Stealing People (32 page)

‘We can go into a long discussion about that if you like, Ms Casey, but it will come at the expense of what we’re trying to do in this scenario, which is to get your children back. And we’d like that to happen with as little distress to you as possible.’

‘What we’re getting from you, Mr Chase, is some diluted reassurance and fuck-all hard facts.’

‘We are an intelligence agency and we necessarily have to be secretive. We cannot reveal modus operandi or give you reasoning that, if known in the world, might have an impact elsewhere. So we might appear to be obstructive, but believe me, we want to get your kids back safely. That is our objective.’

‘You’ve clearly been to some kind of persuasive speaking school,’ said Casey. ‘Where I come from in Western Australia, we like people to talk straight with us. The bizarre situation we have here is that our so-called friends are withholding and the kidnappers are telling us how it is. We’re just wondering who our real mates are.’

The truck and its forty-foot container rolled off the ferry in Bilbao at 8.30 in the morning and joined the queue for customs clearance. All the hostages had been put back under mild sedation after the crossing. At ten o’clock the container cleared customs and started the slow climb out of Bilbao and up on to the
meseta
, heading south to Burgos.

30

07.30, 19 January 2014

Bar Madrid, Ceuta

Boxer had flown into Seville on the morning of 18 January, taken an afternoon bus to Algeciras and caught an evening ferry to Ceuta. He’d stayed the night in the Hostal Plaza Ruiz, not far from the ferry terminal.

He wasn’t sleeping well, and rather than lie in bed staring at the receding ceiling, he’d got up early and walked around the Spanish enclave on the tip of the north-west peninsula of Africa. It was a cold morning, and as he walked along the front, with the high palm trees and apartment blocks to his right and the port to his left, he didn’t mind the mild feeling of deracination he always felt when starting a new job in a different country. This was his first time in Ceuta.

He walked up to the Parque San Amaro and looked across the straits to Spain. It was a clear morning and the Rock of Gibraltar was visible. He thought Ceuta a strange place: neither one thing nor the other, a chunk of Spain balancing nervously on the tip of the Maghreb, an anachronism that had never been righted.

The Bar Madrid was empty at this time. He ordered a coffee, and toast with olive oil and asked after Mercedes Puerta. The guy looked at his watch and rolled his finger round as if it would be a while before she showed. Boxer sat back with the
El País
newspaper and read about
la loteria del viento
, the wind lottery, that had taken place in London the night before last. The barman served his breakfast, saw the headline.

‘Incredible,’ he said. ‘What’s that all about? A hundred and eighty million euros blown all over London. Doesn’t make sense. The world’s gone crazy. You think you’ve heard it all, but there’s always something crazier.’

Boxer wanted to tell him just how crazy it was, but he was reading the article to see the extent of the media knowledge. It was scant. No mention of what the money was for, the kidnaps. The media blackout had been maintained for the moment. The barman nudged him and pointed at the news on the
TV
. They were showing footage of the madness on the streets. They’d even sent a Spanish crew, who’d found some young Spaniards, all graduates in their twenties, living in crowded accommodation, all holding down jobs in clothes shops and restaurants, who’d been in the right place at the right time and were waving fans of fifty-pound notes in the air and promising to send money home.

‘What a world we live in,’ said the barman. ‘This is going to be trouble for us. All the Africans will see that and want to come over the fence again, get into Europe, where they throw money up into the wind for the poor people.’

Half an hour later, a woman in her thirties in jeans and a leather jacket came in and the barman nodded her over to Boxer’s table. He stood; she kissed him on both cheeks.

‘A friend of Omar is a friend of mine,’ she said. ‘You mind if I have some breakfast, or are you in a hurry?’

She called to the barman. They sat down. Mercedes Puerta was a
morena
:
black hair, dark olive skin, brown eyes that weren’t afraid to look you straight in the eye and beyond. He’d always liked that about Spanish women, the way they dared to question your soul.

The barman put a strong black
café solo
and a cake in front of her and withdrew.

‘So I’ve made sure everything is going to run smoothly at the border this morning. There won’t be any delay for us. I’ll drive you to Tétouan and take you to see my partner, Ali Mzoudi.’

‘Your business partner?’

She looked at him very carefully.

‘Omar has told me nothing about you,’ said Boxer. ‘If you want to keep it like that, it’s no problem for me.’

