Tall Order Spider

by Stephen Leather

  ‘I’m on it,’ said Hughes.

  ‘Also, we need to work backwards now from the entrance to see how he got to the stadium and if he arrived with anyone.’

  As the inspector began tapping on his keyboard, Shepherd went over to Sergeant Hurry. The sergeant had taken off his tunic and rolled up his shirtsleeves and was on his third cup of coffee. Shepherd pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. ‘Right, George, it’s time to widen the net,’ said Shepherd. ‘Now that we know where Naveed came in, we don’t need the full team on the stadium CCTV. We’ve got feeds from most of the council cameras around his house in Ealing. We need to start looking at who he met during the weeks running up to the attack. I don’t yet know if he had a regular mosque so until we get that intel let’s look at the four closest to his home. And the usual suspects for jihadist activity. Finsbury Park. Southall. Al Manaar.’

  ‘That’s a tall order,’ said Hurry.

  ‘We’ve no choice unfortunately,’ said Shepherd. ‘This guy was below the radar. No one saw him coming.’

  ‘And what exactly are we looking for?’

  ‘Basically anyone he meets. I need everyone to be up to date on the jihadist watch lists of MI5 and the Met, but it could well be that his contacts here are also under the radar. So let’s start collating a list of everyone he is seen with. We’re going to be getting feeds from Tube stations close to his house.’

  The sergeant grimaced. ‘North Ealing, Ealing Broadway and South Ealing. You’re not asking much, Dan.’

  ‘I know what I’m asking, believe me. But at the moment it’s our only hope of running down his support network. MI5 have absolutely nothing on him and neither did SO15. But clearly a guy doesn’t arrive here from Syria and put together a sophisticated terrorist operation like this without help. And if whoever planned this is still around, we could be facing more attacks.’

  Hurry nodded. ‘I hear you.’

  Chapter 20

  Ten Years Ago, New York

  M cNee took the gag from Rashid Makhdoom’s mouth.

  ‘I’m a British citizen, you can’t do this to me,’ said Makhdoom. ‘You have to call the British embassy now.’

  They had tied him to a chair in the middle of the warehouse, after stripping him of all his clothing. In Yokely’s experience, the less clothing a person had on the more cooperative they were.

  ‘I don’t have to do a darn thing, sonny,’ said Yokely. ‘And so far as I know, you’re a Pakistani who happens to have a British passport, so you watch your tone with me. I have some very good friends in ISI and I’m sure they would love to get their hands on you.’

  The Inter-Services Intelligence was Pakistan’s main intelligence agency and they were especially skilled at interrogation techniques that were banned in most civilised parts of the world. Yokely had sat in on several ISI interrogations in the wake of 9/11 and even he had been shocked by what he had seen.

  ‘I’m fucking British.’

  ‘You were born in Pakistan.’

  ‘My parents left when I was two.’

  ‘You’ve no idea how little that means to me right now,’ said Yokely.

  ‘I demand to speak to my embassy!’ the man shouted.

  Yokely smiled. ‘What you’re going to do is to shut the fuck up or I’ll get my associate there to do it for you.’

  ‘You can’t treat us like this!’ the man shouted.

  Yokely nodded at McNee. McNee walked over to Makhdoom and backhanded him so hard that blood spurted from his nose. The man screamed in pain but then clamped his lips together and stared sullenly at Yokely.

  Yokely went back to his briefcase and took out a portable biometric scanner that he connected to his iPhone. He took it over to the bound man and waited while McNee untied his right hand. He grabbed the man’s index finger and pressed it against the reader, then tied the right hand and repeated the process with the left. Yokely then used the camera to snap a photo of the man’s irises, left and right.

  The app on the iPhone used the Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, which was mainly data on American citizens, but non-citizens who had committed offences were also put into the system. Yokely waited for the results to come through as McNee went over to Ibrahimi and began stripping off his clothes. He used plastic ties to bind the man’s wrists behind his back, gagged him, then placed him on a chair facing Makhdoom. The two men looked at each other fearfully.

  ‘Do not be afraid, brother,’ said Makhdoom. ‘Allah will protect us.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said McNee.

