‘What the hell are you doing, Erik?’
Roberts watched the tall Dutchman glancing furtively around the departures lounge at Heathrow Airport, his actions more than suspicious.
‘They’re going to come for us,’ Erik Houtman whispered. ‘I can feel it. I told you this was a bad idea.’
Roberts, not for the first time that day, regretted bringing Erik along. He’d always been a belligerent shit, and his dedication to the cause was the only reason Roberts hadn’t kicked him out of the organisation. That, and the fact that their numbers were already on the lean side.
Today, however, Erik had been worse than usual. He’d constantly stared out of the rear window on the taxi journey to the airport, convinced they were being tailed, and anyone who looked at them as they queued up at check-in just had to be an undercover police officer.
‘We’re doing nothing illegal,’ Roberts whispered, ‘so just shut the fuck up and relax.’
Easy to say, he thought. He hadn’t done much relaxing since the initial meeting with Efram, despite making a big dent in the alcohol he’d bought on that first night. It had been with a sore head that he’d taken the call the following morning, and while still hesitant, he’d found himself agreeing to Efram’s proposal. After taking down instructions on what to pack, he’d met with his three fellow members. As per Efram, he’d chosen a trio with no family ties, so their absence wouldn’t be questioned. Roberts had told them what little he knew about the offer, and two had been keen to take part.
Erik was the exception.
The Dutchman was in his early forties and had taken part in the poll tax riots in 1990, the worst civil unrest London had seen in more than a century. He hadn’t even been required to pay the new duty, but the chance to attack the government—any government—had been too hard to resist. Since then, he’d been in and out of prison in several countries for a number of violent acts, with his most recent spell ending only six months earlier.
Houtman had at first been keen on the idea of causing havoc, but as the story of the meeting progressed, he’d become increasingly uncomfortable, his hatred and distrust of authority fuelling his native paranoia.
‘This Efram sounds like a plant,’ Houtman had argued, and while the others agreed that it was suspicious, Roberts had pointed out that they were being asked to do nothing more than board a flight.
To Nigeria, it turned out.
‘What do you think they’ve got planned?’ Tony Eversham asked.
‘They want us to play for the national football team,’ Ed Conran deadpanned. ‘But first, you need to get a haircut.’
‘Piss off, Ed.’
Eversham was proud of his long hair, which reached well below shoulder length. Not proud enough to wash it regularly, but proud nonetheless. He tended to let his hair hang around the sides of his face, and Roberts wondered if he did so to take the focus off his acne-covered cheeks. Roberts had always thought that spots were an adolescent thing, but Eversham seemed to be producing them in abundance well into his thirties.
‘Yeah, knock it off,’ Roberts agreed. He found Conran annoying as well. Most days he spent his time teasing Eversham about his bountiful locks, but for Roberts, the joke was becoming stale. Conran’s one redeeming attribute was his planning skills. He’d been the one to suggest giving the prime minister’s car an ad hoc paint job, and while others would have just stood near the gates waiting for the vehicle to pass through the security gates, Conran had scoped out several ambush points over the course of a week, and had found the ideal place to lie in wait. What was particularly impressive about that surveillance was that he’d changed his clothes and appearance each day to avoid arousing suspicion.
Roberts had a feeling these qualities were going to be useful on this venture.
An announcement invited the passengers to begin boarding, and despite Houtman’s fears, they managed to get to their cramped seats without being accosted.
Six and a half hours and one plastic meal later, they arrived in Lagos, where, as promised, someone was waiting for them. A tall Caucasian figure with military written all over him held up a sign bearing Roberts’s name, and the man eyed them disapprovingly when they approached him to introduce themselves.
‘I’m Dan,’ he said by way of welcome. He handed out airline tickets, and they followed him to the departure area.
‘We’re taking another short hop,’ Dan explained.
‘Where to?’
‘North. Kano.’
Roberts pressed for more information, but Dan simply told him they’d find out when they got there.
‘That’s a Yorkshire accent,’ Conran said. ‘What brings you over here?’
‘Work,’ Dan said, and resisted any further attempts at conversation.
The two-hour flight north was spent in silence, and Roberts spent his time trying to control his anxiety. Efram stank of government—current or ex, he couldn’t tell—and Dan, with his buzz-cut hairdo, had to be ex-army. Had he made a mistake in trusting them? Was he leading his friends into a government-sanctioned trap—and a bullet in the brain in the middle of a jungle?
There was nothing he could do about it now, so he tried to focus on positives. As Efram had said, he wasn’t that big a fish in the grand scheme of things, and there would certainly be more deserving cases if their destination were indeed a termination camp.
After landing and taxiing to the domestic terminal of Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Dan led them through cursory identification checks and out into the warm night. A clock mounted on the wall told them it was just after eight in the evening, and they hoped their twelve-hour journey was over, but Dan walked them to a dilapidated minibus and told them it would be another three hours until they reached their destination.
The conveyance shuddered down Airport Road and turned right into the city, where Roberts got his first real glimpse of life on the African continent. It wasn’t all jungle, as he’d envisaged, but a flat expanse of low, irregularly shaped stone and concrete houses in a myriad shades of browns and whites. An occasional malnourished dog could be seen rummaging in the gutter for scraps to eat, and goats wandered the side streets.
