Payback (15 page)

Jackson glanced at him. ‘You could find yourself chasing rather more than one wild goose out here, I’m afraid.’

‘You want to explain that?’

‘This car’s clean, so I suppose it’s as good a place as any to give you an initial briefing. First, I take my orders from Langley, not from Vauxhall Cross, and I’ve been
working here as an exchange officer with the local SIS people for about eighteen months. Somebody, somewhere, obviously must have thought it was a good idea.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘It’s a job, I guess, but I’m not too wild about the Middle East, and Arabs aren’t my favourite people.’

‘Nor mine, but don’t tell anyone that.’

‘OK, that’s me. Now, one of our contacts in the Special Intelligence Service – that’s more or less Bahrain’s secret police force – has an informer who
believes Osama bin Laden is currently a patient in a local hospital.’

It was a few moments before Richter managed to reply. ‘Is this somebody’s idea of a bad joke?’

Jackson shook her head. ‘Not as far as I’m aware. To the best of our knowledge, the sighting was genuine. We passed the information back to Vauxhall Cross, and they presumably
decided you were the ideal man to investigate it.’

‘I’ll bloody kill Simpson,’ Richter muttered. ‘Every credible report that’s crossed my desk for the last six months has suggested that bin Laden is either dead or
still skulking around the Pakistani–Afghan border region. How the hell is he supposed to have checked himself into a hospital here?’

Jackson explained what they knew about ‘Sheikh Rashid’ and his arrival in Bahrain by private jet.

When she’d finished, Richter shook his head. ‘I don’t doubt this Filipino cleaner is genuine in what he thought he saw, but it must be a misidentification. He saw this man for
a matter of a few seconds, and not even full-face.’

‘You’re probably right,’ she sighed. ‘So what do you intend to do?’

‘I’ll talk to my section, not that it’ll do any good. Then I’ll check it out, I guess. I mean, there probably
is
about a one in a million chance bin Laden might
have slipped through the net.’

Jackson eyed him curiously before returning her attention to the road. ‘OK, now
I’ve
got a question. You just said “your section”, but I assumed you were from
Vauxhall Cross?’

Richter shook his head. ‘No, I don’t work at Legoland, I’m pleased to say. My employer is a short, balding, bad-tempered ex-mandarin who heads a small unit tucked away in the
backstreets of Hammersmith. Officially, it’s a research and investigation section affiliated to the SIS. In reality, we get given the dirty little jobs that the people at Six don’t want
to risk soiling their aristocratic hands with.’

‘Like this one, you mean?’

‘Exactly like this one.’

‘OK, I see. Well, the first step is for you to meet Evans, as this is his operation, not mine. We’ve checked you into the Sheraton Hotel. I presume that’ll be OK?’

Richter had a sudden mental picture of the expression he was likely to see on the cashier’s face when he presented his credit card vouchers for this particular excursion, and smiled at
her.

‘Yes, that’s fine. Right, Evans – when can I meet him?’

Jackson glanced at the dashboard clock. ‘He should be at the hotel by now.’

A couple of minutes later she stopped the car outside the Sheraton, expertly manoeuvring it into a parking space. Richter picked up his cases and followed her into the lobby, a large open space
adorned with ornate columns, chandeliers and a wild profusion of plants. She headed straight for the reception desk, then turned and saw Evans sitting in an easy chair, reading a two-day-old copy
of
The Times
.

‘Bill,’ she said, ‘this is Paul Richter from London. Paul, Bill Evans.’

Evans stood up, shook hands and then subsided back into his seat.

‘Paul thinks this is a complete waste of time,’ Carole-Anne Jackson began.

‘And I agree.’ Evans grinned boyishly at him. ‘I still don’t think our Saudi friend would have a chance of getting here without somebody spotting him.’

‘Even if he’s still alive.’

‘Exactly. My guess is that his corpse is rotting in a cave somewhere, and his camp followers aren’t going to tell the world until they think the time is right. But London wants us to
check, just in case.’

‘Right,’ Richter said. ‘I’d like to speak to your local contact, if you’ve no objection.’

‘None at all,’ Evans replied. ‘I can set up a meeting tonight, over dinner.’

