The Afghan

by Frederick Forsyth

  Mr Wei had finished his commission before schedule and was already heading home to his native China. For him it could not have come too quickly. But at least he was on a Chinese vessel, eating good Chinese food rather than the rubbish the sea dacoits served in their camp up the creek.

  What he had left behind he neither knew nor cared. Unlike the Abu Sayyaf killers or the two or three Indonesian fanatics who prayed on their knees, foreheads to the matting, five times a day, Wei Wing Li was a member of a Snakehead triad and prayed to nothing.

  In fact the results of his work were a to-the-rivet replica of the Countess of Richmond, fashioned from a ship of similar size, tonnage and dimensions. He never knew what the original ship had been called, nor what the new one would be. All that concerned him was the bulbous roll of high-denomination dollar bills drawn from a Labuan bank against a line of credit arranged by the late Mr Tewfik al-Qur, formerly of Cairo, Peshawar and the morgue.

  Unlike Mr Wei, Captain McKendrick prayed. Not as often, he knew, as he ought, but he had been raised a good Liverpool–Irish Catholic; there was a figurine of the Blessed Virgin on the bridge just forward of the wheel, and a crucifix on the wall of his cabin. Before sailing he always prayed for a good voyage and on returning thanked his Lord for a safe return.

  He did not need to pray as the Sabah pilot eased the Countess past the shoals and into her assigned berth by the quay at Kota Kinabalu, formerly the colonial port of Jesselton where British traders, in the days before refrigeration, and if they had acquired tinned butter in the monthly drop-off, had to pour it on to the bread from a small jug.

  Captain McKendrick ran his bandanna kerchief round his wet neck once again and thanked the pilot. At last he could close up all the doors and portholes and take relief in the air conditioning. That, he reckoned, and a cold beer would do him nicely. The water ballast would be evacuated in the morning and he could see his log-cargo under the lights of the dock. With a good loading crew he could be back at sea the evening of the next day.

  The two young divers, having changed planes at Kuala Lumpur, were on a British Airways jet for London and, it not being a ‘dry’ airline, had consumed enough beer to send them into a deep sleep. The flight might be twelve hours but they would be gaining eight on the time zones and touching down at Heathrow at dawn. The hard-frame suitcases were in the hold but the divebags were above their heads as they slept.

  They contained fins, masks, wetsuits, regulators and buoyancy control jackets, with only the diving knives in the suitcases in the hold. One of the divebags also contained an as yet undiscovered Malaysian landing card.

  In a creek off the Zamboanga Peninsula, working by floodlights from a platform hung over the stern, a skilled painter was affixing the last ‘D’ to the name of the moored ship. From her mast fluttered a limp Red Ensign. On either side of her bow and round her stern were the words ‘Countess of Richmond’ and, at the stern only, the word ‘Liverpool’ beneath. As the painter descended and the lights flickered out, the transformation was complete.

  At dawn a cruiser disguised as a game-fisherman motored slowly up the creek. It brought the last two members of the new crew of the former Java Star, the ones who would take the ship on her, and their, last voyage.

  The loading of the Countess of Richmond began at dawn when the air was still cool and agreeable. Within three hours it would return to its habitual sauna heat. The dockside cranes were not exactly ultra-modern but the stevedores knew their business and chained logs of rare timber swung inboard and were stowed in the hold below by the crew that toiled and sweated down there.

  In the heat of midday even the local Borneans had to stop and for four hours the old logging port slumbered in whatever shade it could find. The spring monsoon was only a month away and already the humidity, never much less than ninety per cent, was edging towards a hundred.

  Captain McKendrick would have been happier at sea, but loading and the replacement of the deck covers was achieved at sundown and the pilot would come aboard only in the morning to guide the freighter back to the open sea. It meant another night in the hothouse so McKendrick sighed and again found refuge in the air conditioning below decks.

  The local agent came bustling aboard with the pilot at six in the morning and the last paperwork was signed. Then the Countess eased away into the South China Sea.

