Heartbreaker: Love, secrets and terror

by Nick Louth

  But it soon became clear to Wyrecliffe why the location made such sense. Sinai was thinly populated, and easy to police. It was the same reason that Hosni Mubarak had a home here, to which he had fled when he resigned the month before. Only one main road came south to Sharm through the mountains, and the rag-tag jihadists who were making a nuisance of themselves in the north of the peninsula had no traction down here. The ongoing revolution, albeit an intense maelstrom in just one Cairo square, had smashed the tourist trade. Sharm was less than half full in its peak season. There weren’t many Egyptians here either. Those who ran the hotels in Sharm, toiled in the laundries, made beds and cooked food were as likely to be Bangladeshis and Filipinos as they were Egyptian. Even if they were Egyptian, they wouldn’t be from Sinai. Almost no one was local.

  The Grand Tutankhamun itself was owned by a consortium of Gulf businessmen, and had been finished to extraordinary standards of opulence just a year ago at the cost of one hundred and seventy-five million dollars. The ballroom where world leaders would address the journalists was almost the same size as New York’s Grand Central Station, was lined with marble, and boasted a chandelier the size of a hot air balloon beneath its sixty-foot ceiling. Offering it on the cheap as a venue for the conference was an imaginative piece of marketing. The owners could not have guessed that it would turn out to be Sharm’s insurance against the twin disasters of the terror bombing of a jet and domestic political turmoil. So while every other Egyptian resort was now almost empty, the Grand Tutankhamun and the rest of Sharm would for a week be crammed with big-spending guests, officials and journalists.

  There were already Egyptian Air Force technicians visible on the twelfth-floor penthouse roof of the Grand Tutankhamun. They were checking the Saab-Bofors RBS 70 laser-guided anti-aircraft missile launchers set up next to the faux golden pyramid inside which was a gymnasium and plunge pool. The hectare of water gardens behind the front entrance were being searched by navy frogmen. For two days, the main airport at Sharm would be closed to all but dignitaries. The few tourists still resolute enough to visit would instead be bussed up to the old military airfield at Bir Gifgafa, sixty miles east of the Suez Canal.

  Though the exact arrival times of VIPs were still confidential, even to journalist attendees, Wyrecliffe’s security sources reckoned that Hillary Clinton would arrive directly at Sharm. The arrival of a giant US military C5A transport aircraft yesterday indicated that one of the US president’s fleet of armoured limousines was being made available to her. The Israelis, by contrast, would arrive by chopper, almost certainly at night, having followed a route down the Gulf of Aqaba. None of Wyrecliffe’s security sources was quite sure how the Russians would play their movements.

  The first piece to camera was done in shirtsleeves from the roof of his hotel, with the Grand Tutankhamun in the distant background. No one was yet being allowed in to report from inside. The sniffer dogs were in, and there had been all sorts of military convoys coming and going. The most spectacular of which involved a large crane lowering in a dozen car-sized concrete blocks around the hotel entrance, designed to prevent truck-borne suicide bombers. The extensive hotel grounds, defiantly lush green and watered by its own seawater desalination plant, were set between the beach to the south-east and the El Sheikh Zayed Road to the north-west. Both side access roads were closed, their ends crimped with razor wire, while a couple of tanks were placed on the beach to deter sea-borne attack. Half a mile before anyone reached the hotel there was a police checkpoint across the main road, at which all but essential vehicles were turned away.

  Inside the hotel, his sources said, sniffer dogs had already given the all-clear for explosives. The nine miles of air-conditioning vents within the hotel, and the units themselves, so new that you could eat your dinner from them, were checked inch by inch. The air was sampled for biological agents from legionnaires’ disease to anthrax, and for nerve gases. The water system was tested for toxins. Most staff were being brought in by the organisers, but even the few required locally were extensively vetted by specialist psychoprofilers. Nothing, as Wyrecliffe told Arab Satellite Broadcasting viewers, was being left to chance.

  A tone on his iPhone indicated the arrival of an e-mail. It was from Pieter Hoek, who had narrowed down the missing persons list for him based on the accent information to just one name. Pamela Hargreaves.

