by Chris Ryan
‘Bloody good work, Black,’ the man cut in. ‘Colin Seldon, Chief of SIS. Bixby here will fill you in.’
Danny could almost feel the heat of Buckingham’s outrage. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.
The guy in the wheelchair cleared his throat. ‘Flight BA33489 has made an emergency landing over the Mauritanian desert. That’s classified – word’s already leaking through the press that an aircraft has disappeared over African airspace, and we want to keep it that way. It’s early days, but the bioweapon is on board and it’s looking like a hundred per cent infection rate.’
‘Show them the footage, Bixby,’ the Chief said.
The image on the screen changed. Suddenly they weren’t looking at two spooks in a London office. At first, it wasn’t quite clear what they were looking at. The screen was dark, but with occasional flashes of torchlight. After a few seconds, they saw a figure in a white hazmat suit and rebreather mask. He was walking towards the camera, down what looked like the aisle of an aircraft. The camera panned left. The torch beam illuminated a face: a passenger in an aisle seat. In the brief few seconds that the face was lit up, Danny saw that it was a woman with white skin. Her nose had been bleeding. Her lips were cracked. There were two painful-looking welts on either side of her face, one of them glistening with some kind of discharge. But the worst thing was the expression in her eyes: a chilling mixture of horror and fear.
‘Jesus,’ Danny breathed. An image of Ripley’s blistered, bleeding body flashed in front of his eyes.
The camera panned back to the aisle. By the light of the torch Danny saw rows of passengers extending towards the back of the plane.
Then the screen went black again. The Chief and Bixby reappeared.
‘Is there any hope for them?’ Danny asked.
The Chief and Bixby exchanged a look. ‘None,’ the Chief said.
‘So what happens now?’
‘We’re currently evaluating our options. But if word gets out about this, there’ll be mass panic. The economic implications will be—’
‘Can’t you just make it known you’ve compromised the strike?’
Bixby and Seldon glanced at each other again. ‘We would if we could,’ said the Chief. ‘But we haven’t.’
Danny blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This isn’t over yet,’ Bixby said. ‘Not by a long stretch. It’s looking very likely that flight BA33489 was just a secondary strike, designed to keep our eyes off the main event. What I’m about to tell you doesn’t go beyond ourselves. We’ve credible intelligence of a similar strike at the London Marathon. That’s in approximately forty-eight hours.’
Danny stared at the screen. Then he looked over his shoulder. Tony and Caitlin were standing there, just a metre behind him and in earshot of the briefing. Tony’s jugular was pulsing, but his face remained impassive. Danny couldn’t help thinking that if his missus was about to take part in an event identified as a major terror target, he’d be a bit less calm.
Danny turned back to the screen. ‘It could be a different threat. I bet there’s loads of cells targeting the marathon.’
Bixby shook his head. He stretched out one hand to his own keyboard and the image on the screen changed. It was blurry, but Danny recognised the picture immediately. It was one of the shots he’d taken on the Golden Coral of the storage container where the aerosols had been filled. ‘You see the top edge of the storage container?’ Bixby said. ‘There’s a number there?’
Danny strained his eyes to read it. 2121311.
‘The number’s identical to a serial number on the intel that warned us of an attack on April 26, in two days’ time. We take that to mean there’s going to be a serious attempt at a bio-attack.’
‘Call it off,’ Danny said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The marathon. Call it off. I’ve seen what this bioweapon does to people. If you let it loose in London, you’ll—’
‘Impossible,’ the Chief said. ‘Number Ten will never allow it. There’s an election in a month and it’ll just make the government look weak.’
‘And besides,’ Bixby added, ‘all our modelling suggests that if we call the thing off, it’ll just alert the terrorists that we’re on to them and encourage them to bring the strike forward.’
‘They know you’re on to them already,’ Danny urged. ‘You downed that flight from Lagos.’
‘Don’t be a bloody idiot, Black,’ Buckingham said. ‘That doesn’t mean they know we’ve predicted the main event.’
Much as it pained Danny to admit it, Buckingham was right. But they were fresh out of leads, weren’t they?
