Tall Order: The 15th Spider Shepherd Thriller

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Richard Yokely?’ It was a woman’s voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hold for the Defense Secretary, please.’

  Yokely frowned, wondering why Chris Mullins was calling him, and why he was getting his assistant to place the call. But the man who came on to the line wasn’t Mullins.

  ‘Where the fuck are you?’ snapped the man in a nasal Boston accent. It was Robert Follis, who as far as Yokely was aware was running the Defense Intelligence Agency and not the Defense Department.

  Yokely looked down at the body on the floor and realised that it probably wouldn’t be in his best interests to be precise about his location. ‘London,’ he said. ‘What happened to Chris Mullins?’

  ‘He killed himself yesterday.’ From the man’s tone it was as if he was blaming Yokely for the suicide.

  Yokely felt as if he had been hit in the stomach and his jaw dropped.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Yokely. ‘Did he leave a note?’

  ‘No. But the Press was on his case. They discovered that his wife and boy were on the plane that went down at JFK. They were travelling under assumed names so it took time to come out. You understand what has happened here, Richard? What Mullins ordered, what you have been doing, none of it has the approval of the White House. You’ve been on a revenge mission from day one.’

  Yokely’s head was swimming as the realisation of what had happened hit home. ‘Where does that leave me?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s a very good question, Richard. The words Shit, Creek and Paddle come to mind. You need to stand down with immediate effect, obviously. And any teams you have in place also need to stand down. And you need to get yourself to Los Angeles, ASAP.’

  ‘Not Washington?’

  ‘The President doesn’t want you anywhere near the White House, Richard. I’m sure you can understand why. We’re fixing up a meeting on the West Coast and, believe me, you’ve got some explaining to do.’

  The line went dead. Yokely stared at his cell phone, his mind in turmoil. What the hell had happened?

  Chapter 62

  Present Day, London

  S hepherd spent most of Tuesday checking all the sightings of Lex Harper’s car and drawing up a timeline on a map. By early afternoon it had become clear that Harper had driven up to Manchester, then down to Birmingham and then back down to London, to Acton. From Acton, presumably after he had battered Khuram Zaghba to death, he drove back up north to Birmingham to torture and kill Farooqi. Then on to Bolton to kill the Masood family. It had obviously been one hell of a night.

  From Bolton the car had headed south and entered London on the M1 before vanishing, presumably into a garage or car park.

  The first sightings were on the M1 driving north to Manchester. The timeline suggested that Harper had been collecting something, a weapon perhaps. Or an accomplice. Then the car was parked in a hotel car park at Birmingham Airport. Shepherd had asked Sergeant Hurry to see if they could get a feed from the hotel’s CCTV system but that was proving difficult and Hurry had asked if they wanted the local cops to go around and collect the footage on a hard drive. Shepherd was reluctant to do that as it would have meant having to explain what he wanted to look at and he preferred to keep Lex Harper’s involvement to himself, for a while at least.

  Shepherd and Harper went back a long way. There had been a time, during his SAS days, when Shepherd had been a skilled sniper. For several months he had been assigned Harper, then a young paratrooper, to be his spotter and guardian, the man who watched over him and helped determine wind, distance and accuracy as Shepherd took his shots. Harper’s tough no-nonsense attitude and harsh sense of humour went down well with all the SAS guys, and he and Shepherd formed a good team.

