Three Great Novels (43 page)
Read Three Great Novels Online
Authors: Henry Porter
Tags: #Thrillers, #Action & Adventure, #Fiction
‘No, we didn’t. You have to tell me about that.’
He then proceeded to give her everything he had learned from Isis Herrick, aware that this was specifically against the instructions of Sir Robin Teckman. But he had no illusions that he was still being used by Teckman, and reasoned that he could consult his own judgement about what to tell her. She listened intently, memorising the salient details, logging and filing them away to be recalled in a matter of hours for the benefit of her controllers in Tel Aviv. After he finished, she asked him a series of penetrating questions about the tracking of the suspects, not all of which he could answer, but she nevertheless soon grasped the significance of the exclusive Anglo-American arrangements.
‘Why is this? Why don’t they use the other services in Europe?’
‘Because they don’t trust them.’
‘But that is wrong. Only a few months ago the French told the British of some Algerian suspects. We help all the European agencies on Islamist terror cells, sharing information about the movements and backgrounds of suspects. This is the only way.’
‘I’m sure there are many who agree with you, but I didn’t design the policy.’ He stopped and looked at her again. ‘Has it occurred to you that this is the level we work best at - when we’re discussing some fucking intelligence problem?’
‘Yes,’ she said, as though this had long been evident to her.
‘Well,’ he said with a bleak smile, ‘let’s think about the connection between Sammi Loz and the switch at Heathrow. How much notice did you have of Norquist travelling?’
‘Eighteen hours.’
‘And how did you know where he was going?’
‘Other intelligence,’ she said.
‘Oh come on, Eva. What other intelligence?’
‘I cannot say. Operational security.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, raising his hands in surrender. ‘So when did you hear there was a threat to his life?’
‘Just before I got on the plane at JFK. Our people had been monitoring a website. There was nothing definite, but we thought that Norquist was the likely target, and I was told to get to him as soon as possible at Heathrow and warn him.’
‘Your service was ahead of everyone else on this. As far as I can gather, the British had very little notice of the threat.’
She shrugged.
‘Right, so you did get to him at Heathrow. Did you warn him?’
‘I was about to, but then I saw armed police waiting and I knew they must be there to protect him, so I thought it would be better to wait and talk to him about the other things later. I thought he was safe.’
‘Is it the assumption of your service that Sammi Loz tipped off the would-be killers about Norquist’s plans?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because?’
‘We believed Loz knew or guessed that Norquist had been talking to us and had betrayed details of his dealings. Norquist was disposable.’
‘I see. But if there’s a connection between the switch and Norquist’s death - and we should remember that was probably caused by a stray British bullet - it means that Loz must have had notice of Norquist’s plans far in advance of you. A dozen or more men had to get tickets and time their arrival at Heathrow. That would need several days’ preparation. As soon as the operation had begun and all these suspects were in the air bound for London, someone leaked the fact that an American diplomat was about to be topped at Heathrow, on a website they knew was being monitored. Diversion strategy in place.’
‘And because his plane was late, it worked even better than they had planned,’ she said.
Harland leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘That means Sammi Loz is the planner, or at least one of the planners. It’s odd that Teckman hadn’t sussed all this by now.’
‘He couldn’t, because he didn’t know of the corrupt relationship between Admiral Norquist and Sammi Loz. Only we knew this.’
‘Right, but he suspected something, because he asked me to watch Loz.’ He paused. ‘That’s who I have been with.’
‘With Loz!’ She was shocked. ‘Our people are looking for him all over. Where is he? You must tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to.’
‘I can’t, because you will wade in and others may be killed.’
‘But he’s in British hands?’
‘Sort of.’
‘I will have to tell my people that immediately. For God’s sake, why didn’t you say this before?’
‘Operational security,’ he said, grinning.
‘Bullshit.’
‘I needn’t have told you at all, Eva.’
‘But don’t you see, we are working on this together now. There are things that only we can put together.’
‘Naturally that idea pleases me, but forgive me if I have a jaundiced view of your motives, Eva. I know where your loyalties lie - with your mother and Mossad. I come pretty well down the list after those two.’
She lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke. ‘I can’t deny you’re right. But this isn’t a question of loyalty. This is about collaboration for a mutual benefit.’
‘That sounds like a phrase from the communist era. Anyway, I’m out of this. I will tell Teckman what I’ve learned from you, but then I’m going to join the Secretary-General and go back to my work.’
‘Talking to Hamas?’
‘No, acting as a special adviser to Jaidi.’
‘Who is another patient of Dr Loz’s,’ she said tartly. ‘Does he receive home visits like Norquist did?’
‘You
are
well informed,’ said Harland. Then he told her about his own back problem and Sammi Loz’s skills, neither of which seemed to interest her much.
are
well informed,’ said Harland. Then he told her about his own back problem and Sammi Loz’s skills, neither of which seemed to interest her much.
‘Will he be tried in Britain?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Probably.’
‘But there is information that he has been arrested. Do the Americans know? They are looking for him too.’
‘That’s a rather sensitive point. I don’t think anyone knows we’ve got him.’
She looked puzzled. ‘How come?’
‘He’s not under formal arrest.’
‘You mean you don’t have him?’
‘I’m not completely up to speed with the situation,’ said Harland.
She pulled a cell phone from her shoulder bag and got up. ‘I have to report on this. I am sorry, it is too important to wait.’
