by Chris Ryan
‘We need to get our Regiment assets back out to the Nigerian coast,’ the Brigadier cut-in. ‘Our only hope of stopping this situation from escalating is to stop the vectors at source.’
Seldon exchanged a look with the Foreign Secretary over the computer screen. ‘Our intention was to have your people flown back to the UK tonight, Jeremy.’
‘I bet it was,’ said the Director Special Forces.
‘I really don’t know what you mean.’
‘Spare me, Sir Colin. We have two excellent Regiment men in Danny Black and Tony Wiseman on the ground, and they need to be left to do their job, not dumped on from a great height. And be under no illusion that if this situation does escalate, I shall make it known that it was you who opposed the deployment of the only people in a position to make a positive identification of Mr Chiu, or whatever his name really is. Do we understand each other?’
A frosty stare between the two men. ‘Perfectly,’ said the Chief.
‘Good.’ The Brigadier stood up. ‘My understanding is that there’s an Australian SAS team on piracy patrol in international waters off the Nigerian coastline. They’ll have the necessary equipment for a waterborne assault, if need be. I’ll make arrangements for our unit to transfer there. We need all agencies to focus their attention on locating Mr Chiu’s position, and direct any findings through to the ops room at Hereford.’
A nervous cough from the screen that displayed Buckingham’s face. ‘Brigadier, I’m sorry, the line is a little crackly. Did you say, Danny Black?’
‘Problem with that?’ the Brigadier asked.
‘Not at all. Just . . . just curious.’
The Brigadier gave him a dismissive nod. ‘Let’s get moving,’ he said. ‘This could blow up in our faces any second.’
He turned his back on the spooks, and left the room. As he did so, Tessa Gorman said: ‘I need to update the PM.’ Her screen flickered and went black.
Seldon glanced towards Buckingham’s face. ‘I’ll need the room, Bixby,’ he said. The analyst looked slightly offended, but he reversed his electric wheelchair and wheeled himself out without complaint. The Chief shut the door behind him, and only then did he address Buckingham again. ‘This Regiment man, Black,’ he said. ‘Do you know him?’
A shadow passed Buckingham’s face. ‘Oh yes, Sir Colin,’ he said, ‘I know him alright.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘A liability, sir. Hot-headed, impetuous, thinks he’s above the law – I really can’t understand why the Brigadier thinks so highly of him.’
Seldon waved one hand to shut him up while he thought for a moment.
‘You’re ambitious, Buckingham,’ he said finally. ‘I can see that.’
‘We all like to get on, Sir Colin.’
‘A bioterrorism attack is our worst nightmare. We haven’t got a hope in hell of stopping it. Heads are going to roll when it happens. Ours, to be precise.’ Buckingham’s face stared impassively out from the screen. ‘I want you to join the Regiment unit on this Australian ship. MI6 liaison. I’ll make the necessary arrangements with my Saudi counterpart immediately to get you out there. We can spin it that you’re now following the same lead, the Caliph. If Black puts a foot wrong, I want to know about it. You understand why?’
There was no need to spell it out loud: that when the time came for dishing out blame, they certainly would need the scapegoat to which the Brigadier had referred.
‘I understand perfectly, Sir Colin,’ Buckingham said. ‘Don’t worry about Danny Black. I know how to deal with him.’
‘I bloody well hope so,’ the Chief said. ‘All our necks depend on it.’
He nodded at the screen, then left the room.
SIXTEEN
‘Call sign Bravo Nine Delta, this is Zero Alpha. Do you copy?’
‘This is Bravo Nine Delta. Go ahead.’
‘Your instructions are to remain in position until nightfall. A bird will be along to pick you up and transport you to an Australian Navy frigate in international waters.’
‘Do you know where Chiu went?’
‘We’re working on it. Be prepared for a waterborne assault tonight. You’re the only ones who can make a visual ID of this guy, so you’ll need to lead the assault. Get some rest.’
The radio fell silent. Tony snorted. ‘Get some rest?’ he said. ‘Where do they think we are, the fucking Ritz?’