  Harper had all the skills and mental toughness necessary to pass Selection and join the SAS if he’d wanted to, and he and Shepherd had many long conversations during which Shepherd had tried to persuade him to do just that. But Harper never really enjoyed being a soldier. He actually relished combat and was never bothered about taking lives – it was taking orders that he never found easy. They resigned from the army at about the same time. Shepherd quit to join an undercover police unit and Harper just left. Shepherd wasn’t entirely sure where Harper went, or what he was doing, or which side of the law he was on while he was doing it, but eventually Harper reappeared as a member of the Pool, an ad-hoc team of men and women, many former military, who were used to do the jobs that the government didn’t want to be associated with. In recent years Shepherd’s former boss Charlotte Button had run the Pool. She would put together teams as and when needed to carry out all sorts of dirty operations, up to and including contract killings. Shepherd scratched his head. Was it at all possible that the Pool had been behind the deaths of Israr Farooqi, Khuram Zaghba and Imran Masood and his family? Why would the government want suspects in a terrorist case to be murdered rather than brought to trial? But if it wasn’t a Pool operation, why was Lex Harper involved? Did he have a personal reason for wanting Zaghba, Masood and Farooqi dead? That would make sense if perhaps a relative or a friend of Harper’s had been killed in the stadium bombing and Harper wanted revenge and was bent on killing anyone who might have helped Naveed. Harper was the type who would want to take matters into his own hands. Shepherd frowned as he tried to make sense of what he’d discovered. How had Harper known about Farooqi so quickly? Or Masood? Or Zaghba? There was no way that Harper could have known about the three men and their connections to Ali Naveed. MI5 had discovered that Ali Naveed had phoned Farooqi, and they knew that Masood was Naveed’s uncle. That information wasn’t generally known, so someone must have passed it on to Harper. But who? If it was Charlotte Button then it would have been a Pool operation and again that made no sense. There was no advantage to be gained by killing Israr Farooqi instead of arresting and questioning him. The same went for Imran Masood and his family. And what about Khuram Zaghba, the van driver? Zaghba had been murdered only hours after he had been identified as the driver of the van that had delivered Ali Naveed to the football stadium. How could Harper possibly have known that? Shepherd’s mind whirled as he considered all the options.

  It was late evening by the time Shepherd had decided what to do. It took him almost an hour to come up with the right bait: Andrew Millen. Shepherd took a deep breath and composed himself. He took no pleasure in what he was about to do, and he knew that he was putting Andrew Millen’s life on the line in order to prove if his suspicions were correct. Not that Millen was an innocent. Far from it. Born in the UK to Roman Catholic parents, he got into trouble as a teenager experimenting with drugs, which he paid for by stealing cars, and he’d served time for assault. While he was in prison he converted to Islam and after his release he was known to have fought with ISIS in Syria before slipping back into the UK in the winter of 2016. MI5 had him under observation for almost six months but it was clear that he had been schooled in counter-surveillance techniques and the watchers were unable to pin anything on him. The decision had been taken to withdraw the surveillance in the hope that he would be lulled into a false sense of security. In Shepherd’s view the decision had been a mistake, but then no one had asked his opinion.

  He took another deep breath, exhaled slowly and then rang Patsy Ellis’s number. She answered almost immediately and he apologised for calling at such a late hour.

  ‘It’s not a problem, Dan, what do you have for me?’

  ‘I’ve got a lead on Yussuf,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s staying with a jihadist on our watch list. A guy called Andrew Millen. British born but converted to Islam while in prison a few years ago. He changed his name to Mohammed al-Britani by deed poll. He’s on Five’s watch list but is being treated as a low priority. I’ve got CCTV footage of Yussuf and Millen together close to Millen’s house in Harlesden.’

  ‘Are they there now?’

  ‘There’s no camera close to the house but there’s footage of them heading in that directi
on three hours ago.’

  ‘Has this been passed to SO15 yet?’

  ‘It’ll be done in the morning. As I said, we’re not a hundred per cent sure that Yussuf is there. But it’ll need checking out. It was more to let you know that he’s still in the country.’

  ‘Okay, well thanks for keeping me in the loop, Dan. How are things going there?’

  ‘Noses to the grindstone, but we’re making good progress,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Are you still in the office?’

  ‘Just heading home,’ lied Shepherd. In fact he was going to drive towards Harlesden, where he figured he had a long night in front of him.

