False Friends ss-9

by Stephen Leather

  ‘You’re Raj, aren’t you?’ she said with a smile, as she put the two cups down in front of him.

  ‘Yeah. Do I know you?’

  ‘I’m the girl that keeps serving you coffee,’ she said. ‘I heard your friends call you Raj.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s me.’

  ‘I’m Sena.’ She smiled again and went on to the next customer.

  Chaudhry took the coffees over to the table. ‘I think she fancies me,’ he said as he sat down.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl behind the counter. Sena.’

  ‘You’ve got a girlfriend.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who. That bird your dad fixed you up with. What was her name?’

  ‘Jamila? She’s not a girlfriend.’

  ‘Got on like a house on fire, you said. Brains and beauty.’

  ‘It’s early days,’ said Chaudhry. ‘And she’s from a good Muslim family so it’s going to go very slowly.’

  ‘Whereas Turkish girls are easy, is that what you’re saying?’

  Chaudhry laughed. ‘No, I’m just saying that she told me her name and I think that she fancies me.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘The Jamila thing is a bloody minefield,’ he said. ‘It’s like every second thing I say to her is a lie.’

  ‘What, you don’t fancy her?’

  ‘I fancy her, sure, but because of what we’re doing I’m going to have to keep lying to her. I want to tell her the truth but I can’t. I don’t want our relationship to be based on lies but it is.’

  ‘So put her on the back burner until this is over,’ said Malik. ‘Like you said, she’s a Muslim; she’s not going to rush into anything.’ He looked at his watch. ‘What’s taking Khalid so long?’

  ‘You know he likes to pray twice as long as anyone else,’ said Chaudhry. ‘It’s his thing.’

  ‘And treating everyone like mushrooms,’ said Malik. ‘That’s really his thing. He likes controlling people. That’s what this is about. He wants us to be at his beck and call.’

  They had waited in all evening expecting Khalid to phone, but he hadn’t. At just before eight o’clock a man they didn’t recognise had turned up and asked for the backpacks and phone and taken them away. Both backpacks had been locked with small padlocks but they had been able to peep inside and it looked as if they contained only old telephone directories. Chaudhry had asked the man when Khalid would call but he had just shaken his head and said nothing.

  They had almost finished their coffee when Khalid appeared in the doorway. He looked around, then waved at them to join him on the pavement.

  ‘Too many ears,’ he explained. ‘These days the mosque leaks like a sieve. We can trust nobody.’ He gestured with his chin. ‘Walk with me.’

  He headed off along the pavement and Chaudhry and Malik joined him, Chaudhry on Khalid’s left, Malik on his right. ‘You seem tense, brothers,’ said Khalid.

  ‘Tense?’ repeated Malik. ‘Of course we’re tense. What were you playing at? Was it a test, is that it?’

  Khalid’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you questioning me, brother?’

  ‘If I was questioning you I would have done it when you told us to get into the van,’ said Malik. ‘We did everything you asked of us. And then you told us to go home. So I ask you again, brother, was it a test?’

  Khalid nodded slowly. ‘Yes. You were being tested.’

  ‘So we’re not trusted? After everything we have been through you still don’t trust us?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of trust,’ said Khalid.

  ‘Are you sure? Because trust shouldn’t be an issue, brother. We have met The Sheik, remember? Have you, brother?’

  ‘No,’ said Khalid. ‘I was never granted that honour.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Malik. ‘We had tea with The Sheik. He told us how valuable we were to him, how we were a resource that would be used with care, that our mission would be as important as that of the martyrs of Nine-Eleven.’

  ‘You are angry,’ said Khalid. ‘I understand.’ They looked right and left and crossed a side street.

  ‘Harvey, chill, brother,’ said Chaudhry. ‘We’re just a bit concerned that nobody told us what was happening,’ he said to Khalid.

  ‘I understand,’ said Khalid.

  ‘You understand?’ Malik glared at Khalid. ‘Do not patronise me, brother. Was it your idea to test us?’

  ‘Harvey, mate, give him a break, will you?’ said Chaudhry.

