A Loyal Spy (25 page)
‘And you mean to give it to them?’
Nor shrugged. ‘I don’t see that I have much choice.’
Nor was put back into play in September 2002 and he was monitored every step of the way. To get him close to where he started, Winthrop called on the help of certain Colombian acquaintances. Nor was flown by light plane from a jungle airstrip in Brazil to the African narco-state Guinea Bissau, landing at a former Soviet air base near a village called Kuffar, on a route most recently utilised for the transport of cocaine.
From Guinea Bissau, Nor crossed into Guinea Conakry and from there to Mali, where he established contact with a representative of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. They knew about his escape from the Dark Prison. He was already a legend across the western desert. He joined the ‘terrorist underground’, and was transported overland by a combination of truck, bus and train to Khartoum in Sudan. From Khartoum he flew to Istanbul and from there to Diyarbakir near the Iraqi border. He changed taxis in Silopi and crossed into Kurdish-controlled Iraq. It was the beginning of 2003. He was carrying a gutful of diamonds and a GPS tracker.
Winthrop and Jonah took a less prosaic route. Together with the Murids they crossed into Iraq in January, travelling in a convoy of Toyota Super Saloons with a detail of Skorpion bodyguards from the Anabasis programme. They followed the tracker’s route to Sulaymaniyah, where Winthrop met with Kurdish leaders to discuss the imminent invasion. He was upbeat. Saddam’s regime was approaching its endgame and the tracker showed Nor crossing into the Ansar al-Islam enclave.
The world was about to begin a new chapter.
Then it all began to unravel. The tracker was on the move again, heading east out of the enclave towards Iran. On 6 February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed a plenary session of the United Nations Security Council. As well as insisting that Saddam was in possession of biological weapons and was working to obtain key components to produce nuclear weapons, Powell used the existence of the Ansar al-Islam enclave to draw a direct connection between intelligence agents of Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda operatives offered safe haven after the fall of Afghanistan. The following day the tracker crossed the border to the Iranian town of Marivan.
Winthrop moved the convoy to the Iranian border. They camped on the line separating Kurdish peshmerga on one side and the Iranian Republican Guard on the other. After a couple of uncomfortable nights sleeping in the cars, the Iranians sent a runner across the line with a message: ‘Are you Winthrop?’
The following morning the tracker switched direction and came towards them. An Iranian customs official carried it across the border and handed it to Winthrop in a brown envelope together with a handwritten letter that said:
So long and thanks for the stones
.
Jonah expected Winthrop to explode. But he didn’t. He just walked back to the Toyota, climbed inside and announced that they were going back to Turkey immediately. And Jonah could have sworn that for the briefest moment he saw the ghost of a smile on Winthrop’s face.
February–March 2003
Jonah and Alex were in the Tower restaurant on the roof of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh on the night in February 2003 that the historic section of the old town known as the Cowgate caught fire. They were drinking champagne – Veuve Cliquot, the widow – which Alex had demanded. The old town was in flames behind his head.
‘You were warned that this would happen.’ Alex lifted his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. He surveyed the abandoned tables and empty bar, the wash of spinning blue light against the far wall. He did a sudden double-take and spun around in his chair.
‘What the fuck is going on out there?’ he demanded, loudly.
Spectators glanced back from the glass wall.
‘The Cowgate’s on fire,’ Jonah explained.
Alex seemed insulted. ‘Does
anything
mundane ever happen to you?’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Is this what you wanted?’
‘Fuck off,’ Jonah told him. ‘You are the one who is blackmailing me.’
Their waiter returned. He said, ‘Is everything OK?’
‘No, Kevin,’ Alex replied. ‘Things are not fucking OK. We need another bottle, two bottles, in fact.’
The waiter retreated.
Jonah had been back from northern Iraq for a week, staying in transit accommodation in Redford Barracks on the southern outskirts of the city. He was aware that he was being kept in isolation, at arm’s length.
‘I don’t like this any more than you do,’ said Alex. ‘You were given a clear choice. Eliminate Nor or face the consequences. Instead, you stood by and allowed him to make a mockery of the Americans. They are absolutely furious. They are accusing you of being in league with Nor to steal the diamonds. For Christ’s sake, they think you’re a double agent! An al-Qaeda plant! They’re demanding your head on a platter.’
