The Walking Dead

  Ibrahim smiled, then said with gentleness, 'That was wonderful and I compliment you. I am grateful.'

  She gulped. None of the others had thanked her. Was he captured by the thought of virgins? She had never slept with a man, of course, and never would. Did he dream of the virgins in the gardens of

  164.

  Paradise, search and lust for them? She would not sleep with a man because she was scarred and would never find a husband, she knew it.

  'It is not the same food as we eat at home but it was good, or better. It was excellent,' he said softly.

  She flushed. A few days ago, before he had arrived, she would have thought that the final days of the countdown to the walk would have been spent in earnest collective prayer and political lecturing, with hectored statements of commitment. Her recruiter had told her, in the back room of a mosque tucked behind the main Dunstable road, that at the moment a Black Widow pressed the button as she stood on a bus filled with Russian paratroops and heading for Grozny she attained the height of bliss and would feel herself floating to another life. She would know for certain that she was not dead, but living and close to God. She stood up. Only he seemed prepared to stack plates to make it easier for her, but she shook her head briskly. She took the plates off the table, carried them through to the kitchen and brought back a bowl of fruit–oranges, apples and pears. She thought herself honoured to help him make his journey to Paradise. She put it on to the centre of the table.

  There was a rasped question. 'Do we have bleach here?'

  'I don't know,' she stammered. 'I have not looked.'

  She saw the cold, glinting eyes of the one they all called their leader now as he reached for an apple. Again the voice whipped her: 'I have. I have looked under the kitchen's sink. There is disinfectant but not bleach. I want bleach and you should buy it tomorrow.'

  She felt anger and hurt. 'Is the house dirty? I clean each day.'

  'A big bottle of bleach. Buy it tomorrow.' The teeth crunched into the apple.

  Faria went into the kitchen, ran the hot tap and started to rinse the saucepans. The water scalded her hands and…The thought was a thunderclap in her mind. The boy, so gentle and genuine, so dedicated to killing, pressed the button but his head did not fly, climb, soar–pressed the button and heard silence. A plate fell from her hand and cracked as it hit the draining-board. She was not criticized: there was no rebuke from the dining room. She could not believe anything would be more humiliating than to fail.

  He stood alone. The rifles covered him. The shouts battered in his ears. 'See there, the mother-fucker's got a wire showing. It's done a flicking malfunction! Don't let the fucker run! He's mine, the mother-fucker's mine, Sergeant.'

  They came from behind the roadblock's sandbag walls. They stormed out from the cover where they had crouched as he came closer to them. Traffic had backed off on the airport road; out northwest from Baghdad's centre. He was overwhelmed and was crushed down on to the Tarmacadam. A big black fist tore the switch from his hand. Tape went over his eyes and darkness surrounded him. Boots kicked him. He was lifted. He was thrown heavily on to a metal surface and heard an engine roar. A boot was at his throat. He was driven away.

  He did not know then that three hours after his inability to achieve martyrdom, bright lights would be shone piercingly into his face. If he closed his eyes he would be slapped, and questions would rain down on him.

  'Did you get food, Mr Hegner?'

  ''Fraid not, was in the air. I'll tell you, I'm mighty pleased you called me, and it was pure luck there was a flight coming over.'

  'I can get you anything you want,' the intelligence officer said. 'A burger, sandwiches, fries?'

  Just a coffee. I want to say that those grunts did a real good job. To get one of them suckers alive is a rare bonus. I wasn't thinking about lunch, just getting here. Now, is he doing it the Irish way?'

  'I don't follow you, Mr Hegner.'

  'The Irish have got the line on counter-interrogation resistance: "The best thing to say is to say nothing." Would you put him in that category?'

  'No, Mr Hegner, he's singing. That'll be the shock. We did what you suggested last time you were over when you drew this scenario, put a woman interrogator with a kind motherly voice alongside him. He's from the Saudi town of Dammam, a university-grade economics student, and he was brought across the border about–we reckon from what he says–half-way between Hafr Al-Bain and Arar. That was thirty-six hours ago. You want to go face to face with him?'

