The Black Madonna

by Peter Millar

  Then the silent forest night exploded. Violently. In a staccato thunderburst. Marcus felt the sour taste of bile rise suddenly in his throat. Then, with the reek of cordite and a fine blue smoky vapour still rising from his muzzle in the warm glow of the cabin light that came on when he opened the door, the man they called Saladin climbed into the driver’s seat and Marcus realised it was not going to be crowded at all. He had despised the little clergyman, but a bloody glimpse of the wreckage of his body, literally cut in half by the burst from an AK-47 made his stomach turn over.

  He pressed his arm hard across his abdomen to suppress the urge to be physically sick, and looked unseeingly in the darkness towards Nazreem, huddled in the corner, immersed in thoughts of her own. Nazreem who had deceived him, dragged him with her on a wild goose chase that could cost both of them their lives without even telling him the truth.

  The engine kicked into life and the tyres spun on sand as they lurched off onto the forest track, leaving the bloody remains of the Reverend Henry Parker, gone to meet his Great White Maker, on the dirt of the forest floor.

  Insanely, Marcus found an old and melancholy melody running through his head and gritted his teeth: ‘I’m being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow.’ Cat Stevens. It was with bitter irony that he recalled the singer nowadays preferred the name Yusuf Islam.

  60

  Sebastian Delahaye snatched at the phone the instant the green light indicating the secure link to Vauxhall Cross came on. He hated being dependent like this on the security service’s self-styled ‘big brother’ – in this case ‘big sister’ – across the river, but if it brought in a result then reluctantly he would be the last to complain.

  Hilary’s tones were as dulcet as ever but he could sense, beneath the ebullient gloss, a hint that she might really have something positive to tell him. She had: ‘It looks like good news, Seb. Well, goodish anyhow. I’ll go into details later – perhaps we might do lunch in that little place in Chelsea,’ – yes, yes, just get on with it, woman, Delahaye thought. ‘We just got a quick message. Had to be sent unencrypted so it’s a bit oblique but I think the gist is quite clear. Shall I read it to you? Bit of style really, just like the old days.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Delahaye fumed silently. Why couldn’t the bloody woman simply tell him what she knew?

  ‘It says, “Salad all packed and ready for delivery, but burgers are off and the grocery boy has gone home early.” What do you think?’

  ‘What?!’ It was all Delahaye could do not to scream down the phone. Bloody James Bond antics. It was as if they put wit, sarcasm and downright bloody obscurantism at the top of the list on their recruitment criteria.

  ‘Well obviously we’re hoping for fuller contact and a thorough brief as soon as possible, but I would have thought that was quite clear: it means our Mr Saladin has met up with your academic friends and is heading this way. Unfortunately our man has had to withdraw from the scene, at least temporarily. It’s not too clear why, but no doubt we’ll find out soon enough. At least the off-the-wall American threat has been eliminated.’

  Delahaye breathed a silent sigh of relief. He had been worried about the US involvement. Part of the success story he envisaged for himself involved evoking a substantial amount of kudos among his transatlantic peer group. The sooner the ‘Box’ element was closed, the happier he would be. In fact, the sooner the whole operation was back on British soil the better. There were still problems enough to be resolved.

  ‘So what do you say, Seb. How about one-thirty at Deloglio’s? I’ll get Terence to make a booking.’

  Delahaye sighed inwardly. Anything you say, Hilary, anything you say.

  61

  Dr Edward Mansfield lifted his Rosetta Stone-emblazoned mug of tea from the pile of books on his desk where it had been precariously balanced and took a sip only to put it down in disgust. It was cold. Slowly, arthritically, he got to his feet and paced to the window. Outside the traffic crawled as ever along Great Russell Street, an endless caterpillar of carbon monoxide belching cabs, cars and buses, wholly undiminished by the mayor’s congestion charge.

