by Henry Porter
Guthrie coughed and said, ‘All of which underlines the thesis implied in your report on the events of May the fourteenth, that the alert over the President’s man was a…’
‘A strategic diversion,’ offered Vigo, with his eyes closed.
‘To achieve several things,’ said Guthrie, ‘among which was enticement of Rahe out of the country.’
‘Can I ask you if the information about the hit on Norquist came from Rahe’s computer?’
Vigo shot her a look of interest.
‘What do you know about Rahe’s computer?’ asked Spelling sharply.
‘I assumed that if he was working for us you must have had access to any information that came to him via his PC. After all, he barely left that shop and we had his phone covered so I imagined it was simply a matter of interception somewhere along the line.’ This was feeble but she had to protect Andy Dolph. ‘I’m simply asking if the information about the possible hit on Norquist came from Rahe, by whatever means. From the outside that seems to be the important point.’
‘There was an oblique reference to it amongst the usual blazing rhetoric,’ said Guthrie. ‘But this was released after he left for Heathrow. Another source confirmed in some detail what was to happen.’
Spelling moved to take control. ‘We believe he was unmasked during WAYFARER. As most of you are aware, this was the operation to track a hundred-odd kilos of sulphur and two hundred of acetone from Rotterdam to Harwich and then on to a factory in Birmingham. They must have examined their security arrangements after that and come up with Rahe’s name. He was involved in some of the shipping arrangements.
‘The important thing is that Rahe was tortured very badly indeed. He will have told them everything he knew about us before he died, which owing to Walter’s deft handling was kept to a minimum. Still, he wouldn’t have failed to learn quite a bit during the course of the twenty-odd months he was working for us, if only from the questions we asked him. And we must assume certain techniques are now in the hands of the terrorists.’
There was a pause. Vigo had listened to this expectantly, as though waiting to make a bid at an auction, but he said nothing. Christine Selvey seemed to be readying herself for something - a straightening of the back, a pluck at the front of her Sunday blouse.
‘We heard you were out at Heathrow yesterday,’ said Guthrie in what was clearly a planned intervention. ‘What were you doing there?’
‘Trying to tie up some loose ends for my own satisfaction. I wondered if the murder of the lavatory attendant and his family had anything to do with the man who was seen watching aircraft landing from the public viewing terrace. You see I hadn’t heard from—’
‘Yes, well, no more blundering around like that,’ said Spelling fiercely. ‘This is a very delicate situation and we can’t afford the local police or anyone else putting it all together and feeding the theory to the media. Nobody - I repeat nobody - must know that we appreciate the real significance of the events at Heathrow.’
Given that she’d spotted what was really significant that day, Herrick didn’t much feel like the gesture of submission that was called for, but she apologised nonetheless, saying that it was often difficult for someone at her level to see the whole picture.
‘There is one thing,’ she said, levelling her gaze at Spelling. ‘Won’t our discovery of Rahe’s body in Beirut mean they expect us to go back over his movements at Heathrow? After all, he was meant to be in Kuwait or the Gulf States, not the Lebanon, and that might very well lead us to check which plane he boarded and so go over the film.’
‘It’s a good point,’ said Vigo. ‘I’d like to know the answer to that one.’
Spelling shook his head. ‘We didn’t move the body. His wife doesn’t know he’s dead and I’m afraid we’re going to leave things that way. She must believe he’s alive in order for our operation to go ahead. And they must believe we’ve lost him. It will be essential to the safety of the people we’re going to put in the field over the next few days.’ He cleared his throat. ‘As you know, the Chief has asked me to oversee the setting up of RAPTOR, the name of our response to the events of May the fourteenth. You will hear in the next few days what your part will be - the arrangements are being finalised at the moment - but I wanted to speak to you this evening because everyone involved must understand that this is an exclusively transatlantic operation. We are going to work very closely with the Americans on this, but not with the Europeans.
‘International cooperation in the war against terrorism is still at a very early stage of development. Everyone pitches in and there have been some notable achievements in the sharing of information, but we’re a long way from full cooperation. You’ll remember Djamel Beghal, one of the men who was planning to blow up the US Embassy in Paris. He was arrested on his way back from Afghanistan and began to talk, providing valuable names and addresses, top grade material in fact. The counter-intelligence services of France, Spain, Belgium and Holland ran a joint surveillance operation in their individual territories to watch the cell at work. But then details were leaked to the French press, with the result that most of the network escaped. One or two were arrested, but there wasn’t enough evidence to put them away for any length of time. In our opinion it was a serious loss not to be able to observe and watch these people’s MO, the way they moved their money, communicated, planned, provided themselves with false papers and the supplies necessary for the large-scale attacks that they need to keep their movement alive. That’s something we’re not going to allow to happen again. Owing to your excellent work at Heathrow - a superb piece of intelligence gathering - we are now in a position to watch eleven individuals who are currently under surveillance as they merge into their new covers. We and the Americans plan to observe these men and get a fix on the person running the European networks. We know next to nothing about him, but believe him to be in Europe.’