‘Fine. Now, I gather from what Carole has told me that the suspect is in a local hospital, in a ward that’s under surveillance, and he’s surrounded by personal bodyguards. How,
exactly, am I supposed to get inside and check him out?’

Cairo, Egypt

The taxi stopped near the city centre, and O’Hagan and Petrucci climbed out. They stood together on the pavement for a few moments as the vehicle shot back into the
traffic amid a sudden angry blaring of horns, the driver – like most Egyptians – not bothering to look behind him or check his mirror.

‘Take your life in your hands every time you step into the street here,’ Petrucci grumbled.

‘You said it,’ O’Hagan replied. ‘Right, see you in ninety minutes.’

The two men headed off in opposite directions. O’Hagan knew exactly where he was going, because he’d checked the local directory and identified three vehicle-hire companies within
walking distance. The first one he tried had nothing suitable, but the second offered a choice of two white Mercedes vans. Picking the one with the fewest dents, he signed a hire agreement for
three days, paying with a credit card bearing a name that was not his own, and backed it up with an international driving licence in the same name. He spent a few minutes studying a street map of
Cairo, then drove off.

There was about a twenty-minute wait before Petrucci appeared, clutching two bulky bags.

‘Get everything?’ O’Hagan asked.

‘Yup. Had to dig around a bit for the letters, is all.’

O’Hagan stopped the van outside a company offering storage solutions and they went inside. They emerged a few minutes later carrying lengths of racking and shelving, a cardboard box
containing plastic storage boxes, and four small green tarpaulins.

Next, they stopped outside an electrical wholesaler and bought a selection of plugs, sockets, cable ties, junctions, chock-block connectors, insulating tape and a few other bits and pieces. They
also purchased various tools: circuit testers, soldering irons, screwdrivers, pliers and so on. An electrician might have puzzled at their selection – they had soldering irons but neither
solder nor flux, for example – but what they’d just purchased was never going to be used. It was simply camouflage to provide support for their cover story.

‘When do you want to do the van?’ Petrucci asked.

‘Now, I guess. Then we’ll be ready to move as soon as we get the call.’

O’Hagan steered the van down a narrow street near their hotel. At the far end was a block of six large garages, each secured by a padlocked metal up-and-over door, and owned by the hotel
they were staying at.

They’d hired the biggest garage for a week, though they’d need it for no more than two days, but it had been essential to find somewhere they could do their work away from prying
eyes.

As Petrucci released the padlock and lifted the door, a blast of heat rolled out to greet him. O’Hagan drove the van inside, keeping close to the right-hand wall, leaving the maximum
possible space on the other side of the vehicle.

Petrucci took four sets of white overalls from one of the bags and tossed them to O’Hagan, then extracted a plastic sheet, some spray paint, masking tape, self-adhesive letters and a bunch
of other stuff. At the rear end of the garage was a collapsible table. He took everything over to it, unrolled the plastic and secured it to the table top. Then he shook the adhesive letters out of
the bag and started arranging them on the sheet.

Behind him, O’Hagan laid out the overalls face-down on the floor of the van. He took a stencil, a felt-tip pen and tape measure, and began marking the back of the first set.

Just under an hour later, Petrucci had finished at the table, and O’Hagan had completed his work. The two men then began securing the sheet of plastic in line with marks O’Hagan had
already made on the side of the Mercedes. This took quite some time because it was important for the template to be stuck as firmly and accurately as possible to the metal before they started
painting. For what they were planning, the finished job needed to be really sharp and professional-looking.

Once O’Hagan was finally satisfied, he pulled on one of the face masks, climbed onto an empty wooden box they’d found at the back of the garage, and began spraying the side of the
vehicle through the template. Spray-painting wasn’t a skill either man possessed to any great degree, but O’Hagan knew enough to make a reasonably good job of it.

While they waited for each coat to dry, they busied themselves with erecting the racking. Inside the van, they built a line of shelves secured with horizontal braces, then arranged the plastic
storage boxes on them and finally put the tools and electrical components inside them. By the time they’d finished, the rear of the van looked like any vehicle used by a technical
tradesman.

After removing the stencil from the side of the vehicle, they opened the garage door, which did almost nothing to reduce the temperature inside. O’Hagan backed out the Mercedes and then
reversed it into the garage so they could repeat the process on the other side.

