He paused. “Not opposition research, I trust?”
“Opposition?” The look on Norris’ face was that of a man who just hadn’t had enough practice lying. “Perish the thought. We’re allies after all, remember?”
Yes, of course, Thomas thought. Allies. And his allies were keeping something from him. The only question that remained was how to find out what it was.
8:17 A.M.
Thames House
London
“I want to know how in the name of God, Alec, they got this,” Marsh announced, his face dark as he stormed into the conference room. He picked up the remote from the conference table and aimed it at the screen on the wall, ignoring MacCallum for the moment. “Pearson was on Sky News an hour ago, and gave this interview.”
The MP’s face appeared on-screen the next moment, caught in mid-sentence.“—attacker’s name was Javeed Mousa, a twenty-three-year-old Libyan here in the UK on a student visa. Right here in our country, living as one of us. Eating our food, attending our schools, plotting to murder us in the name of his god.”
MacCallum watched as the news host struggled to find his footing in an interview suddenly spun out of his control. “Since, uh, entering the House of Commons, Mr. Pearson, you’ve been marked for your strongly anti-Muslim rhetoric, and—”
“No.” On-screen, they could see Pearson lean forward, an unmistakable intensity marking the MP’s features. “I am not anti-Muslim, though that is how you would tar me. I am against those who have embraced democracy only to destroy it—against those who have come to this country with no desire to learn that which once made it great. Those who bring with them their ideology of hate. And in the interests of stopping this Islamist threat, I will stand with anyone—Christian, atheist, Muslim, Sikh—who believes as I do in the greatness of Britain and is willing to rise up, to take a stand in her defense.”
“He’s a passionate speaker, I’ll give him that,” MacCallum acknowledged, clearing his throat. “But how did the Daily Standard get that name? That type of information, it hasn’t been released to the public.”
Marsh held up a hand for silence. “There’s more.”
“Your name has long been associated with right-wing nationalist groups like the British Defence Coalition,” the host interjected, finally getting a word in. “How do you feel that the extremist rhetoric of such groups helps your cause? Is this not an issue to be addressed with cool heads, not the anger of protesters in the streets?”
Pearson leaned back into the couch, clearly incredulous. “Their rhetoric…are you serious? The bodies of our countrymen are scarce cold—the Security Services are investigating Mousa’s connections with the Islamic State here in Britain—the body count of our failed multicultural experiment grows by the day…and you’re concerned about rhetoric? About anger?”
He paused, holding up a long index finger to cut the anchor off. “I’ll tell you why there’s anger—why people have taken to the streets. People see the images on their telly, they see their countrymen blown up, beheaded by these Islamists, all in the name of some ‘holy war.’ And in response to these atrocities, they find their own government passing laws to protect—no, not them, but the hurt feelings of the very people who share common creed with the terrorists. They feel helpless, impotent, betrayed. Angry.”
Another pause, Pearson glancing directly into the camera as he spread his hands. “And I ask, can you blame them?”
Marsh threw the remote down upon the conference table with an angry gesture, the screen going black in that moment. “This is only going to fan the flames.”
“Even if he’s right?” MacCallum asked, glancing over at the DG.
“Especially if he’s right,” the Cold War veteran glared back, one hand poised on the edge of the table. “We are officers of the Security Service, Alec. Public servants. We do not weigh morality in the balances, we do not presume to place ourselves in the seat of God. That is, after all, what we have Whitehall for.”
The DG’s index finger tapped against the polished wood of the conference table—a hard, insistent drumbeat. “Somewhere…we have a leak. Find it. Plug it. Tell me when it’s done.”
9:34 A.M.
The safehouse
“The trackers are still on-line?” Flaharty demanded. He looked pale from loss of blood, unsteady as he stood to his feet, shrugging his jacket back on over the bandages—the torn shirt.
Harry nodded, watching as the arms dealer reached for the bottle of Bushmills sitting there on the counter and poured himself a shot—the whisky splashing into a glass far too large for the purpose. “They were when I checked an hour ago. Do we have a plan?”
Malone snorted from his position across the room, near the door. He hadn’t been back from his recce of the area more than a few minutes “What do you mean ‘we’, boyo? You’re not one of us.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” Harry responded coolly, not even glancing at the bodyguard. “But we will need a plan if we’re all to make it out of this.”
“Stephen and I,” he began again, an edge to his voice, “were dodging the British Army in Belfast years before you were even a leer in your da’s eye. We don’t need your help getting this sorted.”
This time, Harry turned, transfixing Malone with a cold, hard stare. Only too aware that he was baiting the man.
“Perhaps I was misinformed…I wasn’t aware that you were in charge here, Malone. You would have died in that ditch last night if it weren’t for me.” He shrugged. “Maybe I should have let you.”
“Why, you—”
Flaharty slammed his glass down into the countertop, his hand trembling as he pushed it away from him. “Enough! We’re all in this together now whether we like it or not. Don’t need to bloody well do their job for them. Davey—were you able to establish any contact with the lads?”
A reluctant, almost sullen nod. “Aye, I did—finally, after calling up Éamon’s bird. She put him on the phone.”
