by Mark Dawson
‘I don’t know what purpose that would serve. The message is the message.’
‘Your radio, perhaps?’ Bloom suggested. ‘You were underground. Perhaps you didn’t receive it.’
‘No,’ Snow said. ‘They work underground.’
‘I didn’t hear a thing,’ McNair reiterated.
Morley took over. ‘You understand our problem, Captain Pope?’
‘Permission to speak frankly, ma’am?’
‘Always.’
‘I do not understand the problem. What happened is regrettable, but it has nothing to do with Sergeant Snow, Sergeant McNair or Group Fifteen.’
She smiled indulgently, but Pope could see that she was irritated by his candour. ‘Who do you think is responsible, Captain?’
‘The police. There should have been a firearms team outside the flat to stop and question everyone who left. Instead, they used surveillance officers with no experience in stopping and questioning suspects. They mistook Rubió for Omar, and then they let Rubió board the bus and go into Liverpool Street station. All of those mistakes were made before we were involved.’
‘That may be true, Control. But the police say they called your agents off.’
‘I don’t believe them, ma’am.’
‘They say that Sergeant Snow determined to kill the suspect the moment he entered the platform.’
‘That’s not true!’ Snow objected loudly.
The room was abruptly quiet, and the tension rose. Pope looked up at them, holding their gazes. He wanted them to see that he was confident.
It was the home secretary who spoke first. ‘What happened to Mr Rubió is bitterly unfortunate, and it has brought some misgivings that I have had for some time to the surface.’
Pope realised that the focus of the meeting had now shifted very squarely away from Snow and onto him.
‘Go on, Home Secretary.’
‘I am uncomfortable that we have had, for many years, a group of soldiers operating sub judice around the world. Those agents are granted wide leeway to act autonomously and have often gone beyond the terms of the operation as presented and approved by Oversight. Frankly, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of a state-sanctioned death squad in the first place. This isn’t Chile, Captain. I’m not Pinochet, making people disappear.’
Pope let her words settle and then spoke calmly. ‘The world is a more complicated place than it was ten years ago. We face a multitude of threats. Asymmetrical warfare can’t be defended with conventional methods. An army can’t stop one man with a suicide vest. I know I don’t need to go through the list of jihadists who have been removed as threats to the public in the last twelve months.’
‘Removed,’ Morley said. ‘A splendidly neutral euphemism, Captain.’
‘Use whatever word you prefer, Home Secretary. I try to be thoughtful. I find civilians often have weak stomachs.’
He regretted the slight almost as soon as it had left his lips.
‘Thank you, Captain, but I think we can call a spade a spade, don’t you?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And no, you do not need to remind us. We are aware of the work that your agents have undertaken. And we do not underestimate the need for similar action in the future.’
‘Then I don’t understand what this is all about.’
‘The fact is this, Captain. The Group, as it is presently constructed, is an anachronism. A dinosaur from another time. It’s something that Fleming would write about, or le Carré. The unfortunate death of Mr Rubió might be the reminder we need to bring it to an end.’
Chapter Eight
Monarch Catering was a large and well-respected company responsible for a series of contracts throughout London and the South East. Established ten years earlier, it had since that time enjoyed fast growth and numbered several blue chips among its impressive roster of clients. It had secured the main hospitality contract for the Palace of Westminster two years previously and had, by all accounts, performed well enough to suggest that the relationship would be long-lasting.
The warehouse that served the contract was at 19 Crown Road in Edmonton. Ibrahim Yusof parked his car on the street, as was his habit, and walked the short distance to the premises. Ibrahim was wearing a simple pair of jeans and a denim shirt. He wore glasses with wire rims, and his hair was clipped tight to his scalp. He had shaved off his beard months ago, but he still found his fingers darting up to his chin every now and again, as if surprised that his whiskers had been removed. He was of average height and average build. Nothing about him was out of the ordinary. He was the kind of anonymous man who could slip into a crowd and just disappear.
He opened the door and looked at the machine they used to clock in and out. It seemed pointless to go through with that particular rigmarole this morning, but Ibrahim knew that it was important to maintain the appearance of normality, so he took his card from the rack, slid it into the slot so that the time was stamped onto it, and then replaced it. He checked through the other cards. The only other employees present were the two men who stocked the firm’s lorries before they went out each morning.
It was as he expected.
The company rented both floors of the warehouse. The first floor was taken up by four small, dingy offices that were only rarely used. Ibrahim jogged up the stairs and moved quickly down the short corridor to make sure they were empty. It wasn’t impossible that one of the managers had popped in, and since the manager might not have clocked in, Ibrahim didn’t want to be negligent and allow himself to be surprised. The offices were empty. That was good. He went back down and locked the front door.
The open space where they parked the company vehicles dominated the ground floor. The company drove Mercedes Sprinter panel vans, and there was space for three of them in the warehouse. The drivers had backed them inside last night, and the doors stood open as the two warehousemen replenished the supplies carried within.
‘Morning,’ Ibrahim called out.