  ‘We were told to run a rehearsal,’ said Khalid quietly. ‘It was a question of testing the logistics.’

  ‘The logistics?’ repeated Malik.

  ‘We needed to make sure that we could get everyone in the right place at the right time. We had to arrange vehicles and drivers. We had to check that phones worked and that we could get everyone to work to a schedule.’ Two Pakistanis walked towards them and Khalid stopped speaking until they had gone by. ‘You are very important to our organisation, brothers,’ he said. ‘We have a lot riding on you so we have to be sure that everything works. We must leave nothing to chance.’

  ‘And the test, was it successful?’ asked Malik.

  Khalid shrugged. ‘Mostly.’

  ‘Mostly?’ said Chaudhry. ‘What do you mean, mostly?’

  ‘One brother didn’t turn up,’ said Khalid.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Khalid. ‘But we will find out.’

  ‘Do you think he’s a spy?’ asked Malik, and Chaudhry tensed.

  Khalid turned to look at Malik. ‘Why would you ask that, brother?’ he said quietly. He stopped suddenly, catching the two men unawares.

  Malik looked over at Chaudhry, a look of panic in his eyes.

  ‘We were talking about it earlier,’ said Chaudhry. ‘We thought that you didn’t trust us, that you suspected there might be a spy in the organisation.’ Khalid continued to stare balefully at Malik. ‘That’s what the police are doing, isn’t it?’ said Chaudhry. ‘They put spies in the mosques and they pay informers to betray our brothers.’

  ‘It is not the police,’ said Khalid, still looking at Malik. ‘It is MI5, the security service.’ He started walking again and the wind tugged at his dishdash. Chaudhry and Malik matched his pace. ‘The brother who let us down is not a spy, I am sure of that. But he has shown that he cannot be relied upon so we will have to deal with him.’ He laughed softly. ‘But a spy? No.’

  ‘So when do we do it for real?’ asked Chaudhry.

  ‘You are eager,’ said Khalid. ‘That’s good. But we have to wait until the moment is right.’

  ‘And the backpacks?’ said Malik. ‘Why did we have to have backpacks?’

  ‘That was to test the logistics,’ said Khalid. ‘Why do the backpacks concern you?’

  ‘You know why the backpacks worry us,’ said Chaudhry.

  ‘Brothers, the backpacks were a test of our logistics. To see if we could get a dozen pieces of equipment to a dozen brothers and get them to a specific location at a specific time.’ He smiled. ‘You thought you were carrying explosives, didn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘We didn’t know what to think,’ said Chaudhry.

  Khalid nodded slowly. ‘You thought that there might be explosives in the packs, but still you went. That showed commitment, brothers. And don’t think that commitment wasn’t noticed and appreciated.’

  ‘You wanted to see if we were prepared to become shahid?’ said Chaudhry.

  ‘Was there any doubt about that, brother?’

  Chaudhry sighed. ‘I had hoped that I had already proved my loyalty,’ he said. He nodded at Malik. ‘Harvey too.’

  ‘The two of you are too valuable to become shahid,’ Khalid said. ‘A lot of time, trouble and money has gone into training you and it would be a waste to make you martyrs. The operation we are planning will involve guns, not explosives. And provided you follow your instructions you will kill more kaffirs than died in the Twin Towers and you will live to fight another day.’

  �
��That’s what he said? You’re sure?’ asked Shepherd. ‘He said explosives weren’t going to be used?’

  Chaudhry nodded. ‘Word for word, pretty much.’

  ‘Guns,’ said Malik. ‘He said we’d be using guns.’

  They were sitting in a coffee shop in Camden, close to the market. Chaudhry and Malik had spent twenty minutes walking among the market stalls before Shepherd had called Chaudhry and assured him that they weren’t being followed. They sat in a corner away from the windows.

  ‘No explosives but lots of casualties?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘More than died in Nine-Eleven,’ said Chaudhry. ‘That’s what he said.’

  Shepherd raised his eyebrows. ‘With guns? Did he say what type?’

