by Andy McNab
WILL I GET TO MEET YOU???
'I didn't tell you to ask him that,' said Deveraux quickly. 'Don't write anything more. And that's an order!'
'I need to know,' said Elena quietly as she stared at the screen.
The operations room was completely silent apart from the slight hum of electricity coming from Elena's laptop. They waited.
WE'LL CERTAINLY MEET UP SOMEDAY, GOLA. NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT.
Elena turned to Danny. 'You're right, he is a bastard.'
YOU STILL FEELING STRONG???
Tell him you're OK,' said Deveraux.
Elena's hands went back to the keyboard.
FEELING STRONGER EVERY DAY!!!
THAT'S GREAT. B READY 2 LEAVE THE DAY AFTER OR PASSPORT ARRIVES. INFORMATION WILL COME 2 U SOON. AND GOLA, THIS IS IMPORTANT: U MUST TAKE THE HARD DRIVE FROM UR COMPUTER AND DESTROY IT JUST BEFORE U LEAVE. GOT THAT?????
Deveraux nodded to Elena.
YEAH, NO PROBLEM. I'LL DO IT.
TERRIFIC. GOTTA GO! B IN TOUCH AGAIN SOON, BYE 4 NOW!!!
16
The training had to continue. With just a week to make final preparations there was still a lot to be covered. Both Fergus and Deveraux knew that much would depend on Danny, wherever the mission eventually took place. And Deveraux had made it perfectly clear to Fergus as the days passed that she was still far from satisfied with his grandson's progress.
Danny's tradecraft skills needed to be sharpened, and Fergus had set him a foot surveillance test. His task was to stake out the Oxford city centre bus station, ping Marcie Deveraux and then follow her as she spent the morning in the city.
Before the exercise began, Fergus took Danny to one side. He wasn't gentle with his last-minute instructions. 'Look, you've fucked up more than once, Danny, and losing the car didn't help. I know you can do the job but Deveraux still wants you out. So don't let me down today, and don't let yourself down. Get out there and show Deveraux she's wrong.'
Danny nodded, but he left for the bus station feeling anxious and uncertain.
For the purpose of the exercise, Deveraux was playing the role of Elena. Danny's job was to follow and watch, because if Deveraux stopped and spoke to anyone and then gave the GO signal, it would mean the person she was with was Black Star.
Danny's first task was to ping Deveraux at the bus station. He sat on a bench by the news stand with a copy of the Big Issue in his hands and a pair of earphones in his ears. As always, when on surveillance, he had to appear as natural as possible: he couldn't be seen to be actually looking for someone.
He glanced at the magazine and rocked his head slightly, as if listening to the music coming from his iPod. In reality the machine in his jacket pocket was not even switched on – he had to be completely in tune with the sights and sounds of everything going on around him.
The air brakes of a bus sounded and the doors opened as passengers stepped down from the vehicle. Deveraux wasn't going to make this easy for him, so Danny paid special attention to every black woman he saw. They had done this exercise several times before, and each time Deveraux had changed her appearance as the target. Different clothes, different hairstyle, maybe a hat. And then she would make the follow more difficult by walking slowly, or faster than usual. Sometimes she would stop dead in her tracks and turn round, looking for anything suspicious.
Fergus had told Danny many times that a good ping and pick of the target always led to a good follow. If the ping was messed up, it usually meant that the whole surveillance 'serial' was a series of stumbling cock-ups.
Danny looked over the top of his Big Issue and pinged a tall black woman. She hadn't got off one of the arriving buses but had appeared from a side road. She was dressed in jeans, a nylon bomber jacket and a black baseball cap. Her head was down but Danny had followed Deveraux often enough to know her purposeful walk, however much she attempted to disguise it.
He waited for her to pass from left to right before beginning the follow. As Deveraux crossed the busy road and headed for the town centre, Danny was thirty metres behind her. It was the correct distance: any more than thirty metres and he could easily lose her in the crowd; any closer and she might just as easily realize that she was being followed.
Deveraux kept to the right-hand side of the road, so Danny crossed to the left. It was the best position, allowing a little more distance and giving a better view.
It had started well and Danny remembered to keep his eyes down on Deveraux's feet and the blue Nike trainers she was wearing rather than on the back of her head. That way, if she were to turn back suddenly, they were less likely to make accidental eye contact, which would blow the operation.
Danny knew that he had to remain third party aware too. And in these training exercises the third party included his grandfather, who seemed to have a knack for being in the right place when things went wrong for Danny.
