Empire State

by Henry Porter

  She sat back and laid her phone on the table deliberately. ‘I’d like that drink now,’ she said.

  Vigo poured the Pimms, holding back the mint leaves and fruit in the jug with a silver spoon.

  ‘What would you do if you were in our position?’ she asked quietly. ‘We have two or three main suspects who are rich and mobile. They plan months, maybe years ahead and have a very sophisticated understanding of the way we work. What would you do? Where would you go?’

  ‘There are two options, clearly. You can make it very difficult for them to move by releasing their photographs and all the information you have on them. But that may not deter anything planned to happen this week. So I would be inclined to risk revealing nothing whatsoever and hope to trace them. Sammi Loz probably thinks we believe him dead, and neither Youssef or Jamil Rahe know you’re onto them. So I would use that slight advantage.’

  ‘How?’

  He breathed deeply and looked away to a column of gnats dancing in the sunlight. A blackbird sang out some way off. ‘Well, there’s no obvious way. But if Youssef is unaware that we’re onto him, Jamil also thinks he’s safe. You say you believe Jamil is a major figure in the Heathrow plot. I suggest you find him and start by monitoring his phone. If an attack of some kind is expected, then Jamil will be part of it. From what you say, he’s murdered before - his own people. Then there is the mosque. You say Jamil made contact with this attendant from Heathrow at the mosque. I take it you’re referring to the Cable Road mosque in Belsize Park, the one attended by Youssef Rahe and which is now believed to be under the influence of Sheik Abu Muhsana?’

  Herrick nodded.

  Vigo talked on, unaffected by Harland’s hostility, and began to adopt the professorial manner he had used with Southern Group Three back in the Bunker. At length, even Harland was listening with grudging nods. They discussed ways of prodding Jamil to make contact. He added that this should all happen before the raids on the continent, so that it appeared to come out of the blue, but would be sufficiently menacing for Jamil to break cover. ‘These men are not without fear,’ he said. ‘As Seneca said, “Fear always recoils on those who seek to inspire it; no one who is feared is unafraid himself”. ’

  ‘Let’s keep to the point,’ said Harland.

  ‘I find Seneca is always to the point. It’s a consolation that we experience nothing in the way of anger, failure, disappointment and sheer bad luck that has not been explored two thousand years ago.’

  ‘I can see why you’re reading him,’ said Harland. ‘I think it’s highly unlikely the Chief will want anything more to do with you, other than arranging for you to be tried.’

  ‘We shall see,’ he said, studying Isis. ‘After all, we’ve all been duped and made to look fools, have we not? Now, I know Bobby that you and I have never seen eye to eye; that we have a history, as my wife says. But I would suggest that we are the best people to be working on this. I know Youssef and Jamil Rahe, and you two both know Sammi Loz. We’re the natural front line - the only front line. And with your contacts in Mossad, we should make an admirable team.’

  Harland flinched enough for Herrick to notice. ‘I agree with Harland,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to happen.’

  ‘Well, give it some thought overnight. If I don’t hear from you or the Chief tomorrow I will understand.’

  Herrick and Harland rose.

  ‘And please, no more threats. You know as well as I do they can’t put me on trial. Any more talk of this nature and I will make life extremely difficult for this government and several past governments. Tell Teckman that. He knows I mean it.’

  ‘I suppose that’s how you wrapped your coils around Spelling,’ said Harland.

  Vigo got up heavily and made towards a bed of hostas. ‘I will expect to hear from you tomorrow.’

  ‘One other thing,’ Herrick called after him. ‘I want you to admit that you had my house searched by Marenglen’s men.’

  Vigo stopped in his tracks. ‘We wanted to know what you had got, Isis. We knew you weren’t just looking at the computer. I think you’ll find the Deputy Director was also aware of the need to find out. You could say it was an official operation. ’

  ‘What, with armed Albanian pimps?’

  ‘Needs must,’ said Vigo, turning back to his hostas.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  They were in Holland Park Avenue again. Herrick snapped the phone shut after talking to one of the Chief’s two assistants.

  ‘He’s going to call me later,’ she said to Harland. ‘They don’t know when. Look, we don’t want to be in a restaurant when he rings. Would you mind if I made dinner at my place? I’ve got a sort of garden - we can eat outside.’

  Harland shrugged pleasantly and they went to a shop nearby to buy wine and some rump steak.

  ‘Vigo is such a complete and utter bastard,’ she said as they left the shop. ‘I mean, what’s his game? What does he want?’

  ‘Influence,’ said Harland, flagging down a cab. ‘He likes pulling the strings without anyone seeing it’s him. He likes the aura of power and he wants acceptance - the clubs, shooting parties, the best stretches on the Tweed; all that bollocks. In one way he’s just an unrequited snob, both socially and intellectually.’

  ‘But he is sharp,’ she said, as they climbed into the cab.

  ‘Oh yes, very, but somehow that makes him more disappointed. All that superior talent and where is he now? Desperate to have some minor role in the final stages of this operation.’