It took an hour to navigate their way through the town and out into the countryside, where they relied completely on the vehicle’s headlights to guide their way. After two bone-juddering hours, they pulled up at what Roberts imagined a 1930s holiday camp to have looked like. Dozens of small chalet-like wooden huts formed two rows off to one side, with a larger, rectangular building opposite. Separating them was a large area of bare soil, where a few wooden tables stood empty.
The bus pulled up at the main building and Dan ordered the men out, leading them up the wooden steps and through the door. The small entrance hall led to three doors. One was marked as the mess, while the others served as offices. Dan knocked on one of the doors and opened it, ushering the party of four inside.
A Caucasian man in his fifties wearing army fatigues was sitting waiting, and Dan addressed him.
‘Colonel, the latest arrivals,’ he said, handing over their passports.
The officer regarded the newcomers, comparing them to their documents before dismissing Dan with a nod of the head.
‘Gentlemen, so glad you could join us,’ the officer said, while managing to sound far from pleased. ‘My name is Colonel Mitchell. You’ll be wondering what you’ve signed up for, so I’ll keep this brief and to the point.
‘We will be launching a guerrilla campaign against England at the end of the year. During the next five months, you will be given all the training you need in order to carry out your assignments, which will be many and varied. You will see other recruits here, but you will not engage with them.
‘As of now, you have no names. You will be known by numbers, and that is the only way you will be addressed. Anyone caught using names will be disciplined.’
Eversh
am flicked his hair back and stood with his arms crossed. ‘I knew this was bullshit,’ he said. ‘You bring us halfway around the world and tell us we’re just numbers to you. I had enough of that shit back home—’
Eversham was cut off as a bullet from the colonel’s pistol caught him in the centre of his forehead, and he collapsed to the ground in a heap.
‘In case you were wondering,’ Mitchell said, ‘that is what passes for discipline around here.’
The three men looked in shock from the corpse to the colonel and back again.
‘We didn’t bring you here to hear your complaints; we recruited you because you want to bring Britain to its knees, and we have the resources to help you do that. However, only by treating this as a military operation can we expect it to work. If anyone else feels they don’t want to be here, tell me now.’
All three looked at the pistol held at Mitchell’s side and decided to hold their tongues.
‘Good.’ Mitchell pointed to each man and gave them a number. ‘You are 134, you’re 135, you’re 136. Do not forget those numbers. If you fail to respond instantly to your number when called, expect to be disciplined.’
The three men stood upright, eyes front, showing their understanding.
‘Sergeant!’ Mitchell called, and Dan opened the door a second later.
‘Colonel.’
‘Have them clear this mess away, then show them to their bunks.’
Dan barked instructions, and the trio made a meal of carrying Eversham out of the office, through the main door and down the steps to the training area, where their luggage was lined up, the bus having departed.
‘There are two shovels at the side of the building,’ the sergeant said to Conran, who disappeared like his life depended on it. He was back in seconds, and handed one of the tools to Houtman.
‘You,’ Dan said, pointing to Roberts, ‘get back in there and clean the colonel’s floor. There’s a mop and bucket in the mess.’
Roberts initially baulked at the thought, but a glance down at Eversham steeled his resolve.
He returned five minutes later and found Sergeant Dan waiting for him, another shovel in hand.
‘Get round the back and give them a hand,’ he said, holding it out. ‘Once you’re done, get back here, sharpish.’
Roberts trotted to the rear of the building, where his two sweat-covered friends laboured over a shallow pit, their fallen comrade lying nearby. Five other graves were visible, the fresh soil suggesting they had only recently been filled.
Bugs flitted around their heads as they worked the hole, their only illumination the faint light of an ancient oil lamp.
‘What the fuck have you dragged us into?’ Houtman hissed.
‘How the hell was I supposed to know this was going to happen?’
‘You’re the one that sold this deal to us,’ the Dutchman continued. ‘I swear, if I have to dig another grave, the next one will be yours.’
Roberts looked down at Eversham’s body and had to wonder whether his dead friend had got off lightly.
Chapter 5
13 March 2014
Roberts felt as if his head had barely touched the pillow when he was roused from his sleep by the banging on the door of the hut.
‘Wakey, wakey! Breakfast in twenty minutes. Hit the showers!’
He looked at his watch and saw that he’d been asleep for barely three hours.
‘What time is it?’ Houtman yawned, as he looked out of the window into darkness.
Roberts groaned. ‘Nearly six.’
He joined Houtman at the window, where they saw a stream of people silently filing past, washing kits in their hands.
‘I think we’d better join them,’ he said, and got another growl of disapproval from the Dutchman.
Roberts grabbed his wash bag and a towel from his suitcase and went out to join the throng, who were heading towards a structure that had been hidden from view the night before. He noted that many of them were built like him, with the same pasty expressions and hunched shoulders. Clearly Efram hadn’t been looking for the typical soldier type. Inside the building they found rudimentary shower facilities, and as they queued they noticed that no man took longer than three minutes to finish his ablutions.
