Dark Clouds
Page 24
Is this praise with qualifications? ‘You’ve done all right, Flynn ... pretty well what we required from you, I guess – only you’ve created a problem for us, because now maybe we won’t find the guy.’
‘I didn’t pass it on to the media,’ I say defensively.
‘No – of course not ... we did. Only I’m wondering if it was a good idea ... and you shouldn’t have switched your phone off when you gave Robson the camera you snatched from the young man you assaulted.’
I’m getting up. I’ve had enough. This woman is a living nightmare.
‘Sit down,’ she commands, and there’s a sharp inflection. ‘We picked up your friend Khalad last night.’
He’s not actually a buddy as such, more of a contact. But where is he?
‘Downstairs, in a cell,’ Carla says. ‘He wasn’t prepared to talk to us. Although I think he knows something, Rudi ... I’m sure he does, which leaves us with a couple of options.’
And what would those be, ma’am?
She’s got up from the desk and is stretching her arms over her head in front of the window.
‘You can talk to him ... but if that doesn’t give us anything, we’ve got Brian and Calum from the RUC.’
‘What’s that?’
She’s smiling at my feigned ignorance.
‘They’re now known as the Police Service of Northern Ireland. But Brian and Calum were with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. They dealt mainly with Republican terrorists, and they always knew they were getting somewhere when they persuaded their Irish Catholic prisoners to sing ‘The Sash my Father Wore’, which is of course the equivalent of a Protestant Unionist national anthem.’
I think Carla Hirsch is sick. The very idea of Protestant police interrogators in the land of my great grandmother Róisín makes angry. And I’m not interested in the niceties of which bit of Ireland belongs to the Protestants, the Catholics or the Brits.
‘And what am I supposed to extract from him?’ I ask with a half shout.
‘The details – or even some indications – of what his people are planning, Rudi. OK – you’re not very experienced. Even I was able to tell that he was holding back something. But you two get along ... he might be prepared to speak with you as a friend.’
I’m not sure about that. He’s quite a principled guy, and I think he’d rather become a martyr than spill the beans to infidels. Also, I’m doubtful about him actually knowing anything of consequence. I suspect this is all in the imagination of a woman I briefly thought of as my Controller, but don’t any longer.
‘I’ll speak with him,’ I tell her. ‘But that’s it – when we’ve had a chat, I’m off, out – agreed?’
She’s considering my suggestion while steepling her fingers.
‘I’ll come back to you on that,’ she says eventually. I can’t make any promises – but we need answers ... so I want you to be careful about the questions you put to Mr Hassan.’
‘Can I have something to eat ... I haven’t had anything since this morning.’
Her eyes are narrowing and she’s knawing on her lower lip. I’m crossing over onto the wrong side of the road, which is not a good idea.
‘You spent the night with Sulima Sharif.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because you switched your phone on this morning in the house where she stayed last night. Her friend Maya confirmed this, but she doesn’t know where the Sharif woman has gone ... do you?’
No comment – and I don’t care if she hands me over for questioning with Calum and Brian, or even the nasty little fascist, Robson.
‘I don’t know where she is,’ I say, hoping that Fiona may have found her a safe place to stay. ‘But even if I did, she doesn’t have a contact number for Pele Kalim, and she certainly doesn’t know where he’s staying.’
‘OK – ’
‘If he calls her though, she will do everything she can to stop whatever he’s planning ... and he is very taken with her.’
This all needs careful weighing up. There’s an element of trust involved, which Carla Hirsch isn’t too happy about. She doesn’t usually rely on personal assurances.
‘What were you doing at Fiona Adler’s office this morning?’
‘When I was arrested?’
‘Yes ... our tracking chart shows you went straight from Belgrave Square, where you had spent the night with Sulima Sharif, to Fiona Adler’s office in Curzon Street ... is there some link between these two women, Rudi?’
She clearly has a much higher IQ than I do. She doesn’t miss anything, and if she thinks I’m playing games, I’m in trouble.
