Authors: Henry Porter

Tags: #Thrillers, #Action & Adventure, #Fiction

Three Great Novels (49 page)

BOOK: Three Great Novels

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‘Harland?’ she said stupidly again. ‘What’s he doing here? I thought he was in the Middle East.’

‘No, he’s here.’ The pale eyes narrowed slightly. ‘You’re not there to parry with Vigo. Just tell him we need a complete account of his relations with Rahe. If he proves difficult, mention that one way or another we will press for a prosecution. ’

Normally Herrick would have relished the return match, but she left Vauxhall Cross without much enthusiasm and only when she found Harland in a jaunty mood in the hotel bar did her spirits lift slightly. It had been a matter of days since she’d seen him climb into the little boat on the Nile, but it seemed like weeks, particularly as Harland appeared so different. She asked why he was looking so pleased with himself.

‘I’m not,’ he said, ‘It’s just that life seems suddenly full of possibility.’

‘I know you were on the road to Damascus. Did you get God or something? What happened?’

‘Nothing I’m going to tell you about, and you needn’t look so bloody sour, Isis. Let’s have a drink. You’re looking a bit part-worn.’

He turned and ordered two Soho Cosmopolitans and just in case the man needed reminding, rattled through the ingredients. ‘One measure of citron vodka, one measure of Stolichnaya oranj vodka, cointreau, cranberry juice, fresh lime juice and a twist of lemon. Plus two very cold glasses.’

They drank the cocktails with ceremony. When they’d finished, Harland said, ‘And now for bloody Vigo.’

They took the Tube to Holland Park with perspiring office workers and walked up Holland Park Avenue. The evening was warm. Harland removed his jacket and hooked it over his shoulder with one finger. Herrick noticed how young he was looking, even though his hair seemed more grey than brown in the early evening sunlight.

They approached the impressive entrance to Vigo’s double-fronted house. Harland pressed the bell for several seconds. The buzzer sounded and they were let in to find a nervous but perfectly attired middle-aged woman in the hallway.

‘Davina, this is Isis Herrick,’ said Harland. ‘We’ve come to see Walter.’

‘He’s expecting you,’ said Davina Vigo. ‘He thought you might like drinks in the garden.’

Vigo was sitting in a slice of sunlight underneath the boughs of a spreading chestnut tree. He regarded them with a baleful look and limply gestured them to chairs. Herrick noticed that Davina remained standing in the French windows with her arms folded apprehensively. He offered them a Pimms cup which they both declined.

‘Isis is here to ask you some questions.’

‘And you Bobby, why are you here?’

‘Because I am.’

‘But…?’

‘But nothing, Walter. As far I’m concerned, you should be in jail. If you’d been prosecuted for the last business, none of this would have happened. You’re within an inch of being arrested now, so…’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Aiding and abetting a burglary of Isis’s house, for one thing. But that’s only a start. They want your blood, Walter. What we need are straight answers to our questions and, more than that, we need you to volunteer everything in your mind, every tiny scrap of information, every faint suspicion that you possess about Youssef Rahe, also known as Yahya.’

Again the slow-motion blink. ‘Yes, of course,’ said Vigo. ‘Where do you want to start?’

‘How did you meet him?’ asked Herrick.

‘At a sale of early Arab manuscripts. Rahe was there to look at them before they went into private hands. I saw him at the preview. We talked.’

‘Who made the first move?’ asked Herrick.

‘I forget.’

‘In the light of what you know now, do you think you were targeted?’ asked Herrick.

‘Well, obviously,’ he said disagreeably. ‘But at the time I thought he might be useful in understanding the GIA - the Groupe Islamique Armé. The Islamists had taken their fight to France. We felt we were looking at the Islamic equivalent of the Cambodian massacre. He seemed to know quite a few people involved.’

‘Sure he did,’ said Herrick. ‘He’d been in Bosnia with all of them.’