Danny checked the time. 08.37 hrs. ‘We haven’t slept for forty-eight hours,’ Danny said. He looked around. Smoke was still rising from the isolation zone. The sun was already hot. ‘We’ll round up the others,’ he said. ‘Dig in till nightfall. Get some shut-eye.’
‘What about him?’ Tony looked at the dead body of Jihadi Jim lying in the passenger seat of the Range Rover.
Danny sneered, then opened the door, yanked the limp corpse out of the vehicle and threw it to the ground. ‘There’ll be some wild animals when we’ve gone,’ he said. ‘They could do with a decent meal.’
Tony gave an appreciative nod. It looked like for once they’d found something they could agree about.
‘You sort out Caitlin and the Paras,’ Danny said. ‘I’ll get the Porton Down guys together. We’ll head a couple of hundred metres back into the vegetation. That should keep us clear of any of those Boko Haram cunts who come sniffing about.’
‘Agreed,’ said Tony. The two men started running away from the vehicle, back towards the centre of Chikunda.
11.30 hrs, GMT.
Spud had joined up because he wanted to see the world. He hadn’t really had the arse end of Dudley, just outside Birmingham, in mind. The sun was out, and it was unseasonably warm, but even under a blue sky it was a shit hole here.
He was sitting behind the wheel of Eleanor’s nondescript Renault Laguna, courtesy of the Firm’s car pool, in the car park of a pub called the Hand and Flower. It was situated opposite a busy roundabout and had a big placard outside advertising two meals for a fiver. Spud could have eaten those two meals himself, but food wasn’t on the agenda. They were parked up here because this position gave them a direct view of the Park Lane Minicabs office opposite the car park.
‘I thought you said he’d been operating without a licence,’ Spud had said as they were flooring it up the M1.
‘Well remembered,’ Eleanor had replied as she adjusted her hijab in the mirror of her sun visor. Spud had decided she was one of those women who couldn’t help patronising you. ‘After the police picked him up, he got himself one. Nice and legal, pays his taxes – which is why we know where he works.’
And that place was Park Lane Minicabs, whose office comprised a tiny glass frontage plastered with two telephone numbers in huge white lettering. There was a launderette on one side and a cafe on the other, with prices of its specials – lasagne and chips, apple crumble – painted on the front window. At this time of day, between breakfast and lunch, only the launderette seemed busy. Three saloon cars were parked up on the kerb outside, and through the window of the cab office Spud could see three or four guys hanging around, smoking cigarettes.
‘So what now?’ Spud asked.
Eleanor frowned. ‘I guess we wait for him to arrive, and when he does we go in and ask specifically for him to take us somewhere,’ she said.
Spud gave her an amused look. ‘Great idea. Because that won’t seem weird to him at all, two strangers picking him out by name.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. If you’ve got a better idea . . .’
‘Watch,’ Spud interrupted her. He pointed towards the cab office. A woman was walking in with a couple of bags of heavy shopping. Thirty seconds later, she walked out again accompanied by one of the men from inside. He opened the boot of one of the saloon cars, packed away the shopping, then opened the rear passenger door to let the woman in, before pulling out into the traffic and driving off.
‘Am I supposed to have just seen something?’ Eleanor asked.
‘They’ll be on a rota,’ Spud said. ‘The next fare will go to
the cab driver that’s been waiting the longest. We need to keep surveillance on the cars parked outside. When – if – our man turns up, we wait until we know he’s next in line, then we go in and ask for a cab. We don’t have to mention him by name at all.’
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. She looked as if she was trying to find fault with Spud’s strategy. ‘Alright,’ she said reluctantly. ‘We’ll do it your way.’ She handed him a photograph. Just an ordinary-looking Middle Eastern guy with neat hair in a side parting and a brown leather jacket. ‘Think you’ll recognise him?’
Spud, who had spent more of his life than he cared to think about conducting detailed surveillance, nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ll recognise him. How about I put a bit of pressure on the fucker to talk once we’re in the back of his vehicle?’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Eleanor said. ‘I’ve already told you, I’ll do the talking.’
