Hot Blood

by Stephen Leather

  ‘There’s no way that your company can negotiate for his release?’ asked Armstrong. He flicked open his pack of Marlboro, tossed a cigarette into the air, caught it between his lips, then lit it.

  Muller shook his head. ‘There’s no one to negotiate with,’ he said. ‘It’s a fucking minefield over there, literally and figuratively. There’s no central organisation we can deal with, and we’ve no idea who has any sort of influence on the various groups. The militants are in a state of constant flux, too. I liken it to a virus, constantly evolving. We have a hard time keeping track of who’s who. The Holy Martyrs of Islam only came to light when they kidnapped the Lake boy. The main group out there is called Al-Qaeda In Iraq, and used to be led by a Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They killed an Egyptian envoy and a couple of Algerian diplomats a while back. Al-Zarqawi was killed some time ago but his group is still active. Thing is, they usually target the hostages they take, but it looks as if Geordie’s abduction was opportunistic – they blasted his vehicle and he could easily have died, so we don’t think al-Zarqawi’s mob’s behind it. But there are dozens of other groups out there who are just as dangerous. Al-Jaysh al-Islami fi Iraq, The Islamic Army in Iraq kidnapped an American recently; seized two French journalists and killed an Italian in 2004. They’ve probably butchered a dozen people in the last three years. The Ansar al-Sunnah Army killed a Japanese security manager and a Turkish contractor. The Islamic Army of Iraq seized two French journalists, and killed a dozen Nepalese workers. The al-Saraya Mujahideen took a group of Japanese and Italians two years ago. Al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, which translates as Unity and Holy War, has abducted and decapitated seven civilian contractors. The Green Battalion killed an Italian security guard. The Holders of the Black Banners have been taking hostages but so far haven’t killed any. Ditto the Islamic Movement for Iraq’s Mujahideen. Those are the groups that issue the demands and perform the executions, but they rarely carry out the initial kidnappings.’

  ‘Criminal gangs, right?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Exactly. The insurgents who captured Geordie have probably passed him on to one of the militant groups. Probably got money for him.’

  ‘If we can get to them, could we pay them off?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Almost certainly not,’ said Muller. ‘I’m sorry, guys, but these bastards aren’t in it for the money. We’ve put the word out that we’ll pay half a mill for his return, but it won’t do any good. Between you and me and these four walls, the reward is just public-relations bullshit.’

  ‘Is there any way of telling which side this group is on?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘They’re almost certainly Sunnis,’ said Muller. ‘They pretty much ran Iraq when Saddam was in charge. Most of the Sunni clerics in Iraq regard the jihad as a legitimate reaction to what they see as the American invasion of their country whereas the Shias tend to regard the Americans as a temporary presence. So the attacks on the coalition troops tend to be from Sunni insurgents. The Shias make up most of the Iraqi Army and police force, which is why there are so many attacks against them. More than thirty thousand dead so far.’

  ‘What’s been done on the ground?’ asked Shortt, rubbing his moustache.

  ‘My guys are gathering intel. The Blackwater boys are on the case. We have a number of shared contracts and I’ve got a pretty good relationship with their top brass. But once they’re dug in, the militants aren’t going to put their heads above ground until Geordie’s dead.’ He pulled a face as if he had a sour taste in his mouth. ‘I’m sorry, guys, it doesn’t look good.’

  ‘What about the military?’ said Armstrong.

  ‘They’re looking, but you have to know what it’s like out there. The American troops ride around in convoys and hardly ever get out of their Humvees. The locals are on the ground, but with the best will in the world they’re not going to stumble across Geordie. Our best bet is going to be human intel, either an informer or someone who gets hauled in for something else and wants to cut a deal.’

  ‘Yeah, or maybe we could call in a psychic,’ said Shortt, bitterly.

  ‘Easy, Jimbo,’ said the Major. ‘No need to go shooting the messenger. John’s just telling us the way things stand.’

  ‘I’m heading straight back there,’ said Muller. ‘I wanted to brief you guys, and I’m paying a courtesy call on Geordie’s brother. But then I’ll be in Baghdad until this is over. One way or the other.’