  Malik shook his head. ‘He said there would be lots of casualties and that we would get away.’

  Shepherd sipped his coffee. It was important intelligence that he’d have to pass to Button as soon as possible. There had been about a dozen men at St Pancras, but how could a dozen men kill three thousand civilians with guns?

  ‘How far do we take this, John?’ asked Chaudhry.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We went to the station with backpacks. What if there had been bombs in those packs and they’d been detonated remotely?’

  ‘That was never going to happen, Raj. Like Khalid said, you’re too valuable to waste on a suicide attack.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Chaudhry. ‘Suppose they target the Prime Minister? Or the US President? You don’t think they’d worry about sacrificing me or Harvey if they had a target like that?’

  ‘They’ve never talked about using you for an assassination,’ said Shepherd. ‘And none of your training has been for that.’

  ‘We were taught sniping in Pakistan,’ said Malik.

  ‘You’re over-thinking it,’ said Shepherd. ‘Trust me, you’re worrying about nothing. Everything that happened at St Pancras points to a large-scale operation using a dozen or so men. And even a dozen men with suicide bombs wouldn’t kill more than a hundred or so people.’ He shrugged. ‘That sounds blase and I don’t mean it that way, but it’s a matter of effectiveness. The four bombers in London on 7th July 2005 killed fifty-two people and injured seven hundred, and while that’s horrific it’s still not the thousands that Khalid is talking about. Suicide bombs are terrible things but a bomb in a crowded station is effective only within twenty feet or so; there are simply too many bodies around absorbing the shrapnel. You get horrific injuries close to the source of the explosion but beyond fifty feet it’s survivable and at a hundred feet you’d be unlucky to get a scratch. What Khalid is talking about is something much, much bigger.’

  ‘So what’s the plan, John?’ asked Chaudhry. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘We wait and see what Khalid does next. I’ll talk to our technical people and we’ll see about increasing our electronic surveillance. Now we know he won’t let you take your phones with you we’ll have to come up with something else.’

  ‘Tracking devices in our shoes?’ said Malik. ‘Real secret-agent stuff?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Shepherd. ‘The stuff they have these days is incredibly small. It’s not like it was in the old days when you used to have a metal box taped to your crotch and a microphone stuck to your chest.’

  Malik looked at his watch. ‘Do you mind if I push off, John?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a five-a-side match later.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘I think we’re done. Good job.’

  Malik got up to leave. ‘I’ll stay and finish my coffee, brother,’ said Chaudhry. Malik nodded and left. Chaudhry stirred sugar into his coffee. ‘So how long have you been working with MI5?’

  ‘Fifteen years, give or take,’ lied Shepherd. He’d already agreed with Button not to reveal his police or SAS background to Chaudhry and Malik. She’d decided that they’d react best to him if they thought he was career MI5 and believed he was fairly senior in the organisation, rather than an SAS trooper turned undercover cop who had been with the Security Service for less than two years.

  ‘How did you deal with the stress? The constant lying?’

  ‘I compartmentalise the job,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can’t be on all day every day. So you make sure you have time on your own, or with your family, when you can be yourself.’

  ‘But I can’t do that, John, can I? I have to lie even when I’m with my parents. My dad, he’d probably be proud of me, but my mum would hit the roof. And even if they were cool with what I was doing I can’t tell them, can I? I can’t tell anyone that I helped kill The Sheik. Or that I’m working against terrorists who are planning to kill thousands of civilians. I have to lie to my family, to my friends, to my fellow students. There are only two people that I can be honest with: you and Harvey.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Understanding is all well and good, but I need to know how to deal with it,’ said Chaudhry.

  It was a good point, Shepherd knew, but he wasn’t sure how to respond to it. Chaudhry was right, undercover work was stressful. Most operatives couldn’t do it for more than a few years. Divorces, breakdowns and career burnouts were common, which is why his bosses at the Met, SOCA and MI5 insisted on six-monthly psychological evaluations for all its undercover people. But Chaudhry and Malik didn’t have the luxury of a psychologist; all they had was Shepherd, and all he could offer them was the benefit of his experience.