  Like the Java Star before her, she turned north-east to round the tip of Borneo, then south through the Sulu Archipelago for Java, where the skipper believed six sea containers full of eastern silks awaited him at Surabaya. He was not to know that there were not, nor ever had been, any silks at Surabaya.

  The cruiser deposited its cargo of three at a ramshackle jetty halfway up the creek. Mr Lampong led the way to a longhouse on stilts above the water that served as a sleeping area and mess hall for the men who would depart on the mission that Martin knew as Stingray and Lampong as Al-Isra. Others in the longhouse would be staying behind. It was their labours that had prepared the hijacked Java Star for sea.

  These were a mix of Indonesians from Jemaat Islamiya, the group who had planted the Bali bombs and others up the island chain, and Filipinos from Abu Sayyaf. The languages varied from local Tagalog to Javanese dialect with an occasional muttered aside in Arabic from those further west. One by one Martin was able to identify the crew and the special task of each of them.

  The engineer, navigator and radio operator were all Indonesians. Suleiman revealed that his expertise was photography. Whatever was going to happen his job, before dying a martyr, would be to photograph the climax on a digital radio camera and transmit via a laptop computer and satphone the entire datastream for transmission on the Al-Jazeera TV network.

  There was a teenager who looked Pakistani, yet Lampong addressed him in English. When he replied the boy revealed he could only have been British-born and -raised but of Pakistani parentage. His accent was broad English north country; Martin put it as coming from the Leeds/Bradford area. Martin could not work out what he was for, except possibly as cook.

  That left three: Martin himself clearly granted his presence as the personal gift of Osama bin Laden; a genuine chemical engineer and presumably explosives expert; and the mission commander. But he was not present. They would all meet him later.

  In the mid-morning the local commander Lampong took a call on his satellite phone. It was brief and guarded, but enough. The Countess of Richmond had left Kota Kinabalu and was at sea. She should be coming between Tawitawi and Jolo Islands around sundown. The speedboat crews that would intercept her still had four hours before they need leave. Suleiman and Martin had changed from their western suits into trousers, flowered local shirts and sandals that had been provided. They were allowed down the steps into the shallow water of the creek to wash before prayers and a dinner of rice and fish.

  All Martin could do was watch, understanding very little, and wait.

  The two divers were lucky. Most of their fellow passengers were from Malaysia and were diverted to the non-UK passport channel, leaving the few British easy access to immigration control. Being among the first down to the luggage carousel, they could grab their valises and head for the nothing-to-declare Customs hall.

  It might have been the shaven skulls, the stubble on the chins or the brawny arms emerging from short-sleeved flowered shirts on a bitter British March morning, but one of the customs officers beckoned them to the examination bench.

  ‘May I see your passports, please?’

  It was a formality. They were in order.

  ‘And where have you just arrived from?’

  ‘Malaysia.’

  ‘Purpose of visit?’

  One of the young men pointed at his divebag. His expression indicated it was a pretty daft question, given that the divebags bore the logo of a famous scuba-equipment company. It is, however, a mistake to mock a customs officer. The official’s face remained impassive but he had in a long career intercepted quantities of exotic smoking or injecting material coming in from the Fa
r East. He gestured to one of the divebags.

  There was nothing inside but the usual scuba gear. As he was zipping the bag back up, he ran his fingers into the side pockets. From one he drew a folded card, looked and read it.

  ‘Where did you get this, sir?’

  The diver was genuinely puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.’

  A few yards away another customs man caught the rising tension, indicated by the exemplary courtesy, and moved closer.

  ‘Would you remain here, please?’ said the first, and walked through a door behind him. Those ample mirrors in customs halls are not for the vain to touch up their make-up. They have one-way vision and behind them are the duty shift of one of the arms of British internal security – in this case Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.

  Within minutes both divers, with their luggage, were in separate interview rooms. The customs men went through the luggage fin by fin, mask by mask and shirt by shirt. There was nothing illegal.