Bixby immediately answered that unspoken question. ‘In the last few minutes, we’ve traced a call made from the Golden Coral to a cell phone most likely positioned off the coast of Qatar. Our working theory is that this was the militants making contact with someone on a higher rung.’
‘The Caliph,’ Buckingham muttered.
Danny gave him a sharp look. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that the MI6 man knew the name.
The Chief cut in. ‘Our only hope of stopping this event is by getting our hands on this Caliph before it starts.’
‘But sir,’ Buckingham said, ‘we’ve already been down this line. Nobody will talk about him, they’re too scared.’
‘Tell him, Bixby,’ the Chief said.
‘Buckingham, we’ve just received a communication from your man Ahmed in Doha. He has a number to call in the event he needs SIS assistance. He goes by the handle of codename Murdock. He’s been told to keep his communications obscure, but this is the first time he’s ever made a distress call and he’s obviously very frightened. We’re relaying GCHQ’s recording of the conversation now.’
There was a pause. A crackly hiss came over the laptop’s speakers.
Go ahead, caller.
This is Murdock.
Please hold.
A twenty-second pause, then a new voice came on the line.
Go ahead, Murdock.
He’s killed my parents. He’s going to kill me. You have to help me.
The caller’s voice was trembling. He sounded terrified.
Please try to keep calm, caller. Who are you referring to?
Him . . . him . . . The Cal . . .
The caller checked himself before speaking the word.
I’ll . . . I’ll do whatever you need. To help you catch him, I mean. Otherwise he’ll . . .
Caller, please be discreet.
I have an idea how we can find him . . . I . . . Send Mr Buckingham. Send him quickly . . . I have an idea . . .
The line went dead.
‘Why me?’ Buckingham breathed.
‘Because he recognises you. And in his situation, he’s not going to trust anyone he doesn’t recognise.’
‘I don’t understand his sudden change of heart,’ Buckingham said.
‘Nor do we, and it makes us nervous. Maybe he really is just very frightened.’
‘Have you been able to confirm that his parents have been killed?’ Danny interrupted.
‘Not directly, but we’ve put out some feelers and the Qatari authorities have clamped shut. That’s normally a good indication that something untoward has happened. They’re keeping it quiet for some reason.’
Danny could sense Buckingham tensing up. ‘Sir, surely you don’t actually intend to send me?’
‘That’s exactly what I intend to do, Buckingham.’
‘But sir, what if the Caliph has got to him? What if it’s all a trap?’
‘That’s why Black and his team are going to escort you back to Doha. Immediately.’
‘But sir . . .’
The Chief cut in. ‘Make it count, or a lot of people are going to suffer.’
Danny’s mind was moving quickly as he tried to assimilate this information. Ahmed. Buckingham. The Caliph. Qatar. The spooks on the screen looked desperate. Yesterday they were trying to shaft Danny and his team. Today they were begging for his help again.
>
He leaned into the screen. ‘One more thing,’ he said.
‘Go ahead,’ said the Chief.
‘You’ve been setting us up for a fall ever since we landed in Nigeria. If you think we’re going to take a hit for your fuck-ups, or for his –’ he indicated Buckingham ‘– think again.’
There was a moment’s pause as a flicker of uncertainty crossed the Chief’s face. ‘Your codename is Operation Hellfire. Do your job, Black, and make sure it’s a success,’ he said. Then the screen went blank.
Buckingham turned to Danny. He looked pale. Frightened. But he hadn’t lost his arrogance. ‘You’ve got ideas above your station, Black.’ He looked over at Tony and Caitlin. ‘You should think about how behaviour like that reflects on the rest of your unit. That was the Chief of SIS you just spoke to.’
‘That was a man in a suit. He’ll be replaced by another man in another suit before long.’ Buckingham could play divide and rule all day long. It didn’t matter to Danny.
They exchanged a long glare. ‘You heard the man,’ Buckingham said finally. ‘Do your job. Get ready to leave.’
Danny was already standing up. ‘Make contact with Hereford,’ he said. ‘We need a movement order.’
