Fair Game (5 page)

‘That explains it,’ she said. ‘Anyway, funding worries aside, can you come to London day after tomorrow? I’ll get an office fixed up near Paddington.’

‘No problem,’ said Shepherd.

‘And at some point you’re going to have to have a chat with Caroline Stockmann.’

‘Because of what happened over the water? I already told you I don’t need to see a shrink. I’m sleeping just fine, no guilt, no flashbacks, no remorse. If I had to do it again I wouldn’t hesitate. No post-traumatic anything.’

‘I’m glad to hear that, but you’re overdue your six-monthly psychiatric evaluation,’ she said. ‘I’ll get her to give you a call.’

‘I’ll count the minutes,’ said Shepherd.

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Button. ‘That’s the sort of behaviour that might get you red-flagged on a psychiatric evaluation.’

Shepherd caught the last train of the morning to London. The office that Button had arranged for their meeting was above a Chinese restaurant in Queensway, a ten-minute walk from Paddington Station. On the way he stopped off at a Starbucks and bought himself an Americano and a breakfast tea for her.

He deliberately walked past the door at the side of the restaurant and then stopped suddenly to look in the window of a shop selling tacky souvenirs and check that he wasn’t being tailed. When he was satisfied that no one was following him he doubled back and pressed the button for the second-floor office. The locking mechanism buzzed and he pushed it open.

There was a pile of mail on the other side of the door and a rack on the wall where there had once been a fire extinguisher. The stair carpet on the lower flight of stairs was torn in places but there was no carpet at all on the upper section, just bare boards that were cracked and chipped and which squeaked with every step that he took.

Button opened the door for him and smiled when she saw that he was holding two Starbucks cups. He held one out to her. ‘English breakfast tea,’ he said.

‘You’re such a sweetie,’ she said. She nodded for him to sit down and closed the door. It was a nondescript office with a large teak desk that was bare, except for her briefcase and a Newton’s Cradle with chrome balls, and a matching empty bookcase. There were white plastic blinds over the window and a cheap plastic sofa facing a square coffee table on a threadbare carpet.

‘Salubrious,’ he said, looking around.

‘It was the best safe house I could find at short notice,’ she said. She was wearing a blue blazer over a white and blue checked dress and her chestnut hair was an inch or so shorter than when he’d last seen her in Belfast. ‘MI5 does have a particularly nice office in the British Museum but I thought you’d be happier being closer to Paddington.’

Shepherd took off his coat and sat down on the sofa. Button picked up her briefcase, pulled over a wooden chair and sat down opposite him. She clicked the double locks of her case, opened it and took out an A4 manila envelope.

‘How much do you know about pirates?’ she said, opening the envelope.

‘Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum?’

‘Not so much Long John Silver, more Somalis in the Gulf of Aden.’

‘Holding ships for ransom and making a mint, from the sound of it.’ He frowned. ‘But East Africa is a bit out of MI5’s manor, isn’t it?’

‘Turns out it’s a bit closer to home,’ she said, pushing a couple of surveillance photographs across the table. One was a close-up of a short, stocky man in a hoodie, his head down as he spoke into a mobile phone; the other was of the same man but wearing a Chelsea shirt and climbing into the back of a large Mercedes. ‘This is Wiil Waal, or “Crazy Boy”. His real name, in as much as Somalis have real names, is Simeon Khalid.’ She put down a close-up of the man’s face. ‘He’s twenty-four but looks older.’

Button slid out another photograph and pointed at a mugshot of a black man in his forties, his face pockmarked with old acne scars, his nose squashed flat against his face. ‘This is his elder brother, Abshir. He was taken by security forces in northern Somalia in 2010 and is behind bars awaiting trial. He was one of the founders of the new wave of Somali pirates, a particularly nasty piece of work, and an Islamic fundamentalist. He’s worth in excess of twenty million dollars but the US have got most of it. The Treasury Department targeted him a while back and have been freezing his assets wherever they can find them. The family business was taken over by one of Crazy Boy’s uncles.’

She put two more photographs on the table, surveillance pictures of a group of half a dozen hard-faced men in a skiff, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. She tapped the face of one of the men, in his late forties with two gold front teeth and a thick scar across his chin. ‘This is the uncle. He runs things out in Somalia but since Abshir was taken into custody Crazy Boy has been pulling the strings from here. The uncle’s name is Blue.’

