by Andy McNab
The idea of trying to clear his name seemed absurd now. He still wanted to know what had happened to Emma; maybe he could find out from Latimer, the lawyer he had seen in Belmarsh. For now, he needed to play along with Isham and be his ‘prize’, but only so far. He decided that the fewer words he said the better. He should show no remorse. If he was their hero he would behave like one. He had observed Abukhan asserting his authority with silence: the fewer words he said, the more they counted.
He held Isham to him, then broke away and turned to the smiling group, his hand touching his heart. ‘Brothers, I thank you.’
63
‘This is the man who’s trying to destroy you.’
Jamal didn’t hear him at first; he was too stunned by what he was seeing. In the news report, a tight-lipped police spokeswoman refused to confirm the number of casualties or the names of anyone who was missing. But Vernon Rolt, the new home secretary, left no one in any doubt that Jamal had escaped, describing him as an enemy of the state, a mass killer bent on destroying Western values – even the most dangerous man in Britain.
Isham tapped the screen. ‘Welcome to the new reality. It’s nothing less than a declaration of war on Islam.’ He smirked. ‘This is your next target. And we are ready.’
Jamal was working on the basis that the best method of handling Isham was to play along with his plans, for now. Perhaps this was how he could escape his fatal embrace, maybe the only way. But he also realized that something in him had changed. He must avenge Adila’s death, and Isham was showing him where to direct his vengeance.
‘But he’s the home secretary. How do I even get near him?’
Isham’s eyes blazed. He leaned closer and spoke in a whisper, even though they were alone. ‘We have the means to get right up close. You will see.’ He made a gesture with his hands, miming an explosion.
Jamal said nothing. Whether this was pure fantasy or not, he didn’t know. The Belmarsh escape had been audacious but also planned with great precision. Isham was a fanatic, whose only thoughts were about his personal war on the British Establishment, his dream to see the black flag of the caliphate flying over Buckingham Palace. Jamal’s time in Syria had convinced him of the folly of the Islamist cause and the waste of life it involved. Now, seeing Rolt on national TV calling him those terrible things had rekindled his sense of outrage.
Isham gestured at the image of Rolt on the screen. ‘This man is using you to further his cause. We will show him what folly that is. You will declare war on him.’
Jamal folded his arms and gave him the dead stare that he had learned in Syria from Abukhan. No expression, just stillness. ‘No video.’
‘But, brother, we must alert the world so your escape can be celebrated. They are saying you are unaccounted for. The world needs to know you have triumphed.’
Jamal remained still. In the twenty-four hours he had been in Isham’s presence he had got the measure of the man. But Isham knew nothing about him. He just believed what he had read in the papers about the Aleppo massacre. He didn’t know the real Jamal at all. ‘If I am to do this, I want no video. Let people think I am dead.’
64
10.30
Pimlico, London
Sarah Garvey eyed the lawyer sitting opposite her. He definitely wasn’t her type, that was for sure. His buttoned-up collarless shirt said it all, and his brown suede shoes. Never trust a man in brown shoes: one of her father’s pet sayings. Not only that, just about everything he stood for made her flesh creep. Yet here he was, Alistair Latimer, human-rights lawyer, friend of terrorists, here in her own living room at her invitation.
She picked up the teapot. ‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Just plain, thank you. Lemon if you have some.’
Her father would have had something to say about that as well. She found half a lemon in the kitchen and sliced off the mould. She had called Latimer out of the blue and had had to convince him it wasn’t a hoax. He had refused to meet her anywhere public or at either of their offices, and wanted it understood that if asked he would flatly deny that they had ever met and expected her to do the same. ‘Whatever works,’ she had told him. He was her last chance to help Jamal and she owed it to Adila’s memory to try.
‘Well, this is a turnaround, eh?’ She’d thought a touch of levity might help things along. He stared at her blankly as she plopped the slice of lemon into his tea. ‘You and me, of all people, getting together like this.’
