by Ed Grace
“You didn’t just watch people die.”
“You’ve watched lots of people die, Jay.”
Jay went to smash the receiver against the wall, but managed to restrain himself.
“So did you know?”
“No, we did not know.”
“Liar.”
“Jay, we can talk about this later. In case you hadn’t realised, we are busy. So, if you are okay, I will have to go.”
“Wait.”
He hesitated, regretting being so aggressive.
He let his breathing settle, repressed the bad thoughts, and spoke, his voice low and calm.
“Bring me in,” he said.
“What?”
“Bring me in. I want to help.”
“You’re a wanted man, Jay.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m afraid it does. In fact, you shouldn’t even be talking to me while I’m here.”
“It doesn’t matter. If you want to do something about this, then you know I’m the right man.”
“Jay—”
“I am better than anyone you have at MI5. Bring me in.”
“I am not about to admit that I am sleeping with someone on the UK’s most wanted list. I’m glad you are okay.”
“Fine, I’ll go down to the bar on Benton Street. Drink myself stupid. That’s the best use for me, isn’t it?”
“Goodbye, Jay.”
The line went dead.
Sullivan leant against the wall of the phone box and slid to the ground. He remained on the floor, barely moving.
In fact, if it weren’t for the steam on the glass caused by his heavy breathing, people walking past might have thought he was dead.
Southend, United Kingdom
EIGHT YEARS AGO
Chapter Eight
At fifteen years old, Zain wasn’t what you would call a lad. Nor was he what you would call a petulant teenager, or even a rogue youngster.
He was a faithful son, appreciating all that his parents had done for him. After emigrating from Syria when he was just a baby, they had created a home where Zain would be safe and established themselves as trusted doctors.
His father had always wanted Zain to pursue medicine like he had, but Zain knew he wasn’t smart enough. And that was okay. The main thing his father wanted for Zain, or so he said, was happiness.
Only, happiness was something Zain struggled to find. It wasn’t a high grade on his exams, it wasn’t something he could work for, nor was it something he could buy in a shop.
His friends — who were what you would call lads, petulant teenagers, and rogue youngsters — all told him that he’d find happiness in being one of them. He believed them.
Which meant he also believed them when they told him he should carry a knife. That this place wasn’t safe for people like them.
This wasn’t for fear of being mugged, or of mistreatment by the police who seemed to bother his friends more than they needed to be bothered.
This was for fear of a group of men who called themselves Paki-Bashers.
Zain hadn’t quite believed there was such a thing, at first. I mean, what would be the point? A group of white guys who run around, attacking ethnic minorities with fists and knives. It felt far-fetched.
But this was part of Zain’s problem, even though it was something his mother had always found so endearing — he was naive, and desperately so. He saw the best in people. Through his timid nature, he avoided confrontation, and believed that if you just let people be, then they would let you be. Sure, there were probably guys going around and starting shit with those they labelled ‘Pakis’ — but so long as he didn’t interfere with them, they would have no reason to turn their aggression on him. His friends could be a bit confrontational themselves. They were hardly innocent in all this.
Besides, he wasn’t even a ‘Paki.’ He had Syrian origins, not Pakistani — so if these groups of people were, indeed, as they were termed, Paki-Bashers, then they would have no reason to interfere with someone with Syrian roots.
But all of this changed that summer. It was the middle of the holiday, in the sweltering heat of August, and he and his friends were at the local park. Some of them drank, some of them smoked weed, but he just enjoyed the company.
“Bruv, I could get any girl from school,” Fahad was saying. “All I have to do is slide up to them and be like… what’s up?”
Fahad moved smoothly up to another one of their friends and nudged them with a wink. They all laughed, Zain especially. He didn’t necessarily agree with what Fahad was saying, but he found him amusing. A lot of people might think he was a bit of a dick, but he was the one who made friends with Zain and brought him into the group. He and Fahad were not particularly alike, but they understood each other, and a friendship like they had is rare.
“Did you see that Tiffany girl, she was peng,” Fahad continued. He went to continue, but something caught his attention, and he froze.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
Zain turned to see what Fahad was staring at.
Across the park was a group of guys, probably a few years older than them, charging around the corner, wearing bomber jackets over tracksuits. Most of them had shaved heads. Most of them were shouting stuff Zain couldn’t hear. But all of them, without any exception, had a look on their faces that made Zain panic. It was animalistic, somewhere between a snarl and a growl.
“Let’s get out of here,” one of his friends said.
“Nah, I ain’t leaving,” Fahad said, taking a knife from his pocket.
Zain panicked. He’d been worried, but now, seeing this knife, he was terrified.
“Fahad…” he said, cautiously.
“Just go, cuz.”
The rest of the crew ran. Zain joined them, then stopped, noticing that Fahad was not running.
“Come on, Fahad!” Zain shouted.
“I ain’t going nowhere, fam,” Fahad said, standing strong, standing tall.
