Sleeper Cell

by Alan Porter

  Now, six months of suspension from duty later, the situations was subtly different. This time she was following solid evidence, however inconvenient its trail might be. There was a link; there had to be a link between the bombing, the death of Phillip’s family and the move to Mapleton House. She just couldn’t see it right now. It made no sense. If Phillip was right, why were the Americans trying to destroy the peace talks? And was it even remotely possible that they were running a Jihadist cell to do it?

  A pigeon flew onto the arm of the bench beside her and sat looking expectantly at her. Leila’s stomach grumbled for lack of anything but Danish pastries and coffee for the last twenty-four hours.

  She suddenly felt bone-tired. Lawrence was right about one thing: she needed a break.

  The pigeon flew down to the ground and started pecking at a cigarette butt. Leila watched him for a moment and realised that she couldn’t even remember what she had done with her car.

  She stood up and began to walk back towards Knightsbridge tube station.

  30

  Leila arrived back at her Victorian terrace in Upper Tooting at a few minutes to six.

  She knew as soon as she opened the front door that something was wrong. There was no sign of forced entry to the door, no broken glass strewn across the kitchen floor at the end of the hallway. Just a feeling in the place: something was wrong. She drew her gun and slid along the hall wall towards the door to the front room.

  She pushed the door open with her foot. The books had been pulled from the shelves, the paintings unhooked, the cushions from the chairs heaped in the middle of the floor.

  She moved on, the gun trained on the door to the back room. It was the same. Every item had been moved. More books – including her treasured collection of dust-jacketed first editions – had been pulled off the shelves, the drawers of the bureau had been emptied and the phone-line ripped from the wall. The kitchen too had been ransacked. The back door stood open and she picked her way across the spilled cutlery and pans and closed it. She turned the key in the lock and retraced her steps to the foot of the stairs.

  The entire ground floor had been searched. That was the word that described this mess: searched. Nothing obvious had been broken, nothing stolen. The Bose hi-fi and iPad were in the wrong place but intact; the Walker and Hall silver parakeet salts were still on the sideboard. Even the Picasso drawing that had been a present from her father had just been taken from the wall and leaned against the dining table.

  It was not a burglary. In fact, as she walked through the debris, more annoyed than frightened or upset, she began to think it was not really even a search.

  It was a warning.

  There was no sound from above. She aimed the gun at the bathroom door at the top of the stairs and, keeping her shoulder to the wall, gradually crept up, one step at a time.

  The bedrooms had not been touched and there was no sign of the intruder. She looked out through the net curtains over the front window. Three boys of about ten scooted past; an elderly woman shuffled along with her elderly Jack Russell; a suited business man checked the doors of his BMW and walked up the path of the house opposite. Another man, wearing a Turkish jubba and dark glasses, strode purposefully away towards Upper Tooting Road. Nothing out of the ordinary. But she knew they were out there. The intruder might have gone, but there would be others, and she was not going to disappoint them. This was exactly what she had been waiting for.

  She changed quickly into a white skirt and black Damien Hirst skull t-shirt and ran back downstairs. She stuffed more clothes from the dryer into a supermarket carrier bag and put that, along with a baseball cap, into a small bright red backpack she used when hiking on the South Downs. Into a small handbag she tucked her gun, a wallet containing two hundred pounds in cash and her Oyster travel card. A spare tool-roll containing lock picks, an old monocular and a phone jammer went in on top. The only thing she carried in the skirt’s flimsy pocket was her CTC warrant card.

  She walked back along the main road towards Tooting Bec tube station. Rush hour was now in full swing, with dozens of people coming out of the station as she walked down to the platform. She was not the only person going in that direction, but she was one of the few. Anyone following would have to keep a good distance behind her to avoid being spotted. Going with the flow of people would have been far more difficult: a tail could walk within feet of her in a dense crowd and she would never know.

  She walked quickly to the Northbound platform. The next train was heading up to Edgware, which suited her just fine. Already a plan was forming.

  The rolling announcement screen gave her three minutes until the Edgware train arrived, so she made her way back to the ticket hall and found a payphone. She dialled 999 and the emergency operator answered the call after barely half a ring.

  ‘Emergency, which service?’ the operator said.

  ‘There’s a bomb near gate seven, Victoria bus station.’

  ‘I’m connecting you to the police.’

  ‘There’s a bomb…’

  The line switched and she hung up before the police phone was answered.

  There was a rush of air from the tunnel and she pushed her way back to the platform. She caught sight of a man dressed in a black suit, dark glasses, loitering by the ticket machines.

  She got on to a carriage in the middle of the train. Just as the doors began to close, Mr Black Suit ran past her carriage and squeezed through the doors of the next one along.

  Leila pushed her way to the front of the carriage. Through the connecting doors she waved to a Transport Police officer. She banged on the partition glass and showed her warrant. The officer opened the door.

  ‘I need to get to the back of the train,’ she said.

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No, just a hunch. Nothing to be alarmed about. Just make sure no one else moves through the train.’