He walked across the ops room. Dr Phillips, the Porton Down guy, was standing in one corner, his face etched with tiredness and worry. Danny approached him. ‘If there’s a bio-strike in London, how long before the infection spreads to the rest of the country?’ He was thinking of Clara, giving birth in a provincial hospital, which would very likely become a centre of infection if this thing spread out of London. But what could he do? Tell her to leave the country? She’d never do it. Not when she was about to give birth.
‘Impossible to tell,’ Phillips said. ‘A few days. A week at most. But it’s the inhabitants of London that will be in immediate danger.’
Danny narrowed his eyes, nodded, then walked straight to Tony, grabbed his arm and led him out of the ops room.
‘What the fuck . . .’
‘Just walk with me,’ Danny told him.
A minute later they were on deck again, the immense noise of the sea and the grind of the ship’s engines almost drowning out their conversation. ‘Your missus is running the marathon in two days, right?’
Tony nodded.
‘They’ll know that. They’ll be monitoring any communication you make with her. You can’t warn her directly. But she’s going to be right in the middle of this thing if it all turns to shit.’
Tony gave him an impassive stare.
‘I’ll get in touch with Spud!’ Danny shouted.
‘Why would you want to talk to that limping fucker?’
Danny let it pass. ‘He can get a message to Frances. Tell her not to go. The Firm are clutching at straws. If we don’t get direct proof there’s going to be an attack, they won’t stop the race going ahead.’
As Danny spoke, he was aware of movement along the deck. Caitlin had appeared, about fifteen metres from their position. She watched them, her hair blowing in the wind, one eyebrow raised at their sudden secrecy.
‘Nah,’ Tony said, suddenly dead-eyed. ‘You’re okay. Leave it.’
Danny blinked at him in shock and disbelief. ‘What?’ he breathed.
‘You heard me, Black. I said leave it.’ He glanced towards Caitlin, then walked purposefully off in her direction. The two of them headed back to the flight deck where, in the grey light of morning, Danny could see the stealth Black Hawk being wheeled back on to the LZ, a hubbub of Australian naval crew all around it, preparing the aircraft for take-off . . .
TWENTY-ONE
Sir Colin Seldon stared at the blank screen. Danny Black had just called him out, and he felt a strange mixture of irritation and embarrassment.
They had made the call out of the way of the main ops room, in Seldon’s top-floor office overlooking the Thames. Dawn was creeping over the city, which was still illuminated by street lamps and office lights. A few boats shone as they meandered lazily up the Thames. Seldon pictured the streets filled with hundreds of thousands of people – both runners and spectators. What would it take? A handful of nutters among the runners to spray aerosols as they went? They could do it discreetly, without anyone even knowing it was happening . . .
He turned to Bixby, whose head was – as always – leaning listlessly against the cushioned pad, but who was eyeing his boss with an intensity that sometimes unnerved him.
‘We’re chasing shadows, sir,’ Bixby said. ‘The Qatari lead’s too little too late. Danny Black’s right. We should call off the marathon.’
‘We don’t know there’s going to be an attack, Bixby. And if we call off the marathon, you and I are out of a job.’
‘We don’t call off the marathon, we find ourselves in the middle of the worst terrorist strike in history.’
The Chief bowed his head. Bixby noticed that his hand was trembling. ‘Do we have a list of all the marathon runners?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘I want them broken down by race. Start by getting our systems to cross-reference every runner of Qatari origin with any individual already known to us. Once you’ve exhausted the Qataris, move on to the Saudis, then continue to widen the net. Anyone who comes up positive gets a knock on the door.’
‘Racial profiling, sir?’ It was clear from the tone of Bixby’s voice that he didn’t approve.
Seldon gave him a dangerous look. ‘Don’t even start, Bixby . . .’
‘It’s unreliable, sir. It’s a time-suck and a drain on our resources . . .’
‘Just shut up and do what I tell you, Bixby. And do it now.’
