TARGET BRITAIN: a political thriller

by Owen Bennett-Jones

  At last he could move. He stretched his legs and felt his flesh tingle as the blood rushed back towards his feet. He was afraid his wounds would start to fester and opening one of the water bottles, cleaned the lacerations in his skin.

  Taking care not to knock the side of the vehicle he peeled off his soaking clothes hanging them on the hooped rails that held up the canvas at the back one of the vehicles. The only dry thing he could find to wear was the keffiyeh he’d used to tie up the bundle of food. He wrapped it round his waist above which there were lines of dried blood from the cuts made by the barbed wire.

  He opened one of the Land Rover doors and sat in the front seat. The coarse, dry material felt good on his skin and he put his hands on the wheel as if he were driving. It was to be his home for two weeks, maybe more if the ports did stop working. He saw there were three front seats – like a bench - and he tried stretching out to see if he would be able to sleep there.

  There were more noises now and Jaz returned to a sitting position. He heard metallic clangs ring through the container. And then the whole thing jerked as the truck reversed in the container trailer and docked. Within minutes Jaz felt a rolling motion as the truck left the park and then a smoother sensation as it moved onto the tarmac road.

  Jaz looked at the container doors to see if there was any light. The major had been unable to find out if containers were airtight and given the total darkness, Jaz had wondered whether he would have a finite amount of oxygen. Moving to the back of the Land Rover he looked once more in the rucksack and, this time, found a drill.

  It only took him 15 minutes to make a small hole in the top corner of the container. It appeared as a bright speck in the darkness and Jaz put his mouth to it trying to breathe in. His lips almost stuck to the cold metal and he reckoned he’d need something bigger. He drilled again until the hole let in not only more air but also a bit of light. Satisfied, he decided to reduce the chance of detection by waiting until he was on board the ship before repeating the exercise in the diametrically opposed bottom corner so as to create an airflow.

  The truck was slowing now and Jaz put his eye to the opening.

  He could see sand bags and soldiers manning a checkpoint.

  “Where to?” one of them said.

  Jaz could not see the driver but he did hear him.

  “Tilbury.”

  “We’ve had a few of you lot already.”

  “That’s it.”

  “What’s the rush? Just think what London will be like now. Bloody chaos.”

  “The boss wants everything moving before the whole system grinds to a halt.”

  The soldier went out of view and Jaz could hear him as he tried the bolt securing the container doors.

  “Careful!” the driver said, “It’s sealed for Customs.”

  “I know.”

  The truck’s engine fired up again. Jaz presumed the soldier had waved the driver on.

  Looking out of his hole he saw sand bags at the roadblock and then, as they picked up speed, a whole convoy of army vehicles heading in the opposite direction.

  My search party, he thought, as he slumped down against the side of the Land Rover. They had the whole bloody army on the move. And he was heading in the opposite direction.

  Jaz delved back into the rucksack and took out the mobile phone. There was just one task left now. The major had said Jaz would need to tell them which container port he was leaving from. They’d figured it would most likely be Felixstowe, Southampton Milford Haven or Tilbury.

  He switched on the phone and, unable to find a signal, put the aerial against the small hole. He keyed in the letter ‘T’ and sent it as an SMS to Ravi. Then he switched the phone off and took its battery out.

  He was a bit warmer now and put the red and white chequered keffiyeh around his neck. Otherwise naked he stood in the back of the Land Rover with his hands holding onto the metal bars that stretched over the back of the vehicle. As he hurtled down the M6 the low winter sun shone through the hole he had made briefly illuminating part of his bloody chest. He let his mind wander back to Baluchistan. He thought of the sheikh and the colonel. He thought of the home in which he had been brought up. And he thought of Mahmud.

  *****

  Monty stood by the window overlooking the Thames flicking through the MP3s on his iPod. He selected Fauré’s Requiem and plugged the machine into a device that carried the sound to four speakers, one at each corner of the room. Then remembering the power cuts he docked it into a portable speaker which still had some charge in the batteries. The room filled with the soft orchestral music, tinnier-sounding than he would have liked, and as the sound of the choir swelled up he remembered Rosie and turned the sound down.

  The hot water tanks had gone lukewarm but realising it would only get colder in the hours ahead Natasha had showered and with her hair still wet put on Monty’s dressing gown and made her way to the fire. The room was lit by candlelight and her cheeks flushed with the heat of the flickering flames. She felt hands on her hair and then fingers lightly touching her scalp.

  “All seems fine,” Giles said. “I’ll just put a dressing on your forehead. Rather like Harry Potter isn’t it.”

  “So I’m told.”

  He opened the brass catch of his brown Gladstone bag and delving down with his head almost inside produced white sterile pads, surgical tape and some scissors.

  “And that’s rather Dr Who.”

  “Stay still.”

  Having dabbed the wound to clean it, he put the dressing on. “Don’t worry,” he said, “It shouldn’t scar too much. Your teeth marks will probably leave a more lasting impression on Monty.”