  Nor were there any fewer tourists camped on the steps as if the world’s greatest repository of cultural artefacts was nothing more than a neoclassical picnic venue, gawpers who ticked off the treasures by rote – Rosetta Stone, done that; Elgin Marbles, done them; Lewis chessmen? Most had never heard of them. As for the Assyrian friezes? He doubted any of them even knew where Assyria was. All they knew of Babylon was a song by Boney M.

  Reintroduce entrance charges, that was the answer. Entrance charges to put off the freeloaders, reduce the crowds and make them put a proper worth on the experience. And do something towards topping up a staff pension fund that was on the slippery slope to bankruptcy. If bloody Madame Tussaud’s could charge a small fortune and still get crowds queuing up outside to see its stupid charade of wax dummies that were no more lifelike than the Thunderbirds puppets of his youth, then why could not the British Museum charge at least half as much to get up close and personal with the whole of human history?

  Because history was bunk. That was why. Henry Ford, inventor of the production line, had said so, and today’s production line population went along with him. And so did the bloody government who in any case thought history began with the election before last and ended with the one after next. Mansfield was in a sour mood. As he was so often these days. He was bored, bored with his job, bored with life and bored with the museum. He would have done anything for a little excitement.

  Only a few days earlier he had almost thought himself in luck, although, if he sat down and thought about it – which he had done since – he knew all along it was only a pipe dream. But the unexpected appearance in his office of Nazreem Hashrawi, the pretty and intelligent Palestinian woman he had met at a conference in Cairo two years ago, had been the first ray of sunshine to enter his fusty little world in ages. He should have known she was only there to ask a favour.

  Time and again over the past few days his eyes had wandered to the heavy canvas bag in the corner, and wondered when she would be back to collect it. And if he dared ask her out for dinner when she did. In the meantime it simply sat there, teasing him. It was not that he begrudged it the floor space. There was enough junk on the floor, on the desk, in the cupboards, pretty much anywhere you cared to look in the grubby little glorified broom cupboard that the trustees of the British Museum dignified with the name of academic’s office.

  If it had not been for the little padlock on the zip he would have been sorely tempted to take a peek inside the bag, although more out of boredom than genuine curiosity. Books, she had said. Books that were one of her fledgling museum in Gaza’s few disposable assets, assets that now indeed had to be disposed of, if it was to weather the crisis of confidence and currency that threatened its survival. It would all have been different, she had told him, very different, if only they had not suffered the catastrophic theft. He had sympathised, as one does, though privately he doubted that the figure she had so fervently hoped might bring her little museum international renown was anything like as rare or important as she had hoped.

  As for who had stolen it, probably some nutcase Catholic collector who was daft enough to believe the old wives’ tales about St Luke the apostle-cum-painter-cum-sculptor. Whatever. People would always have their dreams. He wondered if there was any chance she really would accept that invitation to dinner.

  62

  When he was a child, growing up in Cape Town, Marcus Frey had had a mental image of the White Cliffs of Dover. He had heard the sentimental old Second World War song played on the sort of nostalgia radio programmes his mother and her friends were fond of. He had imagined them as a towering, glacial, ivory wall surmounted by giant cartoon bluebirds.

  Only now, as he watched the cliffs, in reality a medium-height green-flecked truncated chalk ridge much like the one on the French coast facing, did it strike him as odd that for all his years as an adult in En
gland he had never actually seen them before.

  Air travel and the Channel Tunnel had done away with much of the need for the old-fashioned ferry business. Yet it still survived, in fact did a roaring trade, not least in day-trippers who flocked to France and Belgium to buy cheap booze and cigarettes. It was also by far the softer option for anyone anxious to avoid the most rigorous immigration controls.

  The big sign in white on blue declared UK BORDER but it seemed to Marcus the woman in the glass box paid little heed to the documents handed over through the window of the Espace as they rolled off the P&O Calais to Dover ferry. She passed them before some sort of scanner, but clearly no alarm bells had been set ringing. ‘Remember to drive on the left – tenez la gauche,’ was her only comment, the latter half in execrable French, as she waved them on their way.

