A Loyal Spy (35 page)

Walid served tea, and before the conversation started he produced a tape recorder and set it down on the table. ‘It’s not that we don’t trust you,’ Nazir explained apologetically, ‘but we can’t take a chance.’ He glanced at Walid, who nodded to confirm that the tape was running. ‘All my children were bright but Nor was very bright. Maybe too bright. He was a sensitive sort of person. He cared about the plight of others.’

Walid stared at the tabletop without comment.

‘I’m looking for him,’ Jonah told them.

‘The FBI are also looking for him,’ Nazir replied, ‘and because they cannot find him they have decided they need a scapegoat. My family has been selected. They send their lackeys in our Jordanian intelligence services, our Mukhabarat, to persecute us. I am not welcome any more at the faculty in Amman. My wife has been suspended from the hospital. My younger son cannot get a job.’ His face cracked into a mirthless smile and his eyes shone brightly. ‘When it rains in Washington, we have to put up umbrellas.’

‘I don’t mean you any harm.’

‘Your word?’

‘My word.’

‘It’s rather late for that, I think. You were my son’s friend but you turned him into a spy, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Jonah acknowledged.

‘We have a saying: a young boy’s company determines his destiny. It was unfortunate for Nor that you ever met him. Why are you looking for him?’

‘Because, like you, I am accused of being his accomplice. Because I was his controller they have decided that we must be conspiring together.’

‘Is that why you are Ishmael?’

‘Yes,’ Jonah acknowledged.

Nazir paused, his teacup shaking ever so slightly in his hand. ‘Then perhaps you are the only one that can understand our tragedy.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He has vanished. Maybe he is in Iraq, maybe in London. He may have been yours once but he is al-Qaeda now and he means to right his previous wrongs, starting with your country.’

He reached forward and switched off the tape recorder. ‘Find my son for me, Jonah,’ he pleaded. ‘Tell him to stop. And tell him to do it before they put his family in jail.’

‘There’s a problem with that.’

‘Life is full of problems. Everything is a problem.’

‘How am I supposed to find him?’

‘He was your agent.’

‘Not any more,’ Jonah replied.

‘Go to them, Jonah. Go to al-Qaeda. Tell them you are his friend. He will confirm it. Tell them to take you to him. They may. They may not. They may kill you. What other choice do you have?’

Standing to leave, Jonah looked down at Nazir. He had his eyes closed and his cheeks were wet with tears. Walid walked him to the door.

‘Go to your hotel,’ he said.

Jonah climbed back into the waiting taxi.

The telephone in his hotel room rang just after three in the morning. Jonah was lying awake watching the television. Desperate New Orleans residents were screaming at helicopters from balconies and rooftops, waving towels and blankets. There was something both horrifying and compelling about the footage.

He picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘You are Ishmael?’ asked a softly spoken man.

‘Who is this?’ Jonah asked.

‘This is Tariq. What do you want from us, please, Ishmael?’

‘I’m a friend of Nor.’

‘What is your business in Jordan?’

‘I have to speak to Nor.’

The line went dead. Jonah stared at the ceiling. Fifteen minutes later the phone rang again.

‘What is your real name, Ishmael?’

‘Jonah.’

Tariq put the phone down. Twenty minutes later he called again.

‘Jonah?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is Tariq.’

‘Yes, Tariq.’

‘A car is waiting for you outside the hotel. It is a black Mercedes. The driver is Zein. Please come now.’

‘Where will it take me?’

The response was an order, strident in tone. ‘Come now. Right now.’

Jonah threw on his clothes and ran down the corridor to the stairs. He stepped through the concrete blast barriers and out into the street. A battered and elderly black Mercedes was parked on the opposite side of the road. A small man with sparkling eyes and a big smile was holding the passenger door open. Jonah crossed the street to him. There was a second man in the shadows of the back seat, his face disguised by a red-and-white chequered scarf.

‘Jonah,’ said the small man. Jonah nodded. They shook hands vigorously. ‘My name is Zein.’

Jonah got into the passenger seat and Zein closed the door on him. He rushed around and slipped into the driver’s seat. He turned the ignition and the engine backfired. They all flinched and across the street the security men took cover. Zein cursed. They set off, weaving between the potholes in the road, with Zein watching his rear-view mirror all the time.