  'Not for me to break the lady's stride. But there's some questions I'd like to get answered.'

  'Not a problem, Mr Hegner.'

  He was driven to the holding cages. Cindy had done well. Within fifteen minutes of the first flash reaching Hegner's territory–a suicide fouled up–she'd tracked down an air-force executive jet that was lifting two senators from Riyadh to Baghdad on the next leg of their inspection tour, and the limousine had taken him from the embassy with no qualms about speed and stop lights. He was led, a loose hand on his arm, from the jeep to the outer gate, then keys clanked and he could smell the stench of the interrogation cage–same as it was anywhere–body odour and urine and pungent disinfectant. But she wore scent.

  The intelligence officer had been brought to him. 'It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Hegner. I feel privileged.'

  'What I want to know, Captain, is whether he has met with two individuals. I hear whispers of them, murmurs on the wind. You see, the Saudi route he was brought through is one used by these two. The facilitator is known to me as The Scorpion, what the whisper calls him. The Engineer–more whispers and murmurs–makes the devices, and it's unlike his to fail. What I need to know, did he pass through their hands? If he did, where and when?'

  'I'll do my best.'

  Another coffee was brought him, and a chair into which he sank heavily. He heard the sounds of the cage around him. Men moaned, and there was the clatter of the guards' boots, the rattle of keys. His mind drifted. A young man, probably identical in background, dedication and motivation to the one now being interrogated, had walked into the garrison camp mess hall in Mosul. Joe Hegner, fresh from a speech to the division's officers on combating the newly flourishing weapon of suicide-bombing, had been queueing with intelligence analysts and had just asked for tuna hash, baked beans and grape juice, when the flash had come, the pain and the darkness…Everything afterwards had been–was–personal.

  He heard the soft footfall of a woman.

  'It was a good question, Mr Hegner. He met neither the facilitator nor the bomb-maker. He says he heard men talking last night. They were fearful, both about the target reconnaissance and the makeup of the device. What he heard, was not supposed to but did, the Scorpion and the Engineer would have returned next week or the week after. I suppose that means they're out of the country. Does that help you, Mr Hegner? Is it enough to justify your trip?'

  'Thank you, Captain, you done good.'

  On the drive out to the runway where the small jet was parked, he phoned Cindy in Riyadh and told her what he wanted. He apologized to the senators and their staffers, already strapped in their seats, for having caused the delay in their schedule, and nestled down to doze.

  They chewed it, dogs with a dry, meatless bone.

  In Riverside Villas, Dickie Naylor shuffled between meetings. The building's lights now blazed down on the Embankment and spread far enough to glimmer on the river. All day, he had stood his ground firmly enough to dictate that it was he who ran the section, not Mary Reakes, and would run it for one further week.

  He hustled along a gloomy upper-floor corridor and she was in his wake.

  He rapped on the door of the assistant director, Tristram, to whom he reported. It would be the last meeting of the day, and his age wearied him. He had been up since six, out of his front door by seven and in his office by eight. Tiredness seeped through him. He had met with the surveillance people, the immigration teams who watched over ferry and airports, the duty liaison man from Sp
ecial Branch, the Anti-Terrorist unit and, last, the security official from the Dutch embassy. The assistant director had driven back from a family christening in the north-west.

  Naylor was called inside. He gave a résumé of what he knew, precious little.

  Maybe he'd stumbled over his words too many times.

  Mary would have done it better, more crisply, but he had the determination. He finished and pushed across the table the three photographs of a boy from a distant land: one showed a shadowed figure, black and white, caught on a CCTV camera at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport; another, similarly grainy, revealed the same boy coming into Arrivals at Schiphol, Amsterdam's airport, same T-shirt, easily recognizable. The third was a colour portrait of the boy, Ibrahim Hussein, who wore on his head and shoulders a loosely wound khaffiyeh cloth. In none of the pictures was there an indication of threat, danger. He had a pleasant face with a wisp of shyness in his eyes and modesty at his mouth. Naylor was reflecting that it was impossible, from the boy's features and expression and from the calm of his gait at King Khalid and at Schiphol, to believe that the threat and the danger were real. A pencil tapped the table in front of him and his head started up. Beside him he glimpsed Mary Reakes's eyebrows roll upwards.