  Yes, Marcus felt like shouting at her, and have a nice day yourself, you’ve just let one of the world’s most wanted terrorists into the country. He didn’t, of course. He couldn’t. Because they had only handed over one passport, his, plus apparently plausible-looking – who knew, maybe even legitimate – French identity cards for his two companions. No longer masked and in black, but wearing freshly pressed jeans and checked shirts they did a fair impression of itinerant jobbing waiters from Marseille of distant Algerian origin. For all Marcus knew, maybe that was even what they were.

  Their leader, the one Nazreem now also referred to as ‘al-Saladin’ was travelling separately with her. On a bus, as it turned out. On another ferry. From another port. On God only knew what passport. What he had been promised, grimly, and had no reason to disbelieve, was that if either of them gave so much as a signal to the immigration or customs officials that they were travelling under duress or that their companions were anything other than bosom buddies, then the other would not reach London alive.

  What would have happened if they had been stopped by immigration or customs, if their ID cards had been queried, Marcus did not dare to think. As far as he knew they had not risked bringing firearms into the country, but they had made it perfectly clear to Marcus that each carried a set of knives that no customs official could object to as tools of the trade for French chefs working in London: Sabatier cooks’ knives, sharp enough to easily sever a head.

  It seemed their captors had done their homework and calculated the risk accurately. Watching the queues of vehicles as two ferries docked within minutes of each other, Marcus had the impression that scarcely one car in a hundred was stopped and it was invariably that of a Brit, suspected of smuggling cigarettes.

  As the vehicle swung out of the Western Harbour area and onto the main road, his two companions smiled for the first time in Marcus’s short and brutal acquaintance with them, and hit their palms in the air in a wholly un-Islamic ‘high five’. In so doing the car veered almost automatically onto the right side of the road and for a moment it looked as if the driver was going to leave it there, until an abrupt blast on a whistle from a policeman on points duty at the harbour exit corrected them. The constable held out his arm, but then merely pointed them back onto the left with a shake of his head and a steely frown.

  The driver let out a sudden sigh of relief and then, as the vehicle began the long climb up the hill away from the coast, caught Marcus’s eye in his rear-view mirror.

  ‘Smile,’ he said. ‘Be happy.’

  And then, as if an afterthought: ‘Now maybe you live.’

  Great, thought Marcus. He really didn’t like the ‘maybe’.

  63

  Edward Mansfield was not impressed. In his experience men who said they represented ‘government security forces’ were little more than armed villains. Men who were ready to die for their flag and country were usually willing to trample all over anybody else’s.

  He understood that there had always been warrior cultures; he just happened to prefer those that belonged to the distant past rather than the present. He had seen what the US army in the name of peace, democracy and civilisation had done for the treasures of Iraq, seen the tank treads scored into the ancient pavements of Babylon, watched on television as armed men trashed the remnants of the world’s oldest civilisation, in the name of the modern variation. He was decidedly not impressed.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Sebastian Delahaye, seated in front of him in his little office in the back corridors of the museum, ‘that it’s imperative, a genuine matter of national security.’

  ‘I don’t see what the fuss is about. Dr Hashrawi merely entrusted me with some personal items, academic material, while she was travelling. I don’t see any reason why she should not simply come in here and pick it up. It has been entrusted to my care, and I don’t care to abuse that trust.’

  Delahaye smiled, his biggest ‘believe me, it’s all for the best’ smile. God, these old buggers could be difficult.

  ‘We have reason to believe that Ms … that Dr Hashrawi is in some personal difficulty. How shall I put it – that she may be being blackmailed?’

  ‘Blackmailed? Over what? I don’t understand.’

  Delahaye sighed, a practised, well-meaning sigh.

  ‘I understand, Dr Mansfield. It’s just that this is somewhat delicate. We’re not asking a great deal of you. Merely that when she calls in advance to arrange to pick up this bag she left with you, that you ask her to come in at a specific time, in the evening, after most of the museum has closed. You can explain that you are out – at a conference or something – the rest of the day, but that you will be happy to see her for a coffee. At the bar in the Great Court.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t she come straight here, to my office, like she usually does? I don’t want to sit out there, like some bloody tourist.’