  ‘Let’s suppose we identify the guys who are holding him,’ said the Major. ‘What are our options?’

  ‘If we know who they are, we can reach out to them through groups they might be sympathetic to. Religious figures, for instance. It’s a question of who should make the approach.’

  ‘Has that worked in the past?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘A few times,’ said Muller. ‘It depends on the agenda of the hostage-takers. Sometimes they’ll make more capital out of showing they can be reasonable. Or it could be seen as a way of boosting the status of someone sympathetic to their aims. Like I said, it’s a minefield.’

  A mobile phone rang. Shepherd winced and fished his two out of his jacket pocket. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this,’ he said, and hurried out of the room.

  ‘That Graham May?’ asked a voice. Youngish, a nasal Birmingham whine.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ said Shepherd, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘A friend of a friend said you might be able to supply us with what we need.’

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got the cash.’

  ‘Who gave you my number?’ asked Shepherd. He was an underworld arms dealer and they were suspicious of anyone they hadn’t dealt with before.

  ‘A friend of mine,’ said the voice.

  ‘Yeah, well, unless he’s a friend of mine, and a bloody good one at that, we’re going to end this conversation right now.’

  ‘You are May, right?’

  ‘Like I said, who the hell are you?’

  ‘My name’s …’ the voice hesitated ‘ … Tom.’

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘Yeah, Tom.’

  ‘Tom, Tom, the piper’s son?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Tom. This conversation is over—’

  ‘Wait! Wait!’ said the man, panicking.

  Shepherd smiled to himself. ‘Tom’ was behaving like a rank amateur.

  ‘The man who gave me your name said I wasn’t to tell you who he is.’

  ‘That makes no sense at all,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘He gave me your number and your name.’

  ‘And what is it you want?’

  ‘To buy some gear from you. I already said.’

  ‘I know that, you moron. I meant what exactly do you want to buy?’

  ‘I want to talk to you, in person.’

  ‘You are talking to me in person,’ said Shepherd. ‘That’s how phones work. Now, get to the point or piss off.’

  ‘I mean, I want to meet you. To talk about what we want to buy. We haven’t done this before.’

  ‘That’s blindingly obvious,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘So we want to meet you, face to face, see if we can trust you.’

  ‘I’m the one who should be worried about trust,’ said Shepherd. ‘Where do you want to meet?’

  ‘We thought maybe Hyde Park. Near the memorial to Princess Diana.’

  ‘We? How many of you are there?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Tom and Jerry?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re Tom, right? Is your mate Jerry?’

  ‘No, his name’s … James.’

  ‘Tom and James?’

  ‘Yes. Tom and James.’

  ‘And how will I recognise you?’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m assuming you don’t know what I look like.’

  ‘Better you tell me what you look like.’

  ‘I’m devilishly good-looking with a twinkle in my eye,’ said Shepherd. ‘Does that help? Of course it doesn’t. Look, be at the memo
rial tomorrow at noon. You and your mate carry a copy of the Financial Times and the Guardian. One each. And stand together. I’ll approach you. If I spot anything I don’t like, you won’t see me for dust. Understand?’

  ‘Okay. Yeah.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ said Shepherd. He ended the call and put away the phone.

  Back in the room, the Major was leaning back in his chair, tapping a pen on the table.

  ‘Do we have a plan?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘We’re working on it,’ said the Major.

  There were three loud bangs on the door. ‘Please stand against the wall, Colin,’ shouted Kamil.

  Mitchell stood up, went to the far wall and stood against it, arms outstretched. The door opened. Kamil was holding a paper plate loaded with rice and chunks of lamb, and a bottle of water. Behind him, a man in a ski mask held an AK-47. It was feeding time.

  Kamil walked into the centre of the room and sat down cross-legged. He placed the food in front of him and beckoned Mitchell to join him. ‘I shall eat with you, Colin,’ he said.

  Mitchell hadn’t told Kamil that nobody had called him Colin since he’d left school. Even his brother called him Geordie. It had been his army nickname, and once his parents had passed away it had been the only name he answered to. But he wanted Kamil to keep calling him Colin. It was a constant reminder that he was the enemy; an enemy that Mitchell would have to kill if he was to escape from his prison.