Bixby stared at his boss. Then, without another word, he manoeuvred his wheelchair backwards, before spinning it round and heading to the exit. But before he left, he stopped and turned the wheelchair back again.
‘Sir, in the past twelve months we know of at least three hundred British nationals who have left the UK to fight in Syria. What if the person we’re looking for isn’t Qatari, or Saudi, or even Middle Eastern. What if he’s British?’
The Chief flashed back a dangerous look. He was sweating badly. ‘What if he isn’t, Bixby?’ he said. Then he looked towards the door, and Bixby knew it really was time to leave.
The rush-hour traffic around Birmingham was heavy, but Spud weaved expertly in and out of the lines of traffic on his motorbike as he headed in the direction of Dudley. It was a little after nine when he found himself in the car park of the same pub – the Hand and Flower – that he’d been in with Eleanor, facing the minicab office. Nothing would be less covert than standing there with his helmet on, so he removed it. His gamble was that nobody in the minicab office would notice him from this distance. And if al-Meghrani did see him, chances were that at a distance he wouldn’t remember him from yesterday. Unlike Spud, he hadn’t been highly trained in the art of observation.
Time check. 09.37. He stayed astride his bike and kept his attention focused firmly on the frontage of the minicab office. There were three cars parked outside: an old BMW and two Renaults. The same old tramp that he’d seen circling the block and getting increasingly arseholed was there again, a full bottle in his fist, his gait relatively steady. But there was no sign of al-Meghrani’s white VW.
No problem. Spud was prepared to put in the hours.
His mind drifted to Frances, and the night before. He remembered the look in her eyes as she’d drunkenly told him about Tony. There was no doubt that she was scared of him. And he wondered if it was just a figment of his drunken imagination, but was there a patch of bruising under her left ribs? He wouldn’t mind a chat with Tony about that one of these days. Spud wasn’t in the business of righting wrongs, but he didn’t have much time for a guy who knocked his missus around.
Or maybe he had just been seeing what he wanted to see, because he liked Frances and loathed Tony. And maybe he was doing the same thing here, waiting for al-Meghrani. He heard Eleanor’s voice in his mind. You have to understand that we can�
��t afford to chase shadows. We have to make sure we see what’s there, not what we want to be there. He’s just a cabbie, going about his business.
Spud swore under his breath. He’d let his mind wander. And now a white VW had just parked up in the rank outside the cab office. Al-Meghrani was getting out. Spud’s attention snapped immediately on to his target. The driver walked towards the cab office. But he didn’t go in. Instead, he walked past it, and entered the cafe immediately to its right. Spud watched fiercely. His target sat down in the front of the cafe, his face obscured by the ‘L’ of the window lettering advertising lasagne and chips.
Spud swallowed a moment of frustration. If he was here with a team, his next move would be straightforward: send one of them in to keep eyes on al-Meghrani – even get them to engage him in conversation, see what came of it – while the remainder of the unit kept their distance. But he didn’t have a team. There was just him. Entering the cafe was a gamble. Close up, the target might recognise him. His chances of gathering some kind of intelligence, though, were much better if he could get close and listen to his conversations or phone calls. Maybe he could work out his movements, establish a time and place where he could properly corner him . . .
He decided to go for it.
Leaving his bike in the car park, and with his helmet under his arm, Spud crossed the road. Thirty seconds later, he was walking into the cafe. As the smell of fried food hit his senses, Spud knew this was a bad idea. The breakfast rush had finished. Aside from al-Meghrani, sitting by the window, there were only three other punters, and one of them was finishing up a plate of food and looked to be leaving any moment. On the far side of the cafe was a counter with a big tea urn and a balding man in a dirty apron checking his phone. It was very hard to melt into the background.
But Spud was committed now: to turn round and walk out would just bring more attention to himself. He grabbed a copy of the Mirror from a newspaper rack by the door, then took a seat at the table adjacent to al-Meghrani’s, facing him. Distance between them, three metres. A Radio Two jingle played softly from some old speakers on the far wall. Spud placed his helmet on the table, made a cursory study of the greasy laminated menu, then placed his newspaper in front of him.