PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (13 page)

18

Mark Cole lay back on the soft double bed, arms behind his head and eyes closed.

He was, in effect, under house arrest; although in this case, the house in question was his hotel room at the DoubleTree.

Although his identity had been verified by the armed police unit back at the mall, he had still been brought to the nearest police station. He’d been involved in an armed incident within the British capital, and – despite his credentials – none of the officers were going to release him without higher authority.

Cole had languished in an eight foot by eight foot cell for over an hour before Dylan Travis arrived, along with a British agent who didn’t bother to introduce himself, and only concerned himself with signing Cole’s release papers.

Travis himself didn’t have a great deal to say either. ‘You’re in the shit, my friend,’ was the best he could manage as they walked to the car which would take them back to Thames House. Cole didn’t bother to ask where Morgan was; he’d seen shock before, and knew that was what had happened to her. She’d be in a hospital now, without a doubt.

When Cole had been dropped off outside Bryce Kelly’s office, the British agent had already left and Travis wasn’t too far behind him; it was clear that they didn’t want to be found guilty by association.

When he’d entered, Cole had seen a second man in Kelly’s office, and recognized him as Sir Ian Riley, the Director General of MI5; but the older man remained silent as he let his subordinate lead the debrief.

‘Just who the
fuck
do you think you are, White?’ Kelly had burst out, almost before the door was closed. ‘You think it’s acceptable to instigate a chase around the city without authorization? Smash up vehicles? Apartments? Injure innocent civilians? Create a situation that killed one of my own fucking men?’

The JTAC director was angry, and Cole – despite being the subject of that anger – could sympathize to a certain extent. Tom Cranshaw had been a good man – one of Kelly’s men – and any half-decent leader would take such a loss personally.

But on the other hand, Cole also felt that he had done nothing wrong. After all, it had been Morgan who’d blurted out the man’s name, who’d alerted him to their presence; and it had been the knee-jerk policy reaction of arming people who had no real idea what they were doing that had caused both deaths. He’d tried to chase down a lead, nothing more.

And it angered him that the incident had occurred hours ago and he still had no idea who Javid Khan was.

‘Sir,’ Cole said evenly, ‘I didn’t create the situation.’ He was careful not to mention Morgan’s role in what had happened – she’d have enough on her plate dealing with the death of her partner without having to also defend her earlier actions – but also wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t responsible for the situation. ‘The subject was alerted to our presence, and – with no time to officially alert anyone, or to make plans – I set off to try and catch him.’

‘And who authorized you to take action in the United Kingdom?’ Kelly demanded. ‘You’re a liaison officer, a diplomat. What were you thinking?’

‘Who authorized me?’ Cole asked, starting to get angry despite himself. ‘Who authorized me?’ He turned to Riley and pointed. ‘Why don’t you ask
him
that question?’ He paused for a moment, and when the director general didn’t respond, he ploughed on. ‘At the request of the President of the United States of America, I’ve been authorized by Sir Riley here, acting on the orders of the Home Secretary, who was instructed by Adam Gregory. You might have heard of the man, he’s the prime minister of your precious little country here.’

Kelly was out of his chair, apoplectic with rage. ‘You arrogant little shit! You ballsy little arsehole! You’re going on the first plane home, or you’re going to fucking jail! Mark my words, White, mark my fucking words!’

‘Bryce,’ Riley said with a smooth, genteel voice completely unruffled by Kelly’s outburst, speaking for the first time since Cole’s arrival in the office, ‘please calm down. I understand you’re upset, but I am afraid our American guest here is quite correct. I extended him the same courtesies as our own agents, at the direct request of the prime minister. Things perhaps didn’t work out quite as well as we would have liked, but we need some circumspection about this whole affair. At least we have a name now.’

Kelly was still fuming, red in the face and sweating around the collar, but he had at least sat back down in his chair.

‘Javid Khan,’ Cole said to Riley, grateful for his support. ‘Who is he?’

‘I said we needed some circumspection about the whole affair,’ Riley said, ‘which meant I don’t want poor Bryce here to give himself a heart attack. It doesn’t mean that I’m about to tell you everything now, given what’s happened. I’m sorry, but while we try and sort out today’s unhappy little incident, you’re going to have to just wait back at the DoubleTree, old boy. No offence.’

Cole glared at the man, knowing that to argue would only weaken his cause. ‘No offence taken,’ he said with a forced smile.

The meeting at an end, the only thing left to do was wait for his armed escort back to the hotel.

And now, a meal and a shower later, he still felt angry about the whole thing.

He’d spoken to Vinson back in Forest Hills, and the president at the White House, but their message had been the same – wait out for further instructions. Apparently the publicity he’d gained had alerted FBI Director Graham to the fact that he might not be who he said he was, and the ramifications of this were still being assessed. Added to which, there was the political fallout that had to be dealt with.

It pained Cole, but he understood; relations between the two countries were important, and ruffled feathers had to be smoothed out for the common good. The Brits wanted him on the first plane home, but the president was angling to have him stay, in some capacity at least; but he knew that international relations might require him to leave.

Still, he figured, Mark White could be made to go pretty easily; he didn’t actually exist, after all. Cole could merely change identity and stick around for as long as he wanted. It would make things harder, in terms of being directly involved in the investigation, but it would be better than nothing.

His secure cellphone started ringing on his nightstand, and Cole rolled over to answer it, hoping it was Vinson – he’d given the man Javid Khan’s name, and asked his chief of staff to find out what he could.

He saw the caller ID and smiled. ‘Bruce,’ he said as he answered, ‘tell me you’ve got something.’

‘I’ve got details on Khan,’ Vinson said, ‘but I wouldn’t get too excited yet, it’s pretty thin.’