‘We’re done,’ O’Hagan announced, some ninety minutes later. ‘Let’s go get a shower and a beer. My throat feels like the fucking Mojave Desert.’

‘Amen to that,’ Petrucci replied, stuffing all the tools and other things they’d used into one of the bags. He tossed it in the van, reopened the garage door and padlocked it
behind them, safely locking away the Mercedes with its brand-new ‘Cairo Specialist Aviation Services’ decals affixed to each side.

Dubai

They’d left the Range Rover at Riyadh Airport, but Massood had pre-booked a Land Cruiser to tow the horse trailer while in Dubai. After delivering Shaf to the
stables the previous evening, Saadi had explained to the staff that there was a problem with the brakes on the transporter, and he promised it would be delivered the following day.

That morning, Massood and Saadi left the hotel after checking out. Massood climbed into a taxi while Saadi carried his own bag and Massood’s across to the transporter, which was backed up
against a wall, with the Land Cruiser already attached to the towing arm.

Saadi knocked twice, and twice more, then inserted the key and swung open the side door of the transporter. Inside, Bashar was sitting on the pile of blankets that had formed his bed, a
Kalashnikov for company.

‘You’re ready?’ Saadi asked, and Bashar nodded. ‘Do you need anything before we start?’

‘No, I’ll eat something when we return.’

‘Good. Massood’s collecting the hire car. It’s time to open the bales.’

They lifted all the bales from their storage. Saadi opened a clasp knife, sliced through the binding cords on the first one and pulled out the packet which had been concealed inside it. They
stuffed the loose hay into the storage area and then opened the second bale.

Half an hour later, Saadi stopped the Toyota alongside a Renault Clio parked just off the Oud Metha Road, a little way beyond the Camel Racetrack. He walked back to the transporter and opened
the door on the side facing away from the road. Massood opened the Renault’s boot and Bashar began handing the packages to Saadi.

Once the transfer was complete, they closed the boot of the Renault, which now contained three Kalashnikovs, two boxes of 7.62-millimetre ammunition and one box of fifty 9-millimetre Parabellum
rounds, along with the eight sealed packages. Bashar started the Land Cruiser just as Massood and Saadi drove away in the Clio. All three men were now armed with loaded pistols.

Kamyshin, Russia

Litvinoff stared at the scatter of tools and boxes on the dockside in front of him. He’d been convinced that they’d find the suitcase nuclear device inside
that crate, but it was now perfectly clear that the weapon simply wasn’t there.

That was the bad news – and in fact there was no good news as far as the FSB officer could see. Despite his earlier threats, he now couldn’t even charge the barge master with
anything more than a misdemeanour, because every single piece of equipment found inside the crate was correctly listed on the paperwork the captain possessed.

The conclusion was inevitable, and highly uncomfortable to contemplate: the Americans had just been using the barge as a decoy. Litvinoff had wasted vital hours on this fruitless pursuit, and he
was still no nearer finding them or, more important, the weapon. They must have planned a completely different escape route out of Russia. But as he stood silently on the quayside, eyeing the
jumble of broken and rusted equipment around him, Litvinoff hadn’t the slightest idea what that other route might be, or how he was ever going to find it.

Wednesday
Al-Shahrood Stables, Ad Dahnā, Saudi Arabia

The local police dutifully arrived at Al-Shahrood less than two hours after Sheikh Qabandi’s peremptory summons.

In the meantime, the sheikh and his men had been busy. Qabandi had summoned his two pilots to help him and Alexander fill the water troughs and sort out feed for the horses, so that by the time
the police cars arrived the animals were again quiet and settled.

‘How many people should there be here?’ the inspector asked, as his men began searching the stable-block accommodation.

‘Usually a minimum of twelve,’ Qabandi replied. ‘That includes at least two members of the bin Mahmoud family, their household staff of about six and roughly the same number of
people living at the stables.’

‘What do you think has happened to them?’

‘I’ve no idea, but something is definitely wrong. I’ve dealt with Osman bin Mahmoud for six years now, and I’ve never known him go off and leave the horses unattended.
There’s
always
somebody here at the stables, day and night.’