The Kill List (13 page)

“I am told your friend in the south is now fully briefed,” said Simon Jordan. “So I must ask you: What exactly is it you want him to do?”

He listened intently while the Tracker explained what he had in mind. He stirred his club soda thoughtfully. He had not the slightest doubt as to the fate the former U.S. Marine next to him had in mind for the Preacher, and it would not be vacationing in Cuba.

“If our man is able to assist you in this way,” he said at length, “and there is any question of terminating him along with the quarry in a missile strike, there would be a serious refusal from us to cooperate with you for a long while to come.”

“I never had that in mind,” said the Tracker.

“I just want us to be clear on that, Tracker. Are we clear?”

“As the ice in your glass. No missile strike unless Opal is miles away.”

“Excellent. Then I will see the instructions are given.”

• • •

Y
ou want to go where?” asked Gray Fox.

“Only London. They are as keen to see the Preacher silenced as we are. His apparent outside man is in residence there. I want to be nearer to the center of events. I think we may be moving toward closure with this man Preacher. I have mentioned this to Konrad Armitage. He says I would be welcome, and his people will do everything they can. It’s only a phone call away.”

“Stay in touch, Tracker. I have to report up to the admiral on this.”

• • •

O
n the fishing dock at Kismayo, a dark-skinned young man with a clipboard scanned the faces of the fishermen arriving from the sea. Kismayo, lost to government forces in 2012, had been regained by al-Shabaab after bloody fighting the following year, and the vigilance of the fanatics was ferocious. Their religious police were everywhere to ensure absolute piety from the population. The paranoia regarding spies from the north was pandemic. Even the fishermen, normally boisterous unloading their catch, were subdued by fear.

The dark young man spotted a face he knew, one he had not seen for weeks. With his clipboard and pen poised to note the size of the catch being landed, he approached the man.

“Allahu-akhbar,”
he intoned. “What have you got?”

“Jacks and just three kingfish,
inshallah
,” said the fisherman. He gestured to one of the kings, which had lost the silvery glitter of the fresh-caught and had a slash across its tail. “From your friend,” he murmured.

Opal signaled that all were permitted for sale. As the fish were removed to the stone slabs, he slipped the marked one into a burlap bag. Even in Kismayo it was permitted for a tally clerk to take a fish for supper.

When he was alone in his cabin by the shore, just out of town, he extracted the aluminum tube and unscrewed the top. There were two rolls, one of dollars and one of instructions. The latter would be memorized and burnt. The dollars buried under the earthen floor.

The dollars were one thousand, in ten hundred-dollar bills, the instructions simple.

“You will use the dollars to acquire a reliable scooter, trail bike or moped and canisters of fuel to attach to the pillion. There is motoring to be done.

“Second, acquire a good radio with a range able to pick up Kol Israel. On Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, there is a late-night talk show on Channel Eight. It comes on at 23.30. It is called
Yanshufim
(
The Night Owls
).

“It is always preceded by the weather report. Somewhere up the coast highway toward Marka, there is a new rendezvous spot marked out for a face-to-face meeting. You will find it on the attached map. It is unmistakable.

“When you hear the coded instruction, wait until the following day. Set off at dusk. Motor to the RV spot, arriving at dawn. Your contact will be there with fresh funds, equipment and instructions.

“The words in the weather report you are waiting for are: ‘Tomorrow there will be slight rain over Ashkelon.’ Good luck, Opal.”

T
he fishing boat was old and battered, but that was the idea. She was rusted and needed a lick of paint or more, but that also was deliberate. In a sea full of inshore fishing boats, she was not supposed to attract attention.

She slipped her mooring in the dead of night from the cove where Rafi Nelson used to have his beach bar outside Eilat. By dawn, she was south of the Gulf of Aqaba, chugging her way into the Red Sea and past the scuba-diving resorts of the Egyptian Sinai coast. The sun was high when Taba Heights and Dahab went by; there were a couple of early dive boats out over the reefs, but no one took any notice of the grubby Israeli fisherman.

