Dead Line

by Stella Rimington

  ‘I’ve found out quite a bit about him. He’s a Lebanese Christian who’s lived in London for about twenty years. He’s a prominent member of the Lebanese community here, and runs a very successful business importing foodstuffs from the Middle East: olives and pistachios from Lebanon, wine from the Bekaa Valley - all sorts of items, not just from Lebanon. He seems to supply virtually every Middle Eastern restaurant in London; speciality shops take his stuff, and even Waitrose carry his olives. He has a wife and five children, and he travels a lot - Lebanon, of course, but also Syria and Jordan.’

  ‘Politics?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have any, though he gave a lot of money to the Labour Party, and supposedly he was in line for some kind of gong until the Honours scandal erupted.’

  ‘Any trouble with the law?’

  ‘No, but he’s sailed pretty close to the wind. I talked to the Revenue, and they said they’d audited him four times in the last six years, which is pretty unusual. They wouldn’t say much, but I had the feeling they didn’t think Veshara was completely straight. His is the kind of business where cash changes hands and transactions aren’t always recorded.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. Customs and Excise have been keeping an eye on him - apparently some of his shipments come in by boat.’ ‘Something wrong with that?’

  ‘No. But these aren’t large containers. Some of these boats are no bigger than a fishing trawler, and they’re sailing from Belgium and Holland, then offloading in East Anglia - Harwich mainly. It seems an odd way to bring in olives.’

  ‘What did they think he was bringing in?’

  ‘They wouldn’t speculate. But drugs is the obvious possibility.’

  ‘If they think that, they’ll be checking him out themselves. Better watch out for crossed wires. But we do need to know more.’

  Peggy nodded. ‘How about you? Have you managed to locate Marcham?’

  ‘No. I gather he’s been away on some sort of assignment for the Sunday Times Magazine. He’s just interviewed the President of Syria, and he’s supposed to deliver the piece next week. That may explain why he’s not answering his phone. He lives in Hampstead, so I thought I might try to root him out there.’

  ‘Maybe he drinks.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ asked Liz, slightly surprised.

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t all journalists drink too much?’

  Liz laughed, as the phone on Peggy’s desk rang. Peggy picked it up and listened for a minute

  ‘Where are you?’ she said. ‘Waitrose would have been much better.’

  Waitrose? What was this about? thought Liz, amused. Peggy was listening intently, then suddenly erupted. ‘No, not broccoli. Green beans.’

  And then it dawned - Peggy had a boyfriend. Well blow me down, thought Liz. It had barely occurred to her that Peggy had any personal life at all; she seemed so utterly caught up in her work. Good for her.

  Suddenly remembering Liz’s presence, Peggy blushed deeply, her face the colour of beetroot. ‘I have to go,’ she said tersely and put the phone down.

  Liz grinned. She couldn’t resist teasing her. ‘He’s not good on vegetables, then?’

  Peggy shook her head. ‘Hopeless.’

  ‘Still, I’m impressed if you’ve got him doing the shopping. Can he cook?’

  Peggy sighed. ‘He can’t make an omelette without using every bowl and frying pan in the kitchen. Deep down he thinks he’s Gordon Ramsay. Are all men like that?’

  ‘By and large,’ said Liz. ‘What does he do when he’s not destroying your kitchen?’

  ‘He’s a lecturer in English at King’s. He’s only just started.’

  ‘That’s nice. How did you meet?’

  ‘At a talk he gave at the Royal Society of Literature. It was on John Donne - that’s Tim’s speciality. OUP are going to publish his book,’ she added proudly. ‘I asked a question, and he came up to me afterwards. He said he didn’t feel he’d answered it properly.’

  I bet, thought Liz. She could imagine it: earnest but pretty Peggy, with her freckles and glasses; the worthy Tim, impressed by her clever question, but also attracted in a strictly unintellectual way. The time-honoured way of all flesh, thought Liz.

  SEVEN

  Wally Woods knew this depressing block of 1930s flats just off the North Circular Road. Years ago when he was a young A4 surveillance officer, starting his career, he’d often sat outside it. In those days, at the height of the Cold War, the block had been home to a group of East German intelligence officers and their families. When the wall had come down in 1989 they had melted away like snow.

