On the Back Foot to Hell

by Roland Ladley

  ‘Machine gun?’ Gareth suggested. It just came to him.

  Chiara hesitated. And frowned.

  ‘That wasn’t the metaphor I was searching for, but it works. Yes, a machine gun. No. Better. A tommy gun, like the American mafia.’ She brought her hands together as if she were holding a machine gun and sprayed the nearby tables with bullets, accompanying the actions with a staccato sound as each bullet left the gun.

  Gareth couldn’t stop himself; he roared with laughter. Chiara joined him, dropping the weapon and raising her hand to her mouth to suppress further giggles.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She apologised.

  ‘Please, don’t.’ Gareth shook his head whilst showing a ‘no more, thank you’ flat palm to Chiara.

  As they both regained their composure the waitress returned and placed their coffee in front of them. As the woman turned to leave, Chiara asked, ‘You’re gay?’

  The waitress was unsure if the question was meant for her, but soon realised that it wasn’t. She quickly left the two of them to their very direct conversation.

  Gareth, now back in control, rested his chin in his hand and studied the reporter closely.

  ‘Yes. How do you know?’

  Another smile.

  ‘We’ve been sitting at the same table for over two minutes and you haven’t looked at my cleavage once.’

  That was true.

  ‘But you’ve studied what I am wearing, and are impressed?’ She added.

  Gareth had been watching Chiara’s face intently. He dropped his eyes to her cleavage. It was very impressive.

  ‘You have a fine cleavage. And you are impeccably dressed, although I can’t make out where you bought your blouse.’

  ‘Etro.’ Chiara replied.

  ‘Ovviamente.’

  ‘No. More passion. Like a tommy gun. And more hands!’

  As she gave Gareth a lesson Chiara wrung hers together.

  ‘Ovviamente. Ovviamente!’

  ‘Got it. Got it.’ Gareth nodded. ‘More passion.’

  ‘Like a tommy gun.’ Chiara added.

  ‘Like a tommy gun.’ Gareth repeated.

  They both had a sip of their coffee.

  ‘Can you help me with my dissertation?’ Gareth asked.

  ‘Maybe? That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘I need something, someone who has links to gli Mafiosi, but is also a recognised name in art. Could be historical. Might be present day.’

  Chiara finished her coffee and dabbed her lips with a napkin. It left a red stain on the white cloth. She opened her handbag and took out a business card. Gareth made out her name, the newspaper’s details and a telephone number before she put the card on the table, face down. She then pulled out a Montegrappa ballpoint pen and wrote a name in capitals. She turned the card through 180 degrees and slid it the short distance across the table to Gareth.

  Gareth picked it up and held it a comfortable distance from his eyes.

  He recognised the name immediately.

  He shot a glance at Chiara. She had a single, delicate finger to her lips.

  Matteo Monza.

  Matteo Monza?

  ‘Are you sure?’ His response to the card was soft; quiet.

  Chiara had lost her smile – and she had dropped her finger. She held his gaze.

  ‘Isn’t this newsworthy?’ A whisper from Gareth, laced with incredulity.

  She nodded, slowly.

  ‘Then why aren’t you investigating this. It’s a huge story. National level – maybe international?’

  Chiara took out her purse and placed a two Euro coin on the saucer of her cup. She then put her pen and purse back in her handbag, pushed her chair back and stood.

  ‘You are an attractive man, Gareth. And I hear you are tenacious. But …’, she leant across so that her lips were close to his left ear.

  ‘Stai attento, signore. Very careful.’

  She stood back to her full height.

  ‘More passion.’ She said.

  ‘Like a tommy gun.’ He added.

  ‘Si.’

  And then she left.

  Headquarters SIS, Vauxhall, London

  Frank rested his forehead on the palm of his left hand. He used his right to manipulate the 32-inch screen in front of him. In the top right corner was a hazy headshot and torso of a man. In the distance was the familiar London Tube logo. Running through the centre of it was the station’s name: East Putney. That was south of the river and not far from where he was sitting. The DTG (date/time/group) on the security camera showed that the still had been lifted from the tape at 5.15 pm yesterday. Frank looked down to the bottom right of his screen. It was now 9.32 pm. The photo was over 24 hours old.