  ‘I’ll have the rear guard come back to accompany you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She walked quickly through the almost-full carriage towards the next pair of doors.

  The train stopped for almost a minute at Balham, and Leila stood by the open door watching the platform. Mr Black was doubtless doing the same two carriages back, though she could not see him.

  As soon as the doors closed, she began to move again. A second guard met her and escorted her towards the rear cab. She had about five minutes until they arrived at Stockwell, her next destination. She might be able to lose her tail there, but she doubted it. She was going to have to draw him into a trap to fully escape his attention.

  The train pulled into Stockwell and she waited until the last moment to get off. She was almost opposite the exit to Platform 1, which would get her onto the Victoria Line train going on into the city. Mr Black was lost from sight as he pushed his way through the crowds behind her.

  She saw him again as she got onto the waiting train. Again, he got in one carriage down from her. This train was far more crowded than the Tooting Bec one, and it was going to be difficult to put any distance between herself and her pursuer.

  Not that it mattered much. Everything so far, from the distinctive t-shirt to the red backpack had been designed to make her easy to follow, to lull him into thinking she would always be within sight. But whether this man was trying to eliminate her from the investigation or use her to get to Phillip, it was now time to lose him.

  Six minutes later the train stopped at Victoria and again Leila disembarked just as the doors started to close. This time Mr Black was already on the platform. She walked with the flow of commuters and tourists to the escalators.

  On the main station concourse Leila glanced over her shoulder. There was no sign of her pursuer, though she knew she had not lost him yet. He was holding back, waiting for her to move out into the open, away from the gaze of the twenty or more armed police in the station.

  She stepped out of the station.

  The most dangerous part of her journey was now beginning. It was
time to disappear.

  Five minutes after leaving Victoria rail station she came to the first of the crowds that were milling around outside the evacuated coach station. She pushed her way through to the uniformed officer at the cordon and flashed her warrant at him. He barely looked as she ducked under the tape and jogged towards the main entrance to the station.

  At the door she looked back. Mr Black was now engaged in heated discussion with the policeman who had let her through. He was showing the officer something, but it was not convincing enough to get him through as quickly as she had. He would make it through eventually, but she intended to have vanished by the time he did.

  She used her warrant again to gain access to the gate concourse. There were a dozen uniformed officers down towards Gate 7, plus bomb squad and a handful of her fellow CTC operatives. They had got here amazingly quickly. She almost felt guilty.

  No one paid her any attention when she walked into the toilets by Gate 12.

  She had only one chance to get this right. If she mistimed her exit from the toilet, if Mr Black got a clear sight of her, she would be trapped. It would be impossible to lose him twice.

  The irony of what she was doing was not lost on her. She was changing her appearance to avoid detection, exactly as Ghada Abulafia had done before returning to the bomb beneath the Park Hotel.

  Everyone had assumed that the bomber had changed to avoid being traced back to her point of origin. Leila now wondered whether in fact Abulafia, like her, had effected this transformation for an entirely different reason. Was she concerned about being followed by someone before the bombing and had disguised herself half way through her journey to throw him off her trail?

  And if so, what did that mean? Did other members of the cell have good reason not to trust her?

  Now dressed in a light-weight leather jacket, pale brown shirt, jeans and with her hair up beneath a New York Yankees baseball cap, Leila opened the door a crack. A line of uniformed officers were pacing slowly along the concourse. Mr Black was nowhere in sight. She hoped he had been held at the cordon and was waiting, watching for her. It was possible that he had called in backup and had the coach station ringed by spotters, all on the lookout for a woman wearing a black skull t-shirt, white skirt and a long loose plait of hair. Her red backpack was the real clincher: the thing that would have convinced Mr Black that she would be easy to spot in any crowd. That backpack was now in the bin in the Ladies’, her previous identity rolled up on top of it. Close up, she was easy enough to recognise; from a distance, in a crowd, she was someone completely transformed.

  She stepped out. Folding a copy of the Standard around her handbag and walked across the coach bays and out into Semley Place. From there, sure she was not being followed, she took back streets back to the main Victoria rail station.

  She was confident that Mr Black had not picked up her trail again, but she knew he would have the very best technology available to back him up.

  As she walked, she dismantled her phone. She also checked her pockets for cash. It would be unwise to use her Oyster card for the next leg of her journey north. It might take Mr Black and his backers time to follow her journey using the data harvested from the card, but it would take them until the end of time to trace her if she used a single-journey ticket purchased for cash at one of the machines.

  She purchased the most expensive six-zone single, thereby giving her pursuers no more specific a destination than somewhere in the two hundred and seventy stations that made up the London Underground system.

  She rode the Circle Line to South Kensington, then changed to the Piccadilly Line that would take her far to the north of the city. With each passing stop the collective identity of the passengers in her carriage changed. By Arsenal almost no one wore a suit. White, middle class professionals had left behind the people of the northern estates; poor working people, black, white, South Asian, mostly middle aged.

