by Henry Porter
By the time she got back to the control room, they had found Rahe on the film taken near the lavatory. More important, they had got him in both sets of clothing and were able to see which man he had changed with. Dolph and Lapping had started cross-referencing the information they had gathered with names on the FBI and British watch lists. It was an inexact process but they had seven faces to play with. Dolph made an impressive case that two of them belonged to an Indonesian cell. He told them he’d lay odds on it.
Herrick had other things on her mind. It was obvious that the timing of this operation was subject to flights arriving late or being diverted. They must have built flexibility into the schedule so that if one man was delayed, there was still someone for him to switch identities with. That probably meant there were one or two floaters, men who at the beginning of the day were prepared to be sent anywhere. These would have to be European citizens with clean passports who could board a plane bound for Barcelona or Copenhagen and enter the country without raising suspicion. She thought of Rahe, a British citizen, sitting in the Garden of Remembrance. Although they hadn’t seen him use his phone, he must have received a text message or phone call to tell him when he was due to swap.
Some of the detail could wait, but they were getting a picture of an impressive operation. To put as many as a dozen people into Heathrow from all over the world, with passports that were stamped with the correct visas, and then to achieve what was in effect a relay switch, required miraculous scheduling skills. Whoever was controlling the switches would need to speak to each man the moment he arrived, which was why, she now realised, three suspects had been filmed talking on their mobiles just after disembarkation. The controller would also have to ensure that the men didn’t all arrive in the washroom at the same time. An early flight might leave a man loitering in the corridors, drawing attention to himself, so a premature arrival would have to be taken out of circulation, perhaps hidden in the locked storage cupboard, until the moment his pair arrived and he could be sent on his way.
There was one more question she needed to answer before returning to London and writing the report for Spelling, which she now rather relished.
She went down to Arrivals, bought a cup of coffee and stationed herself under the flight displays. Heathrow was now open for business. Four flights were expected in the next quarter of an hour and already the roped-off exit from Customs was fringed with small welcoming parties.
She noticed that the chauffeurs and company drivers seemed to know instinctively when planes had landed and the passengers would start to clear Customs. Often the drivers appeared from the car park exit with just a few seconds to spare. She asked a lugubrious man clutching a sign and sipping coffee how they managed it. ‘Trick of the trade,’ he said, blowing across the cup. ‘The top deck of the car park for this terminal has the best view of the airport. When you see your aircraft landing you drive down to the lower floor and then you know you’ve got another half hour or so to wait. It makes a difference if you’re doing this three times a week.’
‘What about when it’s busy?’ she asked.
‘At peak you’ve got about forty to fifty minutes,’ he replied.
Herrick could have gone back to the control room, satisfied that she’d tied up all the loose ends of the operation, but the obsessive part of her nature told her there was always more to be had by seeing something for yourself. A few minutes later she was standing in the open on the top level of the car park with a little huddle of plane spotters. She watched for a while, briefly marvelling that men stirred so early in the day to jot down the details of very ordinary-looking Jumbo jets, then caught the eye of a man with an untidy growth of beard and asked him if this was always the best place to see the aircraft.
‘Not always,’ he replied without removing his eyes from a jet taxiing in to the terminal. ‘They change the runways at three in the afternoon on the dot. Whichever one is being used for take-off becomes the landing runway. Then we go across to Terminal Two and watch from the proper viewing terrace.’
She was about to ask him whether he had seen anyone acting unusually the day before last, but thought better of it. That was a detail. Special Branch could deal with it later.
She walked out of earshot of the plane spotters towards the centre of the near-empty car park and dialled the duty officer at Vauxhall Cross.
It was 6. 45 a.m. Isis noticed she was very hungry.
CHAPTER FOUR
Silence. No word from the Chief’s office; not the merest hint that her report had been discussed at the Joint Intelligence Committee, which Herrick knew was meeting four times a day in the wake of the death of Norquist. Even the people in anti-terrorism, who had been known to make the odd, oblique compliment, said nothing. Dolph, Sarre and Lapping shrugged and went back to their work. Dolph said, ‘Fuck ’em, Isis. Next time we’ll stay in the pub.’ Sarre pondered the behaviour and came up with the phrase ‘institutional autism’, then went off to look at a map of Uzbekistan.
Herrick was not as easily resigned. She didn’t understand why there was not an immediate operation to trace the men who had darted into the glare of Heathrow’s security system and dispersed into the dark. Anyone could see these men had been imported into Europe for a specific purpose, a particular act of terrorism. But the trail was growing colder by the minute.
This just confirmed her belief that the parts of the Secret Intelligence Service were more decent and reasonable than its sum. She trusted colleagues individually, but rarely the collective, which she regarded by turns as needlessly calculating, merciless and plain stupid.
This had been her view since the Intelligence Officers’ New Entry Course when, like the others in her class of a dozen, she was sent abroad on what was presented as an actual mission. A cover story was provided, fake credentials, a task and a deadline. Everything seemed straightforward, but during the trip the trainees were arrested by the local counter intelligence service, held and questioned, the object being to test their powers of resistance and resourcefulness.
