The Dossier (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 1)

by David N Robinson

  The woman instructs her younger colleague to activate the escalators that will take passengers down one level to where the air bridge to the waiting aircraft is located. Obediently, the young man removes his security pass from its holder, swipes the pass through a card reader and then keys in four digits. Lewis is watching closely. The code appears to be 2 – 4 – 9 and the last digit he can’t quite make out. Is that a six or a three? He isn’t certain, the lack of clarity irritating. Lewis always likes to be very precise about his numbers.

  With boarding about to begin, the same man approaches a young woman travelling alone with a young child in a pushchair. He is inviting her to pre-board the aircraft, kneeling down so that he can talk to the toddler at the same time. Lewis is standing about two metres away, watching as the woman struggles to gather together her handbag and a separate carry-on. In her rush to get going, the bag containing all manner of baby paraphernalia spills onto the floor.

  This is his moment. Coming forward to offer assistance, Lewis stoops down next to the kneeling member of staff, reaching across him to help clear up the mess on the floor. Accidentally he brushes up against the young man and apologises. The whole event takes thirty-seconds at most. In the confusion, Lewis has succeeded in discretely removing the man’s security pass.

  Now is the time for him to be moving on.

  Except that when he looks up, two pairs of armed and very serious-looking uniformed police officers are converging on the Oslo departure gate. Their combined approach has all the hallmarks of some kind of well-rehearsed pincer movement: Lewis and several other Oslo passengers being the ones trapped in the middle.

  61

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  He contemplates making a run for it but dismisses the idea. The airport terminal is ordinarily in a semi-permanent state of lock down. Lewis wouldn’t get any distance before being caught, pinned to the ground and arrested.

  He watches the approaching four policemen. Interestingly, their eyes are not yet focusing on him. Silent alarms are sounding in Lewis’s head. The approaching policemen are now ten metres away and closing.

  Then he sees something that ordinarily might have made him laugh. One of the Oslo passengers, a traveller sitting alone and in his late-teens or early twenties, is wearing a blue duffel coat. However underneath he has on a red gingham-checked shirt. The advancing policemen make straight for him, one pair moving to a position behind the man’s seat and the other two standing in front. Lewis concludes that this is his moment to slip away.

  The adjacent gate, Gate 4, is currently boarding a flight to Zurich. Gate 6, on the other hand, is empty. Lewis slips unseen behind the empty check-in desk and down the stationary escalators to the lower level. At the bottom, if he were to turn to the right, he would emerge on the entry jetty that would shortly be extending to meet the incoming aircraft. Turning to the left, however, with only a glass door and a security card reader between him and his goal, is the entry to the arrivals concourse. He takes out the palmed security pass, places it against the scanner and is prompted to enter a four-digit password. He enters the first three digits: two – four – nine and then pauses. Had the fourth digit been a six or a three? With no time to waste, he presses the number ‘six’. The little screen presents him with the message: ‘Invalid Code’.

  Voices can be heard at the top of the escalator behind him. Ground crew on their way down to meet an incoming aircraft. In another few seconds, they will see him. He swipes the security card and tries again. 2 – 4 – 9, this time entering the number ‘3 as the final digit. There is a gratifying ‘click’ as the electronic door lock releases. Lewis, now transformed into arriving passenger Marco Trevoni, slips through the door into the Arrivals level.

  Just in time. As the door closes behind him, the first of the ground crew are at the bottom of the escalator behind him.

  62

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  “Where have you flown in from, sir?” the bored UK Border Protection official is asking. She scans Marco Trevoni’s passport through her document reader and notes that this traveller has entered the United Kingdom only a few days previously.

  “Roma,” Lewis says in his best Italian accent. One of the benefits of lazing away his summers on the beaches of the Mediterranean is that Lewis speaks nearly fluent Italian.

  “You entered the UK only five days ago. What brings you back again so soon?”

  “Chelsea sta giocando il sabato.” She looks at him quizzically. He sees her lack of comprehension and says, simply, “Foot-ball!” and smiles. Marco Trevoni looks the part: swept-back hair, sunglasses perched on his forehead and his face well tanned. She gives him a smile, shakes her head and hands him back his passport. “Enjoy the game.”

  “Grazie,” he says and moves away from the desk into the central area where escalators take him down to the baggage reclaim hall and his re-entry back into Landside. His plan has worked. One queen captured and no sacrificial pawns required. He checks his watch. It is nearly one o’clock in the afternoon.

  63

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  Elsewhere in the terminal, Saul Zeltinger made his way through the staff screening area and was escorted to the small, windowless, detention room where Sui-Lee was being held. An overweight police sergeant unlocked the door and Zeltinger was permitted to enter. He found the Chinese woman sat upright on a hard wooden seat. Her hands were still cuffed behind her back, her face expressionless and eyes unmoving. She was a picture of perfect composure. There was a square table immediately in front of her and a chair opposite for Zeltinger to sit on.

  Zeltinger removed his overcoat, folding it with precision and placing it on the corner of the table nearest to him.

  “It might be nicer if we removed those cuffs before we talk – would that be helpful?”