‘You are Jonah?’ asked the man in the back of the car.

‘Yes,’ Jonah said, recognising the voice from the telephone. ‘You are Tariq.’

‘That is correct. What do you know about this man, Nor?’

‘He used to work for the British intelligence services.’

They turned off the tarmac road on to a bumpy, unpaved alleyway hemmed in by warehouses. Zein peered over the steering wheel, navigating between piles of drifting rubbish.

‘What is your status in your country?’ Tariq asked.

‘I am a fugitive.’

‘When did you last see Nor?’

‘In Nevada in 2002. He was on his way to Iraq.’

‘Why do you want to speak to him?’

‘He is planning a terrorist attack in my country. I want to stop him. It’s a trap.’

‘Why do you care about him?’

‘He is my friend.’

The car shot out of the narrow alleyway and bounced on to a busy tarmac road.

‘We are taking you back to your hotel.’

‘I’m telling you the truth,’ Jonah protested.

‘Tomorrow you must take a bus to Damascus. Tell them at the border that you want a transit visa and that you are travelling overland to Turkey. We will be waiting for you at the central station in Damascus.’

The car rattled to a halt opposite the hotel.

‘We will be waiting for you,’ Tariq repeated, in an encouraging tone.

Sure enough they were there in the crowd at Damascus bus station the following day. Zein darted forward through the heaving mass of people and their suitcases and cardboard boxes and wicker baskets full of chickens. He took Jonah’s backpack from him and led him by the hand back through the crowd to the Mercedes, where Tariq was waiting.

‘Is Nor here in Syria?’ Jonah asked.

‘You must be patient,’ Tariq told him.

It was the first time that Jonah had got a clear view of Tariq. He was younger than Jonah had expected, and slight, with slender fingers that he used to punctuate his speech, and large brown eyes. A familiar type, Jonah thought.

‘Are you Nor’s friend?’ Jonah asked.

Tariq looked at him. ‘Yes, I am his friend.’

‘Then you must help me.’

Zein propelled the Mercedes forward through the bus-station crowd with one hand on the horn and the other gesticulating out of the window.

‘Where are we going?’ Jonah asked.

‘You will see,’ Tariq replied, staring back over his shoulder to see whether they were being followed.

The car entered a warren of narrow streets festooned with electrical cables and laundry. They careened around corners and accelerated across intersections. Several times people were forced to jump out of the way.

Abruptly, the car slammed to a halt beside a small metal door set in a high wall. Zein leapt out and banged on the door with his fist. Tariq reached forward and placed his hand on Jonah’s shoulder. ‘Be calm,’ he said.

A few moments later a man with a Salafist’s beard and a Kalashnikov stepped out of the doorway and cast a wary eye up and down the alleyway. He ordered them to get out of the car and watched while Tariq patted Jonah down. Satisfied, Tariq took Jonah by the elbow and guided him through the door, along a corridor that was damp with mould and down a steep flight of rough concrete steps to another metal door. Tariq knocked on it and waited. The door opened and a cloud of cigarette smoke engulfed them. Jonah heard a man screaming. Two men in balaclavas loomed out of the smoke with Kalashnikovs in their hands. Behind them there was another man in a balaclava holding a video camera. The door behind Jonah closed. Tariq and Zein had gone. The two men marched Jonah down a corridor to a windowless room with a wall that was hung with green jihadi flags and lit by floodlights. In front of the flags there was a blindfolded man in an orange jumpsuit. He was handcuffed to a chair on a large plastic sheet. He was slumped forward, and quietly groaning. Opposite him there was a large man with a full beard with two white tufts that stretched from his ears to his chest. He was sitting on a bench with a scimitar that he was sharpening on a whetstone resting on his knee.

‘Are you Jonah known as Ishmael?’ the man asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is your passport?’

‘In my pocket.’

‘Give it to me.’

Jonah handed it to him.

‘Lock him up.’

The two men in balaclavas led Jonah through another door and down a corridor and bundled him into a cell.

When he woke he could hear footsteps and whispering voices outside the door. He was lying on a cracked concrete floor, handcuffed to a radiator in an otherwise empty room. There was no window, only a ventilation grille that was far out of reach. Other prisoners had been held in the room before him; their names were scratched on the wall behind him, none of them more than a couple of feet above the floor. He wondered whether any of them had survived.