The warehousemen were Bill and Dave. They seemed like decent enough types. Ibrahim had worked for Monarch for two months, and the two had never been anything other than pleasant towards him. Bill was in his fifties and celebrated his support of Tottenham Hotspur with a tattoo of the club’s crest on his beefy forearm. Dave was younger. He had just become a father, and he regularly complained that he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since his son had been born.
‘Glad you’re here,’ Bill said. ‘Simon hasn’t turned up yet.’
‘Really?’ Ibrahim said, playing dumb.
‘Ten minutes late, he hasn’t called – nothing.’
Dave was in the back of one of the trucks. ‘Out on the piss again,’ he called. ‘Not the first time he’s bailed after a night out. He’ll call in sick when he wakes up – you’ll see.’
‘Gonna get himself fired if he keeps that up.’ Bill indicated one of the Mercedes. ‘Your truck’s done.’
‘Thanks,’ Ibrahim said.
‘I’m going for a dump,’ Bill said.
The bathroom was at the rear of the building. Bill took his copy of the Sun from his bag and headed to the back.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ Dave complained. ‘I was going to have a piss. No way I’m going in there after you.’
‘Up yours!’ Bill said as he disappeared from view.
Ibrahim walked around to the back of the van. ‘Have you called the office?’
‘What for?’
‘Simon?’
‘Not yet. Was just going to finish loading up, then I was gonna give him a ring. I’d rather give him the chance to get in.’
Very good.
Ibrahim reached into his bag and pulled out the Beretta 92 that he had fitted with a 9mm AAC Ti-Rant suppressor. The detachable box magazine had a fifteen-shot capacity. Ibrahim had thirteen rounds left in the mag after having shot Simon earlier that morning. He had broken in to the man’s disgusting flat and found him still sleeping in bed. He had held a pillow over the silencer for added suppression and p
ut two rounds into his head. Ibrahim knew that Simon lived alone. The body wouldn’t be discovered for hours. Not until it was much too late.
Dave was stepping down from the back of the van, and there was nowhere for him to go when Ibrahim aimed the gun and fired. The gun barked twice, the suppressor muffling the reports a little but certainly not eliminating them. The man was only five feet away and Ibrahim couldn’t miss. The first shot blew a hole in his coveralls to the right of his sternum, and the second punctured his throat. He slumped back into the van, a look of the most exquisite confusion on his face.
Ibrahim turned and walked to the bathroom. It was small, with a handbasin, two urinals and a cubicle. The door was shut, and Ibrahim could hear Bill inside.
‘Wait up! I told you, I’m going to be a while.’
Ibrahim fired three shots through the flimsy door. He gave it a kick, shattering the lock, the door jamming up against Bill’s spasming body as it slumped forward on the toilet. He fired again, to be sure.
Ibrahim went back into the warehouse.
He made sure that Dave’s body was safely inside the back of the first van. He went to the button that opened the main doors and pressed it. The engine whirred and the metal door rolled up, sliding back on well-oiled casters.
Abdul was waiting outside in the beat-up Vauxhall Astra he had bought from an eBay seller two weeks ago. The man had asked for cash, and Abdul had been happy to oblige him. Cash would be much harder to trace. At Ibrahim’s signal, he reversed the van into the warehouse, sliding it tight up against the right-hand wall with the Mercedes to the left. Abdul switched off the engine and Ibrahim pressed the button to lower the door again. The door rolled down and gave out a metallic clang as it contacted the concrete floor.
Abdul stepped down. ‘Any problems?’
‘None,’ Ibrahim reported. ‘It was easy.’
‘Praise Allah.’
‘Praise Allah. We must move quickly.’
‘The others?’
Ibrahim nodded. ‘It is all in hand.’
‘You spoke to Mohammed?’
‘Yes. As I was walking here. He is confident.’
‘The three boys?’
‘He said that he met them and that they are on their way.’
‘And they will do what needs to be done?’
‘Allah willing. It is in his hands.’
The warehouse was brightly lit from the fluorescent lights overhead. Abdul opened the back of the Astra and brought down a selection of large plastic containers. They were branded with the logos of catering supply companies and advertised as holding various ingredients: carrots, broccoli, potatoes and other vegetables. The contents had been poured away and then sharp craft knives had been used to slice from the sides around to the backs. Now the tops of the containers could be pulled forward enough to allow access to the interiors.
‘Is everything there?’ Ibrahim asked.
‘It is. But you should check.’
He did. He carefully split one container so that he could reach inside. His fingers fastened around a metal cylinder. He brought it out: it was the barrel of a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm. The other containers held a small arsenal of weapons: MP-5 submachine guns that had been broken down so that they could fit into the containers, semi-automatic pistols, magazines, fragmentation grenades.
He clambered into the back of the Sprinter. Racking had been fitted on both sides, and each shelf held two rows of similar containers. He had taken pictures of the cans, and Abdul had matched them at the cash and carry. He cleared the shelf nearest to the front of the compartment, stacked Abdul’s containers against the side of the truck and then obscured them behind containers that had not been tampered with. They worked quickly, and when they were done, the weapons were well hidden. Not satisfied with just that cursory check, he jumped down and looked at the interior of the truck from the bumper, the view that the security guards would have if today was one of the days they chose to examine the vehicles passing through their checkpoint.