There was a captain at the wheel, his first mate making coffee in the galley. There were only two real seamen onboard. There were also two real fishermen, who would handle the long lines and the nets when she took up her drifting role. But the other eight were Sayeret Matkal commandos.

The fish hold had been scoured and cleansed of the old stink to create accommodation for them: eight bunks along the walls and a common mess area on deck. The hatch covers were closed so that the air-conditioning in the cramped space, as the burning sun rose in the sky, could do its job.

As she cruised down the Red Sea between Saudi Arabia and Sudan, she changed her identity. She became the
Omar al-Dhofari
, out of the Omani port of Salalah. Her crew looked the part; all could pass for Gulf Arabs by appearance and mastery of the language.

In the narrows between Djibouti and Yemen, she skirted the Yemeni island of Perim and turned into the Gulf of Aden. From here on she was in pirate territory but virtually immune from danger. Somali pirates look for a prey with a commercial value and an owner prepared to pay the price of recovery. An Omani fishing boat did not fit that pattern.

The men onboard saw a frigate from the international naval flotilla that had made life extremely hard for the pirates, but she was not even challenged. The sun caught the glint of the lenses of the powerful binoculars that studied her, but that was all. Being Omani, she was of no interest to the pirate catchers either.

On the third day out, she rounded Cape Guardafui, the easternmost mainland point of Africa, and turned south, with only Somalia to starboard, heading on down to her operational station off the coast between Mogadishu and Kismayo. When she reached her station, she hove to. The nets were cast to continue the pretense, and a brief and harmless message was sent by e-mail to the imaginary girlfriend, Miriam, at the Office, to say she was ready and waiting.

The division chief Benny headed south also, but much faster. He flew El Al to Rome and changed planes there for Nairobi. Mossad has long had a particularly strong presence in Kenya, and Benny was met by the local head of station, in plainclothes and in a plain car. It had been a week since the Somali fisherman with the smelly kingfish had handed over his cargo to Opal, and Benny had to hope a motorcycle of some type had been acquired by then.

It was a Thursday, and that evening, close to midnight, the talk show
The Night Owls
was broadcast as usual. It was preceded by the weather report. This one mentioned that, despite a heat wave in most parts, there would be light rain over Ashkelon.

• • •

F
ull cooperation with the Tracker from the British was a foregone conclusion. The United Kingdom had sustained four murders by young fanatics seeking glory or paradise or both, inspired by the Preacher, and the authorities wanted him closed down as eagerly as the Americans did.

Tracker was lodged in one of the U.S. embassy’s safe houses, a small but well-appointed cottage down a cobbled mews in Mayfair. There was a brief meeting with the J-SOC chief of the defense staff at the embassy and with the CIA chief of station. Then he was taken to meet the Secret Intelligence Service at their HQ at Vauxhall Cross. Tracker had been in the green-and-sandstone pile by the Thames twice before, but the man he met was new to him.

Adrian Herbert was much the same age, mid-forties, so he had been at college when Boris Yeltsin terminated Soviet communism and the Soviet Union in 1991. He had been a fast-track entrant, after a degree in history at Lincoln College, Oxford, and a year at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His specialty was Central Asia, and he spoke Urdu and Pashto, with some Arabic.

The boss of the SIS, often but wrongly called MI6, is always and only known as the Chief; he popped his head around the door to say hello and then left Adrian Herbert alone with his guests. Also present, as a courtesy, was a staffer from the Security Service, or MI5, at Thames House, five hundred yards down the river on its northern bank.

There was the almost ritual offering of coffee and biscuits, then Herbert glanced at his three American guests and murmured: “How do you think we can help?”

The two from the U.S. embassy left it to the Tracker. No one present was in ignorance of what the man from TOSA was charged with. Tracker saw no need to explain what he had done so far, how far he had got or what he intended to do next. Even between friends and allies, there is always need to know.