  ‘Believe me, I think Dr Hashrawi will prefer it. To be honest I think she may even insist that you meet somewhere more open, rather than in a, if you’ll pardon my saying so, rather enclosed space like this.’ He looked around him at the cramped, book-lined office.

  ‘You make it all sound so terribly cloak-and-dagger. If it’s so important to national security why are you leaving it here at all,’ he pointed to the brightly-coloured padlock-zipped nylon bag lying next to the wastepaper basket in the corner. ‘It seems there’s no way for me to prevent you doing anything you want to.’

  Delahaye swung his head round. He had not actually asked to see the object in question and found it almost bizarrely amusing that this cheap nylon ‘made in China’ bag contained something so sought after. He was sorely tempted to open it, but it would be difficult to do so without obviously tampering with the padlock. And after all, if it was really only some historical relic, he had very little interest. His sole interest in the thing was using it as bait.

  ‘Because,’ he resumed, ‘she is expecting – the people with her are expecting – it to be with you.’

  Mansfield looked at him askance.

  ‘This isn’t dangerous, is it? You’re not asking me to stick my neck out to catch some criminals, mafia-types or something.’

  ‘I can assure you,’ Delahaye told him, ‘that we will do everything possible to make sure that there are no problems. All you have to do is meet with Dr Hashrawi and hand over the bag as arranged. It should take no more than a couple of minutes and you can disappear back to your office as soon as you like.’

  Mansfield harrumphed. ‘Well, I don’t know, I suppose so. She hasn’t done anything wrong, has she? I mean, you’re not going to arrest her or anything, just because she’s Palestinian?’

  Delahaye pulled out another from his repertoire of smiles for appeasing civilians, this time his very best ‘wouldn’t even think of it, don’t you worry about a thing’ smile: ‘As far as we are concerned, Dr Mansfield, your colleague has done nothing wrong whatsoever. Believe me, we are simply trying to help her out.’

  ‘So when is this all going to happen? She’s due to call me, you said.’

  ‘We believe so. It could be any time, any time at all, but almost certainly within the next forty-eight ho
urs. All you have to do is let us know straight away, and ask her to come in around five fifty-five in the evening.’

  ‘But, if it is in the next forty-eight hours, the Great Court closes at six p.m. from Sunday to Wednesday.’

  ‘Like I said, we only expect it to take a couple of minutes and it will be easier if the museum is almost empty.’

  Delahaye walked down the steps feeling something like remotely in control of the situation once again. ‘Remotely’ being the operative word if, thank God, no longer as remotely as it had been. Squaring Mansfield had been the last little element. Once it had been established that the ridiculous artefact that was drawing his quarry as surely as a wasp to a honeypot was at the British Museum, it had not taken a minute to find out which of the institution’s resident ‘keepers’ was most likely to be an acquaintance of Nazreem Hashrawi. Edward Mansfield was a regular attendee at conferences in Cairo.

  And now Hashrawi was back on British soil and so – far more importantly for the security community and the potential career advancement of one S. Delahaye in particular – was the man who until now had been nothing more than a video nasty, the man who called himself ‘Son of Saladin’. If everything went according to plan, his salad days were about to be well and truly over.

  Rashid Hussein al-Samarri, as it said on the Saddam-era Iraqi identity card he had not used for years, had entered the United Kingdom at eleven forty-five using a high-quality forged identity card under the name Abdul Youssef Bezier, latterly of Marseille, currently of Lille, département du Nord, on a coach sightseeing-excursion to Canterbury, crossing the channel on the ten-thirty a.m. (French time) Eurotunnel shuttle departure from Calais to Folkestone. Amongst the other passengers on board the coach was a Ms Nazreem Pascale Hashrawi travelling on a French (non-resident) passport.