She went a little distance off into the sand and made her call. Harland’s eyes flicked between her back and two men who had sat down in the shadows between the pool and the rear of the hotel’s lobby. As he watched her he decided he still loved her, or rather needed her, but outweighing this was her propensity to hurt him, cut him out of her life. She had done it twice before and even if she came back when her mother passed on, there was no question in his mind that she would do it again. She was pathologically elusive.
When she returned he said, ‘Were they pleased? Was it worth the trip?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you for this, Bobby.’
‘Well, at least you didn’t have to sleep with me to get the information.’
‘That’s beneath you.’
Harland felt a guilty satisfaction that he could still hurt her. ‘That’s the old game, isn’t it? That’s what you were doing when we first met in Rome. The beautiful swallow from the East ensnaring all those tired officials and politicians.’
She gazed at him with the familiar look of defiance. ‘Fuck you, Bobby.’
‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry. But you should know how much I’ve missed you. Really, you should know that. I realise it’s over but you bloody well could have told me why you were leaving, helped me understand.’
She lowered her eyes and drew a circle in the sand with her shoe. ‘You’re right. It was cruel of me. But I thought it was the best way.’
He glanced back to the hotel. ‘You see we have company here. I saw them at the airport - Syrian or Lebanese footpads.’
‘No, they’re with me.’
‘You travel with a bodyguard?’
‘In Lebanon, yes. It’s still a dangerous place. People go missing.’
‘So you’re not staying here?’
‘No, I have to return. It is not easy to travel from here to Israel. I want to be back as early as I can for my mother’s sake.’
‘Right,’ he said, getting up. ‘So it’s goodbye?’
‘Yes.’ She handed him a card. ‘You may need to call me. This number will reach me wherever I am. I think we will need to be talking about this again.’ Her flawless English was suddenly tinged with the Czech accent he once loved to hear.
‘I’m not working that beat any more. I’m out of this business. ’
‘If you say so.’ She held out her hand.
He took it, drew her to him and kissed her on the cheek. ‘That’s it then,’ he said.
‘We will talk. Sooner than you think.’
He let her go and she walked away towards the three men.
Harland took out his own cell phone and dialled the number on the card she had just given him. He saw her answer. ‘You didn’t take my mobile number,’ he said, and gave it to her.
When she had disappeared into the hotel he made his own call - to Sir Robin Teckman.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Herrick arrived back in London from Africa with Philip Sarre and Joe Lapping three days after the attack. On the night the missiles struck, Sarre and Lapping took her to a desert airstrip about seventy miles from the island. Five hours later they were picked up by a Cessna Titan and flown to Khartoum, where Herrick was treated for her cuts and bruises. They remained there for nearly three days while their passports were equipped with registration stamps and visas to make it seem that they had been in Sudan for over a week. Then they took a flight to Frankfurt and finally one to Heathrow, landing at midday on Sunday. Herrick was never so pleased to see the orderly patchwork of Surrey and Kent appear through the plane window.
At home she listened to her messages, then took a pile of newspapers into the tiny south-facing garden with a jug of lime juice and returned calls to her father, Harland and Dolph. Munroe was overjoyed to hear she was back. He knew better than to ask what had happened after he left Cairo, and instead pressed her to make plans for a trip to the west of Scotland in late July. Neither Dolph nor Harland answered their phones. There was one other call, from a Dr Leonard Jay. She didn’t recognise his name or the number he’d left, but called the cell phone anyway and left a message.
She browsed through the Sundays, trying to keep a sense of failure and deflation at bay. It was difficult. Karim Khan was dead. Sarre had seen a body in the burning ruins of the villa which was almost certainly Khan’s. The body was quite cold and rigor mortis had already set in, which made them suspect that he had not been killed by the missile but had been dead for some time before the strike. There was only one conclusion. Sammi Loz had ended the life of his friend, either by suffocation or with an injection of a lethal combination of drugs from the medical kit.
Khan’s death shocked Herrick, because she had calculated that one thing she could rely on was Loz’s love for Khan. However vain and ruthless he appeared to her, this had seemed to be a constant in his life. But plainly he had decided to leave the island, and knew that he could neither take Khan with him nor risk leaving him to be questioned further.
But had Loz died after killing Khan? Sarre and Lapping spent as long as they dared in the ruins of the bath-house trying to see if anyone was still trapped below the rubble. Sarre emerged and offered the theory that only the rock-solid bath had saved Isis, and unless Loz had been in it with her he would certainly have perished beneath the tons of rubble. Herrick could not remember the slightest sound or movement to indicate that he had survived.
And the attack, coming out of the night with such demonic force. Why? The motives still baffled her, although she knew after receiving an oblique call from the Chief on Sarre’s cell phone in Khartoum, that it had probably been her fault. The satellite phone she’d left plugged into the computer up in the turret had for some reason kept dialling out, dropping the connection and then dialling again. It seemed likely that the Americans, already monitoring the communications coming from the island, had picked up the endlessly repeated signal and used it as a homing device for the first missile. This meant the CIA was aware that Khan and Loz were on the island, which in turn meant that they had been decoding the traffic both ways. They must also have known that a British intelligence officer was responsible for sending those signals, but that consideration had been overridden by the need to eliminate Khan and maybe Loz too. At the back of her mind she wondered if the CIA station in Djibouti, which would have controlled the Predator, was in possession of entirely accurate information.
She lay dozing in the sun, running through it all and trying to focus on what was left in the ruins of the attack. Khan was gone. Loz was probably dead. However, she was still certain that a third person existed, a man whom both Khan and Loz had met in Bosnia and then subsequently in Afghanistan.
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