  Monty, his arm properly bandaged, had poured two glasses of red wine. “Great, Giles. Good of you to come.”

  Giles looked at them both. “You’ll have things to be getting on with. Good to see you Monty. Any time.”

  He made for the door but Natasha stood up and reached it first and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, I really appreciate it.”

  He took a last look at the dressing on her forehead. “Very neat if I say so myself,” he said waving as he closed the door behind him.

  Natasha walked back into the room and took a glass of wine from Monty’s outstretched hand.

  “How the other half live,” she said, her eyes wide open and a warm smile on her face. There was a noise to their left and both turned to see Tilly enter the room.

  “Fast asleep,” Tilly said coming in and heading for a chair. But then she looked at them and suddenly changed direction. “Gosh, is that the time? You know I was meant to be having tea with Aunt Ethel wasn’t I. I’d better be going.” She looked at her watch. “How about I come back at six. That’s two hours.” She had put on a coat and left the flat without another word.

  They both laughed. Monty had moved to his desk and was logging on to his laptop.

  “Does that still work?”

  “Until the batteries run out,” he said. “But the internet’s a bit on and off. Here we are…” He looked at the time at the top of the story and then his watch. “This is from a few hours ago. Still on the run. Last seen heading into mid Wales.”

  “They’ll find him.”

  “Of course they will. The SAS are out there. It’s not far from their stomping ground in fact. Where they do all their training.”

  He kept hitting the keys gleaning more information.

  “Look at this. They’re throwing everything at him: roadblocks, infrared search helicopters, dogs, the lot. It might take a day or two but he doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “I guess he’ll run out of food at some point,” she said.

  Monty stood up and moving away from the desk went towards the fire and sat in the deep blue sofa. He gestured to Natasha and she sat beside him.

  “Natasha ...”

  “Don’t.”

  “I haven’t said anything yet.”

  She twisted round and rested her body against him. He leant across to kiss her but she
ducked out of his way.

  “I can’t Monty. I can’t do flings. It’s too complicated. I’ll be back in Peshawar soon enough and then what? It just doesn’t work.”

  He sat back in the chair letting out a sigh. As he did so, she followed his movement so that she was lying against him. She put her head on his stomach and held him tightly. “Besides you don’t know how good life is in a house without any sport on TV.”

  He laughed gently, his chest moving up and down and suddenly Natasha was on her feet.

  “Did you hear that? Rosie’s waking up.”

  *****

  As the truck came to a stop Jaz thought they’d reached another checkpoint. But when the engine was switched off he wondered if in fact there were at their destination. He went to the peephole and saw some massive, brightly coloured steel cranes reaching hundreds of feet into the sky. Behind them were ships with containers stacked so high they looked ready to topple over into the Thames. The machinery and heavy vehicles working in the port created a constant rumble of machinery on top of which there were seagulls shrieking in the air. The hole was too small for Jaz to see what was happening close to the truck but he could still make out the conversation happening just a few feet away from him.

  “Hallo mate. You still operating?”

  “Just about. Where you come from?”

  “Midlands. North of Birmingham.”

  “Yeah. And what’s it like?”

  “Amazing. Checkpoints all over the place. Especially on the M25. Roads are clear though.”

  “Well you’re bang on time.” To avoid congestion at the port’s entrance, the container trucks approaching Tilbury each had a Vehicle Booking System time slot allocated to them. The time Jaz’s truck had lost at the checkpoints, it had made up on the empty roads.

  “We aim to please.”

  “Terrible bloody thing isn’t it. The whole country’s down.”

  “I couldn’t get anything on the radio. Have they caught the bastards yet?”

  “Nah. I‘ve got a telly in here. At least they haven’t said they have.”

  “Telly working then?”

  “Well we’ve our own generators here. Yeah. There’s some news on. Limited like. But something.”

  “Well let’s hope they find the bastards and tie their testicles to a bloody generator.”

  “With you there mate. In fact I’d be happy to switch it on. Anyway what you got on board?”

  “Land Rovers.”

  There was a delay and Jaz presumed that the driver was looking for his paperwork.

  “Here’s my ID. Number plate is BU 02 CZL. There you go.”

  “Container number?”

  “Can’t you see it?”

  There was another pause and Jaz heard the man’s footsteps as he walked around the vehicle. Then he stopped, presumably to make a note of it.

  He looked through the peephole but could not see him. Instead he saw one of the cranes moving. Good news. A ship was being loaded.

  “Yeah all looks good. Here’s your swipe card. See you later.”

  “Cheers mate.”

  The engine started again and Jaz stumbled as the truck moved off. He had just one more task to complete: to tell Ravi that he was on his way back home. He was worried that, once on board, his mobile might not work as the chances were that his container would be surrounded by others, blocking his signal. Ravi had found something saying that the spaces at the top of the container stacks were reserved for ones with flammable goods that could, if the need arose, be dumped overboard. A container with a car inside was more than likely going to be stacked at the bottom or in the middle. But he did not want to send a message until he was sure he was leaving. He switched on the mobile and by the time it had boot up the truck had stopped again. The driver leant out and waved his swipe card over a reader that was on a post at the same level as the truck driver’s window. A few moments later the registration number appeared on a digital display high above a grilled metal security gate and taking his cue the driver started the engine and drove forwards slowly. As he did so the gates opened automatically.

