The Dossier (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 1)

by David N Robinson

  Time to be making a quick exit.

  48

  En route to Heathrow Airport

  Sui-Lee had carefully scoured the length of the first half of the train during the fifteen-minute ride to its intermediate stop but had seen no sign of Lewis, She had been stopped once on her way towards the front of the four-car unit by a ticket inspector. He had scribbled something indecipherable on her ticket before she had moved on. Otherwise no one had shown any interest in her.

  The big question was whether Ben Lewis was getting off at the first stop or continuing on towards the far terminal? If she were to make a mistake here, she would risk losing him. The train pulled into the long platform. When finally the doors opened, Sui-Lee got out and went forward to the next section of the train. She stood next to the open rear door of the carriage, consulting the tracking program installed on her mobile phone. She tried to see whether the blue dot in the centre of her tiny screen was moving or not. Satisfied that it appeared to be stationary, she got back on the train just as the doors were closing. Once more she began her walk through the four remaining carriages. The train had already picked up speed on its final short segment.

  Her difficulty was the second carriage from the front. There were two-dozen or so Jamaican athletes singing and dancing loudly in the aisles. Each was making a game of throwing their bags from off the overhead racks towards the central doors. The charade made it impossible for her to pass them by. Annoyingly, the train was already beginning to slow down, moments later entering the platform of the terminal itself. Sui-Lee still hadn’t seen Lewis. Reluctantly she was forced to conclude that he must have been in the front carriage all along, the one place she had been unable to search. This man Lewis was fast becoming very tedious.

  The Jamaican party was making it difficult for everyone in their carriage to get off the train. Sui-Lee however forced her way onto the platform, urgently looking in all directions for where Ben Lewis might be heading.

  Finally she saw him, several metres ahead of her in the distance. He was making his way to the lifts that took passengers to the departure levels several floors above. She hurried after him, determined to get into the same elevator car, tantalisingly only metres away when its glass doors began to close. Slowly, agonisingly, they inched shut just as Sui-Lee had so nearly reached them. She was about to bang on the doors in frustration before stopping herself in her tracks.

  For as the lift began its slow ascent upwards, the man standing nearest to the glass door slowly turned so as to face her.

  It was Lewis himself.

  To make matters worse, he was smiling. He even gave a small wave as the lift began its slow rise towards the upper levels of the terminal building.

  49

  Whitehall

  It was a simple walk from the Foreign & Commonwealth office in Whitehall to the Old Admiralty Building, the overflow space that had been leased to the Foreign Office in the nineteen-sixties. The latter was situated near Trafalgar Square. On foot, the route passed along two sides of a rectangle. Civil servants walking the short journey usually avoided busy Whitehall by heading along Horse Guards Road to the west before entering the Mall and arriving at Admiralty a short while later. The journey, one that had been performed countless times, usually took less than eight minutes.

  That day, however, this particular civil servant had deliberately chosen to walk down busy Whitehall, the other two sides of the rectangle. The rain, at eleven-fifteen in the morning, was tipping down, the small, black, collapsible umbrella barely keeping the rain off. Despite the weather, tourist buses continued their incessant crawl along Whitehall. The civil servant made their way northwards towards Trafalgar Square: firstly past the war memorial, the Cenotaph; next Downing Street with its gated entrance permanently guarded by armed policemen; and onwards towards Horse Guards Parade and the Ministry of Defence buildings beyond.

  Anyone following would have seen an individual in a hurry, battling with the rain, moving at a brisk pace and carrying a large leather briefcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other. Whilst passing the public house, the Lord Moon of the Mall, the person’s cell-phone rang. The individual stopped to take the call, stepping inside the portico entrance in order to escape the rain. The briefcase was put down, the umbrella temporarily collapsed, both parties to the call now able to hear each other without rain or passing traffic interfering. The person was pacing, listening to the other party on the line. From time to time they idly focused their attention on the printed lunch menu of the day pinned to a notice board inside the portico.

  Then, holding the phone against one ear with a shoulder, a pen and scrap of paper were removed from a jacket pocket. Whilst laying the paper against the noticeboard with its printed menu on it, something was hastily written down as the conversation continued.

  No more than a couple of minutes later, the call came to an end. The cell phone, pen and paper were put away, the umbrella opened, the briefcase once more in hand. Then it was back out into the rain for the final push towards Old Admiralty Building a short distance around the corner. By the time the person made it to the office building, despite the call that had been taken on the way, the whole trip had taken only nine minutes.

  All very unexceptional, certainly nothing that even the most vigilant of observers would have had cause to be concerned about. That was the beauty of old fashioned tradecraft. Everything was hidden in plain sight. Only one other person was meant to discover both what had happened and what it meant. That person was about five minutes behind, following the civil servant’s footsteps, entering the portico and looking at the pub’s lunch menu for that day.