  The man in plain clothes studied the now unfolded card.

  ‘It must have been put there by someone, but not by me,’ protested the diver.

  By now it was nine-thirty. Steve Hill was at his desk in Vauxhall Cross when his private and very unlisted phone rang.

  ‘To whom am I speaking?’ asked a voice. Hill bristled.

  ‘Perhaps I should ask the same question. I think you may have a wrong number,’ he replied.

  The MI5 officer had read the text of the message stuffed into the diver’s kitbag. He tended to believe the man’s explanation. In which case . . .

  ‘I am speaking from Heathrow, Terminal Three. The internal security office. We have intercepted a passenger from the Far East. Stuffed into his divebag was a short handwritten message. Does Crowbar mean anything to you?’

  To Steve Hill it was like a punch in the stomach. This was no wrong number; this was no crossed line. He identified himself by service and rank, asked that both men be detained and said that he was on his way. Within five minutes his car swept out of the underground car park, crossed Vauxhall Bridge and turned down the Cromwell Road to Heathrow.

  It was bad luck on the divers to have lost their whole morning, but after an hour’s interrogation Steve Hill was sure they were just innocent dupes. He secured for them a full with-trimmings breakfast from the staff canteen and asked them to rack their brains for a clue as to who had stuffed the folded note into the side pocket.

  They went over everyone they had met since packing the bags. Finally one said: ‘Mark, do you remember that Arab-looking fella who helped you unload at the airport?’

  ‘What Arab-looking fellow?’ asked Hill.

  They described the man as best they could. Black hair, black beard. Neatly trimmed. Dark eyes, olive skin. About forty-five, fit-looking. Dark suit. Hill had had the descriptions from the barber and the tailor of Ras-al-Khaimah. It was Crowbar. He thanked them sincerely and asked that they be given a chauffeured ride back to their Essex home.

  When he called Gordon Phillips at Edzell and Marek Gumienny over breakfast in Washington, he could reveal the scrawl in his hand. It said simply: ‘IF YOU LOVE YOUR COUNTRY, GET HOME AND RING XXXXXXXXXXX. JUST TELL THEM CROWBAR SAYS IT WILL BE SOME KIND OF SHIP.’

  ‘Pull out all the stops,’ he told Edzell. ‘Just scour the world for a missing ship.’

  As with Captain Herrmann of the Java Star, Liam McKendrick had chosen to bring his vessel round the various headlands himself and hand over after clearing the strait between the islands of Tawitawi and Jolo. Ahead was the great expanse of the Celebes Sea, and the course directly south for the Strait of the Makassar.

  He had a crew of six: five Indians from Kerala, all Christians, loyal and efficient, and his first officer, a Gibraltarian. He had handed over the helm and gone below when the speedboats swept up from astern. As with the Java Star, the crew had no chance. Ten dacoits were over the rails in seconds and running for the bridge. Mr Lampong, in charge of the hijack, came at a more leisurely pace.

  This time there was no need for ceremony or threats of violence unless instructions were obeyed. The only task the Countess of Richmond had to perform was to disappear, with her crew and for ever. What had lured her to these waters in the first place – her valuable cargo – would be a total write-off, which was a pity but could not be helped.

  The crew were simply marched to the taffrail and machine-gunned. Their bodies, jerking in protest at the unfairness of death, went straight over the rail. There was not even any need for weights or ballast to send them to the bottom. Lampong knew his sharks.

  Liam McKendrick was the last to go, roaring his rage at the killers, calling Lampong a heathen pig. The Muslim fanatic did not like being called a pig and made sure the Liverpudlian mariner was riddled but still alive when he hit the sea.

  The Abu Sayyaf pirates had sunk enough ships to know what to do. As the bilges began to flood below the cargo the raiders left the Countess and bobbed on the water a few cables away until she reared on her stern, bow in the air, and slid backwards to tumble slowly to the bottom of the Celebes Sea. When she was gone the killers turned and raced for home.