‘Better make this quick,’ he whispered to Conran, keenly aware that no-one else in the building was talking.
When it was his turn, Roberts stripped off his boxer shorts and stood under the shower head. The water was cold, but given the outside temperature even at such an early hour, it felt refreshing. He brushed his teeth quickly before shampooing and rinsing, the whole process taking just over four minutes, drawing angry looks from those still queuing.
Back at the four-man cabin, Roberts dressed in shorts and T-shirt before rolling up his sleeping bag and placing it at the foot of his camp bed. Through the window he could see people making their way to the main building, and Roberts told his companions to get a move on.
They followed the stream of men into the mess hall, where a serving station was manned by three local women. Men filed past slowly, and Roberts grabbed a tray and fell in line. The smell grew stronger as he neared his turn, and when he held out his tray he was rewarded with a dollop of yellow and a stew-like mixture. He hadn’t eaten since the airline food the previous day, but despite this, he was hesitant to tackle the strange offering.
He went to find a seat, and noticed that the tables were designed for a maximum of four people. It brought the colonel’s introductory speech back to mind, and he realised that even the eating arrangements were designed to discourage talking to anyone outside their own little group.
It suddenly struck him that no-one was talking at all, and he put that down to the three armed men standing in the corners of the room.
‘This isn’t bad,’ Houtman said, licking his finger as he took a seat opposite Roberts.
‘Shut it!’ Roberts whispered, as Conran joined them. He looked around to see if anyone had heard, but thankfully there was no sudden rush to discipline the Dutchman. Roberts kept his head down, eating his meal as quickly as possible so that he could retreat to the cabin.
After wolfing down the food, he queued up to put his tray in the wash area and walked back to the accommodation block. Once inside, he sat on his bed with his head in his hands. Houtman and Conran arrived a few minutes later. Despite the closed door, they kept their voices low.
‘This is some weird shit,’ Conran said, a sentiment echoed by Houtman.
‘Agreed,’ Roberts said. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘What choice do we have?’ Houtman asked. ‘If we don’t do exactly as they say, we end up like Tony, with a bullet in the head.’
‘And we can’t leave,’ Conran added. ‘Somehow, I don’t think they’ll just hand over our passports and give us tickets home. Even if we ask nicely.’
They thought about their predicament, until Roberts broke the silence.
‘I say we go with the flow.’
Houtman shrugged. ‘As I said, what choice do we have?’
Shouts from outside broke up the discussion, and when Roberts opened the door he saw everyone running towards Sergeant Dan, lining up in groups of three or four.
Roberts called his friends out and they followed suit, taking up a position towards the rear.
‘Welcome to Camp Sunshine,’ Dan said, once he’d done a head count. ‘Now that you’re all here, the first thing we’re going to do is go over the rules one last time.’
He reiterated the no-talking rule, but explained that when they got back to England, the small groups were going to act as individual cells, each having no idea what the objectives of the others would be. That way, if anyone was caught, they couldn’t compromise the larger operation.
‘Ideally, we would have brought three or four of you here at any one time for training, but we have neither the ti
me nor the resources to do that. Instead, you will all learn the same skills, but your final objectives will be known only to your own team.’
Roberts suddenly understood the reason for the rule, and why everyone was given a number as identification. Still, the colonel could have explained that in the initial meeting, rather than putting a bullet in Eversham’s head. Well, Tony had been an argumentative sod, even on a good day, and he guessed it would only have been a matter of time before steel met skull.
Roberts guessed there were roughly forty groups on parade, close to two hundred men. If they were all to work in different geographical locations, it meant just about every major city would see some action towards the end of the year. The scale of the mission suddenly dawned on him. It wasn’t the localised mayhem he’d envisaged in the last few days, but a nationwide campaign.
That brought a smile to his face.
‘To pull this off,’ Dan continued, ‘you’ll need to be physically fit and mentally alert. That means daily exercise and lessons in everything from explosives to counter-surveillance.’
More instructors appeared, all dressed the same way: khaki shorts, boots and green T-shirt. The small groups of men were split up, with some being told to gather around tables, while others were given warm-up exercises to do in preparation for the morning run.
Roberts and his cell, along with four other teams, were directed to a table on which lay a cream-coloured lump that resembled putty. Next to it were a few cheap mobile phones and a box marked Detonators.
Their instructor launched into the lesson without introducing himself, which Roberts took to mean No questions: just observe and learn.
As the African sun began its daily climb, Paul Roberts began the first of a hundred and fifty days of intense training, starting with Explosives 101.
SUMMER
Chapter 6
9 July 2014
‘That’s right, darling. It’s a sheep.’
Tom Gray looked over at his daughter, who was riding in the front passenger seat of his BMW. He didn’t know if Melissa was actually associating the sound with the cuddly toy she was playing with, or if ‘baaaa’ was just an easy sound for her to make. Either way, she was certainly expressing herself a lot more than she had even a month ago. All of the books and articles he’d read suggested the average child would start forming their first words right about now. But, then again, his one-year-old hadn’t had an average first year.
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