Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide (21 page)

Ted and Sammy went in and sat down at a table by the window, putting their bags on the floor beside them. They ordered coffee, which they drank slowly. By the time they paid the bill and left the café, any conversation that took place at that particular table could have been heard in the Odeon cinema some distance away, which now served as MI5’s Birmingham office. But until it got to 6 p.m. no one was listening.

The familiar voice shattered the silence like an explosion. In the back of the van, freshly resprayed and with new number plates, Dave Armstrong almost jumped out of his plastic chair.

‘So how are you, brother?’ Boatman’s words boomed over the speaker in the van. Dave watched Sammy turn down the volume on the amplifier control. Next to Dave, perched on the edge of another plastic chair, sat Kanaan Shah, looking excited.

‘I’m well,’ said another voice. This must be Malik, Boatman’s friend from the mosque. Boatman had arranged to meet him at the café after work. Under direction from Shah, Boatman had arrived at the café early, when it was still quiet, and had sat down at the table in the window. He probably thought it had been chosen because it was visible from the street. He didn’t know that their conversation was being overheard.

The van was parked in a cul-de-sac less than five hundred yards from the café. In addition, one pair of A4 officers sat in a parked car a short distance from the café; another pair, an Asian couple, were in the café itself, sitting at a table near Boatman and Malik. Dave had an uneasy feeling about Malik, particularly since he’d heard that it was he and a pal who’d attacked Liz. He didn’t think it was likely that there would be any trouble that evening, but he had laid plans to create a diversion, just in case.

‘And how is my married friend?’

It took Dave a moment to realise that Malik was referring to Boatman himself.

Boatman said, ‘It’s going very well.’ He hesitated. ‘She is being very devout.’

‘Ha,’ said Malik with a throaty laugh. His voice was deep, with a Birmingham accent. ‘That’s not how a new wife’s meant to behave – with her mind always on Allah and never on you. She’s a very pretty girl, Salim. I hope you are making the most of it.’

Boatman didn’t respond. Knowing him, Dave thought he was probably uncomfortable with the sexual overtones of Malik’s banter. But Malik didn’t seem to notice as he shifted the conversation on to football. He was a keen Aston Villa fan and spent several minutes discussing their manager and whether he would survive another season, and bemoaning the unwillingness of the owner to invest on the same scale as the moguls of the Premier League. There was an Asian boy in the youth team, but Malik didn’t rate his chances of graduating to the first eleven. ‘Too slow,’ he said dismissively.

‘You’ll miss the football, won’t you?’ said Boatman.

‘Yeah,’ said Malik casually, and Dave could visualise his shrug.

Then Boatman asked, ‘Are you ready for your trip?’

Beside him, Dave saw Kanaan nod intently, happy the conversation was getting down to business. Too soon, thought Dave, worried that the sudden shift of subject was too clumsy. Boatman had no subtlety and that put him at risk.

A waiter must have arrived at the table, for Malik said, ‘Orange squash,’ and Boatman asked for apple juice. There was a pause, then Boatman asked, ‘How soon will it be then?’

Dave waited tensely for the reply; a date would help Pakistani liaison keep tabs on the group from the mosque when it arrived. But Malik only said vaguely, ‘It won’t be long now.’

Next to Dave, Kanaan sighed with disappointment. Then Boatman pressed on. ‘Will you go before the football starts?’

Dave gritted his teeth.

‘I’ll go when they tell me to.’ Malik’s voice had lost some of its nonchalance. Leave it now, thought Dave, frustrated that he couldn’t warn Boatman off.

‘Of course, but do you know where you’re going?’

Silence, an ominous sign. Finally Malik said, ‘Salim, you know where I am going, so why do you ask?’

Fortunately Boatman didn’t hesitate. ‘I suppose it’s because I’m jealous that you’re going now, and I’m not.’

‘You will have your own chance in time. Remember – this is not about either of us, OK? We are nothing. This is just our temporary life, after all. If you were never to see me again in this world, it wouldn’t matter. Never forget that. Nothing else matters – not your friends, not your family. Not even your new bride.’