‘And you mean to give it to them?’
Alex exhaled loudly and pushed back his chair.
‘Actually, no.’
‘No?’
‘Monteith has other plans for you. He has a job, an opportunity for you to redeem yourself if you survive. He’s waiting for you in London.’
Jonah considered this unexpected development.
‘What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just disappear when Nor did?’
‘Maybe because I’m not in league with him,’ Jonah retorted. ‘Maybe it’s because I’m not a traitor.’
Alex regarded him sceptically. ‘You’d better go and catch the shuttle.’
‘I need a proper drink first,’ Jonah told him.
The following morning Jonah was sitting in a private briefing in Monteith’s gloomy basement office. His head was thumping like a steel drum. He’d flown down on the first flight with his forehead pressed to the back of the seat in front. He was full to the brim with self-loathing.
‘Her name is Miranda Abd al’Aswr,’ Monteith told him, sliding the photograph across the Formica tabletop. ‘She’s a British national. Her father was a Somali dissident, living in exile here in London, and her mother a nurse from Surinam. Her background is as exotic as yours, though in her case the mix of races seems to have produced beauty rather than brawn. The parents died while she was still at school. A car crash. She was kicked out of school, she drifted for a while, then she dropped out of sight. We don’t have anything on her until she turned up in Kuwait in the late eighties with a Saudi husband, Bakr Abd al’Aswr, a businessman who ran the Kuwaiti branch of a family conglomerate called Azzam Holdings. The family came out of the Hadhramaut, the same Yemeni province as Bin Laden. We have reliable reports that place Bakr in Afghanistan with Bin Laden in the mid-eighties, before relocating to Kuwait. He disappeared a few days after the Iraqi invasion in 1989. She stayed. She runs a museum of Arab and Islamic artefacts in the Hawalli district of Kuwait City. Clear so far?’
Jonah squinted at the photo. It was difficult to make anything out through the dark panes of his sunglasses. He couldn’t take them off without revealing that he’d lost his glass eye while vomiting in the back of a cab the night before. He settled on a grunt that he hoped Monteith would interpret as an affirmative.
‘We have intelligence that suggests that Bakr al’Aswr was involved in the procurement of weapons of mass destruction for Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son. We understand that the invasion of Kuwait may have disrupted a plot to smuggle a cargo of something unsavoury out of the former Soviet Union. In the confusion of the invasion the cargo went missing. We understand that a sweep of loose containers conducted by an overzealous UN logistician may have thrown up the cargo again. It is close to being found and the plot has now been reactivated. According to our source, who is close to them, Miranda is in negotiations with a hybrid gang made up of cyber-criminals and former intelligence operatives who are searching for the cargo. The gang operates out of a travelling bazaar called the “sheep market” that moves around within the demilitarised zone between Iraq and Kuwait. We believe that they are close to finalising a deal to sell it to elements close to Saddam.’
Jonah frowned, struggling to understand. ‘And what do you want me to do?’
‘You know the drill. Penetrate. Listen. Observe. Maintain your cover.’
‘And my cover is?’
‘You’re being rotated in as a British military observer attached to the United Nations Iraq Kuwait Observer Mission. That gives you free access to the demilitarised zone and the opportunity to make contact with Miranda and the hybrid gang. You’ll go under your own name. If they do any digging they’ll find a disaffected army officer under investigation for kidnapping. You have the perfect cover. You’re in disgrace.’
‘And if they find the cargo?’
‘Stop them.’
A pause.
‘And if I refuse to go?’
‘Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred pounds; in all likelihood a dishonourable discharge and off to prison for kidnapping.’
‘And if I go?’
‘We do you a deal. Witness retracts her statement and the police go back to chasing ordinary decent criminals.’
‘And the Americans?’
‘You pull this mission off and we’ll give you a new identity and a bolthole. It’ll blow over.’
‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Then I guess I’ll go.’
‘Good. You’ll like the zone. It’s your kind of place. It’s drowning in the excrement of the devil.
‘It’s my kind of place,’ Jonah agreed.
‘And another thing …’
‘Yes?’