‘Well?’ Abdul said.
‘Very good,’ Ibrahim replied. ‘Very good.’
Chapter Nine
Isabella wandered aimlessly all morning. She crossed the river on Waterloo Bridge, walked down the Strand to Trafalgar Square, whiled away an hour in St James’s Park and then, finally, ambled along Birdcage Walk to Parliament Square.
She slowed her pace. There was a demonstration, anti-war protestors raging against the suggestion that the British military be put to fresh use against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. She stopped to do up a lace that did not need tying, and used the opportunity to surveil the armed police who were observing the spectacle with wary attention. She looked up to the rooftops: there were officers with video cameras recording the faces of the protestors.
Isabella felt vulnerable, and pulling up her hood, she skirted the crowd. She put on her sunglasses, barely hearing their angry chants in response to the exhortations of the orator, who was addressing them from a raised box with the assistance of a portable amplifier.
Her skin crawled as she walked within range of the cameras. She only regained her equilibrium as she proceeded south down Abingdon Street. She passed Westminster Abbey, and with no real destination in mind, turned into Victoria Park Gardens. The park was adjacent to the south-west corner of the Palace of Westminster and named for the tower that loomed above it. She walked by the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst and Rodin’s sculpture of The Burghers of Calais, until she was at the stone wall that looked down on the sluggish greeny-grey waters of the river below.
She rested her elbows on the wall and gazed out onto the Thames. A towboat was hauling six barges upstream, and one of the brightly-coloured commuter clippers passed it going in the opposite direction. The sky overhead was blue and clear, latticed with the fluffy contrails of passing jets.
She had been lying to Pope. She didn’t have a flight to catch. She hadn’t known why he wanted to see her, and so she had left her return open. She had nothing to do and no place to go. There was her continued training, the regimen that she had interrupted to make this visit, and she would pick it up again when she returned to her riad, but apart from that, there was little else to occupy her. She had no friends. No connections. No reason to be anywhere or do anything. Usually, that was something that did not concern her. She preferred a life with no tethers. Today, though, looking down onto the water, she wondered whether she had it all wrong.
She turned her head and looked at the Palace of Westminster. Her mother had dedicated her life to furthering the interests of the government whose decisions were debated within those imposing walls. She had hidden her occupation from her husband – Isabella’s father – and it had killed him. She thought about the things that her mother had told her during the short time that they had spent together. Beatrix had explained the betrayal that had inspired her vendetta. She had been unable to complete it before the cancer that had raged through her body had rendered her too weak to follow through with her original plan. She had sacrificed herself in an effort to complete her revenge; when that had failed, Isabella had finished the job. She looked down and found that her fingers had drifted unconsciously up to the sleeve of her shirt, up towards her shoulder. Her fingers traced over the spot where she wore the tattoo of the rose. It marked that final death, the final addition to the set that her mother had been unable to complete.
She opened her right fist and trailed the fingertips of her left hand across the silver locket.
She was disappointed. She realised that at a dim and distant level, she had been entertaining the prospect that Pope was going to offer her something to do. Something, perhaps, that her mother might have done before her.
She allowed herself a laugh.
That was foolishness. She was fifteen years old. What use could Control possibly have for her?
She unclipped the clasp of the chain, put it around her neck and fastened it again. She slid the locket between her T-shirt and skin and let the warmed silver drop down to her ch
est.
The blare of the tugboat’s horn brought her around again. There was no point in dawdling. She wasn’t interested in sightseeing. She reached into her pocket for her phone and called up the map of the Underground. She needed to get to Heathrow. She could take the Jubilee Line at Westminster, change onto the Bakerloo Line at Baker Street and then get the Heathrow Express from Paddington. It would take her an hour to get across the city.
No, she thought. There is nothing for me here. No reason to stay.
Time to leave. She would be back in Marrakech by evening.
Ibrahim drove the Mercedes Sprinter carefully. He had driven the route two times before in order to familiarise himself with it, and that familiarity bred confidence. It was twenty miles, and in the heavy morning traffic, he knew it would take between an hour and an hour and a half. That was fine. The itinerary had been designed with that in mind, and it would be flexible enough to be adapted, should that be necessary.
Everything was proceeding as he had planned. Allah was smiling upon them.
Relaxing was out of the question, but as he idled before a red light on the North Circular, he did allow himself a moment to think about the events that had led to this day.
Ibrahim had fought the peshmerga in the ultimately futile battle of Kobani, and Abdul had been involved with the foreign hostages in Aleppo and Raqqa. Ibrahim did not have to try very hard to remember what it was like to be pinned down in a defensive position as imperialist jets screamed overhead, dropping their laser-guided bombs and demolishing vehicles and emplacements. He had seen brothers whom he had fought alongside torn to pieces by the bombs. And he had met others, older than he was, who had done battle with the fascists in Afghanistan and Iraq, and others who had fought the Jews in Palestine. He had heard stories of what the enemy had done during the conflicts. He had seen videos of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, read about the torture at the CIA’s black sites and fulminated over the continued injustices at Guantánamo.
The caliph had decreed that retaliation was in order. Ibrahim was honoured to have been chosen to put the plan into effect.