by Chris Ryan
Looking out from the corner-office briefing room on the seventh floor of the MI6 building in Vauxhall, it was clear that London was being battered by a rainstorm. The familiar sights of Parliament Square, the London Eye, St Paul’s Cathedral and the bridges were glowing blurs in the night.
Inside the room was stifling. It bore all the traces of a long session. Empty pizza boxes were stacked in a wobbly pile – the residue of two meals taken on the hoof. The large table in the middle of the room was littered with polystyrene cups. There was a smell of body odour, and the men and women sitting round the table looked crumpled and drawn.
There was Guy Thackeray. The new director of MI6 had round glasses and an equally round face. His jovial demeanour masked a ruthless streak. Thackeray was the powerhouse behind recent legislation giving much wider powers of surveillance to the security services. It made him a bit of a hero in the corridors of MI6, and a despicable snooper in the eyes of the left-wing press. But he was the sort of man to wear that kind of criticism as a badge of honour.
There was George Chilvers, a surprise recent appointment to the position of Foreign Secretary. Plump, with floppy blond hair and a disarming schoolboy manner. But clearly ambitious for the top job. He’d arrived fifteen minutes ago, but he owned the room and seemed like he’d been there for hours.
There was Alice Cracknell, a security analyst in her mid-thirties, whose recent promotion to the inner sanctum of Thackeray’s closest team – above the heads of many more experienced candidates – was rumoured to be because she and the director shared more than intelligence. Not that anyone doubted her ability to do the job. Alice was a very good intelligence officer.
And there was Ray Hammond, Regiment ops officer, in direct contact with the team currently on ops in the Med. His phone seemed to have been glued permanently to his ear over the past few hours as he kept the line open to the situation room at Hereford in order to update the assembled company in real time about the status of the operation. Hammond knew it was unusual for the head of MI6 to be taking such a hands-on role. It was even more unusual for the Foreign Secretary to be here. Thackeray was up to something. Hammond didn’t know what.
‘So this is it then?’ Chilvers was saying. ‘Proof positive that these IS chappies are using migrant boats to smuggle their operatives into Europe.’
‘Yes, Foreign Secretary,’ said Thackeray. ‘We’ve had our suspicions before now, of course, but we’ve never actually had the smoking gun.’
Chilvers looked over at Hammond. ‘I hope you have your best people on this,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ Hammond said, his poker face not slipping for an instant. ‘Good men. Good soldiers.’ And when there was an awkward pause: ‘The best.’
The Foreign Secretary shook his head. ‘This migrant situation is getting out of hand. I had to talk very hard to get the PM to agree to up the UK’s quota of refugees. We owe these people a second chance, damn it, since it was us that destabilised the Middle East in the first place. We’ve a proud tradition of providing political asylum to those in genuine need. But if it gets out that IS are using them as Trojan Horses, the border agency will go into lockdown.’
Thackeray settled his hands gently on his paunch. ‘It’s how they work,’ he observed. ‘The Taliban used to hide out in civilian areas so we couldn’t bomb them without collateral damage. The mujahideen used to do the same. These IS thugs might have a different name, but they’re the same people and they have the same tactics. They don’t care about the lives of innocents.’
‘I’ve got some intel coming through from our team in Malta,’ Hammond interrupted. He listened for a moment, then reported the edited highlights.
‘Christmas Day. Westminster Abbey. An IS bomb attack.’
Chilvers had turned slightly pale. Hammond had seen that look a hundred times. Give a politician a piece of bad news, chances are their first reaction will be to start calculating how it will affect them personally. He glanced out of the window, in the direction of Parliament Square. The roof of the abbey wasn’t quite visible on account of the rain. ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ he said.
Three cool glances made it clear what everyone else in the room thought of that statement.
Thackeray turned to Alice Cracknell. ‘What’s happening at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day?’
Cracknell was examining some data on her laptop screen. ‘Ten a.m. service,’ she said. ‘Normally a full house. We’ve got the PM attending, and his family.’
The Foreign Secretary gave her a sharp look. ‘How do you know?’ he demanded. ‘I take it this isn’t the sort of information you normally have at your fingertips?’