  'You all right, Dickie?' Tristram asked.

  'Yes, yes.'

  'Don't mind me saying it, but you look knackered.'

  'I'm fine, thank you.'

  'Well, that's that…So, where do we go? Let's throw it around.'

  He had his hand over his mouth as if that would hide his yawn but it engulfed him. 'Sorry about that. We go with the intelligence. If it's necessary for a lock-down in London, so be it. We jack up the threat status. I don't see the alternative.'

  There was the hiss of Mary's breath. Then she chipped, 'It's hardly "intelligence", more like a bucket of supposition. What we have is a deception about a visit to family in Yemen and a flight to Holland. The rest is all theatrical. I suggest we wait until the Dutch have brought us more, picked him up or provided proof of his leaving their territory. Simply put, we don't have enough.'

  Sensing the opportunity, Naylor hit out, 'It will not be me, I assure you, who will ever lay himself open to the accusation that I was the man who ignored the intelligence, or supposition, indicating the risk of an imminent atrocity.'

  The assistant director kept his silence but twisted the pencil faster.

  She said,, 'That's a cheap shot, Dickie. I'm saying we don't have enough to ratchet the threat status. The intelligence isn't there. We cannot do lock-down–with all that it costs, and the manpower–until we know more. We should watch, listen and learn, then decide. In my experience, the American community are paranoid and hysterical. Bluntly, they cry, "Wolf."'

  Her experience, Naylor knew, was substantial and growing. She had been fast-tracked after a degree in Islamic Studies, first-class honours, was fluent in Arabic, had worked in Northern Ireland with distinction, then run a desk in D Branch and had been integral in the team that had put seven young Muslims from the home counties into the cells at Belmarsh. If Mary Reakes hadn't been snapping at his heels, hadn't had the paint chart ready, he would have admired her. But he could feel her breath on his ankles and he loathed her. 'I doubt we have time to dither,' he said.

  How many times had he sat in meetings since Nine-Eleven, more particularly since Seven-Seven1 where scraps of intelligence had been thrown into the ring? Endless hours spent digesting little morsels of information. Mornings, afternoons and evenings exhausted with staring at fuzzy or focused photographs of the supposed enemy, and all the little bastards smiled at whatever camera had caught them.

  'Emotive language, Dickie,' she said. 'Only trouble is that you don't have enough for lock-down.'

  There was a knock at the door.

  Tristram called, 'Please, come in.'

  It was Penny. She tiptoed across the carpet, dropped an envelope on to the table, and was gone.

  Naylor opened it. A photograph spilled clear and a three-line note. He read, then passed the note to Mary. No satisfaction showed on his face. He stared down at the grey images. He saw her jolted, and she pushed the note across the polished surface.

  In a flat voice, Tristram intoned, 'Well, Immigration's cameras at Waterloo's terminal would seem to me to suspend the argument. Rather fortunate that our friend is wearing that ludicrously recognizable T-shirt. What is it–a swan? Peculiar, bizarre, but it's him and he's here.'

  Mary said, 'Actually, it's The Threatened Swan, by Jan Asselyn, early seventeenth century, housed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Last year, on a trip with my art-appreciation group, I saw it. It's impressive and–'

  'I think, Mary, that it is not the moment for an assessment of Asselyn's work; I'll brief the director in the morning, but you can take it as read. It's lock-down and bugger the budget. Thank you, Mary. Dickie, would you, please, stay on for a moment?'

  She swept up the photograph and the note and left them.

  He was waved back to his seat and offered a drink. Didn't usually accept alcohol at work, but said he'd have a Scotch with ice and liberal water. It was given him and the assistant director perched on his desk, let his feet swing.

  'She's a bright girl, has a brain on a computer's scale, just needs a bit of polishing round the edges–please, Dickie, don't huff and puff, because you're not good at it. You're right, of course. You saw it coming before that wretched photograph surfaced and that's because you're an old-school warrior. Suspicion, like malaria, gets into the veins and stays there. You've got it, a bad dose…Anyway, cheers and good health.'