‘I’ll tell you in the car, not here,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

It was a short walk back to the hotel, where Boxer picked up his case. Before he left his room, he took out €2,000 for the weapon he was going to buy and put it in a money belt around his waist. Mercedes drove him down to the border, which was in a constant state of uproar as Moroccans with vastly overloaded trucks, pickups and donkey carts attempted to get into Ceuta. She connected with her man, who quickly dealt with their passports, Boxer travelling now on Christopher Butler’s documents, and inside half an hour they were on the road to Tétouan.

‘My partner Ali and I traffic hashish from the Rif to Spain,’ said Mercedes. ‘That’s why he has access to firearms. He will sell you one, but not if you are going to kill his Muslim brothers. He is very devout. If I had to describe him, I would say that he is not quite a jihadist but very close, very anti-Western. His default setting will be not to like you.’

‘Thanks for the warning.’

‘You will know from the price he gives you whether he finds you acceptable or not.’

Tétouan appeared at the foot of the Rif mountains. A tumble of white cubes rolling down the low hills to the sea. They drove into town, parked in the street outside a rough, battered hotel, where Mercedes paid a glum, cold-looking person in a burnous with hood up to look after the car. She reached into her bag, put a scarf over her head and led the way into the medina. They walked down narrow cobbled streets behind men pushing carts of fresh mint, turnips and oranges, past shops with spices piled in cones of colour and then deeper into narrower streets where people lived. Women, who didn’t look at him, held staring children with fingers in their mouths. Mercedes made a call on her mobile and stopped at a wooden door painted blue, which was opened from the inside by an unseen hand.

They went upstairs into a low-ceilinged room with bare wooden beams where a bearded man with blue eyes wearing a white djellaba was sitting at a desk with a glass of mint tea. Mercedes introduced Ali Mzoudi, who put his hand on his chest and bowed his head and then shouted downstairs for some tea to be brought up and served. They spoke in Spanish.

‘You’re from London?’ said Mzoudi.

‘That’s right.’

‘I don’t like London.’

‘Not many people who live there do either.’

‘Better than Paris,’ said Mzoudi. ‘They’re all racists in Paris.’

‘And the Spanish?’ asked Boxer, looking at Mercedes, nearly amused.

‘They don’t know what they’re doing. They think it’s a joke to make monkey noises and throw bananas at footballers. They’re children.’

Mzoudi carried on in this vein, going through most European countries before starting on America. Boxer sipped his tea and didn’t allow himself to be drawn in. This was business, not social. He was patient. The culture demanded it. It took forty minutes and four glasses of tea for Mzoudi to get past his invective against the USA and, in a natural progression, introduce the word ‘gun’.

‘Why do you need this weapon?’ he asked.

‘I have to kill someone.’

That seemed to surprise Mzoudi who’d been expecting something more anodyne like: ‘for my protection’.

‘I might have to kill more than one person to reach the person I want to kill,’ said Boxer. ‘None of them will be your fellow Muslims. They are either British or American.’

‘What have they done?’

‘They have stolen other people’s children.’

Mzoudi nodded. He went to the door and gave extensive instructions in Arabic down the stairs, but in a much softer voice than when he’d roared for the tea.

The servant brought two cases into the room and withdrew.

Mzoudi opened the first one.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Something light that I can easily carry and hide, but it has to be powerful. I have a Belgian FN 57, which I’m very happy with.’

‘Nothing like that here,’ said Mzoudi, looking through the pieces. ‘I’ve got a Springfield XD-S nine millimetre, which has been used, but not for killing people, I’m assured. It’s light, flat, easy to carry but still holds seven rounds.’

Boxer held out his hand and took the gun, checked the magazine, which was loaded. It was still light. He put on his coat with the gun in the inside pocket. It didn’t show. He liked it. He reckoned new in the US this would be around the $600 mark.

‘Where did it come from?’ he asked.

‘An American trafficker who ran out of luck in the Rif.’

‘What money do you want for it?’

‘A clean gun like that with a box of ammunition … a thousand euros.’

Boxer nodded. ‘I’ll give you eight hundred.’

Mzoudi was happy with that. Boxer counted out the money. He tucked the gun into his coat and put the box of ammo in his pocket. They shook hands. He went downstairs while Mercedes and Mzoudi concluded some business. After a few minutes she came down and they left.

The streets were busier than when they’d arrived. The Moroccan day was slow to get off the ground. People were out buying now. There was the smell of coffee, and boys holding trays of tea aloft.

‘He liked you,’ said Mercedes. ‘And he doesn’t like many Westerners. Doesn’t really like people that much.’

‘I could tell,’ said Boxer. ‘He must like you, though.’

‘He needs me,’ she said. ‘He’d rather not be dealing with a woman. It’s purely business, you know. I have an eleven-year-old son back in Ceuta.’

