The Asset: Act II (An Isabella Rose Thriller Book 2)

by Mark Dawson

  Pope remembered what Bloom had said before. “This was supposed to be off the books. I’m supposed to be suspended, sir. Has something changed?”

  “Events are giving me a little more flexibility, Control. This is still deniable. The pilot doesn’t know who you are or what you’re going to be doing when he drops you off.”

  “What am I going to be doing?”

  Bloom took out a passport and gave it to him. “Your cover is as a military liaison between us and the Turks. Your name is John Creasey.”

  Pope nodded, absorbing the new information.

  “Salim can’t be much farther along the road than Manavgat, and it’s still eight hours to the border from there. You’ll be picked up at Hatay. You should have a few hours on them.”

  “Equipment?”

  “The local quartermaster is collecting you. You’ll have everything you need. There’s one thing you can take now.”

  He reached into his pocket and took out a small phone with a large, thick antenna. Pope recognised it: an Iridium satphone. It would have worldwide range and enough standby time to last a day and a half. Bloom put it, and a spare battery, on the edge of the sink.

  “If you need me, call the number programmed into the memory. We’ve established a small situation room. It’s staffed twenty-four seven. If I can help, I will.”

  Pope collected the phone and the battery and put them into his own pocket. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Your codename is Archangel.”

  “Understood. And my orders?”

  “Get Salim before he leaves Turkey. If you can get the girl, too, so much the better.”

  Pope clenched his jaw and gave a single nod of his head. “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Four

  Aqil and Yasin Malik had arrived in Turkey a day earlier. They had bought a package holiday from an online travel agent. A week of sun and fun in a five-star resort in Antalya. That was how the trip had been advertised on the company’s website, but that was not what they had in mind. They had checked into their hotel, left most of their luggage behind and disappeared. The MI6 agents who later inspected their room found two abandoned suitcases and a discarded beard trimmer.

  Aqil and Yasin took a train to Iskenderun in eastern Turkey. The journey traced the coastline and passed towns with names that Aqil did not recognise: Alanya, Anamur, Icel, Ceyhan.

  From Iskenderun, they took a taxi to Reyhanli.

  The border town was little more than a ragged, bombed-out collection of shanties. They had taken a room at the Kent Hotel. It was a three-storey structure with fifteen rooms. It was filthy, with stains on the walls and carpets and a proprietor who sat at reception wearing a vest that had evidently been unwashed for weeks. He knew what they were here for as soon as Yasin started to speak. The town, and this hotel in particular, was a favourite for European jihadis making the journey to the south. The hotel was almost full. Business was good.

  They had time to kill, so they toured the town. The town was a crazy mix of cultures, with shops bearing the logos of international brands standing next to rickety shacks whose owners catered to the flood of Syrian refugees who had swarmed across the border as the civil war had become increasingly bloody. The smells were overpowering: raw sewage; the sweetness of mamuniyah, rich with butter and ghee; sweat; fresh ma’amoul cookies flavoured with pistachio and walnut. They walked amid the crowd, saw men wearing Western business suits and women in niqabs. It was full of crumbling buildings and dusty streets. The refugees were everywhere. Decaying brick structures, tarps held down with rocks, tents pitched on rooftops.

  Reyhanli was on a hill. They followed the street to the top until they were elevated enough to be afforded an excellent view of the Syrian landscape beyond. A few hundred yards south of the border, someone had flown the flag of the Islamic State atop a watchtower. They could see the black fabric snapping in the breeze, the flash of white betraying the shahada written across it. It was a potent symbol. Aqil found that he was afraid of it.

  They could see the main gateway into Syria from here, too. The Bab al-Hawa Border Crossing was situated on the Syrian M45 and the Turkish D827 highways. It had the facilities to cater for plenty of traffic, but it was quiet today. A handful of lorries were waiting to cross, but Turkish border patrol were making sure that the cargos were legitimate. No oil was to come out. No arms or recruits were to go in. Yasin watched them for a moment and spat into the sand at his feet.

  “That’s all for show. We’re not going through the front door.”

  Yasin had arranged to meet their handler outside a Vodafone shop. They had been there fifteen minutes before the appointed time. The man, an Arab with a wild beard and a distended belly that wobbled beneath his dishdash, had welcomed them with warm embraces that filled Aqil’s nostrils with his foul odour. He did not give them his name and they did not ask. He took them both to a local trader who had an impressive line in second-hand military equipment. They bought hunting knives, binoculars, desert camouflage fatigues and magazine vests for carrying spare AK-47 ammunition. The man said that they would be provided with Kalashnikovs once they reached their training camp.

  “We will go now,” he said to them. “Collect your things. We drive.”

  The wide open stretch of Turkish border was rugged and uninviting. They left the city and headed due south. The desert stretched away as far as they could see, pierced by the wire-mesh border fence.

  The handler took one hand off the wheel to indicate the vista with a sweep of his arm. “This is it,” he said.

  “This is what?”

  “It is what they call the ‘Gateway to Jihad.’”

  “How much farther?”

  “A few miles.”