Vigo sighed. ‘It’s easy with hindsight to say that, but our job does involve taking calculated risks about people.’

‘And as you got closer, he began to open up,’ said Herrick, brushing the remark aside. ‘Did he give you anything worthwhile? ’

‘Yes, there were names - names that were useful in the round-ups after September eleven.’

‘And you plugged in and heard about the people passing through his shop, people asking for help in London. That sort of thing?’

‘Yes, the information was always accurate.’

‘How much checking of his background went on?’

‘As much as was necessary. The story about his upbringing, his job, where he lived in Algiers, all that seemed to tally.’ Vigo’s manner was now markedly less cowed.

‘And you got his brother and family out?’ said Herrick. ‘Where are they?’

‘In England. They were granted asylum.’

‘Did you meet the brother? Can you describe him? Where does he live?’

‘In Bristol, under the name of Jamil Rahe. He’s younger than his brother. Tall, a little overweight, an engineer by training.’

Herrick took out the envelope from a bag and dropped a selection of shots of Rahe and Sammi Loz in Bosnia into his lap. ‘Is the man you know as Youssef Rahe here?’ Harland looked at the picture but said nothing as he registered Sammi Loz.

Vigo pulled a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and examined the picture a little wearily. ‘Yes… I see Rahe.’

‘Anyone else?’ said Herrick briskly.

He looked through the pictures and then handed them back, tapping the top image. ‘That’s the man I know as his brother - Jamil Rahe.’

Herrick glanced at the figure in a balaclava, pulled out her mobile and phoned Dolph, who said Jamil Rahe would be added to the arrest list.

‘Let’s wait,’ she said. ‘This may concern a murder charge, as well. He’s important.’

She snapped the phone shut. ‘A man of very similar appearance coordinated the switch at Heathrow, having come to an arrangement with a washroom attendant in Terminal Three named Ahmad Ahktar. Ahktar and his family died in a fire after the switch. The point is that we have witnesses who saw him watch the planes that day. Also, he appears to have shown interest when Norquist’s escort left the airport.’

Vigo said nothing.

‘About Youssef Rahe,’ she said. ‘In the last twelve months, what kind of information was he passing to you?’

‘Much the same as before. Things he heard from the Arab community in Bayswater and Edgware Road areas. Useful material about mosques - who worshipped where, the financial support of certain charities, here and abroad. It all helped. Then he was approached by a group, mostly Saudi and Yemeni in origin.’

‘And you encouraged him to be recruited?’

‘Naturally. It seemed a very good opportunity.’

‘When was this?’

‘Summer of 2001.’

‘And he told you about the website, the screensavers that contain a daily message?’

Vigo nodded. ‘That’s what you were looking at in the shop, I assume.’

‘It would help if you’d just answer my questions,’ she said. Vigo stared back at her and she became aware of something stir in the shadows of his personality.

‘I wouldn’t take that tone with me, if I were you.’

Harland got up and crouched by Vigo’s chair. ‘Walter, you should know that I’m here on the off-chance that I get to beat the living shit out of you. Otherwise I would not waste my time. Now, answer Isis’s question, or by this time tomorrow you’ll find yourself on remand in Wandsworth Prison.’

‘The screensaver,’ she said. ‘You were monitoring the messages coming in each day?’

‘You forget, I was no longer part of the Service by then.’

‘So who was?’

‘GCHQ and the Security Services.’

‘But there was something different about the information on Norquist’s travel arrangements?’

‘I gather it was in a double encryption,’ replied Vigo.

‘We know the Israelis had access to this particular service,’ said Harland. ‘How long had it been going?’

Herrick wondered how the hell he knew that, but let Vigo answer.

‘Two years or so. I’m not sure. You have to remember that once I had handed over Rahe to SIS, I had very little contact, although I did see him on the book-dealing circuit.’

‘When the tip about Norquist came in, you were asked to check it?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I called him and he phoned me back on the day of the switch. Before he left for the airport.’