  From Turnpike Lane tube station it was a walk of a little over a mile to her final destination in Broadwater Farm. But she was not going to pick up Phillip Shaw. Far from returning to Northolt tower block to collect him and take him into protective custody, she was hoping that his minders would have room for one more refugee from the events of the last thirty-six hours.

  She needed somewhere to hide out, to regroup, to figure out just who she was fighting here, before she moved in for the end game. Harakat al Sahm had not struck again, but they would, and it seemed they had the backing of one of the most powerful intelligence services in the world.

  Day Three

  31

  Leila had woken in her car the previous day. Not a good start to any day, but, she thought now, preferable to this.

  The tiny flat in Northolt was hot and airless. The heat had drawn the smell of stale tobacco and ganja from the wallpaper and brought the dusty odour of mould from the carpets. Her mouth felt like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag and her hair was plastered to her face with drying sweat.

  She stood up, carefully uncricking her back, and walked through to the empty kitchen. Bones had not bothered to check whether there was any food. It was six am, so there was little chance he was out getting her croissants and coffee. Still, he had at least kept her safe. Hopefully he would still be doing the same for Phillip Shaw.

  She drank three glasses of water from a chipped half-pint glass then poured three more over her head. There were no towels, but looking out of the kitchen window at the harsh sunlight that was already burning the open spaces between the blocks, she figured her hair would be dry in minutes anyway.

  Outside Turnpike Lane station she picked up a bagel and an indifferent coffee then took the tube down to Ealing.

  She heard Ibrahim Abulafia moving around in the flat for almost a minute after she knocked on his door.

  ‘Mr Abulafia?’ she said when he opened the door a couple of inches.

  ‘I don’t have time for visitors. I’m late for work.’

  ‘You need to make time,’ Leila said. ‘This won’t take long.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Leila Reid. I’m with the police.’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to the police. And I’ll tell you the same thing: I don’t know anything. Some thugs. I’ve had plenty worse.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Last night, some skinheads shove me around a bit, call me some names. I can deal with them. I can’t deal with you people coming out of the woodwork only when it’s politically expedient for you to do so.’

  ‘I’m…?’

  ‘Yes, I can use words like ‘expedient’. I haven’t always been the man who sweeps up your rubbish in the bowels of the earth. I had another life once. Now, if you’ll excuse me, go away.’

  ‘I think there’s some misunderstanding, Mr Abulafia. If uniformed officers have spoken to you about last night, that’s entirely coincidental. I’m here on a different matter. I just want to ask you a couple of questions, off the record, about Ghada.’

  ‘Ghada’s not here.’ He tried to close the door. Leila did not put her foot in it, but instead pushed back with her hand.

  ‘Can I just come in for a minute?’ she said. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘Then you can tell me here.’

  ‘Your daughter’s dead, Mr Abulafia.’

  He did not reply at first. He just looked at her around the edge of the door. Then he released it and Leila gently pushed it open.

  ‘She was killed in the bomb on Wednesday,’ he said. It wasn’t a question. He knew.

  Leila nodded and when the old man turned and walked back into the flat, she followed, closing the front door silently behind her.

  Abulafia stood looking out of the window when she joined him in his sparse sitting room.

  ‘If you’re still here,’ he said, ‘maybe she wasn’t just another victim. You think she was involved somehow.’ Again, not a question.

  ‘How much do you know about what Ghada has been doing these last few years?’
Leila said.

  ‘Is this on the record now?’ he said.

  ‘Not if you don’t want it to be. There’s just some things I don’t understand. Some things that don’t fit. I’m hoping you’ll be able to fill in the gaps.’

  ‘You probably know as much as I do,’ he said, still with his back to her, watching her reflection in the glass.

  ‘Did Ghada ever discuss her political views with you?’ Leila said.

  ‘Political? No. We escaped from the West Bank when she was small. That was all behind us.’

  ‘How did you get asylum in Britain?’

  ‘I made a good case.’

  ‘I’m sure you did. And I’m thinking it has something to do with why SIS is being so tight-lipped about you. Am I getting warm?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough anyway, now that… ah, what does any of it matter now?’

  ‘You were an informant.’

  Abulafia nodded. ‘MI6, SIS as you call them now, ran me for four years. I fed them information – dead drops mostly – and they paid me well enough. But they had me inside one of the most paranoid organisations in the world. People got suspicious.’

  ‘Your cover was blown. They had to get you out.’

  ‘Eventually. But not before my wife was murdered.’ He studied her reflection in the glass for a moment. ‘She was snatched from the street outside our house on the way to market. They tortured her for two days, so I’m told. She couldn’t have told them a thing. She never knew. And when they’d finished with her they dumped her body at the Pool of Siloam like a sack of spoiled meat. I think it was a message. Isaiah 22:19 – ‘I will thrust thee from thy post’. You know it?’

  Leila shook her head. She was never much for bible quotes.

  ‘It was a warning even my handlers couldn’t ignore,’ Abulafia said. ‘The British arranged to send us to England before the truth had a chance to come out and other informants were compromised. They gave us new identities.’