Fergus knew the route Deveraux was taking and Danny was only too aware that his grandfather was being driven to different vantage spots so that he could watch his progress.
Deveraux was walking more slowly. Danny did the same – and checked out what was ahead of him so that if she stopped completely, he would have a reason for doing the same. He was in luck: there was a row of shops immediately ahead. Or was it just luck? His grandfather and Deveraux had devised this operation; they would want to see how he reacted to every change in the situation.
As Deveraux came to a halt at a bus shelter, joining two other people, Danny turned and checked out the kettles and radios in the window of a small electrical goods shop. He had his back to the target now, and she was unsighted, so he quickly moved back a little so that the area around the bus shelter was reflected in the window.
The target had been unsighted to him for two or three seconds, long enough to move away. Cars and trucks were passing, and the window Danny was looking into was smeared and grimy. His view was far from perfect but he could just make out the three figures inside the bus shelter. He reckoned that Deveraux's eyes would be burning into his back, just waiting for him to make the error of turning round to check that she was still there.
But Danny knew better than that, and he also knew that he couldn't stand staring at kettles indefinitely. He reached into a pocket of his bomber jacket and took out his mobile phone. It was switched off, but Danny acted as though he was answering a call as he continued to watch Deveraux's reflection in the grimy window.
She must have been satisfied with what he was doing because after another minute she was foxtrot again. After a few seconds, pretending to end the call, Danny was also on the move.
Soon after, Deveraux made another attempt at tricking him. He watched her take a right turn, and instead of following immediately, he walked past the junction and saw that she was still on the right-hand side of the road, passing a row of houses. He turned back and followed, still on the opposite side to Deveraux. She took another right, and Danny immediately became suspicious. Two right turns meant that Deveraux was heading back in the direction she had come from.
As Danny reached the next junction, he saw Deveraux take a third right. He knew exactly what she was doing. She was looping her track, checking to see whether she was being followed. For all Danny knew, she would be round the next corner, with Fergus sitting in a car nearby waiting for him to fall into the trap.
'You don't fool me, Marcie,' whispered Danny as he walked slowly back to the main road. He slipped into a phone box and went through the motions of pretending to make a call while he kept his eyes on the junction where his target was due to appear.
The phone box was good cover from both the third party and the target. When Deveraux appeared – if she appeared – she would see only a shadowy shape there.
Danny waited and began to grow anxious when Deveraux failed to arrive at the junction. Maybe he'd got it wrong; maybe the whole route was anti-surveillance. But his grandfather had told him many times that surveillance was not an exact science. No one could cover all the options. It was a
question of weighing up those options and then making a decision. Danny was starting to think he had made the wrong decision, but then Deveraux finally appeared at the junction. He'd got it right.
She crossed the road and headed for the city centre: Danny said a 'See you then, mate' into the phone, replaced the receiver and started to follow.
In the main shopping area Deveraux lingered to look in a few windows and then Danny saw her check her watch. She started off again, making for a short-term car park. Suddenly she stopped and began speaking to a man heading in the same direction.
Danny went into a bookshop, picked up the first book he saw and, through the shop window, watched the two of them chatting across the street. The man was young; maybe a student. He was wearing trainers, jeans and a blue, chunky pullover.
They spoke for less than a minute and the young man pointed back towards a road in the precinct. Then, as he moved towards an alleyway into the car park, Deveraux took off her jacket.
That was it – the GO sign. As far as the exercise was concerned, Deveraux had been talking to Black Star.
Danny left the shop and headed towards the alleyway, walking swiftly but not running and drawing unwanted attention to himself.
He reached the alleyway and could see the car park at the end. He moved into the gloom of the building, his eyes scanning the immediate area for a glimpse of the blue pullover. He knew that the man was totally unaware that he had become involved in the operation; Deveraux had deliberately selected some unknown third party to give Danny the practice of following a real target.
The young man had disappeared and Danny looked for EXIT signs. He could only see one; about forty metres away to his half left. He made another decision. There was no time to search for Black Star – he might already be driving out of the car park; he might just be walking straight through. But options had to be weighed and decisions made.
Danny walked along to the exit and arrived just in time to see the young man in the blue pullover driving out of the car park in what remained of a rusting green X-reg Mini Metro. As the vehicle stopped at the main road, Danny kept walking, burning the car's registration number into his memory.
The Metro pulled away and disappeared into the traffic. That was it, the serial was over – there was no way Danny could follow Black Star on foot. He powered up his mobile and called Deveraux. She answered after a single ring.
'I've got a vehicle registration and a description for you.'
