Trojan

by Alan McDermott

  ‘What did you need to tell me?’ he asked Samir, who looked desperately in need of another fix. He was sweating, not just because of the heat, and his hands wouldn’t stop moving.

  ‘Khan left you a message, but he told me not to bring it with me or tell you about it over the phone. You’re to go to . . .’

  Faysal stopped listening as someone walking an Alsatian approached from his left. The man couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the pair, and Faysal immediately sensed danger.

  The message from Khan forgotten, he got up and started walking away. When the dog began barking, he broke into a sprint. Two joggers were heading towards him, and he ran onto the grass to avoid them, but they mirrored his move and produced handguns.

  ‘Stop! Police!’

  Faysal had no intention of obeying them, despite the weapons pointing at him. He dashed to their left and awaited the sound of their firearms, but all he heard was his own rapid breathing as he ran for his life.

  He was twenty yards from the exit when his escape came to an abrupt halt. One minute his arms were pumping freely, and the next he was anchored by a hundred pounds of snarling German shepherd. The animal clamped its jaws around his lower arm and dragged him to the ground, where it continued to growl as it shook its head violently. Faysal tried digging his thumb into the beast’s eye, but it easily shook off his clumsy attempts.

  The two panting joggers arrived and stood over him, their pistols trained on his head despite his predicament. The dog handler finally turned up and persuaded the hound to release him, and Faysal clutched his mangled arm. Blood was already seeping through the sleeve of his hoodie, but before he could examine the damage, one of the cops slapped cuffs on his good hand and flipped him over onto his stomach. His other arm was cuffed, and then the policeman patted him down before slipping a hand under his armpit and hoisting him to his feet.

  Faysal looked around and saw that Samir had also been cuffed and was being led away to the park’s entrance.

  Don’t tell them anything.

  Khan’s warning came back in a rush. So far, it had been unnecessary. Even now, as the cops forced him out of the park, his escorts remained silent. That suited him fine. Once they reached the police station, he would demand treatment for his injuries, and after that, he would exercise his right to silence.

  When they exited the park, Faysal saw the same Ford that had pulled away when he’d arrived, two men standing next to it. More plain-clothed officers, he assumed.

  One of them opened the rear door and forced Faysal inside. The taller of the two joined him on the back seat while the other took the wheel. Neither spoke as the car pulled away.

  What could they possibly want with me?

  He hadn’t accessed any prohibited material on the internet, nor had he ever used his phone for anything even remotely incriminating. Perhaps they wanted to know what had gone on in his private sessions with Khan, but if that was the case, they were going to be sorely disappointed.

  ‘We’ve got a tail,’ the driver said. ‘White Transit van.’

  ‘You sure?’ the other asked.

  ‘He’s been behind us for the last three turns, but I’ll try the back streets, just to be sure.’

  The driver turned off the main road and drove down residential streets, all the while checking his mirrors.

  ‘He’s still with us. Should we call it in?’

  ‘I think we should. It might be DTI, in which case Faysal here could be in real trouble. Remember what they did to al-Hosni.’

  ‘Yeah, poor bastard. No-one deserves to go like that.’

  ‘Who are DTI?’ Faysal asked before he could stop himself.

  ‘Death to Islam,’ the rear passenger said. ‘They’re a splinter neo-Nazi group, most of ’em ex-military, and they hate everything about your people. They have quite a network, and we believe they have contacts within the police, because they tend to target people who are under investigation. DTI think we spend too much time and money building cases against terror suspects who either won’t talk or are released due to lack of evidence. Their preferred method is to snatch ’em, torture ’em to death and move on to the next person in the chain.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of them,’ Faysal said.

  ‘That’s because we make a huge effort to keep them out of the news. Giving them airtime is what they crave, so we monitor the net for signs of their activity and close them down. Unfortunately, that’s only made ’em bolder. They’ve kidnapped four terror suspects in the last six months and all of them turned up dead.’