‘Blue?’

Button shrugged. ‘Somalis are big on nicknames. His has something to do with his skin colour being so black that he’s gone beyond black and blue. I think you’ve got to be Somali to get it. Anyway, so far as we know, he doesn’t do anything without checking with Crazy Boy first. We think Crazy Boy plans the operations, funds them, then repatriates the profits and washes them through his businesses here.’ She gestured at the surveillance photographs of Crazy Boy. ‘He came to the UK about four years ago. And you’ll like this, he lives in Ealing. Not far from your old house.’

‘Small world,’ said Shepherd. ‘Why Ealing?’

‘There’s a very large Somali population there now, and in Southall. It probably has something to do with the proximity to Heathrow.’

‘The airport?’

‘More specifically, the khat leaves that Somalis like to chew. It has to be eaten fresh and there are supplies coming in every day to Heathrow. Ealing is close to the airport so the Somalis there are guaranteed the freshest leaves. The fresher they are the better the buzz, apparently.’

‘And this khat isn’t illegal?’

Button shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘It is in some countries but not in the UK. The principal ingredient is an amphetamine-like stimulant and the World Health Organisation has classified it as a drug of abuse. You’ll see Somalis chewing it as naturally as smoking a cigarette.’

‘I don’t remember seeing that many Somalis when I lived in Ealing.’

‘There’s been a huge increase in the last few years, but even so they tend to keep to themselves. The women are at home most of the time and the men go to their own social clubs. They don’t mix much. The number of Somalis in the area has probably trebled since you moved to Hereford.’ She tapped the photograph. ‘Crazy Boy has the brains of the family, it seems. He bought himself passage across Europe and into the UK, slipped through in the back of a truck from Calais with half a dozen genuine asylum seekers.’

‘And got asylum, presumably.’

‘He was on track,’ said Button. ‘He had false papers and a top immigration lawyer.’

‘But Five must have known who he was, right?’

‘Not then,’ said Button. ‘He came in under the radar. We knew that he’d left Somalia but no one knew where he’d gone. And to be honest, even if we had known there wouldn’t have been much we could have done. We didn’t have his DNA or fingerprints so all he had to do was to stick to his story and he’d get asylum.’

‘The world’s gone crazy, Charlie. You’re telling me a Somali pirate can just waltz into the UK and end up with a British passport?’

‘It’s not as simple as waltzing, but most of Somalia is a war zone so any Somali who can get into the UK is pretty much assured of asylum status.’

Shepherd sat back. ‘Like I said, the world’s gone crazy. And why the UK? Presumably they all pass through Europe, why don’t they claim asylum there?’ He held up his hand. ‘Don’t tell me, it’s because we’re a soft touch and because once they hit British soil they can claim a free house and full benefits.’

‘Actually Crazy Boy did apply for and received benefits while his application was processed, even though we believe he had access to overseas funds of the order of ten million dollars. He obviously couldn’t touch that because it would have blown his application.’

Shepherd shook his head in disgust.

‘If it makes you feel any better, he dropped his asylum application two years ago.’

Shepherd frowned. ‘But he’s still in the UK? How come?’

Button tapped another photograph, this one of Crazy Boy with an overweight black woman with dreadlocks holding a baby that had been wrapped in a multicoloured cloth. ‘He married this woman. Haweeya Bergman. A German national. She fled Somalia in 2002 and married a German who had British citizenship too. She got a British passport and a German one, divorced him and moved to the UK. When Crazy Boy married her he got British citizenship and German citizenship. The baby she’s holding is Crazy Boy’s. A son. The son was born in Britain so getting Crazy Boy out of the country is now nigh-on impossible.’

‘The woman, how old is she?’

‘Thirty-nine.’

‘And Crazy Boy is twenty-four, you said.’

‘That’s right. Your point is?’

‘Well, forgive me if this is sexist and ageist, but she’s a fair bit older than him and with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, so I don’t see how anyone can think it’s a love job.’