“And?”
Malone sighed, a heavy sound. “Everyone’s dead, Stephen. They caught up with the trucks outside of Claughton—our boys never stood a chance. Every last bleedin’ one gunned down.”
The color seemed to drain from Flaharty’s face, a curse escaping his lips. “Even Sean?”
A nod. “Dear God,” the arms dealer whispered, “Sean was a good man. One of the last from the old days.”
“Éamon said he’d be letting his widow know as soon as he could put his head up.”
Flaharty’s face twisted in anger at the memory and he poured another shot of the Bushmills into the glass, tossing it back. “They are not going to get away with this. They are not going to bloody get away with killing my men.”
“No, they’re not,” Harry interjected, looking from one man to the other. “And I’ll help you bring them down, so long as I get what I want in the end.”
“Which is?” the arms dealer asked, steadying himself against the counter.
“Tarik Abdul Muhammad. Dead.”
Malone shook his head angrily. “Bugger off. We can handle this ourselves.”
“Easy there, Davey,” Flaharty said sternly, shooting his subordinate a warning glance. “We’re going to need all the allies we can find. You…have your deal.”
Harry acknowledged his words with a simple nod. “Then it’s time we were to work.”
“Indeed.” The arms dealer raised his glass, as if in a toast, a grim smile playing at his lips. “To the confusion of our enemies.”
9:58 A.M.
Leeds Central Police Station
Park Street, Leeds
Confusion. Light and darkness, swirling together, a cacophony of noise filling the small, windowless room. Loud music broken every few seconds—or so it seemed—by the wail of a siren.
He no longer had any idea how long he had been alone, but it had to have been hours. At least. It felt like weeks. He put his head down on the small table, struggling to move his manacled hands up to shield his ears against th
e noise.
God suffices me, he breathed, struggling to focus long enough to finish the dua’a. There is no god but He. On Him do I rely and—
All the noise ceased abruptly, the silence hitting him with the force of a physical blow—light flooding through the room as the lights came on above him.
Then the sound of a chair being dragged back over the floor—an almost unbearable noise in the wake of the sudden stillness. “Your name is Ismail Besimi, am I correct?”
Head throbbing, the imam raised his eyes from the table to stare into the face of a British officer perhaps half his own age. “Yes,” he managed, his throat dry.
A photo was slid across the table until it rested against the knuckles of his shackled hands. “Tell me about your communication with this man.”
It was the face of a young man…Pakistani perhaps? Dark hair, a close-cropped beard—and blue eyes that stared out of the photo with mesmerizing power. “I’ve…never seen this man before in my life,” Besimi stammered, struggling to think.
An indulgent smile. “That’s not what I asked.”
10:58 A.M.
Thames House
London
“Ah, there you are,” Alec MacCallum observed as Norris entered the operations centre. “And just in time. How was your visit with the cousins?”
“Unproductive,” was the analyst’s response. “They don’t have anything on Muzhir bin Abdullah—or rather if he’s ever showed up on their radar, they’re not saying.”
That meant they had nothing, and both men knew how dangerous that was. A trail that was already several months cold, dating back to the time when Muzhir had left his flat in East London, never to return.
The Shaikh had placed five phone calls, one of which had already resulted in a terrorist attack. The remaining three were as yet unidentified.
Which left them with Muzhir.
Norris went on after a moment, “Didn’t learn anything from Parker except that he’s good at his job. Very good.”
“And we already knew that.” MacCallum came around the edge of Norris’ desk, laying a plain, unmarked folder before him. “I need you to look into something for me,” he said, lowering his voice, “and keep it off the radar.”
“What is it?” Norris asked, not moving to take the folder.
“We have a problem…someone leaked details about the nightclub attack to the Daily Standard.”
“The Standard?” The analyst’s brow furrowed. “That’s Arthur Colville’s paper, isn’t it?”
A nod. “It is, and he’s using this to stir up a firestorm. A bomb went off on the M6 last night in Lancashire, north of Claughton. The blogs are going crazy saying that it was another Muslim terrorist attack.”
“Was it?”
MacCallum pursed his lips. “No idea—Roth was sending someone up, but the NCA is spearheading the investigation. I need you to focus your attention on this—find out exactly who was read in on the attack details and who could have leaked them to Colville.”
“Anyone could do that—you need me on the search for Tarik Abdul Muhammad.”
“No,” the department chief replied, tapping the folder with his finger. “Marsh needs this prioritized…and I need someone I can trust. Get back to me when you have answers.”
11:37 A.M.
The M6 Motorway
North of Claughton
Slushy snow met Mehreen’s boots as she stepped out of the BMW, closing the car door behind her. It was a desolate stretch of roadway, wind blowing across the open meadows—through the towering pines that lined one side of the motorway.
“Mehreen Crawford, military intelligence,” she announced, flashing her identification at the edge of the tape. “I need to speak with the officer in charge.”
“That would be Inspector Haverson, ma’am,” the young policeman responded, lifting the edge of the crime scene so that she could slip under it. “He’s over there—beside the burned-out Explorer.”