  For the party in the longhouse in the Filipino creek it was another brief call on a satphone from Lampong out at sea that triggered the hour of departure. They filed down to the cruiser moored at the foot of the steps. As they went Martin realized that the ones being left behind were not showing any sense of relief, but only a deep envy.

  In a career in special forces he had never actually met a suicide bomber before the act. Now he was surrounded by them, had become one of them.

  At Forbes Castle he had read copiously of their state of mind; of their total conviction that the deed is being done in a truly holy cause; that it is automatically blessed by Allah himself; that a guaranteed and immediate passage to paradise will ensue; and that this vastly outweighs any residual love of life.

  He had also come to realize the depth of hatred that must be imbued in the shahid alongside the love of Allah. One of the two alone will not work. The hatred must be like a corrosive acid inside the soul, and he was surrounded by it.

  He had seen it in the faces of the dacoits of Abu Sayyaf who relished every chance to kill a westerner; he had seen it in the hearts of the Arabs as they prayed for a chance to kill as many Christians, Jews and secular or insufficient Muslims as possible in the act of death; most of all he had seen the hatred in the eyes of Al-Khattab and Lampong, precisely because they sullied themselves in order to pass unnoticed among the enemy.

  As they chugged slowly further up the creek, the jungle closing in on every side and beginning to shut out the sky above them, he studied his companions. They all shared the hate and the fanaticism. They all counted themselves more blessed than any other True Believers on earth.

  Martin was convinced that the men around him had no more clue than he exactly what the sacrifice would entail; where they would be going, to target what, and with what.

  They only knew, because they had offered themselves to die, and been accepted and carefully selected, that they were going to strike at the Great Satan in a manner that would be spoken of for a hundred years. They, like the Prophet so long ago, were going on a great journey to heaven itself; the journey called Al-Isra.

  Up ahead the creek split. The chugging cruiser took the wider branch and round a corner a moored vessel came into sight. She was facing downstream, ready to depart for the open sea. Her deck cargo was apparently stored in the six sea containers that occupied her foredeck. And she was called the Countess of Richmond.

  For a moment Martin toyed with the thought of escaping into the surrounding jungle. He had had weeks of jungle training in Brunei, the SAS’s tropical training school. But he realized as soon as the thought crossed his mind that it was hopeless. He would not make a mile without compass or machete and the hunting party would have him within the hour. Then would come days of unspeakable agony as his mission details were wrenched out of him. There
was no point. He would have to wait for a better opportunity if one ever came.

  One by one they climbed the ladder to the deck of the freighter: the engineer, navigator and radio man, all Indonesians; the chemist and photographer, both Arabs; the Pakistani from the UK with the flat northern accent, who it turned out was there in case anyone should insist on speaking to the Countess by radio; and the Afghan, who could be taught to hold the wheel and steer a course. In all his training at Forbes, in all the hours of studying faces of known suspects, he had never seen any of them. When he reached the deck the man who would command them all on their mission to eternal glory was there to meet them. Him the ex-SAS man did recognize. From the rogues’ gallery he had been shown at Castle Forbes he knew he was staring at Yusuf Ibrahim, deputy and right-hand man of Al-Zarqawi, his homicidal fellow-Jordanian.

  The face had been one of the ‘first division’ in the gallery he had been shown at Castle Forbes. The man was short and stocky, as expected, and the stunted left arm hung by his side. He had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and his left arm had stopped several shards of shrapnel during an air attack. Rather than accept a clean amputation he preferred to let it hang, useless.

  There had been rumours that he had died there: not true. He had been patched up in the caves, then smuggled into Pakistan for more advanced surgery. After the Soviet evacuation he had disappeared.

  The man with the withered left arm reappeared after the 2003 Coalition invasion of Iraq, having spent the missing time as chief of security in one of the AQ camps under Taliban rule.

  For Mike Martin there was a heart-stopping moment in case the man recognized Izmat Khan from those Afghan days and wished to discuss it. But the mission commander just stared at him with black-pebble expressionless eyes.