Confessor

by John Gardner

  During the previous day in Paris, he had insisted on checking that the devices would do the job. He had intended to do the same thing today in Rome. So it was Ramsi who did as he was told: put the case on the ground, slowly straightened up and placed his hands over his head.

  Nabil did not hesitate. He turned and started to run, knowing that they would probably have to hunt him down to catch him, banking on the fact that they would not take the chance of firing at him while he was carrying the case. He was ten paces from Ramsi when he glanced back, saw his comrade had given in and, with a loud curse, pulled his pistol and raised it to kill the traitor.

  He was riddled with shots from the Carabinieri. The case he was carrying crashed to the ground, and, for less than a second, everyone seemed to pause, flinching away from the huge explosion that could follow, but nothing happened; the pause went almost unnoticed as Nabil’s chest was ripped away by bullets and his body seemed to spin in the air like some whirling children’s top, then lifted, finally hitting the paving with a crunch.

  They closed on Ramsi, frisked him—two bomb squad men pulling the case away—and handcuffed his wrists. In a daze the bomb maker was led away.

  Samira saw all this and was filled with fear. She now knew what the word “dread” truly meant and she willed herself to walk slowly away. Finally, she hailed a cab and asked to be taken to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

  By midafternoon she was back in London and heading towards the Camberwell house. She took great care and made the journey by Underground, taxi and bus, changing several times and finally walking the last four or five blocks through a light drizzle of rain that seemed to reflect her own disconsolate feelings. Now it was up to the four of them: herself, Hisham, Ahmad and Dinah.

  It was only when she let herself into the house that she was told by Dinah—who had been left behind—that they would be moving to yet a new location and that there had also been trouble in the United States. The story had been on the television news, and though the Intiqam teams were not cognizant of each other’s roles, the fact that only two of the original American team were still at large upset both the women.

  They left the Camberwell house in the early evening and Dinah led her to their new quarters: a large service apartment just off Kensington High Street.

  Far away, in the garden of his villa overlooking Baghdad, the Biwãba—the Gatekeeper—sat alone as he contemplated the situation. His team in America had been decimated. Two of the British team were out of the game—one dead, the other in custody. It was Ramsi, the man being held in Rome, who worried him most. Ramsi, he had always considered, was the one who might crack under pressure of hostile interrogation.

  Hisham would certainly move the British team to another safe house, so there was little information Ramsi could give on the question of location. Neither did the bomb maker know the final moves of the plan—the moves they called Magic Lightning—so that was safe.

  The fact that only two of the original team were left in New York caused him even greater concern. To succeed and carry the entire design to its natural conclusion would now be very difficult, as security forces would be more alert. The original scheme had called for acts of violence to take place throughout the summer months so that the culmination would occur as the various governments returned to their seats of power when the long vacation period was over—two weeks to go.

  He sat and thought over the matter for almost two hours. Finally, he came to a decision. They could not wait out the two weeks until the main targets would be in place. He would have to bring the targets back to their cities—to London, Washington, Paris and Rome—so that Magic Lightning could play on them and so destroy all effective governments.

  He went into the house and put a telephone call through to a number in Switzerland.

  In a room leading from an underground laboratory on the outskirts of Geneva, the telephone rang. It was picked up by a young biochemist who, with two other equally brilliant young men, was being paid a fortune to develop something which, once let loose, would be more lethal than any poison or nerve gas.

  “This is the Kingpin,” the Biwãba said in his soft, slightly threatening voice. He spoke in English.

  “Pestilence,” the young biochemist replied.

  “How long will it take you to complete the packages?”

  The young man laughed. “A day. No longer. As we told you, the work is not arduous. It is a relatively simple matter.”

  “Then make your final preparations. I shall have couriers with you in the next forty-eight hours.” The Biwãba closed the line and then called the Yussif teams in both England and the United States. They talked in a code, which told these men in the Hudson Valley and in Britain’s beautiful Oxfordshire countryside, that they were to prepare for new and very special instructions that would reach them in the usual manner.

  With luck, the Biwãba would have things ready for the final horror in a matter of hours. If everyone concerned did exactly as they were told. A week would see it done.

  18

  ONCE MORE, BIG HERBIE Kruger found it difficult to sleep. Perhaps it was the complexity of the case or, possibly, the atmosphere of the Dower House, his own private hell during the year of interrogations.

  He raided the fridge and found some tasty fish paste, which he spread on a couple of pieces of bread, taking them through to Gus’s study, together with a large mug of coffee. Only later did he discover, from Bitsy, that the fish paste was a well-known brand of cat food. Bitsy had started feeding every stray that came her way.

  Earlier, he had tried to send himself to sleep by reading a book from Gus’s library—Conjurers’ Psychological Secrets, by S. H. Sharpe—but instead of lulling him, the work wakened him up. He was amazed, for this book could just as well have been written as a manual for intelligence and security services. Gus, he considered, had been right. The techniques and methods of the performing magician ran parallel to the techniques of what was, in intelligence, called tradecraft.

