by Ols Schaber
The crowed station was busy with trains loading and unloading passengers. He headed for Platform 2, a blank information board and an empty track stared back. Announcements echoed off the building. He kneeled down on the polished stones by one of the steel supporting columns and laid the case on the floor. He felt for his old wooden flick knife, it was in his back pocket. The briefcase wasn’t locked and the latches popped open. A file marked TOP SECRET stared back at him and, underneath it, a 9mm pistol. He closed the case and looked around. What was going on? Doubt filled him like a glass of fizzy water. He looked at his phone, maybe they had called him.
Rebwar rushed back to his car to find a parking fine. He ripped it off the windscreen and put it in his pocket. He took the file out of the case. A photo of himself stared back at him. He was wearing his Iranian police uniform. He scanned the document. Mixed in with vague facts about his army service and police career were lies about his fanatical beliefs in Islam, that he had served with Al Qaida in Afghanistan and had been involved in various bombing operations.
He rolled down the window and lit up. This was some kind of set-up. He looked around, half expecting the police to swoop on him. Was it the work of the SAVAK? He drove off. He had to keep moving. Where was this coming from? The only person he could think of contacting was his case owner, Tyler Mason or Samson as he liked to be called. He had been the official UK Border officer who had dealt with his refugee application. At a traffic light Rebwar looked for his number. Cars honked and he speeded off.
His brain was desperately trying to find some logical answers. What had they said? Consultants? Some kind of agents. He hadn’t spotted anything odd about them. He decided to drive back to the pickup location where it all started. There is always something there, some clue. People love their habits. A siren screamed. Rebwar’s eyes frantically tried to find it. It was an ambulance. He let it pass. He could feel his face flushing. Think, think, he kept telling himself.
He stared at the briefcase, which was lying on the passenger seat like a bomb. Throw it away his emotions were screaming out to him. But he had to get to the bottom of this. This wasn’t going to go away. And it had gone so well. Everybody had welcomed his family into the country. He arrived back at Portobello Road.
He sat there thinking. He was sure they would turn up again. To soothe his nerves he played a CD. Some sounds from home, Kouros, a Persian singer. ‘Chai, Chai’ was the first song on the mix. He let the music take him back home to smoke-filled bars with sweet coffees, men playing cards and discussing the football scores. He had found some bars along Edgware Road that showed Iranian football games. He had seen Petropolis lose.
His mind snapped back to his predicament. He had to stake out the crossing from where he had picked up his fare. Something had to be there – their offices, a rendezvous point, a safe house – something. Habits. He took out another cigarette and lit it. It was helping. He decided he had to burn the file. He had a closer look at the gun, a SIG Sauer P226. Classic government issue all over the world, and from the weight it was fully loaded. He released the cartridge. Dumdum bullets. They weren’t messing around.
At 8 am, lights had flickered on at the Second Cup Coffee Company. They were opening up. Rebwar was back where it all started, waiting in his cab and watching two women set up the tables. A man walked in and ordered a coffee, then another. A couple walked in. The man had a black trench coat. It was them. Habits. He smiled. He grabbed his holdall from the back seat together with a baseball cap and some dark-framed glasses – he popped the dark lenses out. Then he took out the bullets from the pistol, just in case they had other plans and used it on him. He put them in his glovebox.
The two were still there chatting. He waited for a few more customers to come in to get their morning cups of coffee. Sharp sun rays flashed across the bricked buildings and reflected off the windows. More people rushed in to get their caffeine hit. He walked over. He stopped in front, facing the street and rubbed his hands. Lit a cigarette. A few happy customers were having their American breakfast. It smelled great. He smiled at them, then put the briefcase behind his legs, just under the ledge of the shop window. Rebwar stubbed his cigarette on the floor, left the case and walked over to the Second Cup, which was opposite. He walked in and ordered a double espresso.