‘The same man who planned May fourteen,’ she said. It now seemed more like fact than opinion.
‘Possibly - certainly a very ambitious mind was deployed that day, someone who sees an operation as a means of achieving several things at once. It was daring and well thought-out to pull off an assassination of that order while shuffling his men around Europe.’
‘But surely—’ she began.
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ Spelling gave a tight smile that indicated he wouldn’t suffer the interruption. ‘I should have mentioned that tests have been carried out and there’s no doubt that the bullet came from the machine pistol in the first van. Abdul Muid was the assassin. I gather that will be the finding of the inquest that opens tomorrow. It will also make plain the pattern that the two men - Muid and Jamil Siddiqi - were pulled from our midst to perform these acts of terrorism. Neither of their backgrounds suggests training by al-Qaeda in any formal sense, which I think is an interesting aspect that the Security Services will want to explore. There is still no trace of the lorry driver, which perhaps indicates that he was an integral part of the plot, rather than someone who was caught up in the incident.’
Skeoch Cummings nodded. Guthrie brushed the end of his nose twice while Vigo looked into the distance with an expression that suggested he had not even heard what was being said.
Fine, she thought, they’re running with that fiction. The possibility that a British bullet had killed Norquist was not going to be contemplated, which obviously suited both sides. The Americans knew what had happened, but when it came to their closest allies they were capable of miraculous forbearance. After all, they had absorbed the blow of Israeli warplanes attacking and sinking the USS Liberty spy ship in the Six Day War without any public comment whatsoever. Norquist had already been buried at the Arlington National Cemetery with full military honours. His widow had received the folded Stars and Stripes from the President himself and not a word of official complaint had been made. Not in public, at any rate.
But it was another matter in private, she thought. The White House must have used Norquist’s death t
o maximise the US position. They would have received something in exchange and it was likely to be the contents of her report passed up to Number Ten through the Joint Intelligence Committee. She imagined a telephone conversation between the White House and Number Ten during which the President insisted that the US be involved as an equal partner in the pursuit of the live cell. That meant the continental intelligence services would be kept in the dark.
Now she understood why Teckman was not there. The Chief had either lost the battle to keep the Europeans involved, or was standing back waiting for his successor to make a hash of things while he was still in control. Whatever the tactic, it was his absence that gave the meeting its furtive air. This, and Vigo. Spelling may have been in the chair but it was Vigo’s return that established a new era of transatlantic exclusivity.
Spelling put on his glasses again and read something from the paper in front of him. Then he looked up, as if to address the whole room, and began to outline RAPTOR. Each of the eleven men so far identified and tracked would be allotted an entire team that would remain permanently on that individual’s case. In effect the teams would mimic the classic cell structure of terrorist organisations, shadowing the suspects and bedding in around them with an equal regard for cover and security. Herrick would be in one of those teams, and those involved would be expected to drop everything for the operation. That requirement had had some influence on the personnel being chosen: men and women with families would take roles where they could be inserted and removed without rippling the surface. Both the CIA and MI6 would call on the services of retired intelligence officers used to long-term surveillance operations, who would bring the field skills that were perhaps lacking in some of the younger generation.
‘This is about close surveillance of an exceptionally discreet order,’ he said, splaying his fingers on the table. ‘It may go on for months, even years, because that is the timescale the terrorists work with. We will have to match their stamina and patience. Every step of the way will be monitored by us here and the Americans at Langley and Fort Mead. The risk assessment for the entire operation will be provided by the staff of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which will report three times a week. The Americans have agreed to abide by their recommendations though I stress that these reports will not define policy. The JIC will simply gauge the degree of menace presented by these men at any given moment. The Americans will naturally take their own view of how things are progressing and have insisted that each surveillance team has access to armed back-up. That means they can move against a target and arrest him if the situation requires. And so can we.’
Spelling’s confident presentation of the battle plan didn’t fool anyone. If the Americans and British, already welded together in an exclusive eavesdropping treaty known as Echelon, were to start killing or seizing suspects on European soil, untold damage would be done to an already shaky Western alliance. The resentment would last for years. This was to say nothing of the risk - or in Herrick’s mind, the certainty - of one or other European agency catching on and, out of justified concern or sheer bloodymindedness, preempting the situation by arresting the suspect and causing the others to flee. She also knew that the terrorists were nothing if not close students of Western intelligence trade-craft, and that the mastermind who had planned the switch at Heathrow would be the kind of man who had set up trip-wires to give early warning of just such an operation. Sooner or later, someone would stumble across one.