‘You said you were briefed in London?’

‘I was. It was very strange. To have a Westerner teaching you how to conduct
jihad
– it’s like having a Jew telling you how to attack Israel.’

‘Was the Westerner a Muslim?’

‘Of course. Our faith is spreading around the world, you know. For you and me it is natural to think all white people are Infidels, but more and more of them are seeing the true path to Allah. They have the advantage of access to places and people you and I could not approach without people becoming suspicious.’

‘That won’t help you in Pakistan,’ said Boatman.

Go easy, thought Dave.

But Malik replied conversationally, ‘No, it won’t. But from what we have been told, we won’t be in Pakistan that long.’

‘Really? Will you be back here for the New Year?’

‘Who said I will be back?’  There was a long pause before Malik continued, ‘Our enemies are everywhere. They offer targets everywhere. Just look at what is going on.’

‘Where?’

Malik sighed impatiently. ‘Must I spell everything out for you, my friend? The brothers have dispersed across the world. The Middle East, North Africa – these are areas where we can regroup while the Americans and the British remain fixated on Afghanistan. Eventually we will be acting at will in places where the Infidels still think they’re safe.’

‘You’d think they would have learned that when the Twin Towers came down.’

‘They’ve learned nothing. The Towers will prove to be just the tip of the iceberg.’

‘So would you be sent to America?’

Malik laughed. ‘Not likely! I would stick out there like a sore thumb. There are plenty of more suitable volunteers – most of them white.’

‘Then where will you go to after Pakistan?’

Dave groaned. Boatman was starting to sound like an interrogator. And sure enough, Malik seemed to sense this too, for he said sharply, ‘Why are you asking me so many questions, Salim? You know it is forbidden to discuss orders from our leaders.’

‘I’m sorry; it’s just that we are friends, and I am concerned about you.’

There was the sound of a glass being put down sharply on a table top. ‘I’d like to think that’s why you are grilling me. I would hate to think there could be any other explanation. Anyway, I have to go.’

‘Will I see you before you depart? It would mean a lot to me.’

Malik said icily, ‘The cause is what matters, Salim. I have said that already. May we meet when Allah intends. Goodbye.’

The noise of a chair scraping back over the floor came through the amplifier, then there was silence. The technician looked at Dave, who nodded, and the man reached over and switched off the speaker.

A voice from the A4 car in the street reported Malik leaving the café and turning left. Should they follow?

‘No,’ said Dave. ‘Let him go.’ He didn’t want anything else to happen that might spook Malik.

‘Stand down, all teams,’ came the instruction from Larry Lincoln in the control room.

Kanaan turned to Dave, beaming. ‘Our man did very well.’

‘Do you think so?’

Kanaan looked puzzled. ‘Don’t you? He’s confirmed what we suspected – that they’re being trained in Pakistan, but sent elsewhere. That’s important.’

‘Yes, but it could be Timbuktu for all we know.’ Dave saw the crestfallen look on Kanaan’s face and tried to reassure him. ‘You’re right, though – we know now he won’t be coming back. That’s a start anyway.’

‘If Boatman can meet up with Malik again before he goes, perhaps he can find out more.’

‘No,’ said Dave quickly. ‘Not a good idea. Please don’t encourage him.’ And though Kanaan looked puzzled, Dave didn’t explain. He was thinking solely of Boatman now, wondering if he’d blown his cover. Malik’s hasty departure had alarmed Dave. It was clear to him that Malik was a good deal cleverer than their agent.

Chapter 31

Geoffrey Fane stalked into his office on the fifth floor of Vauxhall Cross. The room was flooded with light, shining in through the two large windows overlooking the Thames. He walked across and stared out at the little tourist boat just turning to go back towards Westminster, having completed its tour up river. He knew the boat’s crew would be drawing the passengers’ attention to the building, reminding them how it had featured in a James Bond film and giving them some garbled account of what went on inside. He himself wasn’t at all convinced that they should ever have moved into such an exotic-looking place. Its outlandish appearance just invited people to gawp, and made it more of a target too. Admittedly the previous office block, Century House, where he’d worked when he first joined, was a dreadful hole, with masonry falling off the front and an interior like a squalid tenement. No one would ever have wanted to take tourists to see that or put it in a film. Good thing too.