  The woman shrugged noncommittally, a sign to Zeltinger that at least she understood English. He moved to the door and knocked three times. A few moments later, Zeltinger watched as the burly policeman took a key from his belt, stepped into the room and unlocked the restraints from Sui-Lee’s wrists.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a coffee?”

  “Sorry sir, no. Only water, I’m afraid,” he said, pointing to a plastic jug and several plastic cups on a side table in the corner of the room. He left the room, closing and relocking the door behind him.

  Zeltinger poured two cups of water, one for him and the other for the woman and placed them on the table in front of them both. She was rubbing her wrists.

  “Sorry about the cuffs,” he said, trying to be sympathetic. “My name’s Saul Zeltinger, Detective Inspector in London’s Metropolitan Police.” It was a classic Zeltinger introduction. It was very precise, full of Germanic correctness.

  “Am I being charged? I am a Chinese citizen, you know? I have rights and deeply resent being held without charge and for no reason.”

  “What is your name?” Zeltinger asked patiently, as if he hadn’t heard her. He removed his favourite black notebook, the one with the frayed edges and ink stains that Ben Lewis had seen him write in less than twenty-four hours ago in Hanover Square.

  “Tan Sui-Lee,” she said, piquing Zeltinger’s interest by the way she spoke with such defiance.

  “Well, Sui-Lee,” he said, familiar with the construction of Chinese names. “Before we get to the formalities of charges, I thought that you and I should be having a private little chat.”

  “Is this how you treat visitors to the United Kingdom?”

  Zeltinger took a sip of water as he thought about how best to draw up the battles lines. “Only those we suspect might have had some involvement in the bombing of a flat in Pimlico yesterday evening that killed one woman. Not to mention suspicions we may have about your possible involvement in incidents such as the firing of automatic weapons in and around Paddington ear
ly this morning. If you want me to go on, there was also the dead motorcyclist killed in Hyde Park by a bullet fired by a Chinese woman on a motorbike. And then the attempted assault and capture of one citizen named Ben Lewis in a hotel bedroom on the Edgware Road. Oh, and while we are laying all the cards on the table, there is also the attempted bombing of said hotel room as well. I’d say there was quite a lot to discuss Sui-Lee, don’t you think?”

  She sat there saying nothing, her expression blank, totally inscrutable.

  “Of course,” Zeltinger went on, “If there have been any misunderstandings, if we have the wrong person . . .” He let the sentence remain unfinished, spreading his hands and shrugging his shoulders apologetically. She was watching closely, weighing him up to see whether he was as a worthy adversary, seeing how much he knew.

  “Anyway, we shall soon know whether we have formal charges to make. I understand that the bomb diffused in the hotel bedroom earlier today had plenty of fingerprints on it. Did anyone mention that when they took your prints earlier they found explosive residue?”

  Sui-Lee remained impassive. Below the table, her fingers were fidgeting with each other, her head now bent so that she was staring down at the table, no longer looking at him directly. He allowed a silence to descend, seeing if he could coax her into speaking first. Witnesses often gave their best confessions when compelled to interrupt uncomfortable silences.

  Eventually, when he judged sufficient time had passed, Zeltinger decided to try one final question. “What would your reaction be, Sui-Lee, if I told you that we’d also arrested Ben Lewis?”

  At the mention of Lewis’s name, she actually raised her head and smiled, looking once more directly at Zeltinger eyes. She seemed to be mocking him, or at least that was his immediate impression.

  “Then I would say that you are lying to me, Mister Saul Zeltinger. And for that reason alone, I now no longer have anything further to say.”

  64

  Parliament Square

  Melanie Allen was sat in a small conference room together with Quentin Dunleavy, a young administrative assistant recently assigned to support her on international security-related matters. The star-shaped speakerphone set on the conference table was on. Its tiny green lights were illuminated, showing that the conference call was underway and not muted. At the other end of the line was the Minister, speaking from within the British Consulate’s offices in Geneva. In contrast to the grand edifice in London, these were located in an anonymous-looking, shiny-new, six-storey glass and concrete office block in Cointrin, only minutes from Geneva’s airport.

  Dunleavy had joined the Foreign Office as a graduate entrant on its Fast Stream programme. He was intelligent, every bit the part of a future Whitehall mandarin in the making: crisply presented in well fitting suit and club tie, hair lightly slicked to one side and shoes polished to a mirror shine. Someone destined for high office, assuming that he didn’t blot his copybook along the way.

  Dunleavy had started his new assignment with Allen well. However, the twenty-four year old’s relationship with his new boss had taken a nosedive during the last few days. A critical piece of intelligence that Allen had been given by her journalist friend, Leyla Zamani, during a brief meeting between the two in Paris ten days ago had gone missing. On returning to London, Allen had passed it, together with a whole bundle of background papers on the forthcoming second round of Iranian nuclear talks, to Dunleavy. She had asked him to analyse the documents and produce a draft report on his conclusions for the Minister. Which was where his current troubles had begun. The teaser from Zamani, had disappeared.