  Pamela Hargreaves aka Zainab Picho. Disappeared March 2008, leaving behind a young son, now looked after by her mother. Wife of Mohammed Firquez (aka Jamal Picho) an Iraqi national, last UK address Nelson, Lancashire, who was in 2006 convicted in Jordan of the murder of a police officer and conspiracy to cause explosions. Hargreaves came to the attention of the intelligence community in November 2007 after trying to smuggle in a mobile phone when visiting her husband. She was released from Jordanian custody after ten days, following UK consular intervention. However, intelligence sources suggest she may already have been radicalised. Her current whereabouts are unknown. Hargreaves’ mother denies contact with daughter, however social worker visiting child in June 2009 asked about a clearly new toy. ‘Mummy gave it to me,’ he said. Passport unused since 2007.

  Description: 5’5” slim build, brown hair (frequently dyed), blue eyes. Strong regional accent.

  Pamela Hargreaves. The name meant nothing to Wyrecliffe, but it gave him fresh hope that somewhere, somehow, Cantara was still alive. He thought about her every day. If only there was more he could do to find her. He’d do anything. Anything at all.

  * * *

  Not all hotels in Sharm were luxurious. The Bami Rukh Lodge was supposedly two-star, but it sat at the end of the Sharm el-Sheikh runway and guaranteed an early morning alarm call of thunderous intensity. That, Rifat supposed, was the only reason why he had been able to get space there during the peace conference. The lodge mainly catered for middle-management migrant workers, Malaysian accountants, Sikh engineers, and Jordanian chefs who were still hanging on to their jobs even as the tourists stayed away.

  Rifat himself was barely less financially troubled. The truth was that since Irfan Tiwana’s arrest, he hadn’t dared access the Islamic Light Foundation’s bank accounts, nor use the credit card. Using any cards would just have flagged up his location for those who might now be following him. Instead he used his own money, paid monthly by his father into a London account, and intended for covering the cost of studies at Imperial College. There was just enough until Yemen could organise an alternative account. It covered a one-way flight to Sharm, and this basic room, but not much more until his father’s next payment in March. In the meantime, Yemen was arranging for a courier to bring him a bundle of Egyptian notes, five thousand dollars worth. With it they had promised a gun. Rifat didn’t have high hopes. It would probably be some cumbersome Egyptian-made pistol. He missed the Glock with its sleek silencer. It might come tomorrow they said, or maybe the next day.

  There were other problems. The trojan on Wyrecliffe’s computer had lasted longer than he expected, but had now stopped working. He could follow the journalist’s movements by GPS, but could no longer anticipate them by reading his e-mails. Still, Rifat knew that Wyrecliffe remained a potent and undetectable bomb, his very own remote drone, packed with plastic explosives and controlled, via satellite and mobile phone signal, by him. His first task on arrival had been to open his laptop and check the GPS tracker. He was delighted to see that Wyrecliffe was already in town, moving around one of the big luxury hotels. The signal was good and strong, just as it had been when Rifat first started following it the day after the operation in Mersa Matruh. With a doubled battery in the implanted device, and a full four hundred grammes of PETP this was clearly a bigger, better bomb than the one he had inside Cantara.

  Tomorrow’s opening ceremony of the conference, Rifat knew, was a photo-opportunity in which all the attendees would shake hands with each other for the cameras in the ballroom and perhaps answer a few impromptu questions. While the real work, undertaken by officials, translators and mediators
in backrooms would be what the conference was about, most of the really top officials would only be there for the very beginning and then return for the final press conference five days later.

  That was the time to detonate. Right at the start. That would be tomorrow afternoon, around 1pm. A dozen TV channels, including all the Arabic ones, would be covering it live. Wyrecliffe was bound to be at the ceremony. So as long as the TV was on and Rifat had his laptop, with the Google map of the hotel superimposed on the tracker, he would know for sure. He had calculated that the bomb load had a lethal radius of six metres, certainly enough to kill most of those present.

  Rifat’s musings were interrupted by a phone call. Omar’s group had emerged from North Sinai and had Cantara with them. They were planning to stay at an unfinished hotel on the northern edge of Sharm el-Sheikh.