‘This intelligence corroborates certain whispers we’ve been hearing from elsewhere,’ Thackeray said.
‘What do you mean? Why haven’t I heard about this?’
Thackeray spread his hands apologetically. ‘Foreign Secretary, if we informed you of every single lead we’re obliged to follow up, there would be precious little time for you to do anything else.’ He inclined his head. ‘I will concede, however, that Westminster Abbey has been slightly higher on our radar than any of the other potential attacks. We already have – three, is it Alice? – independent sources suggesting some level of terrorist activity there around the Christmas period. Nothing quite as high grade as this, however – Internet chatter, Facebook comments, the usual stuff.’ He looked at his assistant. ‘I think we can consider it copper-bottomed, don’t you, Alice?’
Alice nodded.
‘Jesus wept,’ the Foreign Secretary said. ‘They’re monsters.’
‘Tell us something we don’t know, George.’ The director looked sharply at Hammond. ‘Level one security,’ he instructed.
Hammond stared at him. ‘You’re going to allow the service to go ahead?’ He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
‘I don’t see that we have an option. Cancelling the thing would be a disaster from a PR perspective. Makes us look very weak. Gives IS the upper hand, publicity-wise. I’m sure the Foreign Secretary agrees.’
The Foreign Secretary hesitated, then turned to Hammond. ‘It’s up to you to stop this thing happening. What countermeasures can you put in place?’
Hammond was thinking on his feet now. ‘Round-the-clock plain-clothes surveillance on all entrances by sunrise, obviously. We’ll organise a full sweep of the interior and exterior, and we’ll check for sniper positions in the surrounding area. We’ll need military bomb disposal units. I also recommend full background checks into all ancillary cathedral staff. If someone’s planting an explosive device, it’s more likely to be a cleaner than a priest . . .’
‘Of course,’ the director said grimly. ‘Alice, I want the Met’s chief commissioner here immediately, and we need to put SCO19 specialist firearm command on standby. I’ll need a full briefing with the directors of MI5 and GCHQ within the hour. And the Chief of the Defence Staff . . .’
‘I need to inform the cabinet,’ Chilvers said.
‘Absolutely not,’ the chief replied.
Chilvers blinked at him. ‘Now look here—’
‘If you imagine, George, that there are members of the wider cabinet who are not being actively monitored by the NSA, then you’re badly mistaken.’
‘I suppose you think the security services are impenetrable too,’ the Foreign Secretary shot back.
‘Certainly not. But we have to keep this tight. And it’s not just to save face. If the Americans learn that we’re intercepting their intelligence sources, they’ll shut them down and use a different method of communication.’
‘Why the bloody hell aren’t they sharing this information with us in the first place? What about the special relationship?’
‘Why our American cousins do anything is something of a mystery these days,’ Thackeray said, with a meaningful look at Alice.
Hammond held up one finger. ‘Updates from Malta,’ he said. He listened to the voice at the other end of his mobile. ‘Our team believes that their ta
rgets are being controlled by an IS commander based in northern Iraq by the name of Dhul Faqar.’ He saw Thackeray and Cracknell exchange another look. ‘I take it the name means something?’
‘It most certainly does,’ Thackeray said.
‘Well?’
‘Go ahead, Alice,’ Thackeray said.
Alice cleared her throat. ‘Dhul Faqar was a high-level member of the Ba’ath Party under the Saddam Hussein regime. He was also an excellent politician – you needed to be, if you were close to Saddam and wanted to stay alive. That said, there are rumours that he supplied Saddam and his sons with certain . . .’ she cleared her throat again ‘. . . playthings.’
‘What do you mean?’ Chilvers asked.
‘Girls, Foreign Secretary,’ Thackeray said. ‘Slave girls. For sex. Uday, Saddam’s eldest son, had some fairly exotic tastes, and the word is he inherited them from his father. Do carry on, Alice.’