There were easily eight of them approaching, and some of their shouts were now becoming audible.
“Get off our fucking patch you fucking pakis!”
“No Shariah law in our country!”
“Get the fuck out of here!”
Come on… Zain urged Fahad.
The rest of the group had left the park, but Zain remained, still yet manic, frantic yet motionless. He was edging toward the exit of the park, but unable to leave without Fahad.
“Fahad!” he shouted. “Let’s go!”
Fahad either didn’t hear him, or he ignored him.
“Come on!”
Zain heard crying in his voice.
He backed away, seeing the group approach Fahad.
“What the fuck do you want?” Fahad said. “Eh? What the fuck do you want?”
He held his knife out, but it did nothing. He was surrounded.
So many people were in this park, enjoying the lovely day, yet none of them did anything. No one intervened, no one tried to pull the gang away, no one said a thing. The bravest of the voyeurs stood and watched. The rest packed up their picnic and blankets and got the hell out of the park.
Zain noticed one person on their phone, and hoped they were dialling 999.
He wanted to leave the park, but he couldn’t. They had surrounded Fahad until Zain could see nothing of his friend, but he could see the punches and the kicks the group were throwing, and he could see that some of them had knives.
Sirens were heard in the distance, and the group seemed to panic. Then the sirens passed. They were clearly not for them, but this was still enough to startle the group. They dispersed, running back in the direction they’d arrived, and had disappeared in seconds.
Fahad was on the floor. He wasn’t moving.
All the onlookers did nothing.
Zain ran to Fahad’s side, fell to his knees, noticing a large amount of blood coming from Fahad’s side. He placed his hands over the blood, trying to stop the flow, like he’d seen done in movies.
> But there was another flow of blood coming from further up the body. And another one on the leg.
He tried to cover them also, but he hadn’t looked in Fahad’s eyes.
If he had, he’d have noticed they weren’t moving.
He kept trying to cover the wounds in hope it would save him. He wasn’t sure how long he did this for, but eventually a police officer put his arms around Zain’s chest and pulled him away.
Later on, the policeman would tell him there was nothing he could have done, and that Fahad had already been dead before Zain got to him.
Zain wouldn’t listen to a word this policeman said.
London, United Kingdom
NOW
Chapter Nine
“This is Umar Nasim,” Toby said, pointing at a picture taken from CCTV of a nineteen-year-old boy, walking across The Regent’s Park toward Camden Market, minutes before the attack. “We believe that he was the suicide bomber.”
“Where’s he from?” asked Jameson, sitting next to Kelly at the head of the table, with their team spread across either side.
“Birmingham.”
“I mean, before that. Where did he emigrate from?”
“Nowhere, he was born in Birmingham. His parents are Bangladeshi, but have lived here for over twenty-five years. He was seen walking into an empty shop an hour before the attack. He was with Huzaifa Nasim, his father, and a known member of Alhami, Naji Qadir.”
“Have we got a run-down on Naji Qadir and Huzaifa Nasim?” asked Kelly.
“Not yet.”
“What are we waiting for?”
A man to her left said, “I’m on it,” then left the room.
“This is Azeer Nadeem.” Toby indicated the picture of another man. “He is believed to be the head of Alhami, and the one who organised the attack. He is also the registered owner of the vacant shop Umar left just before the attack.”
“So why weren’t we monitoring him?” asked a woman toward the front, scribbling away at her notepad. Kelly felt mildly annoyed at her interruption, but it was a relevant question — it was MI5’s job to follow suspected terrorists.
“He’s in HMP Brenthall,” Toby said. “A prison made up of category A and B wings. With him locked up, our intelligence was that Alhami were dormant.”
“That’s bloody stupid,” grunted Jameson. “Someone should still have been monitoring him. Who was doing that?”
Everyone stared at him, but no one spoke.
“Well?”
“I was, sir,” said a man a few faces down. “I monitored all of his communications and had no reason to suspect him of planning an attack. It was my recommendation that he wasn’t worth pursuing.”
“Have you ever been to a prison in this country?”
“No, sir.”
“But you are aware of the prison crisis this country is currently facing, yes?”
“Not entirely, sir.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Seeing Jameson’s anger bubbling, Kelly took over.
“Being in prison means nothing,” she said. “Most prison inmates have phones on them. We may have monitored his communications, but we won’t have monitored any secret phones we do not know about.”
“Having looked into this,” Toby interjected, “we have discovered that Azeer is sharing a cell with one of his generals, Hasim Nadal.”
“How the fuck did that happen?” barked Jameson.
“I — well — the prison officers don’t know, do they?”
“It’s true,” Kelly reassured Jameson. “They won’t know, and prisoners ask to share cells with certain people. They’d have no reason to say no.”
