Close Call (6 page)

‘I am honoured to see you in my house,’ Baakrime began. ‘Sana’a is not a safe place for me to meet you. This is a dangerous time in my country. There is much discontent; the people are unsettled, the country is fragile. There are elements in Sana’a who want to overthrow the government and would like to be able to show we were pawns of the United States. In our desert regions, the jihadi groups have established strongholds. They are in league with groups in other countries and they want to kill us all.’

Miles nodded. ‘Yes. These are disturbed times in the whole of this region.’

‘You asked about weapons,’ the Minister went on. ‘They are everywhere. Where are they coming from? Iran, Pakistan – all the places you would expect.’ He paused to eat some things from the dishes.

‘What do you know of arms from the United States or Europe?’ Miles was anxious to come to the point and get away. In spite of the Minister’s assurances of security, he felt exposed in this place with no backup.

‘My friend, with the arms trade it is always difficult to know the origin. These people are masters at deceit – false invoices, changing documentation while a cargo is en route, and of course there are corrupt officials in every port and so much money to be made. The people who run this trade are very rich indeed – unlike in my country, where the poor are everywhere.’

He sipped his juice and looked at Miles over the rim of his glass.

There was silence. Miles ate some food. He felt sure there was more information to come, but it seemed to need some assistance. ‘Yes. The poor. I hope our contribution helped a little.’

‘Yes indeed, my friend. We are so grateful. But there is so much need.’

Miles felt in his pocket and produced an envelope. ‘Let’s hope this will satisfy some of it,’ he said, placing the envelope carefully on the tray of dishes beside him.

Baakrime began to talk again as though there had been no interruption. ‘Yes. The people who run this trade are very clever at disguising themselves. But I have heard that there is a main middleman for deals from Europe. They call him
Calibre
. His real name is never used. I hear that he is meeting the leader of a group of jihadis or rebels – I don’t know what group or exactly who they are, though I understand they are being funded by al-Qaeda. The meeting is in Paris in the next week or so. It is to arrange a shipment. The delivery will come through Yemeni ports, I hear.’

Miles nodded and waited. His face was calm but he was excited. At last he had something for his money, though it was pretty vague and probably not anything that could be acted on.

But Baakrime had not finished. ‘I will try to find out more about this meeting and if I do my secretary will get a message to you.’ He stopped for a sip of juice. ‘There is one more thing. It is generally thought that the arms that come via this route are for use in Arab countries, and that may be so, but I have heard that the man behind those deals, this
Calibre
, is using someone from England to help with this latest deal. The arms trade is a very tight-knit network, almost like a club, but it seems someone British is applying for membership.’

Chapter 8

It was eight o’clock in the evening and Liz was tidying up the kitchen after her supper. Unusually for her she’d been cooking. Martin was convinced that only French women knew how to cook and she had promised herself that next time he came to London for the weekend she was going to surprise him by producing the perfect soufflé. So she had been practising on herself and this evening she reckoned she’d cracked it. She had just eaten what she considered to be a masterly example – cheese and spinach soufflé à la mode de Carlyle. She was just wondering what to do with the half that remained, asking herself if it would be OK if she heated it up again for tomorrow night, when the phone rang. It was the Duty Officer.

‘Evening, Liz. The Six Duty Officer has just rung with a message for you from Bruno Mackay,’ he said. ‘Would you join him and Geoffrey Fane at Grosvenor tomorrow morning at half past eight for a meeting with Mr Bokus? Apparently something urgent has just come in from Langley. He said you should bring an overnight bag.’

‘Oh thanks,’ said Liz. ‘And did he say what I should put in it? Jeans and a T-shirt, a fur coat or a long black garment suitable for interviewing Arab sheiks?’

‘’Fraid that’s all the message said.’

‘OK. Thanks. I suppose I’ll just have to use my initiative.’

‘Good night then,’ said the Duty Officer cheerily, and rang off.