  There they would see the double asterisk that had been hurriedly scribbled on the bottom right hand corner of the menu in black ink. The underlined second asterisk with one single vertical line through it was their prior agreed code denoting that a crash meeting was required. According to their code, the time being requested was one-thirty that same afternoon. Just over two hours away.

  50

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  So far, everything is going to plan. Lewis knows that this next bit is crucial. One slip here could cost him both his advantage and perhaps even his life.

  He needs to find a suitable individual, someone able to pass for himself or, more importantly, the other way around. His first decision is whether to stay in the immediate vicinity of the elevator bank or to move elsewhere. The latter instinctively feels better. Lewis quickly walks towards the southern end of the terminal, to his immediate right, over to where the First Class check-in area is located. His motives for doing this are not particularly well formed. He is relying on a hunch that passengers in that section of the airport might be less careful about their personal belongings. This is a theory he has not researched but feels instinctively as if it could have logic. It also puts clear air between him and the Chinese woman. She would be about to appear on the departure concourse at any moment.

  It is a large terminal and there are check-in desks everywhere. As he approaches the far end, he sees another group of athletes similar to the Jamaicans on the train. There are about twenty of them, also dressed in tracksuits, this time in colours that Lewis doesn’t recognise. Then he gets close and hears them talking. They are Italian, in the middle of a group check-in. They are hanging around waiting for a few remaining colleagues to have their boarding passes issued.

  There is one amongst them who looks as if he could be of similar age to Lewis. This one has a comparable jaw line and not dissimilar length and style of hair. Under his left arm he is carrying travel documents along with a tracksuit top and several magazines and newspapers. He is talking animatedly with someone on his cell phone. He does this whilst standing a little apart from the others. Distracted by the call, he is not focusing particularly on where he is walking. This is the person, Lewis decides there and then. The lights are all green for go.
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  Without missing a stride, Lewis changes direction. Moments later, head seemingly looking the wrong way, the two men collide, the athlete’s papers and tracksuit top are sent flying all over the floor. Lewis stops to apologise, both men, after a moment’s reflection, generously indicating the accident to be their fault. Lewis helps gather up the detritus, picking up the spilled magazines and newspaper, the man’s boarding pass and his tracksuit top. He hands them back whilst the man continues talking on the phone as if nothing has happened. They nod to each other and continue on their separate ways.

  Mission accomplished.

  Carefully palmed into an inner jacket pocket, Lewis is now in possession of a passport. With a fighting chance, he might even be capable of passing himself off as this unknown Italian. The Italian most likely won’t even realise that his passport is missing until he gets to his boarding gate.

  Lewis heads left towards the entrance to airport security, the well-guarded way in to the airside departure area. He is hoping to put further distance between himself and the Chinese woman. He will need his boarding pass, not his passport, for this next procedure. Lewis removes Leyla Zamani’s phone and unlocks it. Navigating to the text messaging application, he locates the electronic boarding pass for the flight to Rome that that the airline sent by MMS earlier. He places the iPhone’s screen with the special QR code displayed under the scanner and the gates swing open to let Lewis through. The Chinese woman will need to acquire a boarding pass of her own in order to follow him into the security area.

  Somehow, Lewis doesn’t think that is likely to prove too much of an impediment to the resourceful Asian.

  There is one silver lining. At least each and every one of his pursuers, whomever they might turn out to be, would be compelled to discard guns, knives and deadly weapons before passing through the security checkpoint.

  That at least is the theory.

  51

  Whitehall

  The Nikon D800’s motor drive unit had been working overtime. From the vantage point of the third floor vacant office building across the street from the pub, the angle down into the portico had been unobstructed. Not even passing double-decker buses and lorries had been able to obscure the view. The woman was a professional photographer, her choice of lens, the Nikon AF-S 300mm f/2.8D, being second to none for clarity and image quality. She had photographed the civil servant writing the tell-tell. Just as importantly, she had also taken multiple images of the person who had subsequently entered the portico, the motor drive whirring as the person had studiously examined the menu.

  Capturing their image on the way in.

  Then taking an even clearer series of shots on the way out.

  The photographer made a habit in the field of always uploading her digital images to the Cloud immediately. That way there was never a risk of them getting lost or mislaid. At thirty-six mega pixels an image, this was a substantial amount of data being transmitted. She had come prepared with a 4G card in her mobile device. In the end, it took slightly less than five minutes for the upload to complete.

  52

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  The next available lift seemed to take forever to climb from the basement station to the Departures concourse. By the time Sui-Lee was inside the terminal building itself, she was perhaps a minute behind Ben Lewis. The question was, in which direction had he gone?

  She had to assume that he was at the airport because he intended to catch a flight. However, he was also now aware that Sui-Lee was once more following him. There were two entrances to the airside departure gates, both passing through separate security check points. One was immediately in front of where she was standing. The other was off to her right, towards the southern end of the terminal. She checked her phone to see if she could tell from the tracking device in which direction Lewis might have gone. It appeared to be showing him close by, but the signal was faint. Thinking about it logically, heading to the right made more sense. Why would Lewis risk being spotted making his way through the security section immediately in front of where she was likely to emerge from the elevator bank?