‘Right,’ Spud said. ‘So I guess you just ask him if he’s best mates with a major international terrorist?’
‘No,’ Eleanor said with exaggerated patience. ‘I ask him some carefully considered questions that will help me make an informed decision about whether he’s a threat or not. Remember, I’m a Muslim. He’ll trust me much more than he’ll trust you.’
Spud shrugged. ‘You’re the boss,’ he said, and he looked at the photograph again. If he was going to put in surveillance on the cab firm, he needed to commit his target’s features to memory.
13.35 hrs. London.
Daniel Bixby’s wheelchair trundled across the operations room in the bowels of the MI6 building: a large space, filled with computer terminals, satellite phones and three large screens – each of them nine or ten square metres – showing real-time black and white satellite images of the Nigerian coast.
He went through the variables in his head again. The intel from the SAS team on the ground told them that Mr Chiu, or whatever his name really was, had left their location by car at approximately 13.00 hours the previous day. Unless he’d managed to get on an aircraft – and Bixby didn’t think that was likely because they had a man in Nigerian air traffic control who had provided them with flight data for the past twenty-four hours – the analysts’ best estimate was that it would take him twelve hours to get back to Lagos, which took them to 01.00 that morning. So Bixby had had almost his entire staff poring over satellite imagery stills from midnight to right now, searching for a needle in a haystack: a tiny passenger boat – probably no bigger than a RIB – heading out to sea to RV with a larger vessel.
He looked up at the large screens. Little dots, slightly lighter than the grey ocean, were just visible. There was no getting away from it: the waters were crowded. There had to be at least 150 vessels in the 100 square kilometres off the Lagos coast, and there was no way to be sure that their target would be on any of them. Bixby was perspiring heavily. He didn’t see how they would ever find their man.
One of his subordinates strode up to him. ‘Mr Bixby, we’ve been through everything. There’s no sign of what we’re looking for.’
Bixby swore.
‘But we think the Americans might have separate imagery of the same area over the same time frame. I’d like permission to contact Langley to see if they’ll share that information.’
Bixby thought for a few seconds. Strictly speaking he should clear this with the Chief. But Seldon was acting strange. Stressed. Probably the pressure. Bixby decided to make the call himself, and deal with the fallout later.
‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Call the Americans. I want everything they’ve got, as quickly as they can send it.’
14.00 hrs
Eleanor’s all-nighter had caught up with her. She was asleep in the passenger seat, breathing heavily, her body occasionally twitching. Spud kept his eyes on the cab firm, as he had done for the past two and a half hours. There were now only two cars parked outside: a black Peugeot estate and a metallic green Honda.
A shabby old tramp swayed past the cab firm, carrying a bottle of Thunderbird. That was the fourth time Spud had seen him. He passed every forty-five minutes. Ordinarily, a regular appearance like that would ring alarm bells. But Spud could see that the level of liquid in the bottle was decreasing each time, and the tramp’s gait was increasingly erratic. Now, a young mum with a kid in a pushchair and another in the oven came in the opposite direction. She wrinkled her nose and avoided the tramp. Spud was satisfied that he was nothing but an old wino circling the block.
A third vehicle pulled up. It was an old white VW, its side panel slightly dented. Spud watched the driver climb out. As soon as he caught sight of his face, he nudged Eleanor. ‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘Your man’s here.’
Eleanor started. Her eyes pinged open and she looked around as though she didn’t know where she was.
‘Over there,’ Spud said.
Kalifa al-Meghrani wore a shapeless tan-coloured leather jacket, and dark woollen gloves. He was clean-shaven and his black hair was neatly combed. He had some kind of shoulder bag over his left shoulder.
‘There’s two cab drivers ahead of him,’ Spud said. ‘We wait till the Peugeot and the Honda have gone, then we move in.’
It didn’t take long. After three minutes a young couple entered the cab office and were ferried away by the Peugeot. A minute after that, the Honda pulled out into the traffic without a passenger – Spud assumed the driver was on his way to carry out a telephone booking.