The test is never pleasant but Herrick knew that, like most female entrants, she had received especially severe treatment. She was detained by the German police and members of the BFD for a week, during which she was questioned for long stretches at night, roughed up and deprived of sleep, food and water. The particular harshness perhaps had something further to do with the fact that she had followed her father into MI6. No daddy’s girls in the Service, not unless they could stand having a chair broken over their back by a borderline psychopath.
Every reason to take the Cairo posting offered to her a couple of weeks earlier and get out of Vauxhall Cross. Egypt was one of the few Arab countries where she could use her language and work without having to remember at every step she was a woman. Besides, the cover job in the embassy as political counsellor would not be too difficult to master alongside the business of spying.
She shook herself - she had work to do - and returned with little enthusiasm to the investigation of Liechtenstein trusts being used to move Saudi money to extremist clerics and mosques around Europe - a worthwhile job perhaps, although it seemed pedestrian after her night at Heathrow.
Khan had kept going through the first day and, having taken care to memorise the shape of the landscape ahead of him, walked through the night, too. By the following morning he reckoned he had put a good distance between himself and the security forces. He decided to rest up in the shade. But down in the valleys he saw much more activity than would normally be expected in the pursuit of one fugitive. He realised they couldn’t let him leave the country with his knowledge of the massacre of innocent men. He lay low until the early evening and set off again in the warm twilight, eventually coming across a village in the mountains where some kind of celebration was in full swing. A small dance floor had been erected; strings of lights had been hung between its four corners and a band was playing. He guessed it was some kind of religious feast or a wedding.
He had gone for two days witho
ut food, sucking leaves and grass and eking out the water in the soldier’s canteen. But he made himself wait a good half-hour, watching a group of houses that could be approached under cover of a wall that ran down from a ridge not far from where he lay. He set off, moving cautiously, at every step of the way looking back to see his best escape route. He entered two houses but in the dark couldn’t find anything to eat. He came to a third and felt his way to the kitchen, where he found a loaf of bread, half a jar of nuts, some dried beef, cheese and olives. He wrapped them in a piece of damp cloth that had covered the bread.
An ancient voice croaked from the room next door, making him freeze. He put his head round the door-frame and saw an old woman sitting in a chair, bathed in red light from an illuminated religious icon. Her head moved from side to side and she was slashing at the air with a stick. He realised that she must be blind. He crept over to her, gently laid his hand on hers and with the other stroked her brow to reassure her. Her skin was very wrinkled and cool to the touch and momentarily he had the impression that she had woken from the dead. He caught sight of a bottle of Metaxa brandy and a glass, which had been placed out of her reach. He poured an inch or so, put the glass in her hand and helped her lift it to her lips. Her wailing suddenly stopped and she murmured something which sounded like a blessing. Placing the bottle in his piece of cloth, he left the house by the front door.
A couple of dogs pursued him along the wall and he was forced to sacrifice some of the meat, which he hacked off with his knife and chucked at them. Then he melted into the rocks and scrub, making for the place where he had left his belongings. He ate a little of the cheese and bread to give him energy, but it was another hour before he found some rocks where he could make a fire that wouldn’t be seen from below, or indeed from any other direction. He prepared a sandwich, eating it slowly so as not to give himself indigestion, and washed it down with some brandy mixed with a little water. It was his first alcohol in seven years and he knew himself well enough to watch his consumption.
He did not stamp out the fire straight away, but moved some flat stones into the flames then settled down near the light to look through the Palestinian’s pouch of documents. There were a number of identity cards with different names. The most frequent name used was Jasur al-Jahez and all the cards included pictures of the dead Palestinian. He noticed that many were out of date, but felt sure that somewhere among the mostly Arabic documentation an address would be found. When he’d had them translated he would write to Jasur’s relatives and tell them what had happened. The death of the man who’d fought so hard to live had stayed with him all day and, as with his men in Afghanistan, he felt a keen responsibility to the relatives who had been left behind.
Some time later, he pulled the stones from the fire and placed them in a line, digging them in so their tops were flush with the surface of the ground. Then he swept the embers away, buried them and laid his bed-roll where the fire had been and along the line of warm stones. It was a trick he’d learned during his first winter in Afghanistan. Going to sleep by a fire was less efficient than lying on ground that had been heated for several hours. With rocks placed in a line under your body you stayed warm all night, or at least warm enough to go to sleep.
Next day he woke at dawn and packed his things quickly. He was about 700 feet above the village and a good mile away as the crow flies. A slight haze hung over the mountains. When he moved to look down he noticed that an army truck had pulled up in the main square of the village and a knot of figures were gathered round it. It could mean nothing; on the other hand, there was every possibility that the old lady had reported him and the missing food had lent credibility to her story. He moved off without a second glance and decided on the tactics he’d used the first day, of marching further than anyone thought possible. But it was already quite hot and the one thing he hadn’t thought to do while in the village was replenish his water supply. He would have to save the cup or two that remained in the canister.
