Avenger (31 page)

"And you don't know how important the Serb is to all of us. Nor his paranoia. Nor how tight his schedule may be. He has to know the danger to himself is over, totally eliminated, or he will butt out of what I need him for."

"And you still can't tell me?"

"Sorry, Kevin. No, not yet."

His deputy shrugged, unhappy but obedient.

"OK, on your conscience, not mine."

And that was the problem, thought Paul Devereaux when he was once again alone in his office, staring out at the thick green foliage between him and the Potomac. Could he square his conscience with what he was doing? He had to. The lesser evil, the greater good.

The unknown man with the false passport would not die easily, upon the midnight with no pain. But he had chosen to swim in hideously dangerous waters, and it had been his decision to do so.

That day, 18 August, America sweltered in the summer heat, and half the country sought relief in the seas, rivers, lakes and mountains. Down on the north coast of South America, 100 per cent humidity, sweeping in from the steaming jungles behind the coast, added ten more degrees to the hundred caused by the sun.

In Parbo docks, ten miles up the teak-brown Surinam River from the sea, the heat was like a tangible blanket, lying over the warehouses and quays. The gave-dogs tried to find the deepest shade to pant away the hours until sundown. Humans sat under slow-moving fans which merely moved the discomfort around a bit.

The foolish tossed down sugary drinks, sodas and colas, which merely made the thirst and dehydration worse. The experienced stayed with piping hot, sweet tea, which may sound crazy but was discovered by the British empire-builders two centuries earlier to be the best re hydrator of them all.

The fifteen-hundred-ton freighter, Tobago Star, crept up the river, docked at her assigned pier and waited for dark. In the cooler dusk she discharged her cargo, which included a bonded crate in the name of US diplomat Ronald Proctor. This went into a chain-link-fenced section of the warehouse to await collection.

Paul Devereaux had spent years studying terrorism in general, and the types that emanated from the Arab and Muslim world, not necessarily the same type, in particular.

He had long come to the conclusion that the conventional whine in the West, that terrorism stemmed from the poverty and destitution of those whom Fanon had called 'the wretched of the earth', was convenient and politically correct psychobabble.

From the Anarchists of Tsarist Russia to the IRA of 1916, from the Irgun and the Stern Gang to EOKA in Cyprus, from the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, CCC in Belgium, Action Directe in France, Red Brigades in Italy, Red Army Faction in Germany again, the Renko Sekkigun in Japan, through to the Shining Path in Peru, to the modern IRA in Ulster or the ETA in Spain, terrorism came from the minds of comfortably raised, well-educated, middle-class theorists with a truly staggering personal vanity and a developed taste for self-indulgence.

Having studied them all, Devereaux was finally convinced the same applied to all their leaders, the self-arrogated champions of the working classes. The same applied in the Middle East as in Western Europe, South America or Far East Asia. Imad Mugmyah, George Habash, Abu Awas, Abu Nidal and all the other Abus had never missed a meal in their lives. Most had college degrees.

In the Devereaux theory those who could order another to plant a bomb in a food hall and gloat over the resultant images all had one thing in common. They possessed a fearsome capacity for hatred. This was the genetic 'given'. The hatred came first; the target could come later and usually did.

The motive also came second to the capacity to hate. It might be Bolshevik revolution, national liberation or a thousand variants thereof, from amalgamation to secession; it might be anti-capitalist fervour; it might be religious exaltation.

But the hatred came first, then the cause, then the target, then the methods and finally the self-justification. And Lenin's 'useful dupes' always swallowed it.

Devereaux was utterly convinced that the leadership of Al Qaeda ran precisely true to form. Its co-founders were a construction millionaire from Saudi Arabia and a qualified doctor from Cairo. It mattered not whether their hatred of Americans and Jews was secular-based or religiously fuelled. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that America or Israel could do, short of complete self-annihilation, that would even begin to appease or satisfy them.

None of them, for him, cared a damn for the Palestinians save as vehicles and justifications. They hated his country not for what it did but for what it was.