  Wally and A4 had moved on to other targets. New, younger surveillance officers had been recruited and now he was a team leader. Apart from his partner, Maureen Hayes, he was the only one of the team who actually remembered the Cold War. Halton Heights had moved on too, though it still looked just as down at heel. Now it was home to some Syrian diplomats and their families.

  It was a quiet day for A4. For once they had no big operation on, and Wally and his team had been briefed to observe the comings and goings at Halton Heights. The briefing officer, Liz Carlyle of the counter espionage branch, had told them that this was part of establishing background information on a new target. The job was to photograph anyone going out or coming in. But if any one of three men suspected to be intelligence officers appeared - and she had handed out rather poor-quality photographs which looked as if they had come from passports or visa applications - they were to follow him and report on his movements, as well as photograph whoever he met. It was the sort of job A4 hated - vague and promising little action.

  By ten a.m. on this hot, sultry morning, nothing at all had happened. Wally was happy with his position, parked in a layby outside a line of small shops at the side of the flats. He had a good view of the ends of the semi-circular drive that led to the front door. Maureen was in the launderette, one of the shops in the row, putting some old clothes from the A4 store through a wash. If the call came to move, she’d just abandon them.

  From where he sat, Wally could see Dennis Rudge apparently dozing on a bench just opposite the flats, with a full view of the front door, while a few yards behind him, in a little park, the youngster of the team, Norbert Bollum - they called him Bollocks - sat on another bench reading a paper. Other members of the team were parked up in nearby streets or driving slowly around in the vicinity.

  Wally yawned and looked at his watch. Another four hours before the shift ended. Then his eye caught a movement - Dennis Rudge, whose head had been sunk on his chest, had suddenly looked up.

  Wally’s radio crackled. ‘There’s action at the front door. One male. I think it’s Target Alpha.’

  The door of the launderette swung open. Maureen came out and got into the car beside Wally. Several streets away a car did a three-point turn and two others that had been parked up started their engines.

  ‘He’s standing at the door. Looks as though he’s waiting for someone,’ came through from Dennis on the radio. As he spoke a black people carrier with smoked windows turned into the semi-circular drive.

  ‘There’s two, no, three men getting out,’ reported Dennis a few minutes later. ‘Leather jackets, short hair. They look military. They’re unloading big holdalls. I think they’re going to go inside.’

  ‘Get pictures - including the luggage,’ ordered Wally. Clutching her handbag, Maureen got out of the car, walked briskly across the road and past the flats. The camera concealed in her handbag would supplement the pictures Dennis got from his bench.

  After everything was unloaded and all the men had gone inside, the people carrier drove away. Following his brief, Wally let it go, and kept his team at Halton Heights in case anyone left the flats. But by two o’clock, when their shift ended, no one had emerged, and Wally withdrew his people. Control at Thames House would make a preliminary report of their findings; Wally and his team would be debriefed in detail the following day.

  EIGHT />
  Sami Veshara sipped his demitasse of Lebanese coffee and gave a small appreciative belch. The lunch celebrating his friend Ben Aziz’s forty-fifth birthday was almost over, and it had been a feast worthy of the name.

  Not surprising, thought Sami, since most of the ingredients had been supplied to this London restaurant by his own company, and he had made sure nothing but the best was used for this meal. The mezze had been first-rate, especially the babaganoush and the fatayer, pastries stuffed with minced duck and spinach. Then the main course, lamb shawarma, had been mouth-wateringly tender, after its two-day bath in a spicy marinade. Dessert eventually followed: muscat icecream and a sesame tart with berry-rose mousse. All of it washed down with mineral water, and vintage Chateau Musar from the hillside vineyards above the Bekaa Valley, north of Beirut.

  Beirut - you would not have had a better meal even there, he thought with some satisfaction. He looked idly at the plate of Turkish delight on the table, and decided he should show some self-discipline. So he only took one.