He stared into his tea. ‘I’m glad you find something to amuse you in these difficult times.’
Pompous twat. And that was a low blow. She had lain awake all night, unable to sleep, thinking about Adila. It was she who had pulled strings and smoothed it with the governor so the girl could visit Jamal … ‘Well, let’s just say that it’s an interesting sign of these difficult times, is it not, that we find we have a common interest?’
‘Do we?’
She felt like slapping him but held it in check. All through her tenure as home secretary, Latimer had been a persistent thorn in her side. High-profile cases against crazed murdering jihadis, men with blood on their hands who should have been bang to rights, had collapsed in court, thanks to his relentless chipping away at the Crown’s case, prising open tiny cracks in the prosecution’s arguments until they were laid bare, yawning wide for all the court to see. He had particularly undermined the credibility of the Metropolitan Police, humiliating its officers as they were repeatedly wrong-footed in trials.
Much as she would have preferred to hold this nasty little man personally responsible, much as she would have liked to denounce him as a friend of terrorists and an enemy of the state, she knew that the problem was not him but the police themselves. When it came to dealing with the huge escalation in terrorist acts and bloody reprisals, they were grotesquely under-resourced. Although there was no love lost between her and Halford, the Met commissioner, she had some sympathy for him in his struggle to meet the expectations of an ever more anxious public.
But they had underestimated the impact of Latimer, the terrorists’ brief of choice in front of juries wishing to see the streets cleared of terror. By the time he had finished, the prosecution’s case was usually in tatters and the judge had to direct them to deliver a not-guilty verdict. And after it was over, he would stand outside the court oozing pious self-righteousness as he delivered his lefty rubbish to the media about defending the downtrodden and oppressed. She eyed him with a mixture of awe and contempt as he took a sip of tea and placed the cup carefully back in its saucer.
She cleared her throat. ‘Well, let’s get on with it, shall we?’
She downed the contents of her cup in three gulps and refilled it. The teapot shook slightly in her hand so that the top rattled. A Scotch would calm that. Maybe if she just nipped into the kitchen … For God’s sake, woman, get a grip.
‘I know you tried to help Jamal’s sister,’ he said.
‘Much good it did her.’ She reached into her case and drew out one of the two manila folders she had procured, marked MOST SECRET. She placed it on the coffee-table between them, spun it round and pushed it towards Latimer. His eyes widened.
‘The Secret Service report on what happened in Aleppo, suppressed on Rolt’s orders. Go on, take a look. I think you’ll find Jamal comes out of it rather well.’
He opened the folder and scanned it. ‘Your friends in government appear to be hell-bent on the destruction of our civil liberties …’
‘Not my government, not my friends,’ she snapped.
He gave her a weary look. ‘Okay, whatever.’
Biting her lip, she pressed on: ‘It’s pretty comprehensive. It looks as though Abukhan, Jamal’s militia commander, was tipped off just in time. Emma Warner was intercepted as soon as Jamal handed back her camera. And Abukhan arranged Jamal’s passage out of the country.’
Latimer frowned. ‘But why? Why didn’t he kill Jamal too?’
‘Presumably because he wanted to teach the Western media a lesson, an
d to punish Jamal in a different way by having him blamed for the massacre. Or maybe for the same reason he had Emma’s remains deposited at a British consulate – because he’s a fully paid-up out-there fucking nutcase.’
She had his attention now. ‘Who tipped him off about Emma?’
She shook her head. ‘They don’t know.’
Latimer examined the report. Again, as she watched him, she was plagued by doubt. What was she thinking of, showing secret documents to a card-carrying enemy of the state? Well, to hell with it. Having fallen this far, out of cabinet and into the wilderness, what did it matter if she plummeted even further? She had obtained evidence of Jamal’s innocence from SIS, but he was involved in an audacious jailbreak in which several people had died. It was the knowledge of Rolt’s complicity in suppressing that information which strengthened her resolve. She had Derek Farmer to thank for it, another unlikely ally in what felt like her own personal vendetta against her successor. She had to keep in mind that what she was doing would ultimately be for the greater good.