Half an hour later a helicopter appeared and circled the ground immediately above the village. He saw troops moving up the mountainside. They were much fitter and faster than the soldiers who had hunted him two days before and he estimated that if he stayed where he was they would reach him in under an hour. However, it would be suicide not to pick his route carefully while the helicopter was so close.
He waited under some bushes, remembering what a Stinger missile launched from a man’s shoulder could do to a chopper. As soon as it shifted, he sprinted into a plantation of pines and moved rapidly up the slope, running with the gun in one hand and the sack of possessions tied round his back with the gun strap. He reached some open ground and decided to make for a long shelf of rock about a hundred yards ahead.
Something must have attracted the pilot’s attention. The machine dipped and slewed across the mountainside towards him. Khan dived under a clump of bushes to his right, rolled onto his back and pushed the muzzle of the gun through the foliage, briefly aiming it at the tail rotor as it came into view. Instead of settling over the bushes the helicopter passed him. He wiped the sweat that was trickling from his brow and took a sip of water from the canister. He could see very little, but from the rhythmic thud he judged the helicopter was in a steady hover high over a position about a thousand yards to the north of him.
He pulled the shirt-sleeve across his face again, dabbed his eyes and took in the pinpoint clarity of the day. The sun had burned away the haze and was heating the ground so that the air was filled with the smell of herbs.
His eyes returned to the skyline above the shelf. One or two scrawny mountain sheep had appeared and were looking over the ten-foot drop. They were joined by the rest of the flock, obviously scared by the helicopter. With one sudden movement they cascaded over the edge, many of them landing legs akimbo or on their sides. They struggled up and stampeded past him like a river in spate, down towards the pine trees. They were followed by a pair of dogs and a shepherd boy who stood on the edge of the shelf, waved a stick and shouted. Khan noticed that he had a blanket tied across his chest and was carrying a good many pans and bottles that made almost as much din as the sheep bells. As the boy scrambled down, a corner of the sack-cloth came loose and neat bunches of herbs tumbled out. He dropped the sack and ran on after the sheep without noticing Khan’s boots protruding from beneath the bushes.
The helicopter’s engine was producing a more laboured note. He saw it pop into view above, climb rapidly and drop away to his left. He caught another noise - the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons firing and a heavy machine gun, or even a cannon.
He scrambled up to the rock and put his head above the parapet. About two hundred yards away he saw a group of men moving into the open from an old stone shelter. They didn’t seem to be in the least concerned about the presence of the helicopter sitting above a cliff some distance away, and were moving without haste up the scree towards a cleft in the mountains. Several packhorses or mules followed them.
He realised these must be the insurgents he’d heard about from the Bulgarian truck driver who had brought them all the way from Eastern Turkey and left them near the town of Tetovo, West of Skopje. It was a long way from the agreed drop-off point and they had missed their connection, so the driver had got out a road map and showed them that they were south of the place where the borders of Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania meet. He told them there was a lot of trouble because the men from the north crossed into Macedonian territory and stirred up trouble with the local Albanian population. He had been forced to change his route countless times by the Macedonian patrols. Khan had only half-believed him, but here were the men he had spoken about and they might well provide a means of getting over the border.
Shading his eyes from the light, he peered down the mountain to look for the soldiers. At first there was no sign of them but then he noticed that the sheep which had scattered into the pine plantation were now bolting from cover. He saw a figure flash across a patch of light and realised that
the soldiers were nearly in range. They would reach him in minutes. He had a choice. He could try to conceal himself but risk being discovered, or he could warn the men above him about the size of the approaching force. He opted for the latter, and jumped up, letting off a burst in the air to gain their attention, then loosed a full magazine into the trees without hope or desire of hitting the soldiers. They rose to the bait and returned his fire and so announced their presence. He turned and raced across the plateau towards the men, shouting and waving, praying they understood he was one of them; at least that he had earned an audience.
This performance brought them to a halt and even now they seemed to have time to exchange looks and rest their hands on each other’s shoulders and point at the man tearing across the bare plateau. He reached them almost incapable of speech, but gestured down the mountain and said the word soldier in as many languages as came to mind. The men stared back at him. They were all quite short with dusty hair and faces. Beneath the grime was two or three days of stubble and without exception a look of undisguised suspicion. One of them gestured he should fall in behind the column and then they moved off again. A hundred feet up, Khan saw why they were so confident. Hidden behind a wall of boulders was a heavy six-barrelled American machine gun, known as a Sixpak. As soon as they passed the gun, a young man of no more than eighteen years, with eyebrows that met in the middle of his face and the solemn concentration of the truly insane, opened fire, strafing the ground immediately in front of the rock shelf and kicking up an impressive spray of pebbles and dust. Still firing, he swung the weapon in an arc towards the helicopter and pumped rounds in its direction, causing the pilot to rise and feint to the left. He kept up intermittent bursts until the men and mules passed through the opening of the rock, at which point he gathered up the gun and ammunition belts and ran to join them.