“The Preacher is not in Yemen, he’s in Somalia,” he said. “Exactly where he is lodged, I do not yet know. But we do know that his computer, and thus the source of his broadcasts, is in a warehouse-cum-bottling-plant in the port of Kismayo. I am pretty certain he is not there in person.”

“I believe Konrad Armitage told you we have no one in Kismayo,” said Herbert.

“It seems no one has,” the Tracker lied. “But that is not my quest here. We have established that someone is communicating with that warehouse and has received acknowledgment and thanks for his messages. The warehouse is owned by Masala Pickles, based in Karachi. You may have heard of it.”

Herbert nodded. He enjoyed Indian and Pakistani food and sometimes took his “assets” to curry restaurants on their visits to London. Masala mango chutney was well known.

“By an extraordinary coincidence, which we none of us believe in, Masala is wholly owned by Mr. Mustafa Dardari, who was a boyhood friend of the Preacher in Islamabad. I would like to have this man investigated.”

Herbert glanced at the man from MI5, who nodded.

“Should be possible,” the man murmured. “Does he live here?”

Tracker knew that although MI5 had representatives in the main foreign stations, their principal obligations were in the country. The SIS, although principally charged with foreign espionage and counterespionage against perceived enemies of Her Majesty abroad, also had the facility to mount an operation at home.

He also knew that, as with CIA and FBI in America, there had been periods when the rivalry between the internal and external secret services had led to animosity, but the common threat of Jihadist extremism, and its offspring terrorism, had for ten years led to a far greater degree of cooperation.

“He migrates,” said the Tracker. “He has a mansion in Karachi and a town house in London. Pelham Crescent. My information is that he is thirty-three, single, personable and a presence on the social map.”

“I may have met him,” said Herbert. “Private dinner, two years ago, hosted by a Pakistani diplomat. Very smooth, I seem to recall. And you want him watched?”

“I want him burgled,” said the Tracker. “I would like his pad bugged, sound and picture. But, most of all, I want his computer.”

Herbert glanced at Donald Firth, the man from 5.

“Joint op?” he suggested. Firth nodded.

“We have the facilities, of course. I’ll need the go from higher authority. Shouldn’t be a problem. Is he in town at the moment?”

“Don’t know,” said the Tracker.

“Well, not a problem to find out. And I presume the whole bun fight must be invisible and remain so?”

Yes, thought the Tracker, a very invisible bun fight indeed. It was agreed both services would get clearance for a very black operation with no sanction from any magistrate—in other words, totally illegal. But both British spooks were confident that with the Preacher’s trail of blood and death across the country, there would be no objection, right up to ministerial level if need be. The only political caveat would be the usual: Do what you feel you must, but I want to know nothing about it. Leading from the front, as ever.

As he was driven back to his mews cottage in the embassy car, the Tracker mused that there were now two possible routes to the exact location of the Preacher: One was Dardari’s personal desktop computer, if it could be tapped into. The other he was keeping up his sleeve for the moment.

• • •

I
t was just after dawn the next day, that the MV
Malmö
eased her way out of Gothenburg port and headed for the open sea. She was a 22,000-ton general-cargo freighter, what in the merchant shipping world is called handy-sized. The yellow-and-blue flag of Sweden fluttered from her stern.

She was a part of the considerable merchant fleet of Harry Andersson, among the last one-of-a-kind tycoons left in Sweden. Andersson had founded his shipping line many years ago with a single aged tramp steamer and had built the line to forty ships and made himself the biggest merchant marine tycoon in the country.

Despite the taxes, he had never relocated abroad; despite the fees, he had never adopted flags of convenience for his vessels. He had never “floated” except on the sea, never the stock exchange. He was sole owner of Andersson Line and, rare in Sweden, a billionaire in his own right. He had had two marriages and seven children, but only his youngest son, young enough to be his grandchild, was eager to become a mariner like his father.