  ‘Can you play chess?’ asked Kamil.

  Mitchell nodded.

  Kamil reached into a pocket and brought out a travel chess set, a plastic board that folded in half with circular magnetic pieces. He placed it on the floor and set out the pieces as Mitchell chewed a chunk of lamb.

  ‘How long have you been in Baghdad?’ asked Kamil.

  ‘Six months, just about,’ said Mitchell.

  ‘Can you speak any Arabic?’

  ‘Allahu Akbar,’ said Mitchell.

  ‘Ah, good,’ said Kamil. ‘God is great.’

  ‘Inshallah.’

  ‘God willing,’ said Kamil, nodding. ‘If you speak only two phrases in Arabic, they are the two to know. “God is great” and “God willing”. He is all powerful and everything that happens is because of Him.’

  ‘You believe that, do you?’ asked Mitchell.

  ‘Of course. All Muslims do. And all Christians do, too. Are you not a Christian?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Mitchell. He used his fingers to shovel rice into his mouth. Sometimes they gave him a plastic spoon and sometimes they didn’t.

  ‘Either you are or you aren’t,’ said Kamil. He finished placing the pieces on the board and waved for Mitchell to go first. Mitchell pushed his king’s pawn two spaces forward. ‘I was christened a Catholic,’ said Mitchell, ‘but I’m lapsed.’

  ‘You don’t believe in God any more?’ said Kamil. He moved his king’s pawn.

  ‘Not the sort of God my parents believed in,’ said Mitchell.

  ‘What sort of God do you believe in, then?’

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ said Mitchell.

  They played for a while in silence. Within the first half-dozen moves Mitchell realised that Kamil was by far the better player. He was methodical and stared at the board for a full two minutes before each move. Mitchell played impulsively and rarely looked more than a couple of moves ahead. He had never much cared for board games and preferred to play cards, ideally for money. ‘Have you always been a Muslim?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ said Kamil.

  ‘The reason I ask is that a lot of people become Muslims, right?’

  ‘When they realise that Allah is the true God and that only He can be worshipped. And that Muhammad was Allah’s messenger.’

  ‘And you pray five times a day?’

  ‘That is what is required of us. But there is more to being a Muslim than praying five times a day. One is a Muslim every second of every minute of every hour until one draws one’s last breath.’

  They continued to play. Kamil took one of Mitchell’s bishops in a fork attack with his knight, then gradually pressured his queen. Even though he clearly had the advantage, he continued to study every move carefully, bent forward over the board, deep creases in his brow. Mitchell knew that he could kill Kamil. He could grab him and break his neck as easily as snapping a twig. He could smash his windpipe and watch him die on the floor clutching his throat. He could punch his nose so hard that the cartilage would splinter and spear the brain. He could kick him in the stomach with such force that his spleen would rupture. There were a dozen ways that Mitchell could end the life of the man sitting in front of him, but it would serve no purpose. The door was locked and on the other side there were men with guns.

  Kamil looked up. ‘You are in a bad position,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘I know,’ said Mitchell, ‘and I fear it can only get worse.’

  Shepherd sipped his coffee and looked at the Serpentine. ‘The two over there, throwing the Frisbee,’ he said quietly. A homeless man in a grimy overcoat and wellington boots was throwing bread to a group of Canada geese; he grinned at them, showing a mouthful of blackened teeth.

  ‘They know me,’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ said Sharpe. He looked casually to where two Pakistani men in their twenties were half-heartedly tossing a blue disc back and forth. ‘Yeah,’ he said. They were close to the Princess Diana memorial, a concrete water feature in the shape of a battered oval. Several dozen tourists were sitting on the edge, paddling their feet in the water that gushed around as if it was a natural stream.

  It was a quarter to twelve and Shepherd and Sharpe had been in the park since eleven. ‘They’re the brothers,’ said Shepherd. ‘Asim and Salman. I’m guessing they’re there to keep an eye on things because they don’t have newspapers.’