No doubt Latimer felt he was crossing a line of his own even meeting a former home secretary. And now he was looking at her as if she had gone mad – which might not be far from the truth.
‘He is a fugitive from justice. You are aware of that?’
Garvey ignored the patronizing tone. She reached into her case and produced the second folder, also marked SECRET. ‘The interim report on the Belmarsh bomb, the contents of which have also been blocked by the Home Office. It’s not chapter and verse but it points pretty conclusively to the first bomber inside the visitors’ area as being the wife of Isham al Aziz. The two accomplices who blew themselves up outside the visitors’ entrance have yet to be identified. This was a well-planned attack that must have taken weeks to prepare. Neither Jamal nor his sister could have had anything to do with it. For all we know, al Aziz might even have taken Jamal hostage.’
As Latimer buried himself in the closely typed text uncertainty infected her again. She had made her name for herself as a toughie, a hawk, the twenty-first-century equivalent of a hang-’em-and-flog-’em advocate, a believer in the value of tough prison regimes and long sentences. But not at any price. The more she had come to understand the workings of law and order during her time as home secretary, the more she had discovered the extent to which fair play had been squeezed out of the system, and found herself in a minority of one in cabinet as she railed against the steady erosion of the nation’s most treasured freedoms. Then had come the ultimate ignominy of having to make way for the man who would dismantle the rights of the accused altogether. In Rolt’s new world, you were guilty until proven innocent. And that was not acceptable.
Latimer put down the folder without comment. Was she getting through to him? ‘So, do you know where he is?’
His nostrils flared slightly as he took a deep breath, as if she had just woken him from a trance. He looked at her in horror. ‘Even if I did I would hardly be likely to divulge—’
‘Okay, okay.’ Irritating man. She cut him off. ‘Let me rephrase that. If he were to contact you, you could indicate that there is an interested party, in Parliament, prepared to support him.’
Latimer closed the folder, put it on top of the other and moved them back across the table. Garvey prepared herself for a further humiliation. The man clearly thought she was out of her mind, sharing secret documents with him, talking about helping Britain’s most-wanted fugitive.
‘What do you know about Isham al Aziz?’ she asked.
Latimer shrugged.
‘Let me fill you in. He and Jamal are cut from very different cloth, and not just because Isham’s a white convert. At the time of his arrest he was in the midst of assembling a suicide vest in a garage full of hydrogen peroxide and didn’t appear to be running a hairdresser’s, so he was bang to rights. But he still tried to make the most of his day in court to denounce the government and call for the raising of the ISIS flag over Buckingham Palace. The judge had to have him removed. He has tried to style himself as the ISIS caliphate’s ambassador to Britain, not that anyone’s particularly noticed in Raqqa. But for him Jamal is a game-changer. He will be considered a great prize, which will raise Isham al Aziz’s profile considerably with the affiliated Islamist groups, not just here but all over the extremist blogosphere. He’s going to make the most of Jamal while he can, especially if we don’t try to help him.’
Latimer put his hands together and rested his chin on his fingertips. ‘At the time we met, I have to say I had my doubts about him. Based on what you have here, and what’s in those reports, I think he did something very brave in Aleppo.’
‘So what do you think? Some kind of deal to get Jamal out of his predicament and al Aziz back in the bag?’
Latimer let out a long, weary sigh. ‘Jamal may not have been part of the plan to break out of Belmarsh, but the fact that he absconded doesn’t exactly help his case.’
Garvey gripped the edge of the table. ‘Look, given what we now know about what happened in Syria and the claim that the home secretary personally ordered the suppression of the details of the tape and the fate of the journalist Emma Warner, then surely you could try to build a case that mitigates Jamal’s decision to escape. Indeed, it might help if we could argue that al Aziz effectively forced Jamal to abscond with him.’