  By the time the truck came to a halt there was someone talking again and this time Jaz could see him. It was a customs officer with a handheld data pad into which he was punching in the truck registration plate.

  “ID.”

  The driver handed something over and again the customs man punched in some details. He set off looking around the truck and having completed a full circuit pausing to record the number on the plastic tag. Then he moved back towards his office saying over his shoulder: “I’ll just check it against the manifest.”

  Jaz felt a slight rocking movement as the driver climbed out of his cab, slamming the door. And for the first time he saw the man who had transported him from Birmingham to Tilbury: he was balding, with a beer belly and a blue tattoo on the back of his hand which Jaz couldn’t make out. He stretched his limbs as he followed the customs officer to the building by the parking bay. The office had floor-to-ceiling windows and Jaz saw the driver leaning against a counter handing over some documents. One of the men behind the counter entered something into his desktop and then, reaching over to his right, waited for a document with perforated edges to come out of a printer. He handed it back to the driver who handed over his swipe card. The officer updated the card, handed it back and then the two men walked out together, heading for the truck.

  Jaz wondered whether the customs officials were taking extra precautions. If they opened the container there was nothing he could do. But he did sit down on the floor of the container so that there was no chance he would give himself away by slipping or dropping something that could make a noise.

  The men were just a few inches away from him now on the other side of the container’s metal rear door.

  “Visual checks today. Guess why.”

  “I’m just down from Birmingham. It’s like the Germans won the bloody war.”

  As the driver spoke, the customs officer looked at the paperwork and compared it to the documents attached to the container. He looked up higher at the container’s unique identification number and checked that against the documentation as well. He tugged on the container’s seal and then turned back the driver.

  “They’ll catch them in the end. They always do with something this big. Like the Brighton bombing.”

  “So long as they don’t get out of the country I guess.”

  ‘No chance. Everyone’s on full alert. They’ll get them.”

  The driver headed back to his van and the customs officer, his head hunched down, moved back to the office.

  As the truck started moving again Jaz stood holding the mobile in his hand. He could feel the sweat making its shiny plastic surface slippery. Nearly there. Just one text to go. He looked out of the peephole and saw that they were approaching the cranes. The truck had to park in one of the bays - the driver had been given the quay and bay number - and wait for one of the vast cranes to lift the container off the back the truck and load it on a ship.

  Since the port had less traffic than normal it all happened fast and within minutes Jaz felt a swaying sensation as the container was raised into the sky.

  He stuck the aerial of his phone against the peephole. The message was already written: “Boarding now.” He pressed send.

  *****

  Having been asked by the sheikh to monitor the UK news Ravi had been sleeping on a mattress in the eyrie and was having meals brought up to him by one of the sheikh’s servants. At first he had been running downstairs with printed off media stories every few minutes. The sheikh, reluctant to dent his enthusiasm, but also keen to reduce the flow of often repetitive information told Ravi he would like updates every three hours during the day and the material from overnight ready for him to read in bed before he got up. Ravi split the information in two: articles about the impact on the UK and then articles about the search for Jaz.

  Ping! His mobile phone alert went off and Ravi rubbing his eyes with one han
d reached to the back of the desk and picked it up with the other. The black lettering on the green screen showed the message. “Boarding now.”

  Thrusting back his chair Ravi let out a small cry and clenched his fist as he turned and headed for the door. Then he thought better of it. The sheikh would want details. He looked up the Tilbury Port website to see which ship was about to leave for Karachi. It took only a couple of minutes to open the page of each ship listed there until he came to the RHOSSYN. There, next to a photograph of the ship, were all the details Ravi needed:

  Vessel’s details.

  Ship Type: Cargo

  Flag: UK

  Call Sign: RHOS

  Last position received: Tilbury

  Destination: Karachi

  Info received: (0d, 2h 12min 6s ago)

  Ravi printed off the page and ran downstairs. As he emerged into the sunlight he could see the sheikh in the gardens and slowed down. He knew from experience that it was a session in which the sheikh would not allow any interruption. At walking pace, Ravi approached him and then stopped, standing just close enough to hear what was being said.

  The sheikh was sitting cross-legged on a lawn with 15 tribesmen, also on the grass, fanned out in front of him. They came from a village three days’ walk away and had arrived in Dera Chamak two days before, requesting an audience with the sheikh. Although he had at first not given them a firm time they had no objection: they were given food and shelter in the fort as they waited for the sheikh to see them. Although the delegation was led by the village head, everyone felt free to speak as the sheikh asked for their news.

  “How is your village?”

  “All well. Last summer was good to us - as you know. The wheat crop was as big as it’s ever been,” said one man.

  “You should come to see us. It’s been many years now.”