  Yokely’s phone buzzed. There was no record of Rashid Makhdoom on MORIS.

  Yokely went back to the briefcase, put the phone away and took out a Glock semi-automatic, and walked over to stand in front of Makhdoom.

  ‘Who gave you the Stinger?’ he asked.

  ‘You can’t shoot me, this is America, you—’

  Yokely shot Makhdoom in the heart. One shot. One loud bang. Blood blossomed on his shirt and his eyes widened, as much from surprise as pain. His mouth worked soundlessly but Yokely was already walking back to the briefcase. He put the gun back in the case, then walked over to stand in front of Omar Ibrahimi. He took the gag from Ibrahimi’s mouth.

  ‘You killed him!’ gasped Ibrahimi, staring at the body across from him. Makhdoom had slumped in his chair. His chest had stopped moving but the red stain was still spreading across his shirt.

  ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ said Yokely. ‘I guess his British passport didn’t offer as much protection as he thought it would.’ He pulled Ibrahimi’s passport from his pocket. ‘I wonder how being French will help you? Qui vous a aidé à abattre l’avion ?’ Yokely looked over at McNee. ‘See that, Gerry? Did you know I spoke French?’

  ‘Very impressive,’ said McNee.

  Yokely grinned at Ibrahimi. ‘So, I’ll ask you the same question that I asked your friend there. Who gave you the Stinger missile?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ibrahimi, his voice shaking.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Yokely.

  ‘Hamid told us what to do,’ said Ibrahimi. His face was bathed in sweat and he kept looking over at the body in the chair.

  ‘Hamid bin Faisal?’ He gestured over at the body on the floor. ‘The dead guy? That’s convenient.’

  ‘He told us what to do.’

  ‘And how did you meet Hamid?’

  Ibrahimi frowned as if he didn’t understand the question.

  ‘Craigslist? Jihadists-R-Us? How did you meet him? You flew in separately. Did you meet him outside the United States?’

  Ibrahimi shook his head. ‘No. I met him here.’

  ‘So you just flew into the US of A on the off chance you’d be able to commit a terrorist atrocity?’ Yokely shook his head. ‘You flew in to shoot down that plane, Omar. That’s a fact. So someone must have trained you. Told you what to do. Where to go.’

  Ibrahimi nodded quickly. ‘Yes. Yes. That was Hamid.’

  ‘So you knew Hamid outside of the United States?’

  ‘No.’

  Yokely sighed in exasperation. ‘Then someone else must have briefed you before you came. Who was that, Omar? Who wound you up and set you off?’

  Ibrahimi looked down at the floor. Yokely looked over at McNee. ‘What do you think, Gerry? Is he deliberately being evasive or is he just stupid?’

  ‘A bit of both, probably,’ said McNee.

  ‘Does Omar look Algerian to you?’ Yokely asked him.

  ‘I’m French,’ said Ibrahimi.

  ‘You have a French passport, that’s true. But the passport says you were born in Algeria. And to be honest, Omar, I don’t think that you were. You look like an Iraqi to me.’

  ‘That’s what I’d have said,’ said McNee. ‘Iraqi.’

  ‘I am French!’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me I have to phone the French embassy are you?’ said Yokely.

  ‘Where are the police?’ asked Ibrahimi. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘W
ell, the answer to the first question is that they are probably in a donut shop somewhere stocking up. As far as the second question goes, well, I’m the man with a gun who is asking you questions and really that’s all you need to know.’ He held his hands open and looked down at them. ‘Ah yes, the gun.’ He walked slowly over to the briefcase, his tasselled loafers crunching softly on the concrete floor. He picked up the silenced Glock and pointed it lazily at Ibrahimi’s chest.

  ‘Don’t, please …’ begged the man.

  Yokely nodded at McNee. ‘Run his prints through MORIS, will you?’

  ‘Sure,’ said McNee. He used the phone and reader to scan the index fingers of the man and then let the app do the work.

  ‘So, Omar, assuming that is your real name, who taught you to fire the Stinger?’

  The man frowned, feigning ignorance, but his duplicity was transparent. ‘What? Me?’ He shook his head. ‘No, sir, it wasn’t me.’