‘I didn’t sleep with Sulima,’ I tell her. ‘We’re old and dear friends. We share a lot, including her friendship with the girl I loved who fell with the North Tower on 9/11. We went out for supper and some dancing last night in Covent Garden. I drank more than I should have. I was not in a fit state to go back to the hotel in Islington, so Sulima insisted that I stay – in a guest room.’
Carla’s considering my confession, but she’s not finished yet.
‘So this dear friend of yours didn’t tell you where she was going?’
‘No – we thought it was best if I didn’t know.’
‘Because I might persuade you to reveal where she was?’
I think I’m doing all right. It’s like walking along a tightrope without a safety net, but I haven’t answered her first question.
‘Why did you go to Fiona Adler’s office this morning, Rudi?’
Tell it like it is. Make it good and show willing.
‘We’ve got a strong friendship,’ I admit. ‘She’s not just my Islington neighbour. We can talk to each other about the way our lives are going. Right now, I’m in turmoil emotionally. I’m in love with a woman I’ve only just met. She’s asked me to spend time with her in Greece, where I’m thinking I might write a novel about a relative who went through the 1916 rising in Ireland. Only I don’t have any savings and fiction writing’s unreliable financially ... so I have all of this stuff going on inside my head. I needed to talk ... and Fiona’s the one I can do it with.’
‘Did you discuss me, Rudi babe, with your pal, Julia? Because that was kinda embarrassing for both of us, I guess ... I mean, we didn’t really hit it off at all ...’
‘So where do we go from here?’ she asks eventually, and it’s an opportunity. If I respond appropriately I can divert her away from Sulima and Julia.
‘I want to co-operate with you and Earl on everything I can,’ I tell her. ‘My priority is to do whatever it takes to stop this guy Kalim from irradiating London.’
I think the right words came out. It was certainly from the heart, and unless Carla Hirsch is a piece of stone, it should work.
‘Which means you’ll do your best with Khalad?’
‘Yes – absolutely ... but I need some food.’ And drink – alcohol of any sort, but ideally red wine. This would help me to deliver the full one hundred and ten percent, or whatever.
‘Very good,’ she says, picking up a phone on the desk and pressing a number. ‘I need an escort,’ she tells whoever answers. Then we both get up, and when she’s come round from behind her desk, she puts a hand on my shoulder and nods when our eyes meet. I don’t know what it means, but it’s reassuring in an odd sort of way.
* * * * *
A pimply faced corporal with a holstered revolver takes me to the barracks canteen. Here, male and female soldiers are talking excitedly about the riot at King’s Cross on the previous day. ‘I’d say that baldy-headed fellah is definitely a bin lid man,’ one squaddie tells another in the food queue. ‘But if they’d let us in there first instead of them stupid fuckin’ plods, we’d ‘ave got ‘im straight off – yeah!’ And the other guy agrees.
There’s tepid stew with mashed potatoes, but no alcohol. It’s ridiculous, and I’m grinding my teeth with frustration. My escort is standing over by the canteen wall. There’s no way I can prolong eating the stew, which is full of gristle and fat.
There’s a ritual with keys, and when the door opens, I can see Khalad. He’s lying fully clothed on a narrow bed along one of the cell walls. There’s a table with two chairs in the centre of the room and I catch a seatless latrine in a dark corner.
‘How are you?’ I ask, but he doesn’t answer, so I sit on one of the chairs and look across at him.
‘Your being here isn’t down to me, Khalad.’ It’s not entirely true. If we hadn’t agreed to meet again in Shacklewell Lane in Hackney, he wouldn’t be here now.
There is a silence, during which I just keep staring at him.
‘You work for these people, don’t you?’ he asks and I nod
‘Not from choice though,’ I assure him. ‘I have no alternative.’
‘You have betrayed me,’ he says. ‘And I trusted you ... just as Rashid did’
The gentle Kashmiri’s crudely stitched throat haunts me whenever I try to sleep. His eyes are pleading as someone like Pele Kalim takes a knife and gouges it into the skin below his ear.