  ‘I called it in,’ the driver said. ‘They’re sending a weapons team to the industrial estate near here. They don’t want to take them down where there’s lots of witnesses, otherwise the press might get wind of it.’

  ‘Okay, let’s lead them there, but make sure . . .’

  A Transit van pulled out of a side street, blocking the road, and the driver slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision. Faysal was restrained by his seat belt, but his face still struck the back of the seat in front of him, breaking his nose. By the time his vision had cleared, the door was open and he was being pulled out of the car, blood pouring down his face and neck. He heard a pop as a silenced pistol blew a hole in the tyre, then the warm barrel of the gun was shoved into the side of his neck.

  ‘Move!’

  The balaclava-clad gunman didn’t wait for him to respond. He marched Faysal towards the van that had been following them, pushed him into the back and slammed the door closed.

  ‘Go!’

  Tyres screeched as the vehicle reversed at speed, then spun around and took off. Every time it went round a corner, Faysal was thrown up against the side walls, and with his hands secured behind his back, he was powerless to prevent his head pounding against metal. The punishment continued for another five minutes, when the van came to a halt and the rear doors opened.

  Faysal was dragged out by his feet, and his head inevitably hit the concrete floor, sending a bolt of pain through his body. His captors pulled him to his feet and led him into a dark hallway, then down a set of wooden stairs to a dank basement. The smaller one turned on a light and Faysal could see a metal chair in the centre of the room, and next to it was a table adorned with an array of tools.

  The fear that had been growing inside him turned to full-blown panic. He tried to twist out of the big man’s grip, but his strength was no match for the hooded figure, who spun him around and forced him into the seat. Just as quickly, a rope looped around his chest, pinning him to the backrest. He made one last attempt at freedom as they tried to secure his ankles, but a punch to the head knocked the last of the fight out of him.

  The two men stood before him, unreadable eyes staring at him from beneath the balaclavas, the silence almost unbearable. To Faysal, the glare felt as excruciating as the pain he knew was coming. He glanced over at the table, and immediately regretted it. Just thinking about the agony they could inflict with the hammer, knives and pliers was enough to loosen his sphincter.

  ‘You’re scared,’ the smaller one said. ‘That’s a good thing. Give in to the fear, answer our questions and we’ll let you go. You’re not the one we want, but you have the information we need.’

  Something in Faysal wanted to nod his agreement, but Khan’s words once again played in his head.

  Pain is temporary, fleeting, a reminder that while you walk among the living you will never be truly at peace. Only through self-sacrifice will you receive Allah’s blessings and eternal bliss.

  ‘We’ll give you a couple of minutes to think about it,’ the larger one told him, ‘then we’ll start asking questions. If you tell us what we want to know, we’ll set you free. If you don’t, we’ll remove these.’ He pointed to his headgear. ‘Once you’ve seen our faces, your fate’s sealed. Then it’s just a matter of how much pain you can endure before you die.’

  Silence descended once more, and conflicting thoughts battled for control of Faysal’s mind.

  Pain is temporary, fleeting
. . .

  The words suddenly sounded hollow, spoken by a man who wasn’t facing an agonising death . . . but to give in now meant relinquishing his place in the afterlife for eternity.

  ‘You visited the mosque at eight o’clock last night. Who else was there?’

  Faysal looked up at his captors, and a single tear ran down his bloodstained cheek.

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  The taller one removed his balaclava, revealing a balding head and moustache. It wasn’t what Faysal had been expecting. He’d envisioned a tattooed Neanderthal, not someone who looked like they’d come from a boardroom meeting.

  ‘Pity,’ the man said, tossing his mask aside. ‘Sonny, gag him. I think we’ll start with the pliers . . .’