  He sat back and lit a small cheroot, chatting from time to time with the dozen or so other friends of Ben Aziz gathered here. They were all fellow Lebanese, and often congregated for lunch in this small restaurant on a side street off the Edgware Road, just a few streets up from Marble Arch. Once the neighbourhood had been full of Yanks, Little America they’d called it. But those days were long gone, thought Sami with satisfaction, and now Arabs outnumbered the Westerners.

  He contemplated the afternoon ahead of him. Business had been very good during the last twelve months, both the food-importing side of things that he was known for, and other activities he preferred not to be publicly associated with. He had been to the Bayswater offices of his import company that morning for a meeting with the accountants, and had been pleased by their low estimates of the year’s tax liability. A lot of thought had gone into that. He felt an afternoon off was well deserved.

  Outside, his chauffeur waited in the Mercedes saloon. Sami’s wife and children were in Beirut for a pre-Ramadan visit to family and friends, staying in the large villa he had built off the Corniche when the troubles had subsided in the 1990s.

  Normally, Sami would have found distraction in the arms of his mistress, an Italian beauty whose modelling career he was happy to subsidise. But she was on a shoot in Paris for two days, so he would have to find some other way to pass the afternoon. He thought fleetingly of other possible distractions, but he remembered there was a phone call due about a shipment coming in. And later a private meeting, where he would need to have his wits about him. Better to go home, snooze a bit, and read Al Nabad until then.

  Gradually the lunch party dispersed. Sami went outside and stretched his arms, his eyes blinking in the bright sun. His driver jumped out of the car, and ran around to hold the door open. Malouf was Egyptian, an obsequious man, eternally grateful to his benefactor. He was almost seventy years old and he had a heart condition. Sami’s wife Raya wanted her husband to get a younger driver, but Malouf had been with him for twenty-five years, and Sami valued his loyalty. He also knew that at least half of the salary he paid the man was sent back to relatives in the slums of Giza, not far from the pyramids. They would suffer if he let Malouf go.

  Now Malouf asked, ‘Where to, Mr Veshara?’

  ‘Just home. Then you can have the rest of the day off.’ He would drive himself to his early evening meeting, since he trusted no one, not even Malouf, to accompany him there.

  The call came on his mobile as Malouf turned the car around and headed north, towards the Vesharas’ twenty-room mansion on Bishops Avenue in the Highgate hinterland.

  ‘Yes,’ he said into the mobile.

  ‘The shipment arrives tonight.’ The voice was low, and respectful. ‘How many?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘That’s one short.’

  ‘I know. There was an accident.’

  ‘Accident? Where?’

  ‘In Brussels.’

  Not on his watch then. Sami was relieved: the last thing he wanted was Interpol sniffing around. He asked, ‘Is the ground transportation all arranged?’

  ‘It is. And we have a house in Birmingham.’

  ‘Let me know when the packages arrive there.’

  ‘Yes.’ And the line went dead.

  Malouf was watching in the mirror. ‘Forgive me, sir, but there is a large car behind us, a limousine. It’s staying very close. Could it be one of your friends from lunch?’

  Sami looked back over his shoulder. Sure enough, there was a black limo almost on their bumper, and as they went under the flyover and through the green light it momentarily flashed its lights. Who could it be? Not one of his lunch companions, he was sure of that. They were businessmen, but none of them could run to a stretch limousine. Yet he was not alarmed; London was full of idiots in cars. This wasn’t Baghdad, after all.

  ‘Relax, Malouf. It’s just some fool showing off.’

  Suddenly a Range Rover pulled out sharply from the right, and cut in ahead of them on Edgware Road, forcing Malouf to brake. After its initial burst of speed, the Range Rover slowed, forcing them to cut their own speed even further.

  ‘I don’t like this, Mr Veshara.’

  Neither did Sami. For the first time he sensed a threat; they were being boxed in. ‘Take the next right turn. But do not indicate.’ That should shake them off.