‘Look – ’ I tell him, and I’m holding my head in my hands as I speak. ‘The stakes are very high here. Someone wants to explode a nuclear device in London. This will be lethal, Khalad. We don’t know where it might happen, but wherever it is, Muslims will also be killed.’
He considers this for a while and then asks if I’ve seen pictures of the people who flew into the towers at the World Trade Centre in New York. They’re all a bit vague, although I do have a clear image of Mohammed Atta. I see him primarily as an embittered loner: An oddball who never fitted in and then got skewed into terror.
‘Many think the 9/11 jihadists are the Muslim equivalent of your Christian saints,’ he says. ‘A lot of our people want to emulate them.’
I was brought up as a Catholic at school in California. I knew the names of countless saints. I saw them all as guys with long robes, beards and, almost always, a halo painted in over their heads. They were all very good and pure and usually sinless. One or two had gone down the wrong road, but had then repented and been forgiven by the magnanimous lord Jesus and his holy mother, Mary.
‘I can’t see the point of your wreaking havoc on perceived Western enemies, Khalad. What are you going to gain from it?’
He’s got up from the bed and he’s walking slowly over towards the table. I’m feeling hopeful. If we can talk, maybe we can find a way to go forward together.
‘We are all poor,’ he says. ‘Abject poverty is the norm in our Islamic world. We have nothing to lose. Our only hope is with Allah – but this is by definition in another world. After jihad, we die and go to heaven.’
So maybe our American way still has something to offer. We may not be able to deliver on huge quantities of virgins. But we can show people how to become better off. We’re very good at creating wealth, always have been, apart from the odd depression or sub-prime credit crunch. We tend to bounce back, and we usually generate sack loads of cash. If we made peace with Osama and the Mullahs, we could all do well financially.
Khalad’s smiling indulgently as I babble on about Western dreams. ‘You’re all right, Rudi,’ he concedes. ‘I don’t think you’re a bad person.’
I want to tell him about Ingrid and Faria and Sulima, but I hold off because they’re not really relevant, or are they?
‘Yesterday, in King’s Cross, I say, ‘I took a picture of Pele Kalim.’
‘Who is he?’
‘You haven’t heard of him?’
‘No – ’
‘He’s the one who’s going to initiate the nuclear incident in London. He’s in love with a beautiful woman called Sulima Sharif, who I know. She doesn’t want him to do the jihad thing, here or anywhere else. But he’s going ahead anyway ... so I’m relying on you, Khalad, to give me some idea of what we should be expecting; when it might happen and where.’
‘Why should I help you, Flynn ... you’re just another decadent Westerner ... you’ve promised us all sorts of things in the past, but you’ve never delivered ... we have nothing to gain from co-operating with you.’
His eyes are fixed on my left cheek. He won’t be persuaded by rational arguments.
‘We could offer you a comfortable way of life anywhere in the world,’ I tell him.
But something has stiffened his resolve. Maybe it was Carla. She might have tried to titillate or debauch him, if not personally, then maybe with a professional from the sex industry. ‘Come on Khalad, you Arab stud ... I know you like my breasts ... and I’ve got something very special I’d like to share with you.’
‘I’m not going to give you anything, Rudi.’
‘Ah – ’
‘So you’re wasting your time.’
Would that still be the case if we had met the previous evening in Shacklewell Lane? Is Carla Hirsch the problem? She can be intolerable, and I’d like to apologise unreservedly for anything she might have said or done to Khalad.
‘I had a revelation here last night,’ he says.
‘Really?’
‘Yes – and I concluded that I could achieve something I might be proud of by doing or saying nothing at all. You see, I’m not a traitor to my own people, Rudi. I’m not going to betray my Muslim community in the same way you sold me to your authorities.’
‘It’s a far far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before,’ the heroic guy said on the gallows just before they killed him..