  The image had been dropped in a ‘to see’ folder earlier today by The Metropolitan Police (The Met). The ‘to see’ folder was part of a new, collectively-shared database he and a pal of his in The Service, and another in Counterterrorism Police, had been setting up over the previous months. Those with access to the database were: The Security Service; Secret Intelligence Service; Counterterrorism Police; The Met; Border Agency; and Border Force. It was early days, but he and his two pals’ ‘Migration Terrorism Mapping Tool’ (MTMT for short) was already proving very useful.

  Frank hoped the database would earn its keep again today. The man he had on his screen was of particular interest to all of those with access to MTMT. He was sure of it.

  Frank twisted his chair to his right and faced a second, smaller screen (there was a third to the left of the big, central monitor; you can never have enough screens). His hand swiped and dabbed and a map of Eritrea, north Africa, appeared. Frank thought the country looked like a stick of broccoli, titled to its left a bit. Its right side was all coastline; the Red Sea. The vegetable’s ‘canopy’ bordered Sudan. Its left side joined Ethiopia. Its short base, a border with Djibouti. Despite its very strategic position, facing Saudi Arabia on the west side of the Red Sea, the country was dirt poor. Much of this was down to a 30-year fight for freedom by indigenous Eritreans against Ethiopian ‘invaders’, who’d annexed the country in the 1960s. Since Ethiopia had been ousted in the 1990s by the Eritrean Liberation Front, the country had been autocratically and poorly run. It had amongst the worst human rights records in the world, and press freedom was a joke. A very recent thaw between the country and her ‘big-brother’, Ethiopian neighbour had been the first positive sign for over 60 years that something was on the up.

  But Frank had seen the latest intelligence assessment. Eritrea was still a basket case. And, importantly for the users of the MTMT, a breeding ground for exporting all manner of criminality.

  He was pretty sure he had one such criminal on his central screen. No longer in Eritrea – now in East Putney.

  He expanded the map of Eritrea so that the Red Sea port of Mersa Fatma, which was about halfway down Eritrea’s 1,000 mile coastline, loomed large. A finger moved to the top right of the screen and found the terrain icon; it prodded and the latest satellite overlay appeared. The date on the overlay was just two days ago.

  Mersa Fatma wasn’t really a port. It was a place where some people lived between the hilly desert and the sea. The main coastal road dissected the village, which comprised a mosque, about 40 houses on the desert side of the main road and a further 20, including two large (and new?) warehouses, on the seaward side. A dirt track joined the coast road to the water’s edge, at which point Frank thought he made out a slipway. To the left of the slipway was a long, thin pier, probably made out of wood and concrete. In the sea, bobbing around the pier were, Frank counted, 27 fishing boats.

  And a large RIB.

  Throughout Frank’s manipulations of the Eritrean mapping there had been a constant: a small red, filled-in circle. It rested in the approximate centre of the village, hilly-desert side of the coastal road. He tapped it. A drop-down box appeared detailing a list of 47 names, all of which belonged to one of two ‘nasabs’, or family names: Khaldun and al-Rasheed. There were plenty of ‘bin’
, sons of, and ‘bints’, daughters of, on the list. Six - all al-Rasheed and all male - were displayed in red font.

  Frank touched on red-fonted, Abir al-Rasheed. A further box appeared. It contained a list of the man’s family and character details, including height. Importantly there was also a photograph. It was a mugshot, probably from an Eritrean police file.

  Frank put two fingers on the box and flicked it to his left. It shot across the screen, jumped the electronic boundary between right and central monitors and settled in the middle of the screen Frank had been studying earlier. He now had two photos, side by side. One from East Putney. The other from Mersa Fatma.

  Frank hoped they were one of the same.

  ‘Hi Frank, how’s it going?’ Jane’s voice over his right shoulder. She broke his concentration.

  He looked up at her. ‘Fine, thanks, yeah, fine. You?’