  Chapter 63

  Present Day, London

  L ex Harper was lying on his bed watching Newsnight when his iPod Touch buzzed and he looked at the screen. It was Charlotte Button calling.

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked as soon as he answered.

  He could tell from her tone that she was under pressure so he gave her a straight answer. ‘My hotel. London.’

  ‘You need to get to Harlesden now. I’ll send you the address and a picture of the target. His name is Andrew Millen but he also uses the name Mohammed al-Britani. He did time for assault when he was in his teens and became a Muslim while he was behind bars. He’s been in Syria with ISIS but isn’t currently under surveillance. The intel we have is that Usman Yussuf is staying with him.’

  ‘What is wrong with Five these days?’ asked Harper. ‘How can someone like Millen not be under a bloody microscope? Or better still, locked up in Belmarsh.’

  ‘Don’t go looking gift horses in the mouth, Alex. The fact that they’re not watching him will give you a clean run, at least until the morning.’

  ‘What happens in the morning?’

  ‘The cops will be picking him up, so you need to get a move on.’

  Harper sat up. ‘I’m on it.’ He ended the call and phoned O’Hara. ‘Are you ready to go?’

  ‘Just got out of the shower.’

  ‘Well get your clothes on sharpish,’ said Harper. ‘We’ve got a rush job.’

  Chapter 64

  Ten Years Ago, Palm Springs, California

  T he President wasn’t happy. It wasn’t the first time that Yokely had been in the man’s presence – it was actually the fourth – but on all the previous occasions he had been part of a group and only there to supply information. This time there was just him, the head of Homeland Security and the new Defense Secretary, Follis, and Yokely was the focus of the President’s unhappiness. It wasn’t a pleasant position to be in.

  The President shook his head as he stared at the floor, his mind in turmoil. ‘How the hell does something like this happen?’

  The question was rhetorical so neither Yokely nor the head of Homeland Security said anything. The Homeland Security chief was Piers Sutherland, his haggard face and almost white hair making him look older than his sixty years. He was wearing a dark blue suit, a dazzling white shirt and a red tie that he’d loosened to give himself more room to breathe. The President was wearing golfing gear, a pale blue short-sleeved shirt, brown and white checked trousers and white golfing shoes. They were sitting in a private room in the members’ area of an exclusive golf club outside Palm Springs, a regular haunt of the President’s whenever he was on the West Coast. Yokely had been ushered in through a rear entrance by two unsmiling Secret Service agents.

  ‘Why did no one tell me what was going on?’ The President glared at Sutherland.

  Sutherland flushed. ‘Mullins said you needed to be kept at a distance, that it had all been cleared with you but that all communication would be through him.’

  ‘And you thought that I would condone the torture and murder of innocent civilians?’

  ‘Hardly innocent, Mr President,’ said Sutherland.

  The President pointed a finger at Sutherland’s face. ‘Women have been murdered for no other reason than they were related to terrorists,’ he said. ‘And it’s going to be laid at my door. At my desk.’

  ‘Christopher didn’t tell me that families would be targeted,’ said Sutherland. ‘He said that Yokely would be working his way up the food chain, and that he wouldn’t be concerned about collateral damage.’

  ‘He’s been executing people all over the world, that’s not collateral damage,’ said the President. ‘And you’re complicit in this.’

  ‘With respect, Mr President, I don’t see that I’m complicit in anything. The Defense Secretary said he was speaking with your voice.’

  The President looked at Yokely. ‘What were your instructions?’

  ‘To kill anyone involved in the downing of the jet and anyone connected or related to them.’

  ‘Women?’

  Yokely nodded.

  ‘Children?’

  ‘He said he wanted to wipe out their genes, Mr President.’

  The President groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Did you follow through on that? Did you kill children?’

  ‘No, Mr President.’

  ‘That’s something, at least. So what is the death toll, exactly?’

  ‘Four in Queens, the cell responsible for shooting down the plane. Four in Sarajevo. Six in Dubai. Four in London. One in Leeds.’