‘After the downfall of the Saddam regime, he disappeared from the radar. A lot of the people closest to Saddam did. Some of them never reappeared – we assume that the Iraqi people dealt with them in whatever way they saw fit. But some, the cleverer ones, popped up again with the emergence of the so-called Islamic State. They’d rebranded themselves, of course – spiritual leaders, fighters of Islam, all that stuff. But really it was just a way of regaining some of the power they’d grown used to having in the good old bad old days of Saddam. The emerging militants were just a bunch of disorganised thugs, and they needed people to orchestrate them. These are very clever men we’re talking about. They understand the value of publicity. They understand that their battles are won on social media as well as by boots on the ground.’
‘So, this Dhul Faqar character has no real religious affiliations?’ the Foreign Secretary asked.
‘Almost none of them do, George. The IS commanders, I mean. They pay lip service to the cause, of course, talk the jihadi talk, walk the jihadi walk. But in reality, their interests are the interests of powerful men the world over.’ He looked at Chilvers, as if expecting him to know what he was talking about. When Chilvers’s expression remained blank, he said, ‘Sex and money, George. Sex and money.’
‘I don’t understand. How does this character get money and . . .’ Chilvers blushed slightly ‘. . . how does he get what he wants, by running a terrorist organisation?’
Thackeray smiled indulgently. ‘The money is simple. Islamic State is well funded. They have rich backers – we’re talking ultrahigh-net-worth individuals – who pump substantial funds into the cause. IS militants are ruthless and expert looters – when they move into an area they strip its banks, businesses and military installations of whatever cash they’re holding. They levy taxes on the areas they control. They smuggle antiques and artefacts on to the open market. They make millions from human trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. And then, of course, there’s the oil. IS control vast swathes of northern Iraq and Syria. There are plentiful oilfields in this area, and many of them are under IS control.’ He raised an eyebrow at the Foreign Secretary. ‘You’ll stop me if I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, George?’
‘What? No, no, do go on. It’s always helpful to hear another perspective on the matter.’ Chilvers failed to hold the chief’s gaze, and his inexperience seemed to hang in the room like a cloud.
‘Of course,’ Thackeray said, and Hammond had the impression that he was choosing his words carefully, ‘having control of the oilfields and actually being able to sell the oil are two different things, as I’m sure you can appreciate.’ Chilvers gave no indication of whether he could appreciate this or not, so Thackeray continued. ‘One doesn’t simply walk into the head offices of BP and offer them millions of barrels of crude at a knock-down rate. IS are obliged to use more elliptical routes to get their product to market.’
‘Go on.’
‘There are certain middlemen who broker the oil for Islamic State on the open market. They launder it, if you will. Nation states who couldn’t be seen to be dealing directly with IS can much more easily buy it from these middlemen – and they’re happy to do so, because they offer the crude at a discount. It’s simple economics, really. IS earn millions of dollars a day from selling the oil they control. They need to, of course – it’s a big organisation with a lot of mouths to feed and salaries to pay. But it’s straightforward for the people higher up the rung to cream a little off the top – backhanders from the middlemen, that kind of arrangement. A very tiny fraction of IS’s daily income represents a substantial fortune for an individual like Dhul Faqar.
‘The sex is more straightforward. IS routinely take girls hostage to use as sex slaves. Their commanders get the pick of the bunch. There have been a number of special forces raids – British and American – on the compounds these vermin use to keep their harems. We’ve managed to rescue some of the girls, and they’ve given us detailed information on how they are being used and abused. The reports make for . . .’ Thackeray sniffed ‘. . . unedifying reading.’
‘We should be bombing these IS strongholds – us and the Americans,’ Chilvers said.
‘I couldn’t agree more, Foreign Secretary. There is some, how can I put it, frustration among the security services at the rationale behind which IS strongholds in northern Iraq and Syria are being targeted, and which aren’t.’
‘Your frustration is shared,’ Chilvers replied darkly. ‘But we don’t have the mandate from the public to step up a bombing campaign in the Middle East. Not to mention that we don’t have enough planes.’