  Frank thought Jane looked tired, but wouldn’t say so. Mind you, she always looked tired. Recently, with the upsurge of ‘neo-terrorism’, they both worked beyond an acceptable number of hours. He was strictly a Monday to Friday man – unless there was a lockdown - but they were long days. He knew she was in most weekends, and he never saw her leave the office before him. She was dedicated, very good at what she did and a brilliant boss.

  Long may that continue.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks, Frank. What have you got there?’

  Bless her. She didn’t need to ask him. He would brief her when he had something, but it was her way of engaging him: boss to not boss. It took time and energy from her, but gave something back to him. He admired her for it.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  He was on his feet, heading away from his desk to one of the corners of his piece of open-plan Babylon. He made the corner a few steps later, stopping in front of a massive, 80-inch LED. He assumed Jane was behind him.

  He touched the screen and it energised. It displayed a map of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, including Afghanistan. The map showed country boundaries, capital cities and around 100 small, red and green circles – much like the one he had manipulated at his desk. There was also a little less than 50 filled-in squares – all of them yellow. In the bottom right hand corner of the screen was a navigation box.

  Frank pressed an icon in the box and the whole screen came alive with hundreds of ultra-thin blue lines. They crisscrossed their way diagonally from the bottom and right of the map – North Africa and the Middle East – heading up and left, towards the UK. Nearly all of the blue lines passed through a red or green circle, or both. Many made it to one of 43 yellow squares. The squares were all on the north European coast.

  Frank turned to face Jane. She was in deep thought.

  ‘Can I sit down?’ Jane asked whilst pointing at the very obvious chair in front of the screen.

  ‘Sure. Sure.’ Frank motioned with an open hand to the chair, and then moved to his left so that he wasn’t in Jane’s line-of-sight of the screen.

  ‘How long has this contraption been here?’ Jane pointed to the screen.

  She hadn’t noticed?

  ‘About two weeks. I paid for it from the operating budget. It was cheap as chips.’

  Actually it cost £2,300 but, as lead analyst, Frank controlled a budget 40 times that. And he was well within limits for this year.

  ‘Oh. I’m just surprised I’ve not noticed it before.’ Jane muttered.

  I’m not; you’re a busy bee.

  Jane had been head-down on the neo-terrorism malarkey since Christmas. His area, migration and associated criminality, was tight as a drum, and getting tighter – and, so far, there didn’t seem to be a great deal of overlap between criminal migration and the upsurge of unattributable, worldwide terror attacks that were keeping everyone else awake at night.

  Frank was about to say something when Jane continued.

  ‘This is a migration map.’ A statement, not a question.

  ‘Correct.’ Frank answered.

  ‘How long have you been working on this?’

  He went for an oblique answer.

  ‘You know you sent me on that conference to The Hague. Remember? A couple of months ago. You said I needed a break and this Europol thing came up. You glanced at the agenda, booked me on it and told me I was going?’ Frank’s words came out a bit too quickly.

  Jane thought for a second.

  ‘Yes. I think so. The one you had to buy a suit for?’ If Jane were taking the mickey, it wasn’t showing. Actually Frank hadn’t bought a suit, although he’d told Jane that he had. However, when he arrived at the conference and discovered he was the only delegate wearing black jeans, a Genesis t-shirt topped with a blazer he had borrowed from his Dad, he did reflect that maybe he should have.

  ‘Yeah. That’s the one. Well, it was a migration conference. Economic and conflict migrants. Definitions, rationale, current position – the future. Sharing data. All that sort of stuff. And …’

  ‘And, this was the outcome?’ Jane interrupted.

  ‘No. No. No. Not really.’ He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘See, Europol have a brilliant database, tracking - where there is suitable information - migrants from Europe’s eastern and southern borders, to final “resting” locations.’

  ‘Resting?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Well, yeah. The French were keen not to designate where the migrants stop and sort of call their new home as “final”. The Germans agreed, so we all said we’d call it “resting”, on the assumption that is was temporary …’

  ‘But, politically you couldn’t call it temporary either.’ Jane interrupted again.