  ‘How many women?’

  ‘Two. One in Dubai, one in London.’

  ‘Nineteen murders,’ said the President. ‘And they can all be laid at my door.’ He rubbed the back of his neck again. ‘This is a nightmare.’ He shook his head at Yokely. ‘You didn’t think to question what you were being asked to do?’

  ‘Things were moving very quickly. A plane had gone down and a lot of people had died. The scenario put before me was that we had three terrorists in custody, along with the weapon and a video of them shooting down the plane. There was no doubt that the men were guilty, and no doubt that they could lead us to the rest of the cell. They weren’t in the system, which meant that we could be more creative in our approach.’

  ‘That’s what Chris said? He said that?’

  ‘His words exactly, Mr President. And at the time, he said he was speaking with your voice. He said we had a limited time frame in which to act, and that we had your authority to do whatever was necessary.’

  ‘And you didn’t think it worth checking any of this with me?’

  Yokely grimaced. He knew that he was going to have to tread carefully because shit tended to flow downhill and he was the lowest-ranking person in the room. ‘Can I speak frankly, Mr President?’

  ‘It’s about time you did.’

  Yokely grimaced again. ‘You and the Defense Secretary had a very special relationship, Mr President.’ He looked over at Follis. ‘The former Defense Secretary, I mean, obviously.’ He looked back at the President. ‘You went to college with him, you played golf with him, your wives are best friends.’ Yokely realised what he’d said and he quickly corrected himself. ‘Were best friends,’ he said. ‘He was in your office twice a day, he had one-to-one time whenever he needed it.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘My point, Mr President, is that the Defense Secretary, the former Defense Secretary, had a direct line to you that no one else comes close to matching.’ He groaned again as he realised that he was still using the present tense. ‘Came close to matching,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t get used to the fact that he’s dead.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said the President.

  ‘There was no way I could second-guess him. If I had called you and you had approved his actions, it would have looked as if I’d been going behind his back. And I don’t think either of you would have forgiven me for that.’

  The President looked over at Sutherland. ‘What about you, Piers? Didn’t you think to keep me in the loop?’

  ‘May I speak as frankly as Richard has just done?’ said Sutherland.

  ‘Just spit it out, Piers,’ snapped the President. ‘I really don’t have time to fuck around.’

  ‘Mr President, I got to where I am by hard bloody work
, by putting in so many hours at my desk that I broke two marriages and produced three kids who wouldn’t care if I dropped dead tomorrow. I’ve got to where I am because of that, not because I’m your friend or because I let you beat me at golf. If it came to a confrontation between Christopher and me I know that my feet wouldn’t touch the ground so when he said that he had spoken to you and that he was handling it, then I took what he said as Gospel. To be fair, that wasn’t the first time that I had been in that position, so no, I didn’t think to keep you in the loop because the Defense Secretary assured me that you were already in it.’

  The President swallowed, and then stood up and started to pace around. ‘I am so screwed,’ he said. ‘No one is going to believe that I didn’t know what was happening. Hell, they’re going to assume that it was all my idea and that Chris was acting on my behalf. And then he goes and kills himself without leaving a note. The fucker could at least have confessed to everything and left me in the clear. But now the conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day. Look at the Clintons and Vince Foster. Half the population thinks they are behind his death.’

  ‘And they might be right,’ said Yokely, sourly. He had never been a fan of Bill Clinton, and Hillary even less so, and he’d been asked to do some pretty unsavoury things during their tenure in the White House.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said the President. He stopped pacing. ‘So exactly how many people know about what’s happened? Other than the three of us?’

  ‘I’ve had a team of five,’ said Yokely. ‘All Grey Fox and all totally trustworthy.’

  ‘You’d trust them with your life?’

  ‘I already have done,’ said Yokely.

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘One of my people, Tommy Garcia,’ said Sutherland. ‘He was the first at the scene.’