  It was a warm day so Shepherd was in khaki trousers and a pale blue polo shirt, with a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head. There was little risk of anything happening in the open but he wanted the men to see that he wasn’t carrying a weapon. From the phone conversation he’d had, he was sure that the men weren’t professionals. ‘Tom’ had been clearly out of his depth, and the brothers playing with the Frisbee seemed ill at ease and hadn’t once looked in their direction.

  Sharpe drank his coffee and grimaced. ‘This is horrible,’ he said. He was wearing a Glasgow Rangers shirt over baggy blue jeans.

  ‘Good job you didn’t pay for it, then,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Didn’t say I wasn’t grateful.’

  ‘There’s Hassan,’ said Shepherd, ‘blue baseball cap, white shirt, walking over from the road.’

  ‘You and your photographic memory,’ said Sharpe. He glanced towards the man. ‘Yeah, that’s him, all right.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking for confirmation, Razor,’ said Shepherd, drily. ‘I just wanted to make sure you’d seen him.’ He sipped his coffee. Sharpe was right: it wasn’t good.

  Hassan strolled through a gap in the fence round the water feature and wandered over to a clump of trees. He sat down in the shade, his back to a trunk, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one with a cheap plastic lighter. A camera with a telephoto lens hung from a strap round his neck.

  Shepherd and Sharpe walked towards the Serpentine then continued beside it. Two groups of teenagers were racing in rowing-boats, laughing and jeering at each other. Sunbathers were out in force, although it was too early for lunchtime office workers to put in an appearance. An overweight girl with a crash helmet and knee pads whizzed by on roller-blades. ‘They don’t look like hardened criminals,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘The men who blew up the Tube were in their twenties and thirties,’ said Sharpe. ‘These guys aren’t out to rob a bank. They’re terrorists.’

  ‘Terrorists, or wannabe terrorists,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘The only difference is having the tools,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘So why are they coming to us? That’s what I don’t get. If they’re al-Qaeda, why don’t they have t
heir own weapons?’

  ‘Because they’re not al-Qaeda, they’re home-grown terrorists. British born. Invisibles, they call them. You know that.’

  ‘But this seems so … amateurish.’ He took another sip of his coffee and tossed the paper cup into a rubbish bin. ‘Tom and Jerry are here,’ he said. The final members of the group were walking across the grass towards the water feature. According to the names under the photographs on Button’s whiteboard, they were Ali and Fazal. Ali was the smaller of the two with a shaved head and a slight stoop. Fazal was a good six inches taller with a long, loping stride. Both men had moustaches and wore sunglasses. Ali was carrying the Financial Times and Fazal had a copy of the Guardian in the back pocket of his jeans. They headed straight for the water feature.

  ‘Just the five,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘Looks that way,’ said Shepherd. ‘Lying little bugger. He said there’d be two of them.’

  ‘Like you said, amateurs.’

  ‘Thing is, amateurs are unpredictable. You know what a professional will do, but an amateur can go off the rails.’

  ‘I don’t see any heavy artillery,’ said Sharpe.

  ‘Yeah, I know. Come on, let’s go.’ They walked across the grass. Ali and Fazal stood with their backs to the memorial. To their left, an old couple were placing a small bunch of flowers on the ground. There were tears in the woman’s eyes and she dabbed at them with a little white handkerchief.

  Ali saw them first and nudged Fazal in the ribs. Fazal pulled out the Guardian and held it in both hands.

  ‘Which one’s Tom?’ said Shepherd, as he reached them.

  Ali waved his Financial Times. ‘That’s me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m May, the guy you spoke to,’ said Shepherd. He nodded at Sharpe. ‘This is Lomas.’ Ali held out his hand, as if he wanted to shake, but Shepherd ignored it. ‘This isn’t a date,’ he said. ‘Let’s walk as we talk.’ They started across the grass. ‘So,’ said Shepherd, ‘what’s on your shopping list?’

  ‘We want submachine-guns,’ said Fazal.

  ‘Really?’ said Shepherd. ‘What country are you planning to invade?’

  ‘Can you supply us or not?’ asked Ali.