Twice the men in balaclavas came into the cell and beat him with sticks. They beat him about the thighs, the shoulders and the back. Jonah was no stranger to being strung up and beaten. He knew that you go into a kind of glide. One blow becomes much like another – he could sustain a certain amount of it. It was important to let it wash over him. He also knew how to behave. He knew from his training that interaction with his captors should be kept to a minimum. He must not make eye contact. He should not be uncooperative or short-tempered. But on this occasion he felt outrage. He had come of his own free will.

The second time, one of the Salafists got too close and Jonah tripped him up and was on in him in a second and, using his head as a battering ram, broke the man’s nose and dislodged several teeth.

He felt exultant. They beat him unconscious.

They had rigged a blackboard on the wall behind the camera so that he could sit on a chair with his cuffed hands wedged between his knees and read the text while staring into the camera’s lens.

‘The British state will taste a tiny portion of what innocent Muslims taste every day at the hands of the Crusader and Jewish coalition to the east and to the west,’ Jonah said. Blood spooled out of his mouth as he spoke. ‘The duties of Islam are ­magnifi­cent and difficult. Some of them are abominable. The hour of death can be neither hastened nor postponed. Death will find you, even in the looming tower …’

He looked around him. It was satisfying to engage the fear in their eyes. He was convinced that they had been instructed to keep him alive.

‘Come on, then …’ he said, in a low voice.

They advanced on him with sticks.

‘Jonah!’ He woke with a shudder. Tariq was squatting on the floor well out of reach.

‘Nor says that you are beautiful but you think that you are ugly,’ Tariq told him. ‘I believe he must be right. He understands people. He is not frightened to say what he thinks. Is it true that he was your student?’

‘He was my friend,’ Jonah replied.

‘He says that you taught him everything he knows, that you are the one who made him into an instrument of God.’

‘Not me,’ Jonah says.

‘Why are you here?’

‘To warn him …’

‘He is warned. He knows that he is in danger. He is content. He is in danger but your country is in greater danger. Do you understand? You should be proud of him.’

‘Where is he?’

Tariq’s chest swelled with pride. ‘He’s in Iraq, fighting the Crusaders.’

‘Can you take me to him?’

‘He is leaving soon. He is going to take the fight to the Crusaders on their home soil. He says that he is going to sweep away an entire Kuffar city. He says that you will be amazed. I believe him.’

7–8 September 2005

They came for him at dawn, in the midst of a sandstorm.

‘We must leave at once,’ said Tariq. His phone rang and he listened and nodded before someone cut the connection. One of the Salafists knelt beside Jonah and unlocked his handcuffs while another held the barrel of a Kalashnikov against his temple. It was satisfying to feel the man’s fear as he fumbled with the lock. ‘Get up,’ said Tariq. ‘Follow me.’

Jonah climbed shakily to his feet and staggered after him into the corridor.

‘Quickly,’ hissed one of the Salafists, and prodded him in the back with his gun. Jonah spun around and yanked the gun out of his hands. The Salafists fell over themselves to get out of his way. He threw the gun after them.

He climbed the stairs and went through the metal door and down the corridor and out into the alleyway where the car was waiting with Tariq at the wheel.

They turned on to a main road and lorries roared past. Tariq slapped his palm on the horn and kept it there until he found a gap in the traffic.

‘Where are we going?’ Jonah asked.

‘Iraq,’ Tariq replied irritably. He switched on the windscreen wipers to try to clear the dust.

They left the outskirts of the city and passed empty fields and rows of pylon lines. After an hour or so Tariq stopped the car and told Jonah to get in the boot.

‘Be very quiet,’ he told him, before slamming the lid closed on him.

The car started again and they drove for twenty minutes or so before slowing to a halt. For a while they proceeded in fits and starts as if lined up in a queue. The boot steadily filled with a fine cloud of dust. Jonah pulled his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose. He heard voices and imagined papers being inspected and perhaps money changing hands. There was no attempt to search the vehicle. They set off again. Jonah groaned and stretched limbs that were numb from remaining still for so long. Suddenly, the car veered off the road and rattled along the verge for a while before stopping. The doors slammed. Seconds later, Tariq opened the boot and helped Jonah out. ‘Welcome to Iraq.’