14

  Ten Years Ago, New York

  I t was dark when Yokely eventually pulled up in front of the warehouse in Queens. There were several cars already there. A black SUV, a white sedan and a large van with the name of a courier company on the side. He switched off the engine and climbed out. The warehouse was metal-sided with a sloping roof, a delivery ramp to the right and a door to the left with a sign over it saying APEX IMPORT-EXPORT. He walked around to the back of his SUV and took out an aluminium briefcase.

  As Yokely
walked over to the entrance, the door opened. His hand moved automatically to the Glock in its underarm holster but he relaxed when he saw it was Leclerc. He was dressed for the tropics, sporting a cream linen jacket and light cotton trousers. He was a decade younger than Yokely with close-cropped hair and a broken nose.

  ‘No need to shoot your way in, Richard,’ he said. ‘It’s all under control.’

  Yokely chuckled and shook Leclerc’s hand. ‘Sorry to ruin your trip, Peter.’

  ‘I’m not a big fan of the Philippines,’ said Leclerc. ‘Too many distractions.’

  Yokely looked up at the building. ‘What’s the story with this place?’

  ‘Homeland Security use it for short-term storage. We can have it as long as we want. The Homeland Security guy arranged it. His name’s Garcia. Tommy Garcia. He’s inside.’

  ‘Just so you know, Gerry McNee is driving in from Manhattan and David Dalton will be flying in first thing.’

  ‘I’m in good company, then,’ said Leclerc. He stepped aside and followed Yokely into the warehouse.

  ‘You got the gear?’

  ‘In the van,’ said Leclerc.

  There were several pallets piled high with boxes and wreathed in polythene off to the right, close to the metal shutter at the delivery ramp. Beyond the pallets was a glass-sided office. There were two men sitting either side of a desk.

  ‘That’s Garcia, with Martin, the security guard who set all this off. I’ve asked them both to stay there until we know where we stand.’

  ‘What’s your impression of Garcia?’ asked Yokely, setting the briefcase on the floor by the wall.

  ‘Solid guy. Understands what’s going on and I think just wants to get out of here and leave us to it.’

  ‘And Martin?’

  ‘I haven’t really spoken to him. In effect he’s a civilian so I’m keeping my distance.’

  ‘Probably best,’ said Yokely.

  Leclerc pointed at three bodies, face down on the concrete. One was handcuffed behind his back and the second had his wrists bound with what looked like a necktie. The third was clearly dead.