He sat down by the window. It had a direct view to the coffee shop opposite where he had left the briefcase. It wasn’t long before one of the smokers, a man with curly hair, discovered it, looked down and asked around if anyone had forgotten a case. He picked it up, people flinched. Rebwar had locked it with the combination. He sipped his espresso and carried on watching. The man walked into the coffee shop and took the briefcase to the till. The two agents noticed it. A little discussion started with the waitress, she smiled and took the case.
Now the two agents were talking to each other and glancing over to the case. Rebwar wished he could lipread like Farouk. He had picked up a few tricks, but only Iranian words. The man with the silver glasses got up. He went over to the waitress, took her to one side. She handed him the case and he went into the toilet.
The woman agent got up and stepped outside. Rebwar grabbed a Daily Mail off one of the tables. The headline read: Hatton Garden trio convicted over biggest burglary in British history. He folded it up and returned to his seat. Was she going to spot his car? He should have hidden it. The man with the silver glasses rushed out with the case. He whistled at her to follow him and they left. For a moment Rebwar wanted to follow them. But he had sent his message. It was enough.
Rebwar was listening to his CD and smoking a cigarette. Dariush was soothing him with his silky voice singing ‘Age Ye Rooz’. He had been trying to work out who was after him. He had discounted Savak; they wouldn’t have bothered with such a charade. It would have been simple, a bullet to the head. It was all a bit too theatrical for the secret service. It annoyed him.
A phone rang behind him, somewhere in the back of the car. A few more rings and he found it in the back seat pocket. The number was withheld, he picked it up.
‘Hello.’
‘Rebwar,’ a man’s voice said. It was deep and filled with authority.
‘Yes, who is this?’
‘Rebwar Ghorbani. Interesting stunt you pulled on our agents.’
‘What do you want? Money?’ Rebwar looked around him, he could hear the man breathe and sip something. Coffee, he thought.
‘No, not money. We have a proposition for you, one that you can’t refuse. You have seen what we are capable of. We can deport you anytime we want. You are going to have to trust us and the less you know the better. We need your expertise and we will pay for it. It’s a generous offer.’
Rebwar heard a rattling teacup. ‘What’s the catch? And why me?’
‘Let’s just say you owe us. You can stay here but on our terms.’
‘Which are?’
‘Non-negotiable, my friend. We will assign you a contact and jobs will be given to you.’
‘What kind of jobs?’
‘Ones that reflect your skills. In the meantime nothing has changed, keep driving that taxi. We will contact you. And dispose of that phone.’
The phone went dead. Rebwar stared at it, it had no numbers in its memory. He lit a cigarette and let the smoke swirl around him as he weighed his options. At least he was alive. They didn’t want money. On the contrary, they were going to pay him. But what did they want him to do? What was the catch? Everything had a price. He stared down the street; large clouds passed by, blocking the winter sun. His instinct was to run. But he was tired of running.
Fifteen
Rebwar was at the Shishawi, sitting outside facing Edgware Road watching the morning commuters making their way to work. On the little table was a coffee, a pack of cigarettes and a small pile of the morning’s papers. It had taken him a few hours walking through fields to find his car that he had left in the lay-by. On the way back to London, he’d stopped at a motorway services to tidy himself up. He always carried
a spare set of clothes for those long shifts. He had been very lucky to get away with some scratches and bruises; they hurt, but he felt he was coming with arms longer than legs, as they said in Iran. He opened one of the newspapers.
‘Looking at the obituaries,’ joked the waiter. It was Berker, one of the old boys. He had a thick grey moustache and was a Kurd from the Iraqi side.
Rebwar looked up with his cigarette hanging off his lips. ‘Something like that. Keeping myself busy. Hey, another Turk.’ He pointed to his coffee cup.
‘Been burning the midnight oil?’
‘What’s with all the questions?’ His tooth ached, and he grimaced at the pain.
‘Touchy, touchy. Just making polite conversation. Maybe sleep is what you need. And you should see a dentist – it’s only going to get worse.’ Berker went off back into the restaurant.
Rebwar smelled his jumper and took a few more puffs of his cigarette. He unfolded the Daily Mail, a few pages in, it had a version of the story he was looking for. ‘Kessaftha,’1 he muttered under his breath.