  ‘How is Cantara?’

  ‘You ask about the health of this western princess?’ Omar laughed.

  ‘Yes I do. It is vitally important that she remains healthy and well looked after. I’ve told you why before,’ Rifat said. He opened his laptop and initiated the GPS trace icon for Cantara. It was dead.

  ‘I’m not getting a signal from her. She is with you? In range of the same mast?’

  ‘Of course she is with me, do you think I have abandoned her?’ Omar shouted. ‘I am Al Qaeda’s chief nursemaid, beholden to a woman.’ He hawked and spat.

  ‘Calm down. It won’t be for much longer. A day or two at most. Have patience.’

  ‘I would be happy to have her off my hands as soon as possible.’

  Rifat noticed a faint pulse on Cantara’s trace. The red light went on, and then flickered out. Ten seconds later it was on and stayed on. It could be that the battery in her device was finally failing. It was only designed to last three months.

  ‘Make sure you look after her, Omar. It’s important. I’ll be in contact with instructions in a day or so.’

  * * *

  When Omar got back to the truck he seemed in a bad mood. Cantara decided that Omar’s suggestion had been turned down, and she might have some chance to live, at least a few more days. He revved the truck and drove fiercely downhill towards Sharm, turning off left on a dirt road by a large advertising hoarding for Red Sea Emerald, a five-star hotel complex under construction. They were travelling along a newly-made road above the resort, with no surface yet, but with new white kerb stones, a water tower and slender aluminium lamp post shells already in place. To their right, several kilometres away, the glittering scimitar of the coast, studded with hotels, stretched around the horizon. Faced with a barred metal gate, Omar simply drove around, over an ornamental rock garden. They stopped in front of three curved fronted three-storey buildings, each topped with glittering solar panels, and grouped around three empty swimming pools. Construction machinery lay idle at the site. There was a shipping container which looked like a site office, and a scruffy looking man in a djelabah emerged from it.

  ‘What are you doing! This is private property,’ the man said angrily, as Omar lowered himself carefully from the truck.

  ‘We spoke to the other guard about it,’ Omar said.

  ‘What other guard?’ the man exclaimed. ‘I’m the only guard, and no one cleared it with me.’

  ‘Bad answer,’ said Omar. A shot rang out, and the security guard fell to the floor. Cantara gasped and bit her knuckles to still her alarm. She could see a dark question mark spreading in the dust under the man’s head. Omar clicked his fingers at Jabr. ‘Clear this up. Make sure you find his phone and bring it to me.’

  Omar dragged Cantara from the truck, then led her uphill, and through the steel and glass entrance of the highest block. This was the one building that already looked to have been completed. The reception area was carpeted, and boasted a curved blonde wood and grazed aluminium bar overlooking the Red Sea. He pointed her up the stairs, and followed her along a carpeted curved corridor. Most of the rooms were unfinished, lacking locks and handles, but right at the end, perhaps fifty metres from reception, was what looked to be a showroom, beds made and clean towels folded carefully on them.

  ‘A western palace for our princess, courtesy of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula!’ Omar made a mock bow. ‘You stay here. There is water. Clean off the blood. Launder your clothes, girl. I’m ashamed to be seen with you looking like that.’

  As he left, she closed the door behind her, and leaned against it. Omar ashamed? Of her! The man was worse than an animal, and smelled it. Her dirt, at least, was no more than skin deep, and the product only of the neglect of her captors. The bathroom was fully equipped, boasted a solar-heated water system, plus sample bottles of shampoo and body wash. It appeared never to have been used. She ran the tap and was delighted to get a hearty gush of hot water. Locking the bathroom door, she stripped off her niqab, dumped it and all the rest of her clothes in a bath tub of soapy water and took a long shower. She had decided that she was going to revel in this shower, even if it was the last thing she ever did. She started on her hair, still matted with blood, and painfully tangled. She massaged her scalp, enjoying the stimulation, the freshness, and thinking back to the last time she had felt such a feeling. It was back in the musallah when Zainab had combed her hair. Thinking about their secret evenings of music, of conversation and friendship made her eyes prickle with longing and loneliness. Then as she washed the dirt slowly and sensuously off her body, she thought of Chris. His hands. His understanding, his warm brown eyes. His strength. Soon she was weeping torrents, and she turned up the heat to drive it away, to purge herself. Yes, she wanted him. But he wasn’t here. He was probably thousands of miles away, and had no idea of the predicament she was in. She had to use her own resources.