  It was a coin toss, but Sui-Lee decided to head right, searching the crowds but unable to see any sign of Lewis. Then, as she was approaching the entrance to the second security check point, she thought she caught a glimpse of a man in a red gingham checked shirt as the doors closed on a passenger passing through into the secure screening area. It was Lewis, she was fairly certain. If she was to follow him, she needed urgently to acquire a boarding pass.

  Looking around the busy concourse, her eyes latched onto an elderly Korean couple. These two had recently check bags and were standing by an empty counter close to the entrance to the security area, sorting items in their hand baggage. The man was struggling to put passports away inside an already full carry on bag. Two boarding passes and the man’s flimsy jacket lay on the counter next to him. The man’s wife was talking at him loudly, busily directing operations and pointing animatedly where she considered various items should be moved. Sui-Lee approached the empty check-in desk next to them. She pretended to reach across the counter to pick up spare hand baggage labels that were in a small plastic tray beside them. In the process, she had to stretch her body across the man’s jacket and the two boarding passes. Grasping two labels in her left hand, her right hand meanwhile secreted one of the two boarding passes from off the counter top into her jacket pocket.

  Wasting no time, she went directly to the security checkpoint. As it had for Ben Lewis only minutes before, the scanner took a couple of seconds for the machine to process the information on the stolen boarding pass’s bar code. Then the gates swung open and she was on her way inside the secure screening area.

  53

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  There are well over a dozen separate screening areas. Each has its own scanner, conveyor belt and tray systems into which passengers are required to place their belongings. Security personnel direct passengers into one of many roped-off sections that in turn deposit them into a short queue in front of one of the screening stations.

  Lewis is fortunate. The lane to which he has been directed, scanner number twelve, has three people ahead of him. It is a matter of minutes only before he is removing his sturdy shoes, belt and leather jacket and placing them in one of the trays provided.

  He steps through the body scanner and is selected for a personal search by one of the uniformed security staff. The man passes a hand-held scanner over Lewis’s arms, torso and legs and then declares him free to go. Lewis locates and puts on his jacket, collecting his belt and shoes from the plastic tray. As he leans against a chair to tie his shoelaces, he uses the moment to look around. Two machines to his left he spots the Chinese woman. She has also seen him. Lewis stands up tall and puts on his belt, all the time keeping his eyes on the woman. She is second in line to be screened in her queue. She stares back at him. Was that the tiniest trace of a smile on her face? Perhaps Lewis is imagining it.

  Everything, however, is still going to Lewis’s plan.

  It is time for the next phase to begin.

  54

  Savile Row Police Station

  Saul Zeltinger was tired and feeling at low ebb. The Hanover Square shooting and the various subsequent incidents had officially been placed on the Cabinet Office agenda for discussion that morning. Zeltinger was bracing himself for a call at any moment telling him the outcome of their deliberations. He already knew what the outcome was likely to be.

  Meilin had gone off-duty at nine o’clock, heading home to get some sleep. He’d felt guilty himself, sneaking home for a shower and a change of clothing in the middle of the Europa Hotel hiatus, but there had been nothing else for him to do once the Met’s own Counter Terrorism command unit, SO15, were involved. Their specialist field unit had locked down the hotel complex and diffused the crude bomb. The residual forensics had
been left to fellow members of the specialist unit to complete. Zeltinger would have preferred to investigate Zamani’s room safe personally, but that was now out of the question. SO15 would have done that as part of their clean-up operation.

  Consequently Zeltinger was back at his desk at the police station off Savile Row, waiting for the phone to ring. He had several incident reports that he needed to analyse in his own meticulous manner. At that particular moment, he was reviewing an early draft of one concerning the shootings that morning in Westbourne Terrace. He was trying to concentrate when the phone on his desk interrupted his thoughts with its shrill ring.

  “Zeltinger.”

  “Saul Zeltinger? This is Lisa Campbell, duty officer of SO18 at Heathrow.” SO18 was another of the three specialist units of the Metropolitan Police that formed part of Security Command. They all comprised part of the Met’s Specialist Operations group, as were the Counter Terrorism Command team that had been involved at the Europa Hotel.

  “We have a passenger who’s recently cleared airport security at T5, name of Benjamin Lewis. He is ticketed to travel on flight 556 to Rome early this afternoon. I believe you have flagged this individual. Do you want us to detain him on boarding?”

  Zeltinger was instantly wide-awake. “Most definitely, yes. I do not want that man to leave the country. How quickly before you can make an arrest?”

  “He won’t yet know that we are on to him. I suspect that our best prospects will be to detain him at the gate. He is airside as we speak.”

  “I’ll make my way over to the terminal right away. How do I get hold of you if I need to speak urgently before then?” She gave him her contact details.