  Malouf nodded. He angled slightly to make the turn but suddenly a large 4×4 appeared on their right side, drawing up alongside. When Malouf slowed, so did the 4×4. It hogged the middle of the road, and cars coming the other way were forced to move over, one blinking its lights furiously and its driver giving a vigorous two-finger salute.

  Sami wondered who could be in these cars surrounding him. Had they mistaken him for someone else?

  ‘Turn left,’ he ordered. His throat felt dry, constricted.

  But on that side, too, another car suddenly appeared, almost close enough to clip the Mercedes’ wing mirror. It was a white van, like the kind the police used to shuttle prisoners around, with smoked windows that screened its occupants from view.

  The Mercedes was now effectively surrounded and Sami no longer had any doubt they were working together. Who were these people? The Russian mob had been making noises lately about his little sideline, the one that needed small boats running across the North Sea to the dock he’d rented near Harwich. Who else could it be? For a brief moment, he wondered if his deeper, darker secret might have been discovered. No, it was impossible. He had always been exceedingly careful. So maybe it was the Russians, after all. But what did they want? And for Allah’s sake, what did they intend to do? They couldn’t be trying to murder him in broad daylight, and a kidnapping seemed equally preposterous. They’re just trying to scare me, he thought, and if that was their aim they were doing a good job.

  ‘Hold on sir,’ said Malouf, and gripped the wheel tightly with both hands. On their left ahead, a man in a green shirt was getting out of a parked car. He seemed oblivious to the tense convoy approaching them, and though the white van honked its horn furiously in warning, made no effort to get out of the way.

  The white van was forced to slow down, and it was then Malouf made his move, swinging the wheel sharply and steering the car fast into a side street, its wheels screeching like a B-movie car chase. Narrowly missing a trio of mothers crossing the road, buggies pushed before them, Malouf accelerated and sped on. When Sami looked back, only the white van was following, now a hundred yards behind.

  When they reached the junction with a large avenue, the light was green, but inexplicably Malouf slowed down. ‘Go, go,’ shouted Sami. He noticed the older man was sweating.

  But Malouf knew what he was doing. The van was closing behind them, and Sami was about to shout again, when Malouf floored the accelerator and joined the main road just as the light turned amber. The flow of traffic on the larger road meant there was no way the van could run the red light. It gave them at least a minute head start.

 
Sami leaned forward and spoke urgently. ‘Malouf, do not drive to the house. There may be others waiting for us there. Find a hiding place, but quickly.’ He noticed the Egyptian was now sweating even more profusely.

  They drove through a bewildering maze of side streets. God knows where they were. Sami kept looking back, but they had lost the van. At last Malouf pulled into a small mews, and turned the car around so they could exit rapidly. He left the engine running while Sami thought what to do next.

  He didn’t want to call the police. What could he tell them? ‘Officer, four cars surrounded me, and I am sure they wanted to…’ what? Kidnap him? Murder him? The police would think him paranoid - he could give them no evidence of what had happened. Besides, it was important to keep his profile as low as possible with the law enforcement authorities.

  No, he needed security of a private sort, which wouldn’t ask for evidence, and wouldn’t pose difficult questions. Mahfuz came into his mind, a cousin who ran several nightclubs in the northern suburbs of London. He employed all sorts of ‘muscle’ to sort out trouble in his clubs. Once he had shown Sami a handgun he carried when he had large amounts of cash to transport.

  ‘I need to make a call, Malouf. Then I’ll tell you where to go next.’

  There was no reply from the driver. Sami dialled Mahfuz’s home, but got his wife. He was doing an inventory at one of the clubs, in Finchley, she said. He thanked her and was about to ring there when he noticed that Malouf was still sitting upright in his driver’s seat.

  Sami said sharply, ‘Malouf.’ The man didn’t move. Sami leaned forward and touched the old retainer gently on the shoulder, but there was no response. He could have been a statue.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Sami. The old man’s heart had given out. The excitement had killed him.

  NINE

  Geoffrey Fane disliked visiting the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The litter of concrete blocks and ill-shaped flower tubs spread all over the road and round the gardens offended his aesthetic sense. What a mess we’ve made of London in the name of ‘the war on terror’, he reflected.