At quarter past eight the following morning she was walking across Grosvenor Square towards the American Embassy, carrying an overnight bag, when she spotted Geoffrey Fane and Bruno Mackay getting out of a taxi. It was uncanny how similar they looked. Fane, his tall, slim, pinstriped figure, nowadays with a slight stoop that made him look even more heron-like than when he was younger. Bruno, equally tall and slim, equally elegantly clad, though his suit was finely checked rather than pinstriped and the colour lighter than Fane’s navy blue. Bruno’s shock of fair hair and deeply tanned face contrasted with Fane’s pale skin and black hair, but they might have been, if not father and son, at least related. They certainly came out of the same mould.

‘Good morning, Elizabeth,’ said Fane as they all reached the steps up to the Embassy front door together. ‘Glad to see you’ve come prepared,’ he added, glancing at her bag.

‘Good morning,’ she replied, her heart sinking as she noticed that Bruno was carrying a black leather valise. It looked as though wherever she was going, he was going too.

In Andy Bokus’s office in the CIA suite of rooms behind the locked and alarmed steel door in the Embassy, a plate of oversized bagels and cream cheese was set out on the table. ‘Help yourselves to breakfast,’ said Andy, waving his hand at the plate. ‘Coffee’s over there.’

Fane shuddered slightly at the sight of the bagels, and from the corner of her eye Liz caught Bokus’s grin. Liz enjoyed watching Bokus and Fane playing a game with each other. It was a game that neither acknowledged but she suspected both understood. In Fane’s presence Bokus played up his roots as a son of humble immigrants – his grandfather had been a coalminer in the Ukraine and his father had landed on Ellis Island at the age of sixteen with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. Bokus senior had ended up running a gas station in Ohio and making enough to put Andy through college. Andy was bright, or he wouldn’t be where he now was, heading the CIA station in London. But he didn’t like London and he didn’t like most of the Britishers he met. And in particular he didn’t like Fane, who struck him as snobbish, self-satisfied and devious. So to Fane, Bokus presented himself as rather stupid and very uncouth, hence the enormous bagels. Fane responded by shooting his cuffs and adopting an exaggeratedly public school drawl and a patronising manner.

How much of all this psychological drama Bruno was following Liz didn’t know. He was contentedly munching a bagel, seemingly oblivious. But she knew that you could never tell with Bruno.

‘Well, I’ve got things you folks need to know,’ said Bokus. ‘We’ll go down to the Bubble.’  The Bubble was the secure room in the bowels of the basement, purpose-built to foil any attempt at eavesdropping. It always struck Liz as strange and illogical that, as the main threat of eavesdropping in London must come from the British intelligence services, the Agency conducted its most sensitive conversations with the British in their most secure room.

The door of the windowless room closed with a pneumatic hiss behind them and they sat down on padded benches around a central table. The faint hum of the high-frequency-wave baffler had a rather soporific effect on Liz and she hoped that the hastily convened meeting was going to produce something worthwhile.

‘Geoffrey, you and Bruno know something of what I’m going to say, but I’ll just recap for Liz here. We recently sent an officer to Sana’a. He had one objective, to make a quick pitch to a highly placed official who’d been making it pretty obvious to the Commercial Counsellor – a State Department man – both that he was in the arms business and that he could be bought. So we sent young Miles Brookhaven. You all know him from his time here.’ He grinned at Liz; she pretended not to notice. ‘He made a quick pitch and it came good. The guy is now signed up. He’s going to give us stuff on arms supplies going through Yemen, to rebels and jihadis. As you know we’re particularly looking for anything coming out of Europe and the States.’

Fane shifted in his seat, unwrapping his long legs and crossing an ankle over a knee. He clearly found the narrow benches uncomfortable but, more importantly, he couldn’t bear to let Andy Bokus talk for more than a few minutes without interrupting. ‘I mentioned to Elizabeth that you thought young Brookhaven was making progress,’ he said.

‘Yes. He’s done quite well.’ He looked at Liz, ‘You heard he had a rough time in his last posting? Quite badly injured.’

‘Yes. I heard.’ Liz was wondering when he was going to get on to whatever had brought them here.