Thousands of Romanian illegal immigrants roaming free in Kent. He read on: …truck allegedly used for smuggling immigrants has crashed and caught fire killing its driver, a suspected Romanian people smuggler. The 40-tonne truck was found empty, but evidence in an ongoing investigation suggests the vehicle has been used to bring in hundreds of illegal immigrants who are now roaming freely in the Kent countryside.
‘Madar ghabeh-ha dorough-gou.’2
Berker put his coffee on the table and looked at the article. ‘I ask you, what are they waiting for? Close those borders. I have enough beggars to deal with.’
‘Fallen from the elephant’s nose.’
‘Snob? Me?’ Berker pointed to himself. ‘I’m a humble working man, with simple needs.’
Rebwar picked up the Metro and scanned it. This time it was a little more measured. Trucker dies trying to tackle fire… A Romanian truck caught fire off Island Road in Kent… It was empty and returning to Europe.
He sipped his coffee, folded the paper to the crosswords and thought about what had happened. He really wanted to know what Ioanna had said to the trucker. It was something that had made him snap. There can’t have been a body in there as they would have found it. What about the money? Up in smoke. Is there a conspiracy? He had to dig deeper.
‘Hey, Berker, I need a thing.’
Berker walked out to him. ‘Thing?’
‘You know.’ He didn’t. ‘A thing like an exchange and not money. But I want money back.’
Berker tapped his nose with his index finger and winked. Rebwar put an envelope down on the table with the cocaine that Plan B had given him as a payment. Berker covered it up with his tray and put a coffee cup on it. He walked off, and Rebwar carried on reading his newspaper. Rebwar was finally coming home with some extra money. It made him smile. 33 Down – What the fire does when the wind blows. Five words.
Sixteen
Rebwar was still not convinced about Ioanna’s story. He really wanted to question Stefan alone and see how his own would stack up next to hers. Ioanna’s story was like a sandcastle facing an incoming tide, it had no substance and lacked facts. But he had given her a chance to come clean about it. She had sullied the water by trying to get rid of him.
His next tactic was to watch them from his car and see what they did. Raj was still looking for more clues on Vasiles’s laptop. The sun was about to set and its last rays of light made long shadows on Dollis Valley Way. The street lights were slowly warming up for their night’s work.
He watched a woman pushing a buggy along the pavement. It took him back to Iran, to when he had to investigate a gang of war widows. It was the usual sad story of poor women who had lost their husbands to war, didn’t really get compensated and turned to crime to make ends meet. He felt sorry for them. They used the strollers to smuggle money and drugs. It was there that he lost respect for the system. What were they supposed to do? And these women were tough as the ice on Mount Damavand and they would rather die than be captured.
He spotted Stefan and Ioanna down at the bottom of the road, holding hands as a couple would. Why hadn’t she come clean about her relationship with Stefan? That wasn’t how friends walked up a road. He leaned across to grab his camera, which was next to the passenger seat. A van flashed by and rocked the car. He looked up as the van’s tyres screeched to a halt, and four men jumped out of the van commando style. In pairs, they grabbed Ioanna and Stefan. It was done with such speed and efficiency that neither of them had any time to react or sound their panic. Rebwar frantically pressed the camera’s buttons to shoot off some pictures, but the old camera was still powering up. All he could do was watch the van drive off down the road, leaving black rubber marks and blue smoke. He noted the van’s plate – probably a clone, as it was all too easy to steal them.
The phone rang. It was Geraldine. He picked it up as he drove off.
‘I’m af–’ He stopped himself, just realising something.
‘Rebwar! Hello, you need to come in. We need you.’
‘Yes, what for?’
‘A job only you can do. Go to this address. I have the postcode. It’s SG5 2JB.’
He stopped his car to note it down. Behind him, a car honked its horn. He mounted the kerb awkwardly to let him pass.
‘Get there ASAP. Meaning now!’ She dropped the call. Now he suspected that it was either the police or some gang that had taken Stefan and Ioanna in that van. From the urgency in Geraldine’s voice it sounded like the events were linked. Rebwar stepped on the gas.