  ‘You think Teckman will go for it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, he expected him to make the offer of help. He reads Vigo like a newspaper headline because Vigo wants everything that the Chief has acquired effortlessly. Teckman understands his longings.’

  They were silent for the remainder of the journey and watched London slide by, bathed in a soft, crepuscular light.

  When they arrived, Herrick went to change and put Harland to work on her terrace, clearing dead leaves and wiping down the chairs and table.

  The garden was a triumph of neglect. Where a more careful gardener would have tidied and pruned and scraped away at the ground, Herrick had simply bought a collection of shrubs, vines and climbing roses one afternoon five years before, planted them and left them to their own devices, with the result that the roses had spread over the bushes and reached into two apple trees next door, closing off the garden to inspection from neighbouring houses.

  Her attitude to cooking was similarly uncomplicated. As Harland drank a glass of wine outside, he watched her through the kitchen window as she threw together a salad, then briskly dealt with the steak and mushrooms. She had it all ready in under twenty minutes and brought it out to him.

  ‘Have you heard from your father?’ he asked.

  ‘Yesterday. We’re planning a trip when this is over.’ She tore off the end of the baguette and began to work at the steak. ‘Actually, I can hardly wait. You know they bloody well fired me this morning. I was pushed out of the building by a creature called Cecil.’

  ‘But you were seen to be right - vindication is rare in your job.’

  ‘I haven’t even been officially reinstated yet.’

  ‘How’s his wrist?’

  ‘Just sprained. He was lucky. It was his right hand, so he wouldn’t have been able to paint and that would have killed him.’

  ‘You’re pretty close to the old man,’ he said.

  She picked up her glass and thought about it. ‘Yes and no. Proximate in the sense that we have led our lives together without my mother for so long - yes; intimate in the sense that I know what’s going on with him and he with me - no.’

  ‘You rub along.’

  She smelled the night air and said, ‘God, I’m glad to be back,’ then paused. ‘These things are so bloody difficult to talk about, you know. People expect love to be one of a number of standard and recognisable varieties, but it isn’t like that. The relationship - God, I hate the word - is as individual as the people, and that’s all
there is to it.’

  ‘But you’ll miss him.’ He saw the look pass across her face and he wished he hadn’t said it.

  ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘He’s exceptional, untrammelled. That’s what I’ll miss - the idea that there will be no one alive who is quite so independent and, well, strange.’

  Harland remembered Eva looking after Hanna Rath in the Tel Aviv apartment, the protectiveness that had made her leave him.

  ‘You want to talk about this personal stuff,’ she continued, ‘then tell me what happened in the Middle East and why you’re so frisky suddenly?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Well, tell me how you knew the Israelis were deciphering the messages to Rahe from that website - the one that trumpeted Norquist’s arrival in London. Who the hell told you about that? I mean, I’ve only known about Youssef Rahe since this morning, so how did you get onto this so quickly?’ She fixed him with an acute look that let Harland know he couldn’t be evasive.

  He set down his knife and fork and told her about the strained meeting with Eva at the Playlands Hotel. Then about Sammi Loz’s relationship with Norquist and Eva’s appearance on the Heathrow security film. At one point during his account, Herrick darted to take one of the two remaining steaks and proceeded to consume it at a speed that temporarily put Harland off his stride. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Have the other one,’ he said sarcastically. ‘You obviously need it.’ A very short time afterwards, her hand moved to the dish to take the third steak.

  ‘So the upshot,’ he continued, still shaking his head, ‘is that Mossad were watching this thing very closely and were not surprised when Norquist was killed. They know about Sammi Loz, but they have no idea about Youssef and Jamil Rahe.’

  ‘Which is the important one - Rahe or Loz?’ she asked. ‘Who gives the orders?’

  ‘Youssef Rahe - everything points to it,’ he said.

  ‘But on the face of it you would say Loz. He’s the one with all the money and he’s got the better contacts both in New York and the Middle East, to say nothing of the Balkans.’

  ‘So what? Rahe is better hidden. He’s been the strategist all along.’ He sighed. ‘Look, Isis, I don’t have the stamina to think about this any more.’

  ‘There’s something I don’t get,’ she said, sitting on the edge of her chair. ‘Why are you still working for Teckman on this? Now that RAPTOR is winding up and Teckman has got his job back, we’re hardly short of people. Why aren’t you floating about with Benjamin Jaidi in the Middle East? I mean, I’m glad you’re here and all that, but why? What are you doing?’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I have to tell you you’re becoming remorseless.’ He reached over and touched her face, without thinking about it. For a second she looked startled, then let her head collapse into his hand and smiled with a mixture of shyness and devilment.

  ‘What do you think about all this,’ she asked. ‘The clash of civilisations - Islam versus Christendom?’

  ‘Christ, I don’t bloody well know.’

  ‘But don’t you want to understand what we’re in the middle of? How we got here?’ she asked.