‘And a husband?’

‘He got killed.’

‘Doing your work?’

‘I took over from him.’

‘Brave.’

‘Or crazy maybe.’

‘You’re worried about your son?’

‘Always.’

They got back to the car.

‘Omar told me I could put you on a bus to Meknes, but I’ll take you there if you want.’

‘Only if you can spare the time,’ said Boxer. ‘It’s got to be a three-hour drive or more.’

The truck with the hostages had arrived in Algeciras at 22.00 on 18 January after two changes of driver in Valladolid and Seville. It rolled on to the first ferry of the day to Tangier, which was at four o’clock in the morning. The crossing was two hours and thirty minutes and arrived at 05.30 local time. A large bribe had been paid to the customs officer of the day and the truck was given a cursory inspection, the papers were processed and it was out of the port heading south by seven a.m.

They drove from Tétouan to Chefchaouen, a town on the edge of the Rif with a reputation for quality hashish that was well known to tourists. After that they cut away from the mountains and went through Ouezzane on the way to Meknes.

Mercedes was questioning him about his life and was surprised to find he came from such a conservative background as the army and police.

‘I didn’t see anything of the ex-cop in you when you were dealing with Ali,’ she said.

‘I was buying a gun.’

‘And what are you doing killing people?’

‘I’ve done twenty years as a kidnap consultant, mostly in difficult places. We don’t always take the most orthodox line. We’re dealing with criminals. Sometimes the criminals are on both sides of the fence.’

‘And killing people?’

‘It’s not ideal, but given the circumstances, it’s the only way.’

‘So you’ve done this before?’

‘Only in countries where the rule of law doesn’t stand up very well.’

‘This may sound strange,’ said Mercedes, ‘but do you want a job?’

‘A job?’ said Boxer. ‘I’m not a hired killer.’

‘Not so much a job, more of a partnership,’ said Mercedes. ‘I need someone like you in my business.’

‘It’s not my line of work, drugs,’ said Boxer, wondering now what sort of man she saw. ‘No offence.’

‘I had to ask,’ she said. ‘Too good to miss, a friend of Omar with the right qualities.’

‘You must like your work,’ said Boxer. ‘You must have made enough money by now not to have to do it any more.’

‘I do it because I’d be an idiot not to,’ she said. ‘I see all these good people, like my parents, working hard to survive, earning their money, paying their taxes, and then a lot of bad people doing nothing but feeding off corruption, getting fat from government money. So this is me redressing the balance. At least that’s what I tell myself when I put my make-up on in the morning.’

Boxer laughed. Glad to find others who told themselves things in the mirror.

‘Where are you going after Meknes?’ she asked.

‘Marrakesh, I think. But I’m not sure until I speak to Omar.’

‘Do you want a driver?’

‘What about your son?’

‘My sister is looking after him.’

‘I mean, it’s not going to be without danger, what I’m doing.’

She shrugged, looked across at him with those direct Spanish eyes.

In Meknes they drove to the edge of the old medina and found the Riad Lahboul, where al-Wannan was staying. There was a message telling Boxer to call straight away on arrival, and they went up to meet al-Wannan on one of the roof terraces.

He was surprised to see Mercedes, but delighted too. They sat down for a light lunch. When they’d finished Mercedes left so they could talk.

‘She’s sorted you out, Mercedes,’ said al-Wannan, in English. ‘She’s very good. A very strong woman. Not to be underestimated. You know her husband was murdered by gangsters in El Hoceima.’

‘She only said he’d been killed.’

‘She didn’t tell you that she found the men responsible and shot them all dead.’

‘No, she didn’t,’ said Boxer. ‘She offered me a job.’

‘You must have impressed her.’

‘We get along. She’s volunteered to drive me to Marrakesh.’

‘She knows the place quite well, and some people there. I would accept her offer.’

‘Have you got any information on Evan Rampy?’

‘You’re talking to someone who is a close personal friend of Colonel Ahmed Tsouli of the
DS
T,’ said al-Wannan, proud of his connections. ‘That’s the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. Our MI5. He tells me there is no active file on Evan Rampy.’

‘Did they know he was ex-
CIA
?’

‘Yes, but that’s no reason to open a file on him. The
DS
T talk to the local police and ask for a report on his activities and if he is behaving like a normal citizen then they have no reason to bother with a file. He’s a tourist. He has a riad in the old city where he lives for half the year. He doesn’t even have suspect sexual tastes. This man Chuck Powell you mentioned has been to see him several times over the years. Nothing unusual there either.’