  ‘Do you feel guilty about lying, is that it?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘With my family, of course. They ask me how my studies are going and I say great and they ask me what I do in my free time and then I’m a bit evasive, and I really had to lie about the whole Pakistan training-camp thing. But that’s not where the stress comes from. It’s when I’m talking to Khalid and the others that it gets to me. My heart starts beating like it’s going to burst and sometimes I can feel my legs trembling. My mouth goes dry, which means I sometimes stumble over my words. If they see that they’re going to know that something is wrong.’

  Shepherd nodded sympathetically. ‘You have to try to believe in what you’re saying,’ he said. ‘You’re like an actor playing a part, and you have to convince yourself that you are what you’re pretending to be. That conviction will then flow out of you. But to be honest, Raj, you’re worrying too much. You’re not pretending to be someone else; you’re yourself. It’s only your beliefs that you’re misrepresenting. All you need to do is to convince Khalid and the rest that you’re an Islamic fundamentalist who has embraced jihad. All the hard work has been done. You went to Pakistan, you went right into the lion’s den, you went through with the rehearsal at St Pancras. You’ve already proved yourself.’

  ‘But sometimes Khalid looks at me like he doesn’t believe me.’

  ‘What do you mean, specifically?’

  Chaudhry shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to explain. He stares at me, like he’s looking through me. He frowns sometimes, like he’s thinking that something’s not right. He does the same with Harvey.’

  ‘That’s your guilty conscience kicking in. You know you’re lying and you know that lying is wrong, and because you’re basically a moral person you expect to be punished for what you’re doing. I’m not saying you want to be caught out, but part of you expects it to happen. Only sociopaths can lie without any sort of guilt.’

  Chaudhry grinned. ‘That’s what my dad always used to say when I was a kid. He didn’t care what I’d done, provided I told the truth.’

  ‘That’s what all parents tell their children,’ said Shepherd. ‘Not that they always mean it.’

  ‘My dad did,’ said Chaudhry. ‘Even if I did something stupid, provided I owned up to it and provided I said I was sorry and tried to make it right, he wouldn’t punish me. Mind you, Dad didn’t have to punish me, it was enough to know that I’d disappointed him.’

  ‘He sounds like a good guy.’

  ‘He is,’ said Chaudhry. ‘He’s never laid a finger on me, my
whole life. A lot of Asian parents reckon that if you spare the rod you spoil the child, but my mum and dad have been great.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I wish I could tell him what I’m doing.’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Shepherd. ‘You know that, right?’

  ‘Oh, I had it drummed into me by Ms Button. But the fact that he doesn’t know means that I have to lie to him, and you don’t know how much I hate that.’

  ‘No, I understand. I have a son, and I hate having to lie to him. But when you work for MI5 it comes with the job.’

  Chaudhry tilted his head on one side. ‘You said you weren’t married.’

  Shepherd’s stomach lurched. He’d made the worst possible mistake that an undercover agent could make: he’d slipped out of character. He’d been so relaxed in Chaudhry’s company that he’d answered as Dan Shepherd and not as John Whitehill. He forced himself to appear relaxed, and smiled as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but he could feel his heart pounding. ‘She died, a few years ago,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Chaudhry.

  ‘Yeah, my life’s a bit complicated to say the least,’ said Shepherd. ‘Thing is, it always sounds strange to say widower, but I guess that’s what I am. Easier to say I’m not married.’

  ‘And you’re a single parent?’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘He’s at boarding school, so it works out well.’ He felt strange giving out personal information, which was something he almost never did when he was working. But having Chaudhry talk about telling the truth had struck a chord. Shepherd didn’t enjoy lying, even though over the years he had become an expert in the art of telling untruths.

  ‘I bet he misses you.’

  ‘I think he’s having too much fun at the moment,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘But he knows you work for MI5?’

  ‘To be honest, no.’

  ‘And you’re okay lying to him?’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ said Shepherd. ‘I very rarely look him in the eye and lie to him. On the very rare occasions I do then it’s because there’s a very good reason.’