Thackeray raised an eyebrow. ‘Mandates can be doctored,’ he said blithely. ‘And resources can be made available. No, Foreign Secretary, I think you and I both know that the Americans are running the show in the Middle East. We have a great deal to lose from falling out with the US, so there’s no way we would bomb these targets independently without the Americans’ say-so. And it appears the Americans have their reasons for holding back on these targets.’ Thackeray got to his feet and started pacing round the room. ‘Britain has its own little part to play in the conflict, Foreign Secretary, and we mustn’t get ideas above our station.’ He stopped and looked directly at Chilvers. ‘Of course, there are those who think that Britain should not be playing the part of America’s poodle. Whether you yourself are of that frame of mind, I couldn’t possibly say.’
His comment seemed to hang between the two men. Hammond cleared his throat. ‘Westminster Abbey?’ he reminded them.
Thackeray sat down again. ‘Westminster Abbey,’ he repeated placidly.
‘I have to warn you that we can put all the usual precautions in place, but—’
‘—if a device has already been planted, we might not be able to locate it.’
‘But how can that be possible?’ Chilvers demanded. ‘Don’t you have resources for this kind of thing?’
‘The kind of IEDs we’re coming up against these days are incredibly sophisticated,’ Hammond said. ‘And the terrorists are fast learners. They’re setting explosives into composite blocks, for example, then into concrete. When they do that, it’s impossible for dogs to sniff them out. And they’re getting skilled at making these things so that metal detectors can’t pick them up – plastic components in the detonators, only tiny bits of metal.’
Chilvers scratched his blond hair. ‘But . . . in Westminster Abbey? How would they . . .’
‘The Brighton bomb that targeted Thatcher was in place months before it was detonated. With technology now, digital timers and the like, they can put IEDs in place years beforehand. A couple of rogue concrete slabs when they’re doing restorations – the whole place could be an explosion waiting to happen. Then, of course, there’s the suicide bomber factor – if somebody wants to walk in there on the day wearing several kilos of C5, there’s not a lot we can do . . .’
There was an ominous silence as the assembled personnel considered the implication of Hammond’s words.
Eventually, Chilvers spoke again. ‘This Dhul Faqar character,’
he said. ‘He would know the identity of whoever’s in the UK orchestrating this attack, one presumes.’
Hammond had to hand it to Thackeray. He was playing Chilvers like an instrument. His reaction was subtle. An imperceptible widening of the eyes, as if he had not previously considered this option and was impressed at the Foreign Secretary’s perceptiveness. ‘One would assume so,’ he said. ‘As I’m sure you’re aware, 9/11 was conceived and planned in Afghanistan. The Paris attacks were conceived and planned in Syria. The hard truth is that if you’re trying to prevent these atrocities by targeting individuals in the UK, you’re already too late.’ He cleared his throat. ‘If you’re drinking water from a stream that’s giving you stomachache, your best bet is to head upstream and remove the animal turd that’s poisoning it, if you take my meaning.’
The Foreign Secretary blinked hard. ‘Then we must apprehend him.’
Thackeray inclined his head. ‘It’s a possibility,’ he said. ‘But I should warn that the PM is unlikely to give his approval to our going in under the Americans’ radar.’
‘Bollocks to the PM,’ Chilvers snapped. ‘I’m the Foreign Secretary, this is within my authorisation.’
Thackeray nodded. ‘A bold stance is needed,’ he said approvingly. He turned to Alice Cracknell, but she seemed to be one step ahead of him and was already handing over a Manila folder. ‘If that’s your decision, George, there’s a chance that we could kill two birds with one stone.’ He gave a bleak smile. ‘So to speak.’
‘How so?’
‘Our intelligence tells us that Dhul Faqar is hosting four of these middlemen we talked about, the ones who broker oil from the IS-controlled oilfields on to the wider market. I’m sure I hardly need to point out that the elimination of these individuals would be a serious blow to Islamic State. If they can’t broker their oil, a substantial chunk of their funding will be cut off.’
‘You’re asking me to authorise an assassination attempt?’ the Foreign Secretary said.
‘It’s your decision, of course, but such a course of action will require high-level approval. And like I say, I don’t feel comfortable approaching the wider cabinet in case we inadvertently tip off the Americans that we’re listening in on their intelligence sources. The PM would almost certainly veto the operation. It needs the authority of somebody with the ability to see the wider picture. And of course, the person who supported MI6 in this matter would be assured of our support in the future.’ He sat back and let his words sink in.