A couple hours or so later, his GPS had taken him to the postcode that Geraldine had given him. It was a couple of hours from London in a town called Hitchin. He stopped his car outside the gates of a big old building held together with scaffolding. The derelict gardens were enclosed with bare wooden boards, no signs of machinery or builders, just an abandoned old hospital. He drove past the open gates. Behind the building he found the white van with two other cars. One was a Ford and the other a Vauxhall. He knew they were cop cars, standard issue for running around.
Geraldine walked out to meet him with her shiny Doc Martens boots and black denims. She’d had a haircut and it was angular. She smiled, shook his hand, but was hesitant; she wanted something from Rebwar, he could tell.
‘Hey, Rebs, you found it. Of course, you do this for a living. We need to close this case, and you’re going to do it for us.’
Rebwar stood his ground. ‘Did you find the body? Or is this a hunch – see what happens?’
‘A bit of it. A foot. Come in, we’ve got him ready for you.’ Geraldine went ahead through a dirty, forgotten back entrance of the old red-brick building. Its cracked white tiles had more in common with a former abattoir than a place where people came to recover. Rebwar could feel the dampness on his face and his rotten tooth pounded. At the end of the long hallway were two men waiting outside a closed door.
‘As usual, no questions. OK? Just do what you are told.’ She stopped him before they got too close to the men and lit up a cigarette. Rebwar smelled her freshly washed hair. It had a jasmine scent. He touched the tiles with their unknown past. He felt as powerless as a child. He feared what was coming. ‘You are going to get a confession out of you know who. We’ve put what’s necessary in the room.’ He stepped back. He couldn’t say no or make an excuse. They were taking advantage of him.
‘We don’t have much time. Get a confession out of him.’ She pushed him gently towards the two men. He was filled with dread. What exactly were they expecting from him? Had they found his army files? His interrogation of Iraqi soldiers? How could they? It had all been burned by his superiors, he had been there to help.
The two men outside were of a similar mould. Their shoulders were like giant hangers that carried their suited bulk. One was bald and the other had short-cropped brown hair. Rebwar was pretty sure they were part of the van team. Geraldine waved and nodded to them to let Rebwar in. The rusty metal door g
roaned open like a dying patient. In the middle of the room was Stefan, hooded and tied to a chair. His bare tattooed arms gave him away. The cracked white tiled theme had been carried into this room. It felt like this place had seen its fair share of dead bodies. In one of the corners was a steel-wheeled trolley that looked like it could carry corpses. A pile of rusting medical instruments lay on the top of a cold metal surface.
Were they thinking he was going to use them? Had they ordered him to do it? The pained screams for mercy still clung to him like the shrapnel in his body he could never get rid of. Cold sweats and echoes of horror crept back to him. His hand shook over the tools of terror lying on the trolley. He looked over to Stefan who was trying to see who had come in. Maybe he was going to co-operate. Please do, he said to himself.
Opposite the trolley and close to the door, a small video camera was mounted on a tripod, red light flashing. It was already filming. So they really did want to see him spill his soul to them. Rebwar was still not convinced that Stefan was the killer, but he had been wrong before.
‘Who are you?’ said Stefan from under the trembling hood. He wore a faded t-shirt and jeans. He was struggling to breathe through the black fabric of the hood. His mouth was desperately trying to suck in some oxygen and his chest was rising like some wheezy bellows. Rebwar felt like letting him drown in his own terror, but the problem wasn’t going to go away. He had to get a confession out of him.
He grabbed the hood and whipped it off Stefan’s head. There was some dried blood around his nose and mouth. His eyes blinked, adjusting to the bright light. Rebwar turned around to pick up a chair from the other side of the room. It gave him a few seconds to think. He came back and placed the chair in front of Stefan, getting out his pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Stefan, who nodded quickly. Rebwar lit one for him and placed it in his mouth. He sucked it repeatedly as if it was going to take him somewhere else.