A Loyal Spy

by Simon Conway

  “Cigarette?”

  Why not? Jonah thought. Almost everybody you know is dead. Dead as a result of your own actions or lack of them. He accepted a cigarette, his first for a couple of years. The sudden rush of nicotine made his head reel.

  “It’s in my blood,” Yanov told him, sprawling beside him on the back seat of the sedan. They had picked up a driver in Diyabakir, the first of several relay drivers tasked with transporting them across Turkey. “I’m Bulgarian. I’m a smuggler. Some of my colleagues prefer to call themselves commodity traders or wholesalers but not me. I’m a smuggler. You want a drink? There’s a bottle of fine Scotch in the glove compartment.”

  Sure enough, there was a half-finished thirty-year-old Lagavulin. “I don’t think that they made many bottles of this,” Jonah said, holding the bottle up and reading the label.

  “Just over two thousand.” Yanov winked. “I did an old friend a favor. Pass it over.” He pulled out the cork with his teeth, took a slug and passed it to Jonah, who wiped the neck and took his own slug. They continued in that way for some time, passing the bottle back and forth, as the car raced west towards Istanbul.

  “Smuggling is my country’s cultural heritage,” Yanov told him. “It’s how we cope. My country has always been squeezed between ideologies, between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, between Islam and Christianity, between capitalism and communism, between empires suspicious of each other. If you want to make progress in the Balkans you have to learn how to make the boundaries disappear. We can cross the roughest sea and traverse the highest mountain. We know every secret pass and, failing that, the price of every border guard.”

  The only time that they stopped was to refuel or collect a new driver. Jonah slept fitfully and his dreams were filled with images of cataclysm, of a city swept away by an immense wave.

  They entered Bulgaria at the Kapeten-Andreevo border crossing. From Bulgaria, they drove through Serbia to Montenegro. The car was waved through each successive border crossing after payment of what Yanov referred to as “transit tax” by means of bulky brown envelope.

  Jonah first caught sight of the crystal-blue water of the Adriatic just north of Lake Shkoder, the cliffs falling hundreds of feet to the sea. In the port of Bar there were hundreds of sleek, expensive-looking speedboats bobbing in the packed marina, the fruits of a thriving trade in contraband.

  “This is as far as I take you,” Yanov told him. “From here the Italians have you. They will deliver you to your final destination …”

  “Thank you.”

  They shook hands.

  Jonah made the 130-mile sprint across the Otranto Strait to Italy with a cargo of cigarettes, landing on a beach in Puglia after midnight. Another Mercedes was waiting. They drove him to a truck stop outside Milan. From Milan to London Jonah traveled in a specially adapted ten-foot-by-ten-foot compartment hidden inside a standard truck-mounted shipping container. He shared the compartment with four Moldovan girls. He spoke to the Moldovans in pidgin Russian and they replied in pidgin English. They were expecting to work as shop assistants. It didn’t seem very likely.

  Once in the European Union, Jonah did not have to cross a single police control point before Dover.

  Death Will Find

  You “Wherever you are, death will find you,

  Even in the looming tower.”

  Koran, Sura 4

  THE RAIN FELL

  Monday, September 12, 2005

  A flood of commuters emerged from the buses and underground entrances and from the train station, looking dusty in the morning sunlight. The sky was a fierce blue but there were thunderheads advancing from the east and there was an ozone taste in the air as if lightning might strike.

  Jonah was standing in the midst of a loose gathering of people arriving, removing their helmets and locking their bikes to the collection of steel hitching posts located opposite the entrance of 89 Albert Embankment, an office block with a café on the ground floor. Motorcycle couriers came and went. Close by, a cluster of early smokers was standing or sitting in a covered shelter that faced the side wall of the MI6 building with its loading entrance and green cathedral-like windows.