The
Malmö
had a long trip ahead of her. She had a cargo of Volvo cars, destination Perth, Australia. On her bridge was Captain Stig Eklund; the first and second officers were Ukrainian and the chief engineer Polish. There were ten Filipino crew, including a cook, cabin steward and eight deckhands.

The only supernumerary was the cadet Ove Carlsson, studying for his merchant officer’s ticket and on his first long-distance voyage. He was just nineteen. Only two men on that ship knew who he really was: Capt. Eklund and the lad himself. The old tycoon was determined that if his youngest son was to go to sea on one of his ships, there would be neither bullying caused by resentment nor sycophancy from those seeking favor.

So the young midshipman traveled under the identity of his mother’s maiden name. A friend in government had authorized a genuine passport in the false name, and the passport had secured papers from the Swedish merchant marine authorities in the same name.

The four officers and the cadet were on the bridge that summer morning when the steward brought them coffee as the
Malmö
pushed her blunt nose into the rising swell of the Skagerrak.

• • •

A
gent Opal had indeed managed to acquire a rugged trail bike from a Somali who was desperate to get out of the country with his wife and child and needed the dollars to start afresh in Kenya. What he was doing was utterly illegal under al-Shabaab law and liable to bring him a flogging or worse if he were caught. But he also had a scruffy pickup truck and believed he could make the border if he drove by night and lay up all day in the dense vegetation between Kismayo and the Kenyan frontier.

Opal had also strapped to the rear pillion a large wicker basket in which anyone might carry their meager shopping but which in his case would hide a large extra canister of petrol.

The map he had acquired from the belly of the kingfish showed him his handler’s chosen meeting point was on the coast almost a hundred miles north. On the pitted, rutted track the coast highway had become, he could manage it between dusk and dawn.

His other purchase was an old but serviceable transistor radio on which he could listen to various foreign stations—also forbidden by al-Shabaab. But living alone in his cabin out of town, pressing the tranny to his ear with the sound low, he could pick up Kol Israel and not be heard by anyone a few yards away. That was how he heard about showers over Ashkelon.

The inhabitants of that merry borough might look up the next day and be perplexed by a blue sky with not a cloud in sight, but that was their problem.

Benny was already with the fishing boat. He had arrived by helicopter, a machine owned and flown by another Israeli on what purported to be a private charter for a wealthy tourist from Nairobi to the Oceans Sports Hotel at Watamu on the coast north of Malindi.

In fact, the helicopter had flown past the coast, turned north past Lamu Island, east of Somalia’s Ras Kamboni Island, until the GPS system located the fishing boat below.

The helicopter held position twenty feet up as Benny fast-roped down to the pitching deck and the hands waiting to grab him.

That evening, Opal set off under cover of darkness. It was Friday, the streets were almost empty, the population at their prayers and the road traffic thin. Twice when the agent saw headlights coming up behind him, he pulled off the road and hid until the truck went by. He did the same when he saw the glow of lights on the horizon ahead. And he rode only by the light of the moon.

He was early. When he knew he must be a few miles short of the meeting point, he pulled off again and waited for dawn. At first light, he went on, but slowly, and there it was: a dry wadi, coming from the desert to his left, but large enough to merit a bridge to pass under. It would flood in the coming monsoon and become a raging torrent, passing under the concrete span of the bridge and through the cluster of giant casuarina trees between the highway and the shore.

He left the road and coaxed his trail bike the hundred yards to the water’s edge. Then he listened. After fifteen minutes, he heard it: the faint snarl of an outboard engine. He flicked his lights twice: up, down, up, down. The buzz turned toward him, and the shape of the rigid inflatable came out of the dark sea. He looked back at the road behind him. No one.

Benny stepped ashore. Passwords were exchanged. Then he gave his agent a hug. There was news from home, eagerly awaited. A briefing, and equipment.