  Harvey finished typing up his report into Faysal’s abduction and printed out a hard copy for Ellis to check and sign. He’d omitted his conversation with Farsi regarding DTI, nor had he mentioned the van that had been following them. He’d simply stated that Hamad had taken to the side roads to avoid traffic and the van had pulled out in front of them. Before they knew it, an armed man with dark forearms had snatched Nejem, blown out their tyre and driven off. Unfortunately, the dashboard camera had been knocked out of position at some point during the day, and all it managed to capture was black plastic and a tiny sliver of the bottom of the windscreen. Harvey had made the description of the attacker as vague as possible, underestimating the height by six inches and taking fifty pounds off Smart’s actual weight.

  It was the same story he’d told Bury when he’d turned up, though Harvey had given Smart a few minutes to clear the area before calling it in.

  Harvey took the printout to Ellis’s office and stood silently while she read through it.

  ‘Sounds plausible to me. Nice touch on the description, too. That’ll make them think one of Faysal’s friends came to his rescue.’ Ellis put down the paper and looked up at Harvey. ‘How did it actually go?’

  ‘Like clockwork. We planted the seed of fear in the kid’s mind. Hopefully he’ll talk before Len and Sonny have to get physical.’

  ‘And you’re okay with it if they do?’

  ‘We need to find the nerve agent,’ Harvey shrugged. ‘If Faysal isn’t helping us, he’s against us. I’m not sorry, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Good. I don’t want you getting squeamish on me. Did the police find anything at Nejem’s house?’

  ‘Nothing. Looks like one of the other seven has the X3. We’ve identified one of them and SO15 will take him down tonight. We’re just waiting on Len to get the names of the other six.’

  Ellis looked at her watch. ‘They’ve had him for a few hours. We’d have heard by now if he was being helpful.’

  ‘Then it’s just a matter of time,’ Harvey said, as the clock on the wall ticked past midnight and into Friday morning.

  CHAPTER 31

  Friday, 18 August 2017

  Harvey awakened to the sound of an unfamiliar buzzing, and it took him a moment to realise that it was coming from his untraceable mobile phone.

  ‘Did you get it?’ he asked, careful not to mention Smart’s name.

  ‘All seven.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Harvey said, very much relieved. ‘I’ll meet you in twenty minutes.’

  He went to the bathroom and threw cold water on his face, then checked his watch. It was far too early to call for an update on Sarah, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her, despite the fact that she was in safe hands. He’d managed a few minutes on the phone with her the previous evening and that had only made him miss her more. Thankfully, she would be released from hospital later in the morning, and he’d be able to fuss over her himself.

  Once he’d eliminated the threat of the X3.

  Harvey made his way down to the underground car park. It was a short drive to the rendezvous point, and traffic was almost non-existent at four in the morning. Smart was already waiting by the time he arrived.

  ‘Judging by the time, I’m guessing you had to be persuasive.’

  ‘He was a brave kid,’ Smart said, as he handed over a sheet of paper, and Harvey thought he detected a note of respect in the ex-soldier’s voice.

  ‘Is everything clean?’

  ‘We used false plates for the vans and took the route you gave us, so we avoided CCTV cameras. Sonny’s dealing with the last loose end as we speak.’

  ‘As long as it won’t be discovered for a few years, I don’t need to know the details.’

  ‘No chance of that happening,’ Smart said. ‘Unless someone decides to dredge five miles off the Kent coast.’

  Harvey was sure that Sonny would be more thorough than to just dump the body overboard, so the chances of anyone coming across the corpse would indeed be remote.

  Harvey shook Smart’s hand. ‘Thanks. We’ll be in touch in a couple of months to offer you some legitimate work. Say, forty hours of security consultation at two hundred an hour? That should more than cover your expenses for today.’

  ‘Much appreciated,’ Smart said. ‘I just hope it was worth it.’

  Me, too, Harvey thought as he walked back towards his car, mindful that on top of a kidnapping charge, he was now an accessory to murder.

  It wasn’t something he would have ever foreseen when he’d joined the service nearly two decades earlier, but the threats they now faced were quite different. Peace had broken out in Northern Ireland back in the late nineties, and the PIRA ceasefire meant a switch of focus to the Middle East, though that had generally been seen as an issue affecting the US rather than Western Europe.