  It was Monday morning. Dead on 9:50, Fisher-King strode past, briefcase in hand. Jonah followed from the opposite side of the road as Fisher-King walked along the pavement past the police building and Alembic House, toward the roundabout by Lambeth Palace. He crossed Lambeth Bridge. Instead of entering Thames House as expected, Fisher-King strode purposefully across Horseferry Road and down Dean Ryle Street, past the baroque church, St. John’s Smith Square, with its leaning towers, and into the rows of Georgian houses beyond. Racing clouds made the streets narrow and elongate. Fisher-King did not look back once. He walked down Great College Street, past the crumbling wall of the medieval abbey precinct and through the gateway into Dean’s Yard. Jonah followed at a discreet distance.

  Fisher-King crossed Victoria Street and cut down Dean Farrar Street and along Dacre Street, entering Scotland Yard at 10:05.

  Two hours later, Fisher-King re-emerged with his briefcase in hand and strode down Broadway and along Queen Anne’s Gate into St. James’s Park. There were people everywhere, jostling crowds of tourists on the paths and sitting on the grass, and there was a fervent quality to their chatter, as if they must cram as much enjoyment as possible into the remaining time before the approaching storm.

  Jonah spotted Ginger, one of Alex’s bodyguards, standing by a tree and surveying a field of deckchairs, and then Taff by an ornamental flower bed, similarly observant. Fisher-King strode straight past them both and toward the bridge at the center of the park. And waiting for him there, head and shoulders above the crowd of Japanese tourists around him, the creases in his suit trousers and in his hair parting as sharp as ever, was the former deputy proconsul and arch neocon, the father of the Eschatos program, chairman of Graysteel, Richard Winthrop IV.

  Jonah was careful to keep himself out of the line of sight of both Ginger and Taff as he circled around behind Winthrop and Fisher-King as they crossed the bridge, their heads together in intimate conversation. The crowds helped and hindered him. They masked him from the watchers protecting Winthrop and Fisher-King but several times he lost sight of them. He was forced to push his way forward, craning his neck this way and that.

  For a moment, he thought that he saw Pakravan cutting across the crowd, brushing Fisher-King’s shoulder and then disappearing again. He lost them. He pushed sideways. He was aware of someone swearing behind him.

  He caught sight of them sitting beside each other on a bench, but then Winthrop stood up and strode purposefully north, holding Fisher-King’s briefcase. Jonah looked from Fisher-King to Winthrop and back again. Fisher-King was leaning to one side on the bench. Something was wrong. He was toppling into the lap of a woman who had sat down on the bench in the intervening seconds. The woman pushed him off and sprang up with an expression of disgust.

  Jonah darted forward. He pressed his fingers to Fisher-King’s neck, feeling for a pulse, but there was none. His chest wasn’t moving. He lifted one of his eyelids. No pupil reaction. He was already dead.

  Jonah walked swiftly away, scanning the crowds for signs of Winthrop. He caught a glimpse of him standing by a litter bin. Winthrop removed a brown envelope from the briefcase and then dumped the case in the bin. Somewhere behind Jonah there was a commotion. A woman was yelling. Winthrop spoke briefly on a mobile phone, before continuing north toward Buckingham Palace. Taff and Ginger fell in behind him. Jonah followed. A black Range Rover pulled alongside them as they reached the Mall and they got in. It made an abrupt U-turn, heading in the direction of Trafalgar Square. Crossing the road, Jonah hailed a passing black cab.

  “Follow that car,” he said, pointing.

  “Just get in,” said the cab driver, rolling his eyes. He was an overweight man visibly perspiring in an England football shirt. On the backseat there was a discarded newspaper with Jonah’s scowling face on the front page. Jonah crumpled i
t in his fist.

  They followed the Range Rover down Northumberland Avenue from Trafalgar Square to the Embankment.

  On the cab’s radio a presenter announced that the police had carried out a major anti-terror operation in Sheerness, Kent, and broken up a plot for an attack on London. The presenter added that they were going direct to a press conference being given by the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard.

  The commissioner said: “The arrests are as a result of a month-long joint investigation which commenced after intelligence and law enforcement agencies identified a potential threat to the UK’s national security. This investigation has been a massive physical and electronic surveillance effort. The alleged members of the group are Pakistan nationals from the Baluchistan region bordering Afghanistan.”