‘So,’ said Bokus. ‘What he’s got from this new source – we’re calling him
Donation
– is that there is a European arms dealer who is arranging supplies from somewhere in Eastern Europe, the old Soviet Union probably.’ He paused for effect. No one spoke; they all knew there was more to come. ‘We don’t know what nationality the arms dealer is. They call him
Calibre
. But
Donation
says that he’s using someone to help him ship the arms – a transport expert, I guess. And this expert is a Brit.’

‘Are you sure this
Donation
isn’t just telling Miles what he thinks he wants to hear?’ said Liz after a moment. ‘It all sounds a bit too pat.’

‘Wait till you hear the rest,’ said Bokus. ‘He says that there’s a meeting arranged between
Calibre
and a jihadi leader, tomorrow in Paris.’

‘Big city, Paris,’ said Bruno dreamily.

‘In the Luxembourg Gardens,’ Bokus went on. ‘At twelve noon.’

‘So that’s where we’re going,’ said Liz, turning to Bruno.

‘That’s where you’re going,’ he replied with a grin. ‘I’m going to Sana’a.’

Chapter 9

Jean Perlue was excited. He had been in the DCRI, the French equivalent of MI5, for just eighteen months and this was his first real surveillance operation. At the briefing the team had been told that an international arms dealer was going to meet a dangerous jihadi in the Luxembourg Gardens, and that it was vital that both of them were photographed and followed.

So at the age of only twenty-four Jean was engaged in counter-terrorist work of international importance. His instructions were to hang around, just inside the park gates on the Boulevard St Michel, looking natural and merging into the surroundings until he heard the controller, speaking through his earpiece, telling him to move.

But it was a frosty morning and his feet were very cold and he had been in place for more than an hour. He was running out of things to do to look natural. He’d bought a crêpe from the mobile cart parked outside the gates and eaten it slowly; he’d read a copy of
Le Monde
standing up until he knew the front page virtually by heart. Now he was stamping his feet and looking angrily at his watch, for the fourth time, as if he was waiting for a girlfriend who was late. Just as he was wondering what to do next, conscious that the crêpe seller was staring at him, he heard a voice in his ear.

‘We have a possible for
Numéro Un
. Male, Caucasian, about forty-five to fifty, one hundred eighty centimetres, grey/brown hair, brown leather knee-length jacket.’ The voice was Gustave Dolet’s. Jean Perlue knew he was sitting with Michel Vallon in a Renault car parked in the Rue Gay-Lussac with a view of one of the other gates of the Gardens. ‘He’s heading into the Gardens now. Michel is going with him.’

Jean felt his throat constrict as his excitement rose. His cold feet were forgotten, as was the cover of waiting for a girlfriend. He peered eagerly in the direction of the action, hoping desperately that the target would come his way. This was better than a training exercise.

The thought had hardly entered his head when he heard, ‘We have an Arab at the gates. He’s nervous, looking around. I think he may be
Numéro Deux
. Thin, about twenty-five to thirty, white trainers, jeans, navy-blue sweater. He’s in the Gardens now, heading west.’

‘I have him,’ came the hoarse voice of Rabinac. Rabinac had been one of his teachers on the course and had been known by all the students as Mr Croaky. ‘They’re walking towards each other and slowing down. I’ll have to pass them.’

At that moment Jean Perlue, from his post by the Boulevard St Michel gates, saw them. They were walking together now, approaching a park bench. He saw Rabinac walk past as they sat down. Rabinac came on towards Jean and, without giving any sign of recognition, went through the gates, passed the crêpe seller and walked off along the Boulevard.

‘I have eyeball,’ said Perlue into his microphone, his voice rising in excitement. ‘They’re talking. The Arab has a piece of paper and the European is shaking his head. They’re too far away for my camera to get a clear picture. I’ll go closer.’

‘Stay where you are,’ came the urgent voice of the controller. ‘Michel has photographed the targets.’

‘I might be able to see the paper he’s holding if I walk slowly.’