  Her reverie was interrupted by a banging on the door. It was Jabr, telling her that she had spent a half hour in there. ‘Enough time, Princess, for an entire village to wash.’ Cantara scrambled out into a towel. The only thing she lacked and desperately needed was a toothbrush. She found some delightful minty toothpaste and loaded a finger with it, then began some gentle massaging of her sore gums. Her finger came away bloody.

  Jabr banged on the door again. ‘Come on! Or I’m going to fetch Omar.’

  ‘My clothes are still wet,’ she said. ‘They need time to dry.’

  ‘Put them on anyway, and sit in the sun,’ he yelled.

  Cantara did as she was told. While drying herself she opened the wardrobe. An unopened pack of carpet tiles lay in the bottom, and on a shelf above it a pack of curtains. Next to the carpet tiles were a bottle of glue and a Stanley knife that had presumably been left by the fitter. She picked up the knife, testing its sharp retractable triangular blade with her thumb. Useful.

  Before she got dressed she plucked up the courage to wipe the steam off the mirror and glance. She gasped. Her eye was swollen like a boxer’s, purple and pale yellow, and her jaw swollen. Most of all she was shockingly gaunt. Lacking a brush, she tied her hair into a wet ponytail. She would have liked to cut her hair, but wouldn’t be stupid enough to give away the existence of the blade. Strangely enough, her abdomen seemed to have stopped hurting since she had been kicked.

  Jabr led her out onto a sun terrace and gave her a chair. The wet niqab soon warmed up, and then quickly became unbearably hot. She moved the chair towards the shade.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Jabr said.

  ‘I’m cooking in this damn thing.’

  Jabr clicked his teeth in exasperation. ‘Too cold one day, now too hot.’

  ‘What are we doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Omar thinks this is safer, away from the Bedouin sneaks. But I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Someone will come to check on the guard won’t they?’

  ‘The tourists are all gone. Scared away by the terror of Tahrir.’ He laughed, pleased with his expression.

  ‘But guards have bosses. Sites have managers.’

  ‘Omar does not think like that,’ Jabr said, his grimace indicating discomfort. ‘He is thinkin
g of the big waste-of-time peace conference that begins here in two days,’ he jerked his chin towards Sharm. ‘They’ll all be coming soon. Jews, Americans, United Nations people. Crusaders for peace.’ He spat onto the polished basalt tiles, then absent-mindedly spread the phlegm around with his sandal. ‘We will show them the way to peace.’

  * * *

  Cantara was locked back in the hotel room for the rest of the afternoon. She heard Omar drive off in the truck. After she had finished showering for a second time, she sat in her underwear on the bed, toying with the Stanley knife. She felt the scar on her belly, and wondered again whether she really could be carrying a bomb inside. It was the only reason she could think of that she was still alive. They planned to use her, but how? She rested the cold sharpness of the blade against the scar, and imagined the pain. Would she have the strength to do it? She didn’t know. Even if she did, and was successful, she would remove the one reason they were keeping her alive. There was no point in cutting out the bomb until she had escaped and was close to safety.

  It was a tall order.

  She inspected her room minutely. The windows were huge and didn’t open. There were no screws or fastenings visible that she could work on, and the whole assembly was just too big to deal with. Even if she could break the glass she was nearly ten metres from the ground. There were some possibilities of escape through the ceiling. Standing on the washbasin, with the bathroom door bolted, she could feel that the rectangular tiles were light and had some give. If she could remove one, she was just slim enough to climb up through the gap. She tested the Stanley knife along the edges, and found that it would cut the plasterboard edging. Suddenly there was a roaring noise, like a crowd cheering. Before she could investigate further, she heard Jabr bashing at the main door. She called for him to wait a moment, then quietly jumped down and slipped on her abaya.