Fair Game (11 page)

Crazy Boy shook hands and waved at the sofa opposite the fireplace, the one where the hooker had been lying. The bodyguard had followed al-Zahrani into the room but had stayed in the doorway, his hands clasped over his groin, watching through impenetrable sunglasses.

Al-Zahrani sat down and crossed his legs. He looked around the room. ‘You have a lovely home,’ he said.

‘Can I offer you a refreshment?’ asked Crazy Boy. ‘There is tea, or coffee, juice.’

‘Tea would be much appreciated, thank you,’ said al-Zahrani.

Crazy Boy gestured with his chin for Two Knives to go to the kitchen. ‘Some cake, and fruit,’ Crazy Boy said in Somali. Two Knives nodded and left the room.

‘You are not what I expected,’ said Crazy Boy, settling back in the sofa.

‘You heard I was a Saudi and you expected a man in a dress and a towel on my head? Should I have expected you to be wearing a grass skirt because you are from East Africa?’

Crazy Boy chuckled. ‘You are right, of course.’

Al-Zahrani waved a languid hand along the buttons of his jacket. ‘In England I wear a suit and I belong, or at least I look as if I belong. No one can tell if I am a citizen or not. I could be a banker, a judge, a politician, a businessman, no one would know. But if I wear the
thawb
and
keffiyeh
then I am immediately marked as an outsider and treated as such.’

‘Camouflage,’ said Crazy Boy.

‘Exactly,’ said al-Zahrani. He carefully adjusted the creases of his trousers. ‘I am grateful for you allowing me into your home. I had hoped that we could have met in my hotel but I gather that was not possible.’

‘I have been very busy,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘There is much happening in my life.’

‘So I understand. But at least now we can talk. You do business with Sameer Haddad, do you not?’

Crazy Boy shrugged. ‘I do business with a lot of people.’

‘But you buy arms from only a few. And Sameer is one of the most amenable and trusted of arms dealers in the Yemen. He is a friend of mine, and I mention it only so you know that I too can be trusted.’

Crazy Boy’s eyes narrowed. ‘When I do business I assume that the business I do remains confidential.’

‘It is a small world, and secrets are difficult to keep at the best of times. But rest assured, Sameer did not go into specifics.’

‘And what is your business, may I ask?’

Al-Zahrani smiled and shrugged. ‘I have fingers in many pies,’ he said. ‘I move money around for people who are too busy to do it themselves, I take care of problems, I facilitate deals.’

‘You are a middleman?’

‘You could say that, Simeon. Or you could say that I have friends in high places.’

‘And where would these friends be? Yemen?’

‘I have friends in Yemen, yes. I have friends all across the Middle East. That is why I am so successful at what I do.’

‘If you’re here to ask me to stop what I’m doing in Somalia, you are wasting your time,’ snapped Crazy Boy. ‘The West has depleted our fishing stocks, used our sea as a dumping ground for its waste, treated our country as if we are less than nothing. The West owes us for what it has taken from us, and the only way to get what is owed is to take it. We take only a small fraction of what sails by our coast and it is our right.’

Al-Zahrani waited until Crazy Boy had finished speaking, then he slowly smiled and steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘You Somalis have a saying, do you not? “Dogs understand each other by their barking, and men by their words.” You and I are men. More than that, we are Muslim men. We can talk like men, can we not?’

Crazy Boy nodded, accepting the point. ‘I apologise, brother. I should have allowed you to have spoken first.’

Al-Zahrani’s smile widened. ‘I appreciate that, brother,’ he said. ‘But let me ask you something before I tell you what is on my mind. My question to you is, are you a good Muslim?’

‘Of course,’ said Crazy Boy.

Two Knives returned with a silver tray on which there were two glasses of tea, a plate filled with orange segments and another plate with slices of lemon cake. He held the tray out to al-Zahrani, who took a glass of tea but waved away the cake and fruit. Two Knives put the tray down on the coffee table and then went to sit on one of the wing chairs by the window, where he stared at al-Zahrani’s bodyguard.

Al-Zahrani smiled at Crazy Boy. ‘And as a good Muslim you follow the five pillars of our faith?’

‘Without a shadow of a doubt,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘
Shahada
,
salat
,
zakat
,
sawm
and
haj
.’