  The commissioner paused and there was an immediate barrage of shouted questions. The taxi was following the Range Rover east on Victoria Embankment, driving alongside the Thames. Cleopatra’s Needle flashed past. Fat drops of rain began to strike the windshield. There was a rumble of distant thunder.

  “We continue to take the threats made on the Internet very seriously,” the commissioner assured the journalists. “We believe that with these arrests the immediate threat has been averted. However, I am in constant contact with my counterparts in other police forces nationally as well as with the UK Border Agency. I am confident that if the individuals identified as Nor ed-Din and Jonah Said attempt to enter this country, they will be apprehended.”

  As they emerged from under Blackfriars Bridge, a wall of rain advanced down Upper Thames Street and buffeted them as it struck. The Range Rover was still visible by its brake lights just ahead of them. At London Bridge, Upper Thames Street became Lower Thames Street.

  “Our correspondent Brian Judd is in Sheerness,” the presenter said. “What can you tell us, Brian?”

  “What we do know is that this is one of the UK’s biggest ever security operations, involving hundreds of police officers from forces in England and Scotland, which came to a head this morning in a pre-dawn raid in Sheerness.”

  “Do you have any information on what the target might have been?”

  “The police haven’t given any specific details or told us what charges these men are likely to face. But we understand that the conspirators were planning to detonate a huge quantity of explosives in the Thames Estuary. And I can tell you the police have cordoned off the center of Sheerness town. Local people here are pointing to the presence in the estuary of the wreck of a Second World War cargo ship, the SS Richard Montgomery, which is believed to contain up to two thousand tons of unexploded shells.”

  They passed the Tower of London and turned left, heading up Mansell Street towards Aldgate.

  There was then a statement from the Home Secretary, saying that he had full confidence in the intelligence services and the authorities’ response to date in arresting the conspirators and continuing the search for the alleged mastermind. He said that it was, however, necessary that everyone remain vigilant.

  At Aldgate, they turned on to the Whitechapel Road. “Vigilant!” scoffed the taxi driver. “How’s that gonna help? What a load of old bollocks.” For the first time he glanced in the rearview mirror and then his glance became a stare. “Ere, you look familiar. You’re on television, right? You’re famous. I can’t place it—is it Big Brother?”

  “Not me,” Jonah said.

  “I’ve seen your face.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “Jesus Christ! You’re the terrorist!”

  “Stop the cab!”

  The driver slammed on the brakes. There was a slow screech, then the sound of metal crumpling and glass smashing. A Renault had plowed into the back of them and a white van into the back of the Renault. Jonah was thrown to the floor. He landed on his shoulder and groaned as the edges of his broken clavicle ground against each other. An alarm was wailing and somewhere someone was shouting. He pushed himself back on to the seat with his good arm and grabbed at the nearest door but it was still locked.

  “Let me out,” Jonah said.

  The driver was shaking his head in a daze. “What?”

  “Let me out!”

  “You’re the terrorist.”

  “So let me out or I’ll blow myself up. I’ll fucking do it!” Jonah yelled.

  The locks clicked open. Jonah tumbled out of the cab into the rainstorm. Another sudden jolt of pain. He picked himself up and started running up the street. He could hear police sirens behind him. The Range Rover was maybe fifty feet away, stuck at an intersection with a bendy bus blocking its way. He ran up on its passenger side.

  The door opened. Ginger rolled out and into a crouch with his arms outstretched and a gun in his hands. Jonah ducked between two cars. He heard the crack of the shot and a windshield shattering behind him. He scuttled forward between rows of cars. There were several more shots. People were screaming. On one knee by the front wheel of a Volvo, Jonah risked raising his head for a look. They had abandoned the Range Rover. He caught a glimpse of Winthrop being rushed up a side street, past Whitechapel Bell Foundry, with Ginger, Pakravan and Taff in a protective huddle around him.

  Without thinking, he rolled across the hood of the car and sprinted after them. He ran down Fieldgate Street behind the East London mosque, dodging between women in niqabs and men with Salafists’ short trousers. They turned down a street of shabby Georgian houses. At the end of the street they sprinted across the road, passing a video store with its shop window filled with Bollywood posters.