‘Go,’ he said, as the vehicle pulled away. He and Eleanor alighted from their Renault and crossed the road. Seconds later they had entered the cab office. It was a cramped, dingy little place. A couple of threadbare seats along one side and an enormous, laminated map of the Birmingham area on the wall. There were only two people in there: the controller behind the desk, and al-Meghrani himself.
‘Cab to the Bullring, please,’ Eleanor said. Spud found himself double-taking: she had exaggerated a Middle Eastern accent that she didn’t have in real life. He almost found himself smiling at her subterfuge.
The cab driver looked them up and down. Hardly a surprise: they must have looked a strange couple. But he didn’t seem suspicious. ‘Alright, babs, follow me,’ he said in a very pronounced Birmingham accent. He nodded at his controller, then led the way to the car. Spud stood back to let Eleanor go first, then followed her out on to the pavement.
‘You go round the other side,’ he breathed. He wanted to make sure he was sitting directly behind their man. In the absence of a weapon, he’d have to make do with the driver’s seatbelt if anything went wrong.
Once they were installed into the back seat, and al-Meghrani had dumped his shoulder bag on the front passenger seat, he started the car. ‘Rocket Man’ by Elton John played softly from the radio and he turned it up a fraction as he pulled out into the traffic. ‘I blimmin’ love this song,’ he announced to his passengers, and as he accelerated along the road he started humming along.
Eleanor gave Spud a sidelong glance. A glance that said: how many terrorists do you think listen to Elton John?
Spud just kept his eyes fixed on the back of the cab driver’s head.
‘Have you been busy?’ Eleanor asked.
‘What’s that, love?’
‘Have you been busy?’
‘Oh, yeah, crazy busy. Don’t you know it’s gonna be a long, long time . . .’
‘I suppose you get some time off over Ramadan,’ she said.
‘Not really, babs.’
‘How come?’
‘Lots of cabbies take time off over Ramadan. More work for the rest of us. Got to earn a living, you know.’
Eleanor pursed her lips disapprovingly. Spud had to hand it to her: her performance was a fucking masterclass. He saw the cab driver glance at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘You don’t approve?’ he said quietly.
Eleanor shrugged and looked out of her window. ‘Either you obey the Qu’ran,’ she said, ‘or you don’t.’
The cabbie frowned. He killed the radio, cutting off Elton
in mid-song. ‘You’re not one of those crazy ones, are you?’
‘What do you mean?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Some of the Muslims round here, they want to go off and fight stupid wars. Some of the other cabbies, they’ve got badges for that Islamic State in their cars. You one of those crazy ones?’
‘Maybe they’re not so crazy,’ Eleanor said.
The cabbie looked at her over his shoulder. There was no doubt about it: his expression was one of disgust. He slammed the radio back on and turned it up much louder than it had been. Elton John had given way to One Direction, but the cabbie didn’t sing along this time. He accelerated on to a busy ring road and started overtaking wherever he could. It was obvious what he wanted to tell them: I don’t like what you’ve just said, and I want you out of my car.
It took fifteen uncomfortable minutes to get to the centre of Birmingham. Al-Meghrani pulled up in a cab rank outside the Bullring. ‘Seventeen pounds,’ he said.
Eleanor handed him twenty. ‘Keep the change,’ she said. But the cabbie made a big show of finding the three quid – he fumbled a little because of the woollen gloves he was wearing – and handing it back to her. Eleanor shrugged again, then stepped out of the car. Spud did the same, and the cabbie pulled out again immediately he’d slammed his door shut.
‘I think that went pretty well, don’t you?’ Eleanor said.
Spud watched the cab disappear into the traffic.
‘Coffee?’ Eleanor said. They were standing outside a McDonald’s, and she pointed towards it.
Spud nodded. Two minutes later they were sitting at a small table in the window, their conversation drowned by the noise of the busy restaurant.
‘You’re a good actress,’ Spud said.
‘Why, thank you.’ She fluttered her eyelashes at him.
He looked at her over the brow of his polystyrene cup as he took a sip of scalding hot coffee. ‘You should consider al-Meghrani a person of interest,’ he said quietly.
She blinked. ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’