  ‘You fired the Stinger. You shot the plane down.’

  Ibrahimi shuddered. His face was bathed in sweat. ‘It was Hamid.’

  ‘It was you.’

  ‘No, it was Hamid. It was Hamid. I swear on the words of Mohammed and all that is holy.’

  ‘It was you, Omar. I’ve seen the video. You’re wearing a scarf across your face but it’s you.’ He smiled tightly. ‘And now you lied using the prophet’s name, which means no heaven and no virgins for you. You need to tell me the truth, Omar, and you need to tell me the truth now. Who trained you? Who taught you to fire the Stinger? The Stinger is a complex piece of kit; you have to know what you are doing. Who trained you?’

  Ibrahimi’s lower lip was trembling.

  Yokely pointed his gun at the man’s chest and his finger tightened on the trigger. Yokely’s phone rang. He smiled and lowered the gun. ‘Saved by the bell,’ he said. He pulled out his phone and looked at the screen. Karl Traynor. ‘Yes, Karl.’

  ‘Lots of shorting of American aviation stocks,’ said Traynor. ‘It started four days ago and ended six hours before the plane went down.’

  ‘More than normal?’

  ‘A thousand times more than normal. And most of it seems to have gone through Dubai at some point.’

  ‘Do you have any names?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Traynor. ‘I’m working on it but they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to cover their tracks. Purchases were made through dozens of companies and those companies are themselves owned by other companies, many of them sells. But I’ve been following the money and there are two banks in Dubai that funnelled a lot of it.’

  Yokely went over to the briefcase, put down his gun and took out the three passports. He gave the names and passport details to Traynor. ‘Any financial transactions involving these three, especially over the past few weeks, would be much appreciated, Karl.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ said Traynor.

  The call ended and Yokely put the passports and his phone back in the briefcase. He picked up the gun and smiled over at Ibrahimi. ‘Now, where were we?’ he mused.

  ‘You can’t shoot me,’ said Ibrahimi. He swallowed nervously. ‘Just hand me over to the FBI or the police. I will plead guilty. I am not ashamed of what I did.’

  Yokely frowned. ‘You murdered men, women and children in one of the most inhumane ways possible,’ he said. ‘How can you not feel shame?’

  Ibrahimi jutted his chin up. ‘We are at war,’ he said.

  ‘With who?’ asked Yokely. ‘With businessmen, holidaymakers, children with their mothers?’

  ‘With America!’

  ‘Then attack America,’ said Yokely. ‘Put on a uniform and pick up a gun and fight the good fight. But shooting down an airliner isn’t war, it’s terrorism.’ He stood in front of Ibrahimi. ‘Is the man who planned this from Dubai? Is he there now?’

  ‘I have never been to Dubai.’

  ‘That’s not the question I asked you.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone from Dubai.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ said Yokely. ‘Hamid bin Faisal lives there. He has a Saudi passport but lives in the United Arab Emirates.’

  ‘Okay, so I know Faisal.’

  ‘How long have you known him for?’

  ‘Since I came to America. I told you. Yes, okay, he is from Dubai but I have never been to Dubai.’

  Yokely smiled. ‘So who introduced you to him?’

  Ibrahimi frowned and said nothing.

  Yokely pointed the Glock at Ibrahimi’s chest. ‘You’re not helping me, Omar, and if you’re not helping me then you’re wasting my time. Who was running you, Omar? Who gave you the Stinger? Who organised this?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ shouted the man.

  Yokely sighed, then shot Ibrahimi in the chest. Twice.

  The iPhone beeped and McNee looked at the screen. ‘He’s not on MORIS.’

  Yokely unscrewed the silencer from the barrel of the Glock. ‘No, they were all trained overseas, probably separately, then brought together for this operation. I don’t think they even knew each other before they came to the States. Someone put them together, someone arranged the whole thing.’

  ‘Any thoughts?’

  Yokely shrugged. ‘The key is the launcher. Whoever put this cell together supplied the Stinger. If we follow the Stinger, we’ll find him.’

  There was a quick knock on the door and Yokely went over and opened it. Leclerc and Martin were there, a bound and gagged Asian in between them. Yokely waved McNee over.