  Jonah turned a corner at speed and Pakravan hit him with a plank of wood from a skip. Jonah staggered backward, hit a brick wall and thumped down into a sitting position. Pakravan hit him again, bringing the plank down in a great arc. A door slammed in Jonah’s head.

  He came to on his back, looking up at the mannequins in a sari shop. He was stretched out on the pavement with his hands in steel handcuffs. There were sirens converging from all directions.

  “Nor said you were tenacious,” Winthrop mused. “‘Unstoppable’ was the precise word he used. When he explained to me that you had shown up in Iraq, I told him to tie rocks to you and throw you in a river.”

  “They forgot the rocks,” Jonah groaned.

  “I see that.” Winthrop glanced over his shoulder and raised his voice angrily. “We need to get out of here.”

  Ginger was consulting his BlackBerry. “There’s a helicopter pad on top of the Eastern General Hospital. The chopper can land there. We’ll be with them in minutes.”

  “I will never forget the expression on your face the first time that I met you when I told you that we were holding Nor in the cages in Kandahar,” Winthrop said.

  “You played me all along.”

  “You were very useful. You provided a level of separation between Nor and me and with it plausible denial. You did us all a favor.”

  “What should we do with him?” Taff asked, appearing at Winthrop’s shoulder, pointing a gun at Jonah.

  “I think we should take him with us,” Winthrop said. “Provided that he behaves …”

  Winthrop reached forward and placed the heel of his palm against Jonah’s shoulder. He pressed down on the bandage. Jonah gasped and passed out from the pain. When he came to again, he was lying in a pool of his own vomit.

  Taff pulled him to his feet and pushed him along the street.

  “Run.”

  He staggered after Winthrop with Taff pushing him from behind. They crossed the Mile End Road by Whitechapel station, running through the market stalls to the road and into the crowds of people spilling out of their cars. Somewhere to their left a police car was inching its way forward through the traffic, its siren pulsing. The hospital was beside them. They ran across the access ramp to Accident and Emergency and into an alleyway where there was a steel staircase bolted on to the side of the red-brick Victorian building. They ran up the stairs and emerged on to a broad helicopter pad on the roof of the building.
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  “There she is,” Pakravan said.

  The helicopter came thumping out of the southwest. It was a Sikorsky S-76 with Graysteel Security written in large letters on the side. It touched down and they ran forward under the spinning rotors. Taff hauled Jonah in after him and the Sikorsky immediately lifted off again.

  Jonah rolled over on to his stomach on the floor of the helicopter and looked out as they flew east along the Thames, skimming the surface of the river; around Canary Wharf, between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, over the top of the Millennium Dome and the Thames Barrier. He could see the corral of armored personnel carriers around the control room on the South Bank. The Barrier gates were rising out of their concrete sills on the river bed. He remembered Alex’s words to him at the Thames Barrier what seemed like an age before: five hundred thousand houses, four hundred schools, sixteen hospitals and eight power stations and all of it fucked. One and a half million people at risk.

  Pakravan turned him over and fitted a set of headphones over his ears. A burst of static was replaced by Ginger’s voice: “Storm tide warnings have been issued. The King George flood gate and the Barking Barrier are closed. The rising gates at the Thames Barrier will be closed within an hour, the falling radial gates soon after that.”

  Then Winthrop spoke. “It won’t make any difference.” He was leaning forward in his seat, staring intently at the passing landscape. “The tidal wave caused by the explosion will overwhelm the Barrier. The storm is an unexpected bonus …” He glanced back at Jonah. “Only the British would keep thirteen thousand unexploded aircraft bombs on board an unstable wreck smack bang in one of the country’s busiest shipping lanes at the entry point to your administrative and financial heartland. What did you think it was … a museum? Yet one more memorial to a war that ended more than half a century ago? Is everything in this damn city a museum or a mausoleum? As far as I can see, up to now the only thing that has stood between London and total annihilation is a failure of imagination on the part of the terrorists.”