‘So what have you got?’

‘I’ll read you the jacket. Javid Khan, born September fifth, nineteen seventy-nine, aged forty-one. Place of birth Karachi, Pakistan. Pretty good background, middle class – father was a dentist, quite wealthy for the area. Two sisters and a brother, all younger. Javid went on to study engineering at the National University of Sciences and Technology in Islamabad, before becoming an officer in the Pakistan Army. Information is scarce at this point, as although he did well, reaching the rank of Major, he then absconded, never to be seen again.’

‘He went AWOL?’

‘Yes,’ Vinson confirmed, ‘and that was the last the Pakistan Army ever saw of him.’

‘But Morgan knew who he was.’

‘Yes, he was of interest to British intelligence, SIS had flagged him as a unit leader of an ISIS brigade in Syria a few years back. Led attacks all over the area and was involved in the battles of Falluja and Mosul. He dropped out of the picture again though, until Five caught him on surveillance footage entering the UK a few months ago.’

‘They were following him over here?’

‘Unfortunately no,’ Vinson answered. ‘They didn’t pick up his entry until a few hours after he’d already left the airport – and by then he was long gone. They’ve been trying to find him ever since, and his face was well known to Five’s officers, which is why Morgan would have recognized him, and got so excited by the whole thing.’

‘So what we have,’ Cole said, ‘is an engineer, trained by the military but who was turned by Islamic extremists, entering the UK a few months before a major terrorist attack here. A man who then appears at the scene of those same attacks.’

‘Yes.’

‘But we have no way of knowing if this was
his
plan, or if someone else was behind him and he was just a middle-man, a facilitator.’

‘No.’

‘Do we know if he’s been cut loose from ISIS? Is he still with them?’

‘We don’t know for sure. NSA intercepts indicate he may have been disavowed, that he’s no longer with them, but that might be disinformation aimed at confusing us, muddying the waters. On the other hand, they’ve not claimed responsibility for the attack, which probably indicates that they aren’t behind it. But we don’t know for sure, and it’s an avenue we’re exploring.’

Cole nodded to himself. ISIS, also known as ISIL and Daesh – although a major threat for several years – was now something of a spent force, hammered down finally by an ad hoc coalition of Kurdish fighters, Turkish soldiers, and western airstrikes guided by boots-on-the-ground special forces. There were still remnants of the so-called ‘Islamic State’, but it definitely wasn’t what it once was; Khan might well have decided to abandon a sinking ship and move on to pastures new.

It had also, Cole knew, never really been that active in international terrorism; the group had intended to establish a new caliphate within Iraq, Syria and beyond, and had never concerned itself unduly with lashing out directly at the west as Al ‘Qaeda had done.

But then again, Cole reminded himself, many of the lone wolf attacks that had occurred in recent years had been a result of strong IS online propaganda. Could it be that Khan had been the go-between, an IS agent whose mission was to recruit such lone wolf attackers and provide them with weapons and equipment, help them plan the attacks?

Perhaps the organization – now that its dreams in the Levant were seemingly over – was looking to become a more traditional terrorist organization in the Al ‘Qaeda mold? Looking back on what they’d achieved in Iraq and Syria, it was a sobering thought indeed.

What
was
clear, though, was that Javid Khan would have been an important man in whichever organization he was now a part of. A former officer in the Pakistan Army and a senior ISIS commander, he was far from being a flunky; he was a major player for someone. But who?

The question nagged at Cole, but he knew that frustration wouldn’t provide him with any answers. Between the British and American intelligence services, some of the finest analysts in the world – not to mention some of the most powerful supercomputers ever created – would be crunching data right now, looking for patterns, looking for the one bit of information that would cause the whole thing to unravel.

And yet, Cole realized, one of the best intelligence analysts he’d ever met wasn’t even allowed to be in on the investigation.

Michiko.

‘Could my daughter help?’ Cole asked – hating himself for it, his desire to keep her safe at odds with his desire to win, to get to the bottom of what had happened and beat the bastards who had done it.

‘You know I have a lot of respect for Michiko,’ Vinson said, and Cole already knew where it was going, ‘and I appreciate the fact that she is your daughter, but – at the end of the day, and please forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn here – you still barely know her, and she’s been working for a criminal organization for most of her life. You must understand my reticence – not to mention that of the president, and dos Santos,
and
General Olsen – about letting her have access to anything classified.’

Cole kept his instinctive anger in check. It was an argument they’d had many times already, and – intellectually at least – he supported Vinson’s position. But in his heart, he wanted to back his daughter, to campaign for her, to protest at how the others perceived her.

And – right now – he believed with all his heart that she might be able to help.

‘I appreciate your concerns,’ Cole said, ‘but as commander of Force One, it’s me that has to make the decisions.’

‘I understand, and of course I’ll back you whatever you decide to do.’

‘Okay,’ Cole said, ‘leave it with me, and I’ll contact her myself if I decide to go down that road. I –’

Cole was interrupted by a loud knocking on his door, and – phone still in his hand – he leapt off the bed and moved swiftly across the room.

He was here as an advisor, and had no reason to suspect that anyone wished him harm, and yet he had not survived for so many years by being careless. He therefore avoided looking through the peephole in the door, knowing that an assassin’s bullet could all too easily find its way into his brain as a result.

Instead, he looked down at the screen that was attached to a thin fiber-optic cable he’d slipped underneath the door when he’d got back to his room. It was tiny, almost invisible to the naked eye, and was therefore incredibly easy to take on international flights; it would also be undetectable to the person – or people – on the other side of the door.

When he saw the image on the screen, displayed in perfect high-resolution, he was momentary taken aback.