There were five things that every Muslim had to do to proclaim his faith.
Shahada
was to declare one’s faith to the world,
salat
was prayer, which every true Muslim did five times a day,
zakat
was the giving of alms, whereby Muslims gave at least a fortieth of their income to the poor and needy,
sawm
was fasting, which every Muslim did during the month of Ramadan, and
haj
was pilgrimage to Mecca, which every Muslim had to do at least once in his lifetime.

‘That is what all good Muslims do, and praise to you for that, but a true Muslim has to do more, does he not? A true Muslim has to fight to defend his faith. As a Somali you more than anyone must be aware of that.’

‘The Americans,’ said Crazy Boy.

‘Not just the Americans. The infidels, the infidels that think they have the right to impose their beliefs and values on our countries, on our people. These days it is not good enough just to follow the five pillars. A good Muslim, a true Muslim, has to do more.’

Crazy Boy nodded slowly. ‘What you say is true,’ he said. ‘But if you know anything about me, you would know that I have already done more than most.’

‘You are referring to Ahmed Abdi Godane, are you not?’

Crazy Boy’s breath caught in his throat. He was sure that no one knew of his involvement with Ahmed Abdi Godane.

Al-Zahrani waved a languid hand. ‘Please do not worry, Simeon, the information was passed to me in confidence and I am a man who guards his secrets jealously. I mention his name only so that you can assess my credibility. Your contributions have been well received and they will be long remembered.’

‘So what is it you want me to do now? Am I being asked for more money?’

‘Money we have in abundance, Simeon. What I want is for you to be a good Muslim, a true Muslim. And to do that you have to help us.’

‘Who?’ said Crazy Boy. ‘Who am I helping?’

‘The Lion Sheikh,’ said al-Zahrani. ‘The man the Crusaders seek but cannot find. The Prince in the Cave. It is he who seeks your help and I am but his messenger.’

Shepherd let himself into his flat and switched on the lights. He tossed the jacket of his suit on to a chair and took off his tie, then went through to the kitchen and took a can of Carlsberg out of the fridge, courtesy of Damien Plant. The MI5 dresser had stocked the fridge with food from the local Marks and Spencer and had thrown in half a dozen cans of beer and two bottles of Frascati for good measure. He poured the lager into a glass and went through to the sitting room. There was a Sky Plus box under the television and Shepherd grinned when he switched on the set and discovered that he’d been given the full Sky Sports package. It made sense because Oliver Blackburn wasn’t married and didn’t have a girlfriend.

He picked up his regular mobile and called his home in Hereford. Katra answered and she told him that Liam was out playing football with his friends. Shepherd promised to call back and returned to the kitchen. He took out a cottage pie, tossed it into the microwave and sipped his lager as he waited for it to heat up.

It had been his first day at the freight company and it had been one of the most unhappy experiences of his life. It had started badly with an early morning Tube journey to Hammersmith, crammed into a stuffy carriage with dozens of other workers who all seemed as miserable as he felt. The office was a short walk from Hammersmith Tube station. The company had two floors of a modern building, and the managing director had a corner office on the upper floor. His name was Clive Wallace and he was about Shepherd’s age and clearly resentful that Shepherd had been foisted on him. After a quick chat he’d handed Shepherd over to a much more pleasant office services manager, Candice Malone. She was in her late twenties with long blonde hair and a model’s walk, wearing a very short skirt and very high heels. She showed Shepherd to an office on the lower floor after giving him a quick tour, then showed him how to access the employee files on the office computer network. She was warm and had an infectious laugh and Shepherd found himself liking her after just a few minutes, which was unsettling as she was one of the suspects on Button’s list.

The floor was mainly open-plan with some twenty desks surrounded by waist-high dividers, though on one side were a line of glass-sided cubicles with frosted-glass doors. Shepherd’s was in the middle, and from his desk he could see pretty much everyone sitting outside. It didn’t take him long to realise that work wasn’t a high priority at the firm, and if he really had been an efficiency consultant he’d have happily recommended that the workforce be cut in half.