  “We’re making fuck-all progress,” the Minister’s Yorkshire accent came through clearly over the speakerphone. The latest discussions with the Iranians had reached a delicate and problematic stage. The Minister’s frustration was evident in his tone. “The Russians are being down-right obstructive at the moment. How are we meant to get Teheran to a so-called agreed position when the rest of us can’t even speak with one voice? We’re already some distance from where we ended up when we signed the interim agreement five months ago, for God’s sake. Just as the whole of the Middle East starts going well and truly tits up, with these Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria creating this damned new caliphate or whatever the fuck they are calling it, the last thing we need is some rogue Shias in Iraq joining forces with the Iranians with all their nuclear capability and no treaty in place. Unless everyone in the alliance speaks with one voice and pulls the reins tight on what Teheran and its new friends and allies can and can’t do with its uranium, before we know it we’ll have a nuclear war on our hands.”

  Mel absorbed the news in silence. Quentin was taking notes on his secure laptop. “What’s the Chinese position?” she asked eventually.

  “They’ve been keeping their powder dry. They’re always so damned hard to read. At one point today, I thought they might even be taking the Iranian’s side in the negotiations, it was that fucking weird.”

  “You know, that fits with some of the intelligence we’ve been hearing. We think that both the Russians and or the Chinese may have been trying to negotiate secret side deals of their own with the Iranians.”

  “Well that would be a fucking disaster – we may as well all pack up and go home. Do you have anything concrete or is that just some Foreign Office bullshit and speculation? A smoking gun would be useful. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Mel looked briefly at Dunleavy who was too busy typing away on his laptop to see her glance at him. “Let’s just say that we’re still working on that. We did have something,” she said and this time Dunleavy looked up, his face red with embarrassment, “but it appears to have gone missing temporarily.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Just find the bloody thing and get it out to me here, pronto. The PM is going to give me a right bollocking if we don’t nail some kind of follow-on deal in the next few days. My fucking reputation is on the line here I hope you realise that? I’m damned if some bunch of tossers in Whitehall are going to wreck my ministerial career simply because they can’t keep track of the paperwork. What are we talking about here? Some FCO analyst’s ‘maybe theory’ or something more tangible?”

  “Definitely the latter,” Mel said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and trying to sound more self-assured than she felt. “We just need a little more time. We’re working on a plan B. Fingers crossed, it should hand you the Russians and Chinese on a plate.”

  There was a pause on the line whilst this piece of news was being digested. “Don’t let me down, Mel. I need whatever you can get, the sooner the better, by yesterday would be best.”

  “We’re on the case, trust me,” Mel said, looking calmer than she felt inwardly.

  “Okay. Let’s have another update later today. I may need you out here in Geneva tomorrow. God knows, I could do with some support. Having a female negotiator on our team might change the dynamics a bit. Let me think about that and we can talk later.” With that, the call ended abruptly.

  Mel looked over at Dunleavy. “No sign of that missing document, Quentin?”

  The young man shook his head. “I’ve been through the whole stack of papers literally a hundred times. I can’t find it anywhere. I know you told me that it was in amongst them all, but I never saw it, not once.” He stopped short of accusing her of never having given it to him, but the implication was clear.

  Mel shook her head, her irritation showing. “It was definitely there. I remember turning to have a look at the front page whilst it was on your desk. Are you sure that you have searched everywhere, including the filing cabinets? It’s not tucked inside a pad of paper or something.”

  “I’ll look again but I’ve tried everything several times, I’m really sorry.”

  “I don’t care if you have to go on searching all night, you can’t have lost it. You’ll simply have to keep looking. You heard th
e Minister, our collective reputations are on the line and I, for one, am mightily pissed off.” Her pursed lips and gritted teeth matched the testiness in her voice. She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes to go before her next meeting. She needed time to prepare. This next one was going to be hugely important.

  65

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  Lewis is in a hurry to get away. He takes the lift down to the subterranean Heathrow railway platform. With only seconds to spare, he jumps on the next train to London just as the doors are about to close.

  Sitting in a section of the train almost by himself, Lewis feels his body relax as the train picks up speed. For the next twenty minutes, he should have uninterrupted thinking time, a precious commodity of late.

  Closing his eyes, the same arguments keep going around and around in his head. Logic keeps suggesting him that he should simply walk away – ditch Zamani’s phone, go into hiding, probably leave the country and disappear. It isn’t his fight, and he still doesn’t fully comprehend what was going on. Who are these lunatics trying to capture him, steal from him and now seemingly are hell bent on killing him?

  The Chinese woman is a lunatic for sure, someone who has been pursuing him relentlessly these last few hours all because she had been following orders. Orders that included doing whatever it took to find and capture Zamani’s phone and kill anyone who seemed to know anything about it. What is that all about? Thank God Zeltinger had managed to have her arrested at Heathrow. Lurking in the back of his mind, however, is a feeling that if these people were serious, no sooner had one been taken out of the picture then doubtless there would be others. The Chinese had to have been tipped off about the dossier – but by whom? The Russians? Unlikely. The British? Also fairly unlikely. The Iranians? More probable, but how had they got to know about its existence? If Zamani’s cousin, Shafiq, really had been smuggling nuclear secrets out of Iran, was it possible along the way that the Iranians authorities had somehow learnt about it? That seemed plausible.