'End ex. We'll debrief back at the hotel. Now turn round.'
With the mobile still held to his ear, Danny followed the instruction. Deveraux was standing about twenty metres away next to the dark blue Vectra.
Fergus was sitting in the car's front passenger seat.
As Danny powered down his phone, he saw his grandfather's nod of satisfaction. Danny smiled; he'd done it.
17
The information that Black Star had promised arrived in the form of two e-mails, which revealed that Elena would be leaving the UK just three days later. Three days – hardly any time to make preparations, despite all the planning and hurried training that had already taken place.
New York was the destination: Deveraux's hunch had been correct. But there wasn't the time, or even the inclination, to score points in being proved right. There was too much to be done.
The first e-mail was an e-ticket, a return, economy-class flight from Heathrow to JFK, New York. Black Star had thought of everything; a one-way flight would have aroused the suspicions of US immigration officials. But they all knew that the bomb master had no intention of Elena being on board when the return aircraft left the ground.
The second e-mail was a booking confirmation for a two-week stay at New York's Hotel Pennsylvania. Perfect again. The hotel was a popular and affordable destination. Black Star then sent a further e-mail instructing Elena to equip herself with a Lonely Planet guide and a city map and to prepare a cover story.
A girl of seventeen travelling alone was unusual but by no means unheard of. And Elena had watched Friends and Sex and the City for years, so she almost felt as though she knew the city well enough to get around without a map. All she had to do was make sure she was confident and believable with her cover story. It had to be based on something that was possible, a genuine reason for being in New York.
Deveraux ordered high-speed covert checks to attempt to identify whoever had requested and paid for the airline ticket and hotel reservation. There was a bewildering trail of spoofed IDs through Indonesia into North Africa. Finally it was discovered that both the airline ticket and the hotel room had been ordered and confirmed – but never paid for. A hacker of Black Star's capabilities had no need to pay for anything.
Meanwhile, in a series of meetings with Dudley and high-ranking government officials, Deveraux finalized her immediate plans. But not all those plans were revealed to Danny, Elena or Fergus; yet more secrets in an operation already riddled with secrecy. But that wasn't unusual in the Security Service, where most operations were carried out on a need-to-know basis. It made operational security even tighter.
On the day before departure Deveraux held a last meeting in the operations room at the hotel. Time was short, as she still had to go to London for a final briefing with her boss, Dudley.
'Mission' – Deveraux paused to ensure she had everyone's attention – 'to locate and destroy Black Star. Mission – to locate and destroy Black Star.'
Giving the mission statement twice was standard practice; that way everyone understood the exact order. From now on, nothing was more important than the mission, but Fergus knew they were getting only half of the story. No mention had been made of exactly who would be doing the destroying. But Fergus was prepared to wait for that information.
He, Danny and Elena listened in silence as the operational commander ran through the arrangements for the flights and the arrival in New York and then reiterated procedures for making contact and passing on information once they were on the ground.
Fergus was booked onto an earlier flight than Deveraux, Danny and Elena. He didn't argue with the decision. Travelling with a leg injury such as his brought added complications and he would need extra time to board and leave the plane and to travel to his hotel; he had been booked into the Roosevelt Hotel close to Grand Central Station.
Deveraux pointed at Fergus. "The reason you are on an earlier flight is to stand by if any immediate help is required by either Danny or Elena when they get to their hotel. You need to be in position before then.'
Fergus nodded. The earlier flight suited him perfectly: it would allow him precious time to finalize some of his own arrangements. Arrangements Deveraux would never know about as they involved their escape route after the job was done.
Danny had been booked into the Pennsylvania, where Elena was staying, but the two friends had to avoid giving any indication that they knew each other. His role was to relay information from Elena once Black Star re-established contact in New York.
'Our plane is due to land at sixteen forty hours,' said Deveraux to Danny and Elena. 'You will carry out a brush contact in the hotel reception area at exactly nineteen forty. You must both adjust your watches by the arrivals display in baggage reclaim. You should have ample time to clear the airport and check into the hotel. Understood?'
Elena was gazing vacantly through the window towards the garden and the blue, cloudless sky, as she had been for most of the meeting.
'Elena!' said Deveraux sharply.
'Yes, I understand what you want me to do,' said Elena, still looking out at the garden.
Deveraux sighed; there wasn't time for teenage angst. 'The purpose of the contact is for Elena to pass on the location of her chosen DLB and to inform us if Black Star has made initial contact.' She directed her next comment directly at Elena. 'But at no time, Elena, must you prepare anything for Danny while you are inside your hotel room.'