No reaction. Garvey peered at him. Perhaps he was getting the message. Perhaps she hadn’t gone mad after all. ‘So you think you can help him?’
He gave her a disapproving look. ‘You’re asking me to aid and abet a fugitive from the law, an accused terrorist.’
Garvey gritted her teeth. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, man, you’ve made a career out of helping terrorists.’
He placed his fingertips on the folders again, then spoke in an icy whisper: ‘I’m not sure you’ve thought through the ramifications of all this. If it ever got to court, what you have here is potentially enough to destroy the current home secretary’s reputation. But in the current climate that’s a very big if.’ He paused and prodded the folders again. ‘Furthermore, certain people would be extremely upset if they found out these had got into the wrong hands.’
She pushed the folders towards him and grinned. ‘Good.’
‘There’s the matter of who’s going to pay for all this. We’re hardly going to be applying for legal aid.’
Garvey glared at him. ‘Well, don’t look at me.’
Latimer paused and sucked his bottom lip. ‘There is another interested party.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Someone else with an interest in Jamal’s fate.’
65
14.00
Pall Mall
‘I’m sorry, sir. We haven’t seen Mr Buckingham for the last two nights. But he hasn’t checked out. Maybe he’s gone back to the country and it’s slipped his mind.’
The porter’s hangdog expression betrayed just the minutest hint of irritation. He liked to run a tight ship.
Tom smiled. ‘Probably my mistake.’ It wasn’t. His father had gone AWOL. ‘Anyway, he’s got my regimental tie and I need it for a do tonight. I don’t suppose you could let me have the key to his room?’
The porter pursed his lips. ‘I’m afraid the rules are that no one is allowed into a member’s room without being accompanied by the member himself.’
He knew that any high-horse stuff wouldn’t work. Neither would bribery. They were hard as nails, these old geezers, and didn’t take shit from anyone. Perhaps if he appealed to his sense of propriety. ‘I’m not sure I can show my face if I don’t have the right tie …’
The porter looked at him over his glasses and sighed.
Two minutes later he was standing in his father’s room. All that was left was a half-completed Times crossword and some socks. He had packed and gone – but where?
The porter was looking over his shoulder. ‘Well, as I said, he hasn’t signed out. That’s not like him, sir.’
Tom turned. ‘I’m sure he’ll show up s
oon enough. Sorry to have troubled you.’
Back in the lobby he stepped into one of the club’s charmingly archaic and seldom used phone booths, and dialled Mandler’s number. Tom had put the covert message in the letter to meet him here but there was no sign of him either. He got a continuous tone: unobtainable. He dialled his main office number. The same. He dialled his home number. No answer, and no outgoing message.
Because he couldn’t think of anyone else to try he dialled Woolf.
‘I can’t really talk, Tom. We’ve got a big flap on with these escapees.’
‘What’s happened to Mandler? He’s gone off the grid.’
‘No idea. He’s been kicked upstairs, remember?’ The din of a busy office almost drowned his reply. ‘Garvey wanted to speak to you, though. She’s his ally. Why don’t you ask her?’
‘What does she want?’
In the background someone was shouting Woolf’s name. He hung up.
Tom tried Garvey’s mobile. The former home secretary was the only other person to know about his true role inside Invicta.
‘Tom Buckingham, what a pleasant surprise.’
She sounded pissed. That was all he needed. He asked her if she knew where he could find Mandler.
‘How should I? But listen, Tom, I need to pick your brains. How about a drink?’
He could hear ice cubes clinking. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t right now.’
‘Well, give me two minutes.’
Four minutes later he was still listening as Garvey went into breathless detail about Jamal al Masri, the Belmarsh escapee whose sister had died in the blast and how he was being hounded by Rolt who was suppressing the truth about his bravery in Syria. Tom didn’t have time for it, but it confirmed that Xenia Dalton had been right to be worried about the fate of her reporter in Aleppo.