  In the study he tried to gather his tangled thoughts. It was exceptionally difficult to focus everything on the how and why of Gus’s death, when they now found it appeared to dovetail with the recent terrorist activity. The FFIRA and the hostile Arab cells seemed almost to have been designed to lead them away from the truth, pulling efforts into tributaries which beckoned them from the main target—Gus’s killer, or killers.

  He was also depressed, as there was something funny about Gus’s having run the agent Jasmine. To add to this concern, he was now ninety-nine percent certain that he could not trust Carole, and that hurt him, for he had been almost like a father to her. Slowly he came to the conclusion that he had no option but to interrogate her again, with great hostility.

  So, through the night, Herb worked is way through several layers of Gus’s dossier and the tangled web of notes for his memoirs. At around eight in the morning he had another shock. This time it was a private file, red flagged and marked “Mr. Keene Only. No Subscribers.”

  After reading only a few lines he picked up the telephone and called Worboys, who was also in the Office early.

  “Tony, the asset that Five latched on to?”

  “The one who gave us so much grief?”

  “That’s the fellow. One they didn’t give up without a struggle. You got his name?”

  “Sure. Hisham Silwani.”

  “This can’t be Jasmine by chance?”

  “Definitely not Jasmine, Herb.”

  “He got a crypto? With the Security Service I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me have it, Tony. Be a good old chum and share it with me.”

  “Share it, Herb? Share it? For heaven’s sake, don’t go all American on me. The damned American Service are always wanting to share things with me when, as they say, they have a visit with me. I’ll do better than share it, Herb, I’ll give it to you.”

  “Wait.”

  “Wait?”

  “Sure, let me have a shot at reading your
mind.” He had watched Gus doing his thing on video, so now Herb was in the psychic business. “I sense that this man has a crypto which is biblical. It is a Bible name beginning with an I—”

  “Cut the crap, Herb. Yes.”

  “It starts with an I and the name is Ishmael, like in Moby Dick also—‘Don’t call me Ishmael, I’ll call you.’”

  “No, Herb. Ishmael, as in son of Abraham and Hagar. Recipient of a divine blessing. Our friends in the Security Service have a sense of humor; Hisham Silwani was the recipient of their divine blessing. They turned him.”

  “Wrong, Tony. I got it in front of me. Gus turned him.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Gus turned this guy for the Security Service. Same as Gus got hold of this asset Jasmine. Very close fellow, our Gus.”

  “You’re sure? I mean one hundred percent sure?”

  “Two hundred and fifty percent sure. Proof positive. Might even be able to get DNA.”

  “Stop horsing about, Herb. You’re really serious?”

  “I told you, Tony. We lent Gus to Five. Gus turned the guy and never told us. Like Five never told us.”

  “Shit!” said Worboys with feeling.

  “While we’re at it, Young Worboys, what did you get from the telephone numbers in The Times answerback ad?”

  “Damn all. Those telephone numbers make no sense at all.”

  “You tried other cities as well as London?”

  “They tracked the entire United Kingdom, Herb. Nothing. Zero. Zilch.”

  “Okay, why not try it worldwide? You see, Tony, they have big silver birds these days. Carry people over oceans.”

  “I think we have them doing that already—I mean a global search.”

  “Good. So what about the telephone log in and out of here and the big house?”

  “On its way to you now by courier. A couple of interesting things there. But you really have got Gus’s fingerprints all over Ishmael?”

  “Told you, Tony. Give you full report later in the day. Trouble is these islands are full of noises and full of silence. Now we got committees running things, left hand doesn’t know what right hand is doing half the time.”

  “We really only want to know who blew Gus away, Herb. This is getting more complicated.”

  “Sure, I’ll give you full complications later. Okay?”

  Herbie had it there in front of him. Chapter and verse. A long notation giving all the facts.

  The Security people had come to Gus in 1983 wanting to lay their hands on a new Middle East asset. They had put the man, Hisham Silwani, under surveillance and considered that he was not—as they said—kosher. Gus had the notes of his first meeting with the two officers who really wanted the man. “You’re good at turning and burning, Gus,” they had said. “Can you do this one for us? Discreet. Closed mouth. Strictly entre nous.”

  Gus had noted in the file:

  They took me out to watch Silwani today. Playboy Arab on the surface, but he has contacts which a playboy would steer clear of. I was with them on the following night, and it was very obvious that Mr. Silwani liked playing with the ladies. To be fair, they liked playing with him also. I told J and B that I could set it up. I thought Mary Delacourt would suit very well. I said that if I baited the trap the actual burn would be up to them. Then I’d come in and turn him when they had softened him up. They said okay.

  The next comment was made almost a week later:

  Our brothers at Five have decided to give Mr. Silwani a shot. They called me in for a meeting, and C has given permission for them to use me without having the details from them. I am not elated over the fact that our brothers and sisters are not going to share the product, so to speak. However, it is a go, so we go.

  Last night I had a long talk with Mary (Delacourt). She said things like “Oh, yes!” and “Yum-yum.” So I yum-yummed her, just for the practice, and she is going to latch on to him sometime this week. The boys will then do their stuff and I shall be called in to spin him. It all appears to be straightforward. Mary is a Sloane at heart, and she mentioned some club where the younger royals can be seen at least twice a week. She has an in with the management and they will send Brother Silwani an invitation—a free week of temporary membership, then he can decide if he wants to pay ten grand a year so that he can go out with aristocratic young women, and get the occasional glimpse of Di and Fergie.