Everyone got this. Equally, they understood they were just at the start of RAPTOR. As time went on, the situation would change; the grand scheme would be buffeted by chance and circumstance. They were going along with it because during an operation the policy makers - in this case a none too bright President and a Prime Minister with attention deficit problems - would become dependent on those who implemented their plan. All of which meant there were great opportunities for the secret servants: advancement, increase in influence and, in Vigo’s case, rehabilitation.
But why show her the secret mechanism? The answer, of course, was that she had made the breakthrough, put it all together, so Spelling had been forced to include her. But why not Dolph, Sarre and Lapping? Simple. She had written the two-page report and then followed it up with her own inquiries at Heathrow. She understood the total operation on May 14 but had not spoken about it to them. That’s what distinguished her and that’s why Spelling had to get her on-side.
Spelling moved his papers together and looked around the table. ‘I think we’ve just about covered everything. Isis, have you any questions? You will of course be briefed over the coming week. In the meantime, I suggest you take some leave, say two days. We’ll see you on Wednesday. You’ll receive instructions tomorrow about time and place.’
‘There’s one thing,’ she said. ‘I want to get clear in my mind why we’re excluding the European agencies as a matter of course.’
‘Because that’s what our political masters have decided,’ replied Spelling crisply. ‘And that is what the Chief agreed with the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary this morning at Chequers.’
The invocation of all these authorities seemed weak, apparently even to Vigo, whom she was now sure owed his place in the secret deliberations to something more than his recruitment of Youssef Rahe. He shut his eyes with a hint of exasperation, and Herrick had the odd sensation that it didn’t matter whether they were open or closed, Vigo still watched.
She was dismissed a few minutes later and left convinced that she’d already blown it by raising the business about the Europeans. It was crass of her, especially as she now understood that the sole point of the meeting had been to test her reliability, to see if she was fit for the game only the adults played.
She went to her desk, picked up her bag and left a note saying she would be out for a couple of days and if there were any problems to call Guthrie or Spelling. She saw a few people - the shades that always haunted Vauxhall Cross at night - but there was no sign of Dolph, Sarre or Lapping, whom she knew would be regarded somehow as her co-conspirators. They would be seen too, but she didn’t think they’d get the full treatment with Madame Selvey, Walter Vigo and the inscrutable pair from the JIC.
She left the building, collecting the cell phone that always had to be checked in at the front entrance. As she walked out into the dreary no man’s land of the Albert Embankment she noticed that she had a text message. ‘Drnk tonite any time - Dolph.’
She replied. ‘No thanx. Dead tired.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Khan expected the Albanians to descend into the valley once they crossed over from Macedonia, but they marched on into the mountains taking increasingly untravelled, treacherous paths that caused the six mules to stop every so often, snort and shake themselves as if to adjust their loads. After the first exchange with the head man who had given his name as Vajgelis, they said little to Khan and seemed bent on covering as much ground as possible before the middle of the day. A couple of the youths tagged along behind, apparently speculating about him and his bundle of possessions, which they occasionally poked with their sticks. He turned round and grinned at them, but the only response was a surly lift of the chin to tell him to keep his eyes on the way ahead.
When the sun was at its highest they stopped in the shade of some pine trees and squatted to eat a little cold meat and onion stew, produced from tall canteens. They offered it to him saying, ‘Conlek, eat Conlek.’ In return he offered them food stolen from the Macedonian kitchen, and then asked for water. They gave it to him gracelessly and now seemed to be making jokes at his expense. He smiled, nodded and thanked them. He remembered what they had said in Bosnia, the tales of savagery and endless slaughter amongst their Muslim cousins in Albania. For nearly thirty years the country had been the world’s only official atheist state and under Enver Hoxha the people had happily pulled down their mosques or turned them into cinemas and warehouses. The civilised Bosnians shuddered at the godless barbarity of what had happened under the Marxists. But the
re again, he thought, he’d seen plenty of that kind of thing in Afghanistan without doing anything: the destruction of monuments; the execution of a whimpering boy who’d been caught listening to a music tape. He’d seen it and, willingly or not, he’d been part of it.
After eating, the Albanians dispersed through the woods to sleep, leaving a couple of men to guard the mules. Khan lay back where he had been sitting on a carpet of pine needles and, hugging his gun and pack into his stomach, told himself that he must snatch the rest while he could. He closed his eyes in the songless, dry forest and fell asleep thinking that he would now have to make his way to Italy rather than Greece. They were a more tolerant people.
In what seemed a very short time he was woken by someone tugging at his gun. The muzzle of a pistol was drawn across his cheek. He looked up. The two young men who’d trailed him during the morning were crouching either side of him.
‘Come Mujahadin. Good. Come.’ Standing above them was Zek, one of the mule guards, who placed his boot on the AK47 while one of the younger men pulled it gently from Khan’s grasp. The third, who had been holding the pistol to his face, withdrew it.