Of the twenty men and women in the main office area, eight were smokers and every hour they would all troop outside for a ten-minute cigarette break. The non-smokers appeared to compensate for the lack of smoking breaks by taking regular trips to the kitchen area, where there were tea- and coffee-making facilities. Even when they were at their desks, a large part of the day was spent chatting to colleagues or making personal calls. There was one man, overweight with a shaggy mane of unkempt hair that was peppered with dandruff flakes, who clearly spent most of his time watching pornography on his computer, because every time anyone walked by his cubicle he would hurriedly hit a button to clear his screen.

Every now and again Shepherd would take a walk around the office and more often than not he would see people with Facebook or YouTube on their screens or playing games. But just because someone wasn’t working hard didn’t mean that they were passing information to a group of Somali pirates, and Shepherd knew that he needed to dig deeper if he was going to identify the mole.

He’d spent the afternoon sifting through the personnel files, looking for clues, but couldn’t find any red flags. The next step would be to start interviewing the members of staff individually, and it wasn’t something that he was looking forward to.

The microwave pinged and at the same time his mobile rang. It was Liam. ‘Homework done?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Will be soon,’ said Liam.

‘You should do your homework before playing football,’ said Shepherd.

‘That would mean staying out later, though, Dad. This way I’m home before it starts to get dark.’

Shepherd smiled to himself. His son was becoming quite the manipulator since reaching his teens.

‘Where are you?’ asked Liam, and Shepherd’s smile widened as he realised that his son was using one of Shepherd’s own staple techniques – whenever under pressure, change the subject if you can.

‘London.’

‘When are you coming home?’

‘Friday night,’ said Shepherd. ‘And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve changed the subject.’

Liam sighed. ‘Dad, it’ll take me twenty minutes to do tonight’s homework.’

‘Exactly. So you could have done it before you went out.’ He closed his eyes as he realised what a nag he was becoming. ‘Anyway, no problem, just get it done now. Have you had your dinner?’

‘Katra’s cooking now,’ he said. ‘Slovenian meatballs.’

‘How are they different from regular meatballs?’

‘Katra says that they taste better,’ said Liam. ‘So what are you working on?’

‘Boring stuff,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m in an office, mainly.’

‘But you’re undercover, right? You’re always undercover.’

‘Yes, but it’s very boring.’

‘So who’s the bad guy?’

Shepherd laughed. His son was as good at asking questions as he was at avoiding answering them. ‘It’s a fraud thing,’ he said. ‘Very boring. So you get your homework done and I’ll see you on Friday night.’

‘Dad, what about boarding school?’

‘I’m working on it. I’m still looking at websites and stuff.’

‘But in principle, you’re OK with it?’

‘If it’s what you really want, I don’t see why it’d be a problem,’ said Shepherd. ‘But it’s a question of finding the right school. And we’ll have to look at the finances. It’s expensive, you know that, right?’

‘I know that, Dad. But thanks, yeah.’

Shepherd ended the call and went back to the kitchen to retrieve his cottage pie. As he sat down in front of the television with his microwaved meal and his lager he suddenly missed his son a lot. He had to fight the urge to call him back. Instead he tried to concentrate on a match between two North of England teams, neither of which he had any interest in rooting for.

Two Knives watched on the monitor as al-Zahrani and the bodyguard climbed into the Bentley. Sunny came down the stairs cradling a pump-action shotgun. ‘Everything OK, brother?’ he asked.

‘Everything is just fine,’ said Crazy Boy. He took a handful of khat leaves and chewed them as he walked over to stand behind Two Knives and watch the CCTV monitor. The Bentley reversed away from the gates and headed down the road. ‘Put the gun back in the attic and send the hookers home.’

‘OK if I do them first?’ asked Sunny.

Levi’s came out of the study, a Glock in his hand. ‘Me too, yeah? That blonde is hot.’

‘Help yourself,’ said Crazy Boy, his eyes on the screen. ‘Just put the guns away first. And don’t hurt them, the agency gives me grief if we send them back damaged. No marks, you hear me?’

Sunny headed back upstairs. ‘What do you think?’ asked Two Knives, nodding at the monitor. ‘What he wants us to do, you really OK with it?’

Crazy Boy shrugged. ‘One hand washes the other,’ he said. ‘We help them, they help us.’

‘What they want, you know what it means?’

‘I’m not stupid.’

‘They’re dangerous people.’