  ‘All I know is that there are lunatics, envious of Western technology, resentful of Western wealth, who believe that the solution to humanity’s problems is to drag us back into some barbaric state on the lines of the Taleban regime.’

  ‘But you’re not anti-Muslim?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, but I fail to see why Islam hasn’t produced proper democracies. If people can begin to participate in democracies in South America there seems no reason why they shouldn’t in the Arab countries.’

  He noticed she was energised by the prospect of argument. She leaned forward, eyes suddenly glistening. ‘And yet a democracy might produce a regime like the Taleban. The fact that people have the vote doesn’t guarantee a social democratic system. So you could argue that it is the religion which is at fault, that it is inherently expansionist and intolerant. You could even say that the precepts of Islam are incompatible with democracy and therefore human rights, because only democracy can guarantee human rights.’

  Harland hadn’t seen this side of Isis Herrick before. He liked it, but felt that he was being sluggish. ‘Then you make the fact of religious belief the belligerent act and that’s very hard for a true democrat to accept.’

  She smiled, her mind moving faster than she knew. ‘But surely there’s no difference between a person who holds doctrinaire political views, like the old style communist, and an Islamic fundamentalist. Their basic positions, whether involving a political creed or a religious one, are anti-democratic and so present a threat which all true democrats must oppose with equal force.’

  ‘That’s quite a right-wing stance, Isis. I assumed you were an out-and-out liberal.’

  Suddenly the exhilaration in her eyes was tempered. She drank some wine and her gaze swivelled to the dark. ‘I am a liberal, but when I was watching Sammi Loz the other night, I saw pure, visceral hatred in his face. He pays a lot of lipservice to Bosnia and the Palestinians, but I somehow didn’t think that was his priority. There was an element of savagery which I simply can’t contend with.’

  He moved to touch her face again.

  ‘In other circumstances, I would say this was rather romantic,’ she said.

  ‘Why, what’s wrong with the circumstances?’ His fingers splayed backwards into her hair.

  ‘I’m sorry, it is romantic. Yes it is. To my amazement I find myself very happy to be with you here in my manky little garden. It’s taken me by surprise, that’s all.’

  ‘Good,’ said Harland, not really knowing what he intended. ‘Your garden isn’t manky, and you are exceptionally attractive - uniquely attractive, in my view - although it’s clear you don’t feel it.’

  She stiffened in his hands. ‘Don’t say that. That’s what Loz said to me.’

  ‘I know… I know about what happened to you. Philip Sarre told the Chief.’

  ‘How odd that he should tell you.’

  ‘He was concerned.’ He stopped. ‘Anyway, you haven’t said what’s wrong with the circumstances.’

  ‘It’s just that I feel we ought to be doing something to work this thing out. Get Rahe. Find Loz. Look at Dolph’s photographs… you know.’

  ‘But you need rest.’

  She put her lips to the palm of his hand for a second, then lifted her head. ‘Why are you in London? Aren’t you meant to be with Jaidi in the Middle East?’

  ‘He’s gone back to New York. Things didn’t work out in Syria.’

  ‘But that wasn’t really my question. Why are you still working on this?’

  Harland withdrew his hand, mild exasperation spreading across his face. ‘I’m here partly because Teckman asked me to come. He thought he might need help persuading the powers that be that Norquist was in a tangle with Mossad and Loz.’ He paused and picked up his glass. ‘But the actual reason is that Jaidi and Teckman overlapped at Cambridge, something I only recently discovered. Teckman took pity on the little man from Zanzibar and introduced him to people, made his life bearable in the cold, damp fens. They have been friends on and off for thirty-five years and were especially close when Teckman was with the British mission to the UN and Jaidi was a minor official. At some stage in the last few months, Jaidi told Teckman about a character named Sammi Loz in New York. Teckman had probably already had him investigated or knew at least that he had shown up on their radar. So, in the wake of Norquist’s death, Jaidi gets me an appointment. Then Teckman approaches me the day afterwards. They fixed it between them. Now that we know Loz was working for Hizbollah and has most likely set up a group with Youssef Rahe, clearly Jaidi wants to protect himself and the other well-known patients on Loz’s books. You see, Jaidi has been recommending Loz to all manner of folk. Who knows, he may have been responsible for introducing Norquist to Loz and now suffers some kind of remorse. At any rate, you can see that with the Israelis sniffing around, everyone needs to be extremely careful. Information i
s power when it comes to Israeli foreign policy.’ He stopped. ‘That’s why I’m here to see this thing through. And by the way, that was the reduced version of the story and I don’t want to be cross-examined on it.’

  ‘Okay, okay!’ She held her hands up in surrender. ‘But you have to admit it’s interesting that there are so many parallels. These pairings across the Atlantic for instance - Jaidi and Teckman; Loz and Rahe…’

  ‘You and me,’ said Harland, grinning.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  He touched her lightly on her forearm and let his hand rest there.

  ‘The question now is am I going to allow myself to be seduced by you?’ She looked at him with an open expression that made him think she was considering it with the same fierce logic that she applied to everything else.