‘The Russians are paying an interest.’
Jonah groaned. ‘Great.’
‘I’d stay away from them if I were you.’
He staggered out of the office and down the corridor past the thumping boilers and into the men’s room where he threw up in the nearest stall.
Beams of light shone out of nothingness and were fractured by a whirl of black cloth. Death was approaching, pulling at the hood of a robe. Jonah cowered in the corner. Then there was a torch in his face and his eye was filled with dazzling prisms.
He heard a woman’s voice speaking in English. ‘It’s a clear violation of his rights and of your mandate. You can’t hold him like this.’
A second voice, a man with a Russian accent, replied, ‘The matter is he’s a suspect.’
‘Christ, Nikitin. There’s such a thing as due process. Even here.’
The man identified as Nikitin protested, ‘He stole a UN vehicle.’
‘He’s a UN observer. He’s entitled to drive UN vehicles.’
‘You say that.’
‘He’s UN. I’m telling you. He’s just been posted in.’
‘And the dead Norwegian?’
‘Turn the body over to the embassy.’
‘The incident is being investigated by the police.’
‘The Iraqi police? The
Mook
? Don’t make me laugh.’
A hand took Jonah’s upper arm, and the woman said, ‘On your feet.’
Within seconds they were out of the container and into a grotto of camouflage netting, and after it a blaze of light and then cool shadow, and the sensation of entering a medieval town. Rising above them was a warren of routes and dwellings, a jumble of wooden and steel stairways, exposed balconies, passageways and alleyways. Everywhere there were washing lines and TV and radio aerials.
Jonah was following a tall, dark-haired woman in a black robe as she strode across the stage created by the pool of downlight from a skylight far above. Russian soldiers struggled to keep up with them. Jonah could hear distant noises – an argument, chickens, pop music – and smell cooking, garbage, sweat and urine.
In the less than twenty-four hours since Jonah had touched down in Kuwait City, Odd Nordland, the UN logistician, had had his throat cut in a toilet stall in the Desert Palm bar on the Iraqi side of Umm Qasr, and Jonah, who had fled the scene in Odd’s car, had been tracked down and beaten up by Russian soldiers. After a bloody interrogation they’d thrown him in a shipping container.
He called out, ‘Where am I?’
‘Not Kansas,’ the woman replied briskly.
‘And you’re not Judy Garland,’ he retorted.
You’re Miranda Abd al’Aswr.
She spun around to face him, with her hands on her hips and her elbows out at angles, and anything else that he might have said became an irrelevance, because he was thinking that Miranda was by some distance the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. Monteith’s photo didn’t do her justice. To his eye she was five-ten with a mane of hair as black as molasses. Her teeth were bright white, her grin a slash of light in the encircling gloom. He felt a heady rush of excitement.
‘We’re in the Russian compound in Umm Qasr port,’ she said. ‘There’s about six or seven hundred Russian “peacekeepers” in here without a fan between them. They have no showers, no hot meals, and no place to take a shit. It tends to make them irritable. So, if it’s OK with you, I’d like to leave.’
He wanted to reach out with one hand and touch her, to place his fingers against the slender curve of her neck. He saw the blood rise in her cheeks. She threw up her arms in exasperation, turned on her bare heels and strode away.
‘Sure, let’s go,’ Jonah said. He hurried after her.
They emerged from the building into daylight. They were walking across a large courtyard formed by a wall of double-stacked freight containers. There was a battered Nissan Patrol parked on the far side of the yard. Jonah noticed that Miranda’s ankles and the skin of her bare brown feet were covered in floral hennaed patterns.
‘My name’s Jonah,’ he called out.
‘I know,’ she said.
There was a sudden commotion off to their flank and Miranda cursed. A Russian officer had appeared and he was shouting and gesticulating at the guards on the gate. Abruptly a hand gripped Jonah’s shoulder and a group of soldiers placed themselves between him and the woman.
‘
Ribbet
,’ he called out. He was being dragged back to the container, his heels raising clouds of bone-dust.
‘I’ll get you out,’ she shouted.
‘
Ribbet!
’
‘Why do you keeping saying that?’
‘If you’d kissed me I’d have turned into a prince,’ he shouted.