  Glasses were raised, clinked.

  'I'm going to miss you, Dickie. Very sincerely, I will. Two reasons. First, my being something of a protégé of your father-in-law but, second, for your common sense and good reasoning. I'd, keep you on if I could. Human Resources wouldn't hear of it. I can't. On Friday night, Dickie, you finish. Now to the point. You wouldn't disagree with me if I suggested that we wriggled through by the skin of our teeth after the Underground and bus bombs–what the Iron Duke said after Waterloo is appropriate: "The nearest run thing that you ever saw." The knives were out for us but we were only nicked, and that won't be repeated. Another major catastrophe in London and there'll be a wholesale cull of the veterans, and those bloody little people in Anti-Terrorism will be crawling all over us and taking primacy. Lifetimes of endeavour, Dickie, yours, mine and many others', will be reduced to dust and ashes. You're following me?'

  Naylor nodded. The decanter was eased closer to him and his glass was refilled.

  'I called you an old-school warrior. You're from former times. Their benefit was that we concentrated on prevention, not the gathering of evidence to set before a court. Kept the Soviets at bay, the realm intact, and the dock at the Old Bailey hardly mattered. We won't have time on this one for evidence, only–if we're very lucky–for action and that's the "action', Dickie, of an old-school warrior. We may–and you have to believe that Fortune will look kindly on us–find, or have offered to us, a small window of opportunity in the hours before the inevitable detonation of the bomb that will, I have no doubt, be carried by this ghastly young man to a point of maximum impact. Only a small window–are you following me, Dickie?'

  He lifted his glass as acknowledgement. He was.

  'I take no pride in saying it, but the new broom–the Mary Reakeses of our Service–are so damned moral. They care for the fine print of legality. You don't, Dickie, and probably I'd follow in your lane. The attack will be this week, that's a certainty, and it will be on your watch, Dickie. If that window were to open I'd like to think you'd know how to scramble through it with vigour, and without the constraints of a more conventional morality. It's in your past, am I correct? It's a different war and we may have to dirty our hands. I'm sure you know what's necessary…Thanks for staying on, and my best regards to Anne.'

  Naylor took the stairs down.

  Mary looked up from her screen. She said briskly, 'Well, you were right an
d I was wrong. We're going into lock-down. Oh, the source of it all will be here in the morning, Mr Josiah Hegner.'

  'By whose invitation?'

  'Not mine; He invited himself.'

  He felt a net tightening round him, like the noose on the neck of a prisoner when, long ago, they were taken to interrogation. He seemed to see mud and filth encrusted on his hands.

  'Hello. Surprise, surprise. Is that meeting over already, Banksy?'

  'No, still in full swing.'

  The armoury used by the Delta and Golf and Kilo teams was in the police station's basement. It was the territory of Daff, a predictable Welshman in blue overalls, who clung with adhesive commitment to his Caerphilly accent. Behind the counter, stacked on racks, was weaponry sufficient to start a small war. It was where Banks came any time there were demons in his mind, and he found comfort there–never failed to. Late on that Sunday evening, he needed it bad.

  'Beg pardon, I'm not understanding you, Banksy. Big flap, everybody in, pagers bleeping. Why aren't you sitting in?'

  'Not wanted,' Banks said grimly. 'Had the door shut on me.'

  'That's ridiculous, a man like you and with your experience, daft…I have to say, Banksy, I had heard there was friction in the Delta lot.'

  'A bit of friction, but I didn't think it would come to this. I was told there was a query about me, about my commitment. I was put out of the briefing before it started.'

  The shock was still with him. The inspector had said, 'Sorry and all that, Banksy, but your pager going was a mistake. You won't be involved in the security up-grade. You shouldn't have been called in. My regrets that we screwed your evening. Drop by tomorrow and I'll set the picture out for you, if I've time.' He had stood and walked up the aisle in the briefing room, had known that every eye was on him but he had looked straight ahead. Outside the room he had heard the door shut behind him and a key had turned. He'd leaned against a corridor wall, shaking, then headed for the only place he knew where he could find comfort: Daff's basement.