  They left the road and took a dry, dusty track. The handler explained that it was one of the ancient smuggling routes that criss-crossed over the Turkish hills into Syria. As they drove on, the only things that demarked the border were scraps of broken barbed wire. The track led down to the Orontes River. It meandered through a valley of olive plantations, and on the other side of the water was Syria. They followed the track as it mirrored the river.

  A Turkish army truck full of soldiers drove by. They ignored them. The next people they passed were men from local villages, carting oil drums and boxes of food. They were smugglers, and they were going to deliver the goods to the riverbank, where they would be taken across on rafts.

  “That is for the caliphate,” the man said. “We are well supplied, thanks be to Allah. And it is where you will cross. We must wait until dark.”

  He parked the car. Others appeared. Soon, there were another ten people waiting to cross. Aqil heard French and German, and two of them spoke English. Yasin nodded to them, shared a gruff hello, but they kept to themselves. There was an atmosphere of excitement among the men. They were all keen to get across.

  The sense of anticipation was contagious, yet Aqil started to feel nervous. He had started to doubt his choice as soon as they had landed in Turkey. He did not want his brother to think he was having second thoughts, so he had managed to ignore it, distracting himself with the practicalities of getting across the country to the border. But now that they were here, he couldn’t help himself.

  He was thinking about his mother and father. He wondered what they would be thinking. What would they be doing? Would they have contacted the police? Probably. Yasin had explained that they would call them once they had crossed safely into the caliphate. Aqil knew that they would be relieved to hear from them, but that it would be cold comfort once they realised where they were and what they were planning on doing. He had been consumed with guilt. They had left their parents to deal with everything on their own. And when the papers found out where their sons had gone . . . how much worse would it get for them then? One twin was a failed suicide bomber, murdered and dumped in the river. The surviving twin, together with their eldest son, had travelled to Syria to fight for the most hated—the most reviled—organisation in the world.

  Th
e sun dipped beneath the horizon. It very quickly grew cold, and Aqil was pleased that he had listened to his brother and packed a fleece in his travel bag. He pulled it on.

  The raft came back across the water again. It was a ramshackle vessel, a square of wood fashioned from logs that had been lashed together, a metal fence providing something for them to lean against so that the passengers did not fall over the edge. It was pulled across the river by a man wearing a Barcelona top with “MESSI” on the back.

  “Everybody on.”

  The men waded out into the shallows and were pulled up by the man with the Messi shirt. Aqil shuffled to the back, letting the others go before him.

  Yasin was alongside him. “Are you sure you really want this, little brother?”

  He swallowed, but his throat was suddenly dry. “No,” he said.

  “We have to decide now.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Yasin’s self-confidence and certainty were suddenly missing.

  “Come on,” the man with the Barcelona shirt said. “Get on.”

  Yasin turned back to his brother. “Yes,” he said, although there was no conviction in his voice. He tried again. “Yes. I’m going. There’s nothing for us at home.”

  They were the last to embark. “Last chance,” the handler said. “If you want to go, you get on the raft now.”

  “Give us a moment,” Yasin said. He turned to his brother.

  Aqil swallowed again. He closed his eyes and remembered his brother’s body laid out in the front room, the kafan parted to show his face and the ugly wound that brutalised it. He blinked hard, trying to shift the image, but he could still see it. He knew that he would always be able to see it for as long as he lived. Aamir had made a mistake, but his brother had refused to compound it. He had not detonated his vest. He had tried to do the right thing. He had been vulnerable, and he had been killed anyway. Aqil knew that the security services were responsible, and he felt a tremor of anger. It made his mind up for him.

  “I’m sure,” he said, his voice cracking. “Let’s go.”

  They boarded. The raft was overbalanced and it pitched to one side, water sloshing over it and soaking their feet. The handler rearranged them so that their weight was distributed more evenly, and then he stepped down, his robe floating on the water. The man in the Barcelona top started to haul the rope, passing it hand over hand, and the raft jerked out into the current.

  “Congratulations, boys,” the handler said, his voice carrying out over the water. “You’re nearly there. That land, Syria, is where God’s judgment will come to pass. Praise be to Allah.”

  Chapter Five

  There was an observation window in the departures lounge, and Pope had been staring out onto the runway when he saw his ride make its approach. A series of other, larger jets had landed, but this was obviously nothing like them. He recognised it as soon as it was close enough to pick out the detail: the engine intake mounted at the bottom of the fuselage, the foreplanes mounted before the main wing, the delta mainplane and the tall and sharply swept tail. It was a Typhoon FGR4, the larger bubble cockpit and the deeper upper fuselage distinguishing it as the two-seat version. The jet glided down to the runway, its bright landing lights glaring out from underneath the mainplane. It touched down and taxied toward the terminal building. Bloom had explained that a member of the airport security staff would escort him down to the runway after the jet had been refuelled.

  Pope sat down, took out the satellite phone and switched it on. He dialled Rachel. Even though she had grown used to extended periods of time when he was out of contact with her, he always tried to let her know before he went dark.

  The call connected.

  “It’s me.”