‘Tell me about him,’ said Herrick. ‘What kind of man is Youssef Rahe?’

‘Very able,’ Vigo replied. ‘A true scholar in his own field. A good father and husband too, I would guess. He has none of the obvious appearance of a fundamentalist. He goes to the mosque infrequently, doesn’t pray five times a day, is relaxed and liberal in his attitudes.’

‘Where do you think he went?’ she asked.

‘Beyond Beirut? Naturally, I have no idea.’

She sat back and laid her phone on the table deliberately. ‘I’d like that drink now,’ she said.

Vigo poured the Pimms, holding back the mint leaves and fruit in the jug with a silver spoon.

‘What would you do if you were in our position?’ she asked quietly. ‘We have two or three main suspects who are rich and mobile. They plan months, maybe years ahead and have a very sophisticated understanding of the way we work. What would you do? Where would you go?’

‘There are two options, clearly. You can make it very difficult for them to move by releasing their photographs and all the information you have on them. But that may not deter anything planned to happen this week. So I would be inclined to risk revealing nothing whatsoever and hope to trace them. Sammi Loz probably thinks we believe him dead, and neither Youssef or Jamil Rahe know you’re onto them. So I would use that slight advantage.’

‘How?’

He breathed deeply and looked away to a column of gnats dancing in the sunlight. A blackbird sang out some way off. ‘Well, there’s no obvious way. But if Youssef is unaware that we’re onto him, Jamil also thinks he’s safe
.
You say you believe Jamil is a major figure in the Heathrow plot. I suggest you find him and start by monitoring his phone. If an attack of some kind is expected, then Jamil will be part of it. From what you say, he’s murdered before - his own people. Then there is the mosque. You say Jamil made contact with this attendant from Heathrow at the mosque. I take it you’re referring to the Cable Road mosque in Belsize Park, the one attended by Youssef Rahe and which is now believed to be under the influence of Sheik Abu Muhsana?’

Herrick nodded.

Vigo talked on, unaffected by Harland’s hostility, and began to adopt the professorial manner he had used with Southern Group Three back in the Bunker. At length, even Harland was listening with grudging nods. They discussed ways of prodding Jamil to make contact. He added that this should all happen before the raids on the continent, so that it appeared to come out of the blue, but would be sufficiently menacing for Jamil to break cover. ‘These men are not without fear,’ he said. ‘As Seneca said, “Fear always recoils on those who seek to inspire it; no one who is feared is unafraid himself”. ’

‘Let’s keep to the point,’ said Harland.

‘I find Seneca is always to the point. It’s a consolation that we experience nothing in the way of anger, failure, disappointment and sheer bad luck that has not been explored two thousand years ago.’

‘I can see why you’re reading him,’ said Harland. ‘I think it’s highly unlikely the Chief will want anything more to do with you, other than arranging for you to be tried.’

‘We shall see,’ he said, studying Isis. ‘After all, we’ve all been duped and made to look fools, have we not? Now, I know Bobby that you and I have never seen eye to eye; that we have a history, as my wife says. But I would suggest that we are the best people to be working on this. I know Youssef and Jamil Rahe, and you two both know Sammi Loz. We’re the natural front line - the only front line. And with your contacts in Mossad, we should make an admirable team.’

Harland flinched enough for Herrick to notice. ‘I agree with Harland,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to happen.’

‘Well, give it some thought overnight. If I don’t hear from you or the Chief tomorrow I will understand.’

Herrick and Harland rose.

‘And please, no more threats. You know as well as I do they can’t put me on trial. Any more talk of this nature and I will make life extremely difficult for this government and several past governments. Tell Teckman that. He knows I mean it.’

‘I suppose that’s how you wrapped your coils around Spelling,’ said Harland.

Vigo got up heavily and made towards a bed of hostas. ‘I will expect to hear from you tomorrow.’

BOOK: Three Great Novels

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