  That had all changed following 9/11, which led to the US/UK invasion of Iraq. That in turn made Britain a legitimate target in Al-Qaeda’s eyes, and the Islamic terror organisation was a completely different proposition to the Provisional IRA. For one, the Irish would telephone warnings before detonating a bomb, whereas Al-Qaeda would strike without notice.

  The geographical difference was immense, too. The PIRA had been concentrated in a relatively small area, while Bin Laden’s people were a global phenomenon.

  Perhaps the biggest contrast, though, was loyalty to the cause. From the early eighties, dozens of arrested paramilitaries had turned on their own and divulged the identities of compatriots in exchange for immunity from prosecution. In the realm of Islamic extremists, the supergrass was unheard of. Now and then, MI5 would get access to someone low in the food chain, unfortunate souls like Samir, but it was rare for them to come up with anything of major value. Experience had taught him that those more closely involved in operations would rather die than give up information, and Faysal Nejem had been a prime example.

  It hadn’t given him any pleasure arranging the boy’s death, but unless they adapted to the enemy’s strengths, the battles – and perhaps the war itself – would be lost.

  He thought of Sarah once more, and wondered what she would have had to say about Nejem’s fate. Would she have gone along with it, agreeing that the end justified the means? Harvey wasn’t so sure. Sarah had a social conscience, and while his opinion sometimes differed from hers, he respected her stance. In this case, he felt sure that she’d have stood in the opposite corner and argued against torturing the boy . . . which begged the question: should he tell her about it?

  The easy answer was no, but could he trust Farsi and Ellis to keep it between them? He felt he could, for now at least. That would give him time to revisit the issue, once the current crisis was over.

  Harvey got into his car and drove back to the office. Ellis would be back in at six, preferring to sleep in her own bed rather than the makeshift sleeping quarters at Thames House.

  He had a feeling she wouldn’t be distraught at Nejem’s death, either.

  It was eight in the morning by the time SO15 were ready to execute warrants at the homes of the remaining six subjects. The locations were spread out over London, and Harvey had decided to remain in the office to oversee matters rather than try to guess which one might have the X3.

&nbs
p; His cell phone rang, and the commander of SO15, Elias Burke, informed him that the teams had been given the go-ahead, which meant half a dozen people were about to choke on their cornflakes as their front doors smashed in. Harvey kept the line open so that the commander could feed him real-time updates, and within a couple of minutes, four teams had reported arrests. Another one came in shortly afterwards, but the news from the last address was less than stellar.

  ‘The flat’s empty,’ Burke reported.

  ‘Which one was it?’

  ‘Iqbal al-Mubari.’

  Harvey jotted down the name. ‘Let’s hope one of the other five have what we’re looking for.’

  Even as he said it, Harvey had a strong feeling that it wasn’t to be. He handed Farsi the name and asked him to track the boy’s movements.

  It was another twenty-five minutes before his worst fears were confirmed. Searches of all six addresses had failed to turn up anything remotely like a nerve agent, which meant Iqbal must have it on him.

  ‘Any sign of him?’ Harvey asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Farsi replied. ‘There are no cameras on his street, and I haven’t been able to locate him in the immediate area.’

  ‘Shit!’

  Harvey returned to the open line with SO15 and was asking if Iqbal’s bed looked slept in when Gareth Bailey jumped up from his chair and started waving his arms frantically.

  Probably just found the truck he was looking for last week, Harvey thought. ‘Hamad, go and see what he wants, will you?’

  Harvey turned his back on Bailey as he waited for a response from Commander Burke.

  ‘Doesn’t look like anyone’s been there for a few days,’ he finally heard. ‘Apparently the milk bottle on the kitchen table looks more like yoghurt.’

  Harvey turned to ask Farsi to check if there was an alternative address for Iqbal al-Mubari, and saw that Farsi too was now beckoning him over to Bailey’s workstation.

  His curiosity piqued, Harvey walked over. ‘What is it?’