  ‘Yeah. No, no. You’re right. That could mean fewer funds for integration. And the migrants would lose benefits if they were “temporary”.’ Frank used both hands to demonstrate the quotation marks. ‘So we all agreed on “resting”.’

  ‘And that’s the UK’s position?’ Jane asked.

  Frank thought he saw a grin emerging on Jane’s face.

  ‘Well, the Border Agency woman didn’t make the conference for some reason, so I flew the flag, so to speak.’

  Jane was nodding. And smiling.

  ‘Go on, Frank.’

  ‘Well, the database is brilliant. But, ehh, messy. And not very Anglocentric. It also didn’t have everything we have, that is SIS, The Service, etc. That’s because until I went on the course, the only agency with access to the info was Border. And they hadn’t shared it.’

  ‘So this,’ Jane spread her arms, ‘is the UK’s souped-up version of Europol’s database, a la Frank.’

  Frank thought for a second.

  ‘And Vernon. And Fi.’ He added.

  ‘Vernon and Fi?’

  ‘Yeah, well, Vernon’s a pal of mine from The Service, and Fi works at Counterterrorism. Fi’s an expert with the front end …’, Frank tapped the top of the screen, ‘… and between Vernon and me, we did the modelling. Simples.’

  Jane was nodding again. She looked pleased.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’s complicated. If you look closely you’ll see that the red circles are terminals. That is, the blue transit lines stop, or, more accurately, start, at a red circle. They’re “originating locations”, where the migrants come from - originally.’ He added unnecessarily. ‘As you can see, they’re spread everywhere in the east and the south. Most of the known documented migrants are from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. You know that. Using Europol data fused with our own, that’s everything from all of our agencies and services, we have around 1,800 discrete “originating locations”. Villages. Towns, Cities. Quite often down to house numbers, although whether the house is still standing, or a pile of rubble, we couldn’t say.’

  He picked the red circle that was centred on Mosul in Iraq and touched it. A new insert box appeared: an expanded view of Mosul, around 100 kilometres square. The one red circle had morphed into dozens and dozens.

  ‘At city level, there are 73 separate locations in Mosul.’ Frank paus
ed to let Jane take it in. He touched one of the new red circles. A dialogue box appeared like the one on the right-hand screen back at his desk. Except this box had 127 names. Seven names were in red,

  He stabbed at one of the non-red names. A further dialogue box appeared. Some subsidiary information dropped down, but there was no photograph. However, at the same time as the migrant’s details were presented, one of the blue transit lines lit up brighter than the others. It left Mosul, travelled northwest through Baghdad, then due north to a green circle on the Iraqi/Turkish border. It stopped there.

  ‘This guy …’, Frank leant forward to see the man’s name, ‘… Mohamed Ibrahim, originates from Mosul and …’, he used a finger to trace the highlighted blue line to where it stopped, ‘… he’s, as far as the intelligence tells us, currently in the Andac refugee camp.’

  Jane had leant forward so she could get a better picture.

  ‘Turkish side?’ She asked.

  ‘Correct.’ Frank said.

  ‘Where did this int come from?’ Jane looked confused. ‘Unless he’s been picked up by our people in Iraq, we’d have no record of Ibrahim. We don’t have access to the refugees in the camps. And I can’t imagine that Europol do either? Unless he was a previously known criminal.’

  Frank let out a long breath. He had a lot to do and it was starting to get late. He needed to eat something. And he never went to bed without watching at least two episodes of The Big Bang Theory. He wouldn’t be in bed before midnight.

  ‘DfID (Department for International Development). They have access to most of the camp’s registers. For no other reason than their own bookkeeping. They only have boots on the ground in six or seven; Jordan mostly. But they have contacts with The Red Cross, The Red Crescent, Save the Children, etc.’

  Jane was sat back in her chair now.

  ‘I’m surprised they would want to share that. A leak of their information attributed to us would drive a wedge between them and the aid agencies?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Actually, not so much. We played the “national security” card. And, when they need to, they have access to this database. The know we’re keeping it close to our chests. Currently everyone’s fine with it.’