“They said in their video that there are two more attacks coming,” said Toby, “and he is our primary way of knowing where they are. We believe that he only revealed Camden Market as the target yesterday — not even the suicide bomber knew where he was going until then. It seems Azeer does not tell anyone of the target until twenty-four hours before an attack.”
“Could we arrest him?” said another subordinate. “Interrogate him?”
“Are you an idiot?” said Jameson.
Again, seeing Jameson’s frustration, Kelly took over. “We can’t arrest him. He won’t talk if we do, and we’ll just give away what we know.”
“That’s the thing I can’t get my head around,” Toby said, unsurely. “He was one step ahead of us the whole time. How did he do this without us even getting a sniff of it?”
Kelly and Jameson looked at each other. She knew he was thinking the same thing as she was — that Azeer Nadeem had known what intelligence they had.
This could only mean one thing:
Someone in that room was a traitor.
Someone had ensured that no one knew of this attack.
Kelly glanced from one face to the other, all of which were staring back at her. Each person there had been hand-selected by her and Jameson. Each had worked hard for the cause, made huge sacrifices, and helped ensure many terrorist attacks had been prevented.
It would be nearly impossible to know which one of them had done all of that for show.
“Everyone leave,” Jameson said decisively. “Now.”
The sounds of chairs creaking and sliding across the floor followed. They shuffled out without a word, and Kelly and Jameson were left alone.
“We have a leak,” Jameson said.
“It looks like it.”
“We can’t trust any of them.”
Jameson stood, hands in his pockets, and wandered to the window.
Kelly watched him, considering the impact of this. Who knew how much this leak had revealed, or how far they had infiltrated MI5.
Their next move was going to have to remain between her and Jameson, which complicated things. They couldn’t run a full operation with just two of them.
“So what do we do?” Kelly said. “We could split up Azeer and his cellmate, or…”
She had a thought.
“Or what?” Jameson said.
“Or we could leave them there.”
“So they can organise the next attack?”
“The next attack will come either way, but we know they are discussing the attacks, which gives us an advantage.”
“Are you suggested we plant someone in the prison with them?”
“Yes. Put them in the cell next to them, get them to record their conversations and transmit it to us somehow. If they are speaking Arabic, I can translate it.”
“It’s a good plan, there’s just one problem.”
“What?”
Jameson folded his arms. Leant against the windowsill.
“If we can’t share this plan with anyone, then who do we get to do it?”
Kelly went to answer, but didn’t. She considered this.
“We can’t trust anyone here,” Jameson said, “and we can’t do it, for fear that someone in there may recognise us. We have no one who can blend in.”
He was right. They were going to have to use someone outside of MI5. It would have to be someone they could trust.
But who could they trust?
Who could they rely on?
Who would even be capable of doing this?
Kelly, of course, knew exactly who to suggest, but was afraid to do so.
It may not go down well, but this was not a time for thinking about how she came across — it was a time for making decisions for the greater good.
And the best man for a job was currently sitting at a bar on Benton Street, drowning his sorrows in drink.
She paused, took a deep breath, looked down, and said, “I know someone.”
Chapter Ten
“You are fucking him?” shouted Jameson.
“Would you calm down?”
“Do not tell me to calm down! Never tell me to calm down! Are you a bloody idiot?”
“Henry, please.”
“Don’t please me! Jay Sullivan is on the UK’s most wanted list. He is an incredibly dangerous man. Do you know how many people
he’s murdered?”
“He was forced into it.”
“What?”
“He was brainwashed and manipulated by our government. He’s a victim really.”
“A victim?” Jameson threw his arms in the air and turned around, landing his hands on his hips. “A fucking victim? A man who has killed at least 200 people is not a victim, he is a serial killer.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Which I am damn grateful for.”
“He’s the best option.”
“I can’t believe you even…”
Jameson turned back to the window.
He wasn’t sure he had ever been so angry. Kelly was his partner. Had been for ages. He’d overseen her promotion himself, and he had huge respect for her — yet, here she was, fucking a guy the secret service were after.
Did she even know anything about Jay Sullivan?
Jameson had read his file a few years back, when Sullivan absconded and Jameson’s curiosity took him. He may have killed many people for the good guys, but he had killed many of the good guys after that. Whilst there was no arguing that the training the Falcons had put him through was brutal, it was no excuse for betraying your country.
Although, as Jameson knew from his experience, such things were rarely as simple as good guys and bad guys. In fact, sometimes the good guys could be real arseholes.
He dabbed his forehead. He was sweating. He took his blazer off, threw it on a chair, and turned back to Kelly, who was staring at him. She was a strong and resilient woman, and had no problem standing her ground, but right now she looked as if she was being told off by a father for kissing the bad boy at school.
His breathing settled. His heart raced a little slower. He felt himself beginning to calm down, and as he did, a sense of rationality entered his thoughts.
He was not pleased with Kelly, but this may be their only option.
Could they trust a man like Sullivan?
And what of his bosses — what would they say when he told them they were using a man they were hunting so desperately?