  “Michael! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You can’t say where you are?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “I am. I’ve been up all night. But I’m fine. I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be out of contact for a while.”

  “Do you know for how long?”

  “Three, four days. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Have you seen the news? You know what’s happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s horrible. They’re saying it was a missile. Can you believe that? They can shoot jets down now.”

  She spoke about what was being said about the attack, but Pope was only half listening to her. Something—the sound of her voice, perhaps, or the sound of his daughters’ laughter just audible in the background—coalesced the nascent thoughts that he had been considering without even really being aware of them. He had wanted to tell Rachel that he was going to be incommunicado, but that wasn’t the real reason for the call. He was frightened, and he wanted to tell her that now was the time to put into action the contingency that they had first discussed years earlier. He had just joined Group Fifteen, and it had seemed prudent then. They had never had to take the next step, but something was nagging at him, worrying him, and he wanted to be sure that they were safe.

  Pope interrupted her. “When’s Flora’s recital?”

  It was true that his daughter played the violin, but there was no recital. That simple sentence, those three precise words, that was their own private code. Pope knew that it was very likely that there was a permanent tap on his home number, and knowing that, it was wise to obfuscate. This was the first time that he had invoked their secret protocol, but what had happened to him in Geneva made him nervous that he was only glimpsing the edges of a larger, and more dangerous, situation.

  Rachel was not expecting to hear it, and she stumbled over her response. “It’s—it’s—”

  “It’s all right,” Pope said, trying to reassure her without giving himself away. “I just couldn’t remember what day it was.”

  “Monday,” she said, confirming that she understood what he had said to her. “It’s Monday. Will you be back for it?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  There was silence, and Pope could easily visualise his wife gripping the telephone a little tighter, her face a little paler. As soon as they finished the call, she would need to start planning. The Popes had an apartment in Montepulciano; that was the hideout that they had selected. She would need to pack the things that she and the girls would need, get them ready and go. They had spoken about the plan on many occasions: how she would drive to Felixstowe and take the car on the ferry, rather than flying; how she would confiscate the girls’ cellphones in order to remove the temptation that they might use them and give away their position; how they would all lay up in the apartment until Pope could get to them.

  He felt awful. He wanted to tell Rachel more about what he was about to do, but that was impossible. He wanted to tell her that it would all be fine, but that would alert anyone who might be eavesdropping to the secret context that lay beneath their domestic platitudes. “Is everything else okay?”

  “We miss you.”

  “I miss you, too. Tell the girls I love them.”

  “I will. Any message for me?”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Love you. Be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  They said goodbye and he ended the call. Pope hoped that he had done the right thing. He thought that he had.

  But the thought of his daughters had made him think about Isabella and what had happened to her. It was impossible not to feel responsible. Pope had known her extraordinary mother, of course, and the girl had inherited the same steely demeanour. It was a mask that she wore very well, but it was just a mask; Pope knew that she was just a fifteen-year-old girl behind it. He had doubted his own decision to involve her as soon as he had recommended it to Bloom, but they had no other recourse, and the country had been threatened with further attacks. More people would die unless they discovered the terrorist cell that was responsible. Isabella was their best chance of doing that quickly.

&n
bsp; Did that mean that the risk of involving her was justified?

  He had finally decided that it was, but that was before.

  Now he was starting to doubt himself again.

  He put the phone away and looked up at the television screen again. A piece of recorded VT was playing. A group of men, all dressed in obviously expensive suits, were arranged around a large conference room table. There were flags at the head of the table: the red and white of the Lebanon and the red, white and black tricolour of Egypt. The camera focussed on one man. He held a pen, and with a theatrical grin, he looked into the lens. He put the pen to the paper with a flourish and made to sign his name. Flashbulbs popped, throwing bright white light over his face, and he grinned again.

  Pope recognised him even before the rolling ticker at the bottom of the screen named him.

  “Salim Hasan Mafuz Muslim al-Khawari Named as Suspect in London Attacks.”

  Bloom had said that this would happen. They wanted Salim’s name out there so that the conversation could be shaped according to the narrative that they had chosen. There would be a briefing, and his links with ISIS would be revealed. It didn’t make any difference to Pope. It wouldn’t make his task any more difficult. Al-Khawari already knew that he was a wanted man. The FBI had made that abundantly clear when they assaulted his compound.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  It was a man in a suit. Airport security? Swiss intelligence? Pope didn’t know.

  “Yes?” he said, standing.

  “They are ready for you,” he said.

  Chapter Six

  There were around fifteen hundred nautical miles between Geneva and Hatay Airport in the southeast of Turkey. The normal flight time for a commercial jet would have been around four hours. The Typhoon, though, was a little faster than that. The pilot took them up to forty thousand feet and then went supersonic, maintaining Mach 1.5 for almost the entire duration of the seventy-minute flight. They passed through a heavy bank of cloud and then emerged into the brightness of the morning, the sky a bright blue and the cloud below a perfect white. The cloud dispersed as they crossed over the Dalmatian Coast, and Pope looked out from the bubble cockpit as Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria and then Turkey rushed below them.