  Another eight days passed before Gus made further reference. Then:

  Well, Mary did the work and they felt Silwani’s collar yesterday morning. It appears that he is fearful to the extent that he is without excrement. I am on standby and they’re going to let me listen to the tapes before I go and burn him good and proper.

  Three days later, Gus turned and burned Hisham Silwani in the apartment off Marylebone High Street.

  When he had laid out the terms, playing a very hard man from the word go, Gus had said, “That’s it, pure and simple, Mr. Silwani. You throw in your lot with us, or we explain certain things to your superiors. I realize that this puts you at a disadvantage whichever way you decide, but with us at least you get to go on living.”

  It took Hisham Silwani only thirty minutes to make his decision, and it had not been all bad, because the Brits had been generous with money for expenses.

  Now, in Gus’s room at the Dower House, Herbie listened to the sounds of the place coming alive for a new day. He locked the files away and went through for breakfast.

  In the new Kensington apartment Hisham had also suffered a night of sleeplessness. After the news that Nabil was dead and Ramsi in the hands of the Italian authorities, all Hisham wanted to do was dig a hole and hide.

  During the night, he struggled with his conscience and tried to work out his options. All Ramsi could tell them was the size of the team. He could also give them descriptions and names. Names—that had always been a weak point. They should have known each other only under code names.

  From Baghdad’s point of view, there was no problem, but Hisham had a slightly different vantage point. The British Security Service had him by the balls. They knew his name and had told him what he should do. If he did not do as he was told, they would make things more than uncomfortable. If Ajax had still been alive, he would have bypassed the people who made direct contact with him and thrown himself on Ajax’s mercy.

  Ajax, as he knew only too well, was the man Keene, who had already been blown to heaven before they began Intiqam. For Hisham—or Ishmael, as the British knew him—there was no way out. He also wondered how much the man Declan, from the FFIRA, was telling his interrogators.

  He wanted to run but had nowhere to go. If he did not carry out his orders and report to the British, they would come for him by reporting him to Baghdad. If he went on and did the real jobs allotted to him, the British would still bury him. He assumed they had blown the target Kruger into little pieces, though the news segments on television had made no mention of a death when they reported on the explosion near the New Forest. Like all intelligence and security services, the Brits like to keep quiet about things like that. It was sometimes better for them to remain silent.

  There was still some time to go before the day of Magic Lightning, and what he required was time. Perhaps some halfhearted attempt at the other two targets—the official Worboys and the man with the strange name, Archie Blount-Wilson—might buy him a few more days.

  By six in the morning Hisham had made a kind of decision. They would go for the other two targets. No botched jobs. Straightforward assassinations, with dead bodies at the end of the day. That would at least keep him on the right side of the FFIRA, who could be mightily bad enemies.

  After that? Well, maybe it would be time to run to the Security Service and beg for their mercy. Surely they would have to do something to help him. Everything else was in hand. He had sent in code their new hiding place to the Biwãba. He did not expect any instructions for major incidents, as they liked to call the placing of bombs, for some time yet. Today he
would instruct his team on the assassinations of the two targets and he would leave tomorrow’s problems to look after themselves.

  Once again Hisham was being pushed into that dangerous area of self-deception which made him walk, not just on two sides of a street, but three—if you counted the Irish.

  It was the middle of the night in New York, but Walid and Khami were awake in their sumptuous suite at the Parker Meridien. Khami, as Walid had long suspected, really cared for him. During the previous afternoon Yussif had telephoned them—right there in the suite. It had worried him because the call came in through the switchboard, but Yussif had been careful; asked for Mr. Jaffid, and went into a long and very punctilious monologue, which, in the end, had told him that they should stay and wait for instructions. It was possible that Yussif himself—by which the voice meant one of the team—would visit them and give new instructions. In the meantime, they should act as normally as possible. “Enjoy your stay,” the voice had said.

  Walid took that literally. He knew from past times that Iraqi women who became Westernized liked nothing better than to go shopping. He had noted on earlier visits that Westernized Iraqis could easily squander thousands of dollars, and they were always very happy to do this. So, he told Khami to go out and buy herself a lot of frivolous things, giving her a credit card in the name of Fatima Jaffid. “Be bold,” he said. “Buy things that will please you, and me also.”

  On Khami’s return they had called down to room service and had a huge meal sent up to the suite. “We are living like kings and queens,” he told her. “Enjoy this while you can, Khami. They will certainly give us more work to do soon.”

  After they had eaten, they bathed together in the Jacuzzi, then Khami told Walid to go and rest, as she had many beautiful things in store for him. He put on a terry cloth robe and stretched himself out on the bed.

  Presently Khami, also dressed in a robe, came into the bedroom. She appeared to be shy and modest as she approached the bed. “Walid.” Her voice was soft and throaty. “Walid, I would like to come to you as a bride on her wedding night …”