Fane was feeling thoroughly out of sorts. He’d just been to a meeting in ‘C’’s office upstairs, to discuss the launch of the forthcoming
History of MI6
. Geoffrey didn’t agree with that scheme at all – what was the point of it? he’d asked. There were other ways they could have celebrated the centenary. A Secret Intelligence Service should be secret. But he’d been unable to prevent it, especially when Five had announced that they were doing one, and the defeat had annoyed him greatly. At least he’d managed to ensure the book stopped at 1949. Over at Five they’d gone almost up to the present day and then found themselves criticised because the last chapters were too thin. What else did people expect?

Perhaps it was time to retire, he thought, before he started to get the reputation of being old-fashioned and dyed in the wool. But retire to what? One of his troubles was that there was no woman in his life. Since Adele had gone off with her Frenchman, various short affairs had come to nothing. The women had all bored him; intellectually negligible, with nothing at all interesting to say. He still lived by himself in the flat in Fulham he’d bought after the divorce, since Adele had got away with – as he saw it – their house in Kensington. Not that she needed it (her new husband was as rich as Croesus), yet now she was pressing Geoffrey to sell the small country house that had been in his family for generations. It wasn’t that he went there very often now, and there was no prospect of grandchildren to enjoy it with. But it was his, damn it, not Adele’s.

His thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of the phone on his desk. He picked it up. ‘Yes, Daisy?’ he said. A new girl, rather sweet if a little slow. Still, he’d get her up to speed soon enough. He prided himself on having a deft hand with his PAs, though it was annoying that they never seemed to stay with him very long.

‘Liz Carlyle rang, Geoffrey, while you were upstairs.’

‘Oh?’ Fane said, a little tetchily, cross that Daisy hadn’t told him straight away.

‘Yes. She wondered if she could come across. Preferably today, she said.’

‘Hmm,’ said Fane. He would have liked to tell Daisy to ask Elizabeth Carlyle to come over right away, but that wouldn’t do. Though he would like to see her, he couldn’t conquer a need to demonstrate what a
very
busy man he was; so busy that he might, just might, be able to squeeze her in between more pressing appointments. He said, ‘Tell her I can probably fit her in at the end of the day. Let’s say half-past five.’ Then another thought came into his head. Perhaps he could persuade her to stay for a drink after their meeting.

Because the truth was that Elizabeth Carlyle was the one woman he’d met since Adele went who really aroused his interest. He found her attractive, both physically and intellectually. Her slim figure, brown hair and calm but watchful grey-green eyes fascinated him. She was a woman of real intelligence and he wanted to know what she was thinking about – other than the problem of the moment, which was all they ever found themselves discussing.

But now she’d got herself involved with that DGSE chap, Seurat. What was it with the French? First Adele and now Elizabeth. Anyway, he thought spitefully, he’d embarrassed them both that afternoon in the Athenaeum, telling neither of them that he was inviting the other. He toyed with the top of his pen as he thought of that awkward meeting, and of how Elizabeth’s expression had stayed rigidly business-like while Martin Seurat blithely chatted on, all Gallic charm, assuming Fane did not know they were seeing each other. But Geoffrey Fane was always in the know. He prided himself on that.

By five-thirty the sun was in the west and glancing off the windows. Fane heard Reception ring Daisy to say that Miss Carlyle was in the waiting room. He got up from his desk and pulled a Venetian blind partway down.

‘Liz is here,’ said Daisy a few minutes later, poking her head round the door.

‘Come in, Elizabeth,’ he called out, frowning slightly to himself at Daisy’s informality. Liz walked in, looking cool in black trousers and a satin blouse. Was she getting slimmer? he wondered, admiring her figure.