And she saw him, a short, balding figure standing by the blackened hulk gesturing to the man at his side—his form cloaked in a light windbreaker with the letters NCA on the back.
National Crime Agency.
It looked American—and indeed, there were many in the UK who resented the NCA as an American import, echoes of the powerful Federal Bureau of Investigation, with its power to supersede local constabularies. A state police.
She walked up and introduced herself, showing the identification once more. “What are we looking at?”
“A spook, eh?” Haverson asked, looking at her keenly. She didn’t respond, just stared back, her eyes never leaving his. Five was an insular service, guarding the identities of its employees far more closely than most other Western intelligence agencies.
“Right,” he said finally, seeming to quail under her gaze. “Well, ma’am…let me know how I can be of help.”
She glanced across the pavement, taking in the multiple chalk outlines. “How many bodies are we looking at?”
“Five,” came the taciturn reply. “Four of them clustered around the van here—another one ten meters away, above the median ditch. Everyone else was killed in the explosion, by the looks of it, but not him.”
“Oh?” she asked, hands shoved into the pockets of her coat. Nothing made sense here.
“He was…” the NCA inspector paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “Well, he was nearly disemboweled by a shotgun blast, ma’am. That type of wound—I was never military, but I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Mehreen grimaced.
“That’s not what killed him, though,” Haverson went on after a moment’s pause. “He was executed—a pair of 9mm rounds to the temple. In and out. Mitchell dug one of them out of the macadam.”
It had likely been a mercy, she thought, staring back along the roadway at the chalk outline marking the place where the body had once lain—the faint stain of blood. “Any ID on the bodies?”
The inspector shook his head. “Nothing in the way of formal identification on them, no—no driver’s licenses. One of the men had a military tattoo on his arm, though and judging by their kit…” He gestured toward a pile of spent rifle casings still lying on the roadway. “I’ve made inquiries with the MoD.”
The Ministry of Defence.
A sudden chill ran down her spine at his words—a premonition? A feeling so familiar. “The tattoo. Can you describe it?”
He ran a hand across his chin, shaking his head. “Almost—I don’t know—a winged dagger?”
It wasn’t wings, but rather a wreath of flame—but it was no moment for quibbling. “Yes. With Latin underneath it?”
“Something like that.” Haverson looked up suddenly, realizing the import of her question. “You recognize it?”
But she was already on her mobile, holding up a finger for silence as she listened to it ring.
This was happening…again.
11:52 A.M.
The flat
Leeds
“…as you can see behind me,” the Sky News reporter said, looking over her shoulder at a line of riot police, “violence has erupted this morning in the Washwood Heath ward of Birmingham as men wearing the armbands of the British Defence Coalition clashed with police, assaulting members of the majority Muslim community here in Washwood Heath and setting fire to several Muslim-owned shops. The BDC has…”
She was pretty, Tarik Abdul Muhammad thought, gazing absently at the screen. In the blatantly sensual way of the West.
The way her dark hair framed her face…those red lips. The soft white column of her neck as it descended into her blouse.
It reminded him strangely of one of the prostitutes there in Las Vegas, on the eve of the attacks.
A curse broke from behind him and he looked up from the couch to see Hashim Rahman standing there, the imam’s eyes fixed on the telly.
“And all across this country,” he hissed, waving a hand, “Muslims grovel and scrape the ground in an effort to be accepted by these…animal
s. We have to do something.”
“We have been,” Tarik replied calmly. He had known that Colville would retaliate, even if he had not known the target. Muslim women being beaten in the streets—one nearly half-strangled with her own niqab—it was the perfect trigger. “And there is more to come.”
“Small attacks,” the imam spat, pacing back and forth across the floor in front of Tarik. His fist clenching and unclenching as if of its own will, his body trembling with anger. “Mourned today and forgotten by the next news cycle. They took Imam Besimi last night, took him right out of a restaurant here in Leeds.”
“Besimi,” Tarik shrugged, “was an apostate. You told me that yourself.”
“That’s not the point, God will judge his soul, not this corrupt government. We need to make them pay for what they have done to our brothers, our sisters. Not just here—but all across the Middle East.”
“They will, insh’allah.”
“Truly?” He gestured toward the darkened window, the shades drawn shut. “Ever since December, the name of the Shaikh has been on every faithful lip—the name of the man who had been used of God in the humbling of the Americans. You were compared to Usama, to Saladin…even to the companions of the Prophet. Lofty praise for one so young.”
Tarik spread his hands. “Does the age of a man matter in the sight of God? We are all but His slaves, the instruments of His will. Nothing more.”
Rahman went on without acknowledging his response, his voice growing with intensity—seemingly heedless of his sleeping wife only a few rooms away as he glared over at Tarik. “And when I heard that you had arrived in the UK, when you responded to my request for a meeting, I felt that God had sent us a messenger. A man to rally the faithful to our cause once and for all. And yet here we cower.”
The Shaikh’s gaze never wavered, his voice calm when he spoke again. “For the moment. For those who fight in Allah’s struggle, no retreat is final. No failure permanent. Even the Prophet, peace be upon him, was once forced to flee the persecution of the unbelievers. Our time will come.”
“When?”
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 22