‘If you don’t give me a few crumbs,’ I tell him, there are a couple of guys upstairs who will work on you until you deliver ... I don’t want that to happen. I think you’re an all right guy basically. I respect your standing up for what you believe in. But can you sit there and tell me that you’re prepared to let hundreds of thousands of people – maybe even millions – suffer ... and for what?’
It’s the best performance I’ve ever attempted in my life. I’ve steeped myself in the role like a Stanislavsky method actor, and I’ve given it all I’ve got. I’m half expecting Khalad to applaud. There’s a slight baffled smile twinkling around in his eyes. He’s hesitating. But then he gets up and pushes out his right hand, which I take reluctantly.
‘I don’t regret meeting you, Rudi ... you have a few good points,’ he concedes. ‘But I have nothing else to say ... so goodbye ... and take care.’
Chapter 24
I don’t want to leave him. But Khalad has already withdrawn his hand and turned to face a brick wall. I’m not welcome any more in the cell, so I turn towards the door. Earl is waiting with Carla when my escort takes me back. I shake my head and shrug.
‘He wouldn’t tell you anything?’ Carla asks.
‘No – ’
‘Very well – there’s only one other option.’
‘Can I leave?’
‘Not yet ... we may need you to speak with him again.’
She makes a call and we’re joined soon afterwards by an Army officer and two placid looking guys in blue shirts and ties. They could be undertakers or pen-pushers in a redundant office.
‘This is Brigadier Featherstone,’ Carla says, ‘and these two gentlemen are Brian and Calum from the Police Service of Northern Ireland.’
The Brigadier gives me one of those under-stated English handshakes with an intense nod. I’m thinking of a confused academic I once knew at Berkeley, who used to move his head up and down earnestly and say ‘yes’ to everything. Brian and Calum however are like a pair of clockwork automatons. They say ‘aye’ in unison, followed by ‘grand’ when we are introduced. They are scary in their ordinariness. I can see each of them sitting down to tea in the evening with almost identical wives, although I can’t imagine either of them fathering children.
‘Very well,’ the Brigadier says when we’ve finished with the social preliminaries. ‘Brian and Calum have a lot of experience with terrorists, although there is of course a difference between the Irish and Islamic variety.’
I like the English, but I start to seethe when they denigrate the Irish and a part of me wants to kick this cod academic soldier.
‘My understanding, Miss Hirsch, is that your main interest in this chap Khalad is to try and unravel what exactly it is he and his chums might be up to, or are planning, here?’
‘That’s it,’ Carla says encouragingly. ‘He may not be directly involved in anything, but we have reason to believe his associates are planning something along the lines of our Twin Towers disaster here in the UK ... but with a nuclear element. We think Khalad is aware of this, and we’re hoping you gentlemen may be able to persuade him to give us precise information ... or frankly, anything at all.’
She’s doing her best to give the impression she appreciates Brian and Calum’s professional expertise as interrogators. They both respond with sage nods and Brian rolls his hands around each other before responding. ‘We’ll do everything we can of course, ma’am ... although there are never any guarantees in these matters, I’m afraid.’
I’d be worried if I was an Irish Republican and these guys got me in a chair or on a table. They’ve each got a fair amount of surplus fat around their waists. Their hair has almost completely disappeared and I can sense an antipathy to Fenians. So where does that leave a helpless Arab like Khalad. ‘Ah well so, son ... ye’s want to disrupt our way of life – is that it? Aye ... but ye can’t really do that see. It’s not appropriate ... and if ye don’t co-operate, Ahmed, we’ll give ye a heart attack ... can ye understand that now?’
I notice shiny patches on the back seats of their trousers as they leave and the Brigadier has a persistent twitch on his left shoulder.
‘I’ve got to make a few calls,’ Carla tells us. But I thought you might like a drink, Rudi, and we can have sandwiches later.’
Earl’s grinning as she leaves. He’s got whisky and red wine in a Fresh and Wild carrier bag, along with a corkscrew and plastic cups.