  ‘Gentlemen, meet Shabir Rauf.’ Leclerc held up a holdall. ‘He was waiting for them at the motel. Some interesting stuff you might want to take a look at.’

  Yokely took the holdall. ‘Gerry, make Mr Rauf comfortable, will you?’

  McNee took Rauf inside the warehouse while Yokely went outside with Leclerc and Martin. ‘How did it go?’ he asked.

  ‘Smooth,’ said Leclerc. ‘Dean here was a great help.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Yokely. He patted Martin on the shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I can do more,’ said Martin earnestly. ‘I was born for this.’

  ‘I’m sure you were, but this operation is … Well, let’s just say it’s sensitive.’

  ‘I’ve shown I can be trusted.’

  ‘Yes, you have. But this isn’t about trust. We’re geared up for moving quickly, you’re not. You’ve been a great help, but your work is done. For the moment anyway.’

  Martin opened his mouth to argue but he could see from the look on Yokely’s face that there would be no point. ‘Okay,’ he said.

  ‘Peter here will drop you back at the mall. And remember—’

  ‘It never happened?’ Martin finished for him. ‘Sure. I was never here. Neither were you.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Yokely, patting him on the shoulder again.

  Leclerc and Martin walked over to the SUV as Yokely went back into the warehouse. McNee had stripped Rauf and tied him to a chair. They ran his fingerprints through the MORIS system, then Yokely unzipped the holdall that Leclerc had given him. There was a British passport in the name of Shabir Rauf, along with a dozen tickets flying out of Miami and Boston in the names of Rauf, Makhdoom and Ibrahimi, all on different airlines and to different cities in Europe. There were half a dozen throwaway mobile phones and two Glocks. Yokely put down the weapons and went over to Rauf. Rauf was eyeing the dead jihadists fearfully.

  ‘They’re all dead, Shabir. All three of your co-conspirators. I shot two of them; one of them was killed at the scene. So you are the last man standing.’ He smiled. ‘For the moment.’

  Rauf started to speak but the gag muffled everything.

  McNee went over and untied it.

  ‘I was just holding the tickets, I didn’t know what they were going to do, I swear,’ he said.

  ‘You swear on the words of Mohammed, the prophet?’

  Rauf nodded frantically. ‘Yes, I do.’

  Yokely looked over at McNee and shook his head sadly. ‘I can’t get over the fact that they can lie so easily,’ he s
aid. ‘Could you lie on the Bible?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Me neither.’ Yokely looked at Rauf. ‘That’s the difference between our religions, isn’t it? When a Christian swears on the Bible, it means something. That’s why we use Bibles in courts of law. But you …’ Yokely shrugged. ‘The Koran means nothing to you. You just use it for your own ends.’

  ‘I am a good Muslim!’ shouted Rauf.

  ‘But that’s not true, otherwise you wouldn’t have sworn a lie on the name of the Prophet. Now who gave you the Stinger?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who trained you?’

  ‘I was in Afghanistan. Two years ago.’

  ‘To be trained by al-Qaeda?’

  Rauf nodded.

  ‘Is that where you met Rashid and Omar?’

  ‘No, we met for the first time in America.’

  ‘Who put you together? Who arranged everything?’

  Rauf took a deep breath. ‘If I tell you, will you let me go?’

  ‘If you don’t tell me, I will kill you the way I killed your friends, that much I can tell you.’

  ‘Who are you? FBI? CIA? Why aren’t you in uniforms?’

  ‘I’m a man with a gun who has questions that you need to answer, that’s all you need to know.’

  Rauf nodded at the bodies in the chairs. ‘You killed them?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Rauf nodded. ‘I think you killed them.’

  ‘Then tell me what you know. Tell me who was running you. Who was pulling your strings?’

  ‘I need you to swear that if I tell you, you will not kill me the way you killed my friends.’

  ‘I swear,’ said Yokely.

  ‘On the Bible,’ said Rauf. ‘I want you to swear on the Bible that you will not kill me.’

  Yokely took a deep breath. ‘Fine,’ he said eventually. ‘I swear, on the Bible, that I will not kill you if you give me the information I want. Now, who told you what to do? Who organised this?’