Button feigned dismay. ‘Spider, the courts have to take people at their word. If they say they want to be together until death do them part, then who are we to pour scorn on their choices?’ She grinned. ‘It’s as clear as day that he married her for the passport, and had the child because that gives him extra security. But the simple fact is that he’s now in the UK to stay. He’s brought in several million pounds, he’s purchased a large house in Ealing and he’s set up two restaurants in the area, along with a Somali shop and a café. He’s also active in the
gar
system.’

‘
Gar
?’

‘Somali criminal courts, where judgement is handed down by the community elders. Crazy Boy is unusually young to be running a
gar
but after several elders died or ended up in intensive care, he was invited on board. In his area of Ealing he effectively functions as judge and jury, holding sway over several thousand Somalis.’

‘So if he’s a legitimate businessman and happily married father, what’s Five’s interest?’ asked Shepherd.

‘I didn’t say anything about him being legitimate,’ said Button. ‘His businesses are almost certainly money-laundering fronts and he’s continuing to run the family’s piracy operations out in Somalia. He sends money out to fund the pirates and brings back the profits. He runs a gang that also deals in drugs, mainly marijuana, but we think he also imports coke and heroin through Somalis in Amsterdam. But our interest is because there are terrorism considerations. Serious considerations.’

She took another surveillance photograph out of the envelope, this one of a tall black man wearing desert fatigues and cradling an AK-47, his face half masked by a black and white checked scarf. There were half a dozen other men similarly attired standing around him.

‘This is Ahmed Abdi Godane, the leader of Somalia’s al-Shebab movement and an al-Qaeda stooge. He’s based in northern Mogadishu and he’s a nasty piece of work. He’s effectively created an African Taliban and he’s been issuing fatwas against everything from televised football to pop music. He moved into the major league during the World Cup when he organised two massive suicide bombings in Kampala. He’s directly responsible for seventy-six Ugandans dying for no reason other than the fact there are Ugandan peacekeeping troops in Somalia. All our experts reckon that he’s gearing himself up for a major attack on the West.’

‘And the UK connection?’

Button tapped the photograph again. ‘We have evidence of telephone traffic between Godane and Crazy Boy’s uncle just days before the attacks in Kampala.’

‘They could have just been talking about the match,’ said Shepherd.

Button flashed him a tight smile. ‘We don’t know what they were talking about, but the mere fact that they are in contact sends up a lot of red flags. We’re looking now for financial movements between the pirates and al-Shebab and if we find them, then we’ve opened up one hell of a can of worms.’

Shepherd nodded slowly. ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘If Godane blows up a US embassy in Africa and the Americans find out that the UK has given citizenship to the man who paid for it . . .’ He grimaced. ‘It’s going to screw up the special relationship, isn’t it?’

‘There is no special relationship, not any more,’ said Button. ‘That’s the problem. If Crazy Boy is funding al-Shebab terrorism, then yes, we’re going to look bloody stupid if we’ve given him a passport. The last thing we want is for the Americans to be pushing for extradition while Crazy Boy gets defended by a pack of human rights lawyers.’

‘Led by our own Cherie Blair, no doubt.’ Shepherd laughed. He held up his hands as Button glared at him. ‘OK, I shouldn’t be flippant, but it’s hard not to be cynical, isn’t it? How the hell do we allow this to happen? How do we get to the stage where a Somali pirate with al-Qaeda connections is able to live in the UK? Why don’t we just sling him out?’

Button tapped the photograph of the woman and child. ‘His family,’ she said. ‘And human rights legislation.’

‘But he lied to get into the country. He said he was an asylum seeker when he wasn’t. Then he switches horses midstream and marries a Somali woman with German nationality and gets her pregnant despite the fact that she’s ugly as sin and twice his weight.’

‘It’s the law,’ said Button.

‘But at any point Five could have told the UK Border Agency or the Home Office who he is and had him sent home.’

‘Five doesn’t work like that, Spider,’ said Button. ‘We don’t reveal our files to immigration tribunals.’

‘I think a quiet word in the right ear might have helped, don’t you?’

‘And then a lawyer starts demanding to know where information about his client came from? That would be a can of worms that we wouldn’t want opening.’

‘We still have D notices, don’t we?’

‘Not for criminals, we don’t. For terrorism and national security, yes. But not for criminals like Crazy Boy.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘I understand exactly what you’re saying, Spider. And I’m in total agreement. But we have to follow the law. If we start bending or breaking laws simply because we don’t agree with them, where do we end up?’