He recalled the old British spy chief in the window table at White's as the left-wing demonstrators went by. Apart from the usual snowy-haired British socialists who could never quite get over the death of Lenin, there were the British boys and girls who would one day get a mortgage and vote Conservative, and there were the torrents of students from the Third World.

"They'll never forgive you, dear boy," said the old man. "Never expect it and you'll never be disappointed. Your country is a constant reproach. It is rich to their poor, strong to their weak, vigorous to their idle, enterprising to their reactionary, ingenious to their bewildered, can-do to their sit-and-wait, thrusting to their stunted.

"It only needs one demagogue to arise to shout: "Everything the Americans have they stole from you", and they'll believe it. Like Shakespeare's Caliban, their zealots stare in the mirror and roar in rage at what they see. That rage becomes hatred, the hatred needs a target. The working class of the Third World does not hate you; it is the pseudo-intellectuals. If they ever forgive you, they must indict themselves. So far their hatred lacks the weaponry. One day they will acquire that weaponry. Then you will have to fight or die. Not in tens but in tens of thousands."

Thirty years down the line, Devereaux was sure the old Brit had got it right. After Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Aden, his country was in a new war and did not know it. The tragedy was made worse by the fact the establishment was steeped in ostriches as well.

The Jesuit had asked for the front line and got it. Now he had to do something with his command. His response was Project Peregrine. He did not intend to seek to negotiate with UBL, nor even to respond after the next strike. He intended to try to destroy his country's enemy before that strike. In Father Xavier's analogy, he intended to use his spear to lunge, before the knife-tip came in range. This problem was: where? Not more or less, not 'somewhere in Afghanistan', but 'where' to ten yards by ten yards, and 'when' to thirty minutes.

He knew a strike was coming. They all did; Dick Clarke at the White House, Tom Pickard at the Bureau headquarters in the Hoover Building, George Tenet one floor above his head at Langley. All the whispers out on the street said a 'big one' was in preparation. It was the where, when, what, how, they did not know, and thanks to the crazy rules forbidding them to ask nasty people, they were not likely to find out. That, plus the refusal to collate what they did have.

Paul Devereaux was so disenchanted with the whole lot of them that he had prepared his Peregrine plan and would tell no one what it was.

In his reading of tens of thousands of pages about terror in general and Al Qaeda in particular, one theme had come endlessly through the fog. The Islamist terrorists would not be satisfied with a few dead Americans from Mogadishu to Dares Salaam. UBL would want hundreds of thousands. The prediction of the long-gone Britisher was coming true.

For those kind of figures the Al Qaeda leadership would need a technology they did not yet have but endlessly sought to acquire. Devereaux knew that in the cave complexes of

Afghanistan, which were not simply holes in rocks but subterranean labyrinths including laboratories, experiments had been started with germs and gases. But they were still miles from the methods of mass-dissemination.

For Al Qaeda, as for all the terror groups in the world, there was one prize beyond rubies: fissionable material. Any one of at least a dozen killer groups would give their eye-teeth, take crazy risks, to acquire the basic element of a nuclear device.

It would never have to be an ultra-modern 'clean' warhead; indeed the more basic, the 'dirtier' in radiation terms, the better. Even at the level of their in-house scientists, the terrorists knew that enough fissionable element, jacketed within enough plastic explosive, would create enough lethal radiation over enough square miles to make a city the size of New York uninhabitable for a generation. And that would be apart from the half a million people irradiated into an early, cancerous grave.

It had been a decade and the underground war had been costly and intense. So far, the West, assisted by Moscow more recently, had won it and survived. Huge sums had been spent buying up any fragment of Uranium 235 or plutonium that came near to private sale. Entire countries, former Soviet Republics, had handed over every gram left behind by Moscow, and the local dictators, under the provisions of the Nunn-Lugar Act, had become very wealthy. But there was too much, far too much, quite simply missing.

Just after he founded his own tiny section in Counter-Terrorism at Langley, Paul Devereaux noticed two things. One was that a hundred pounds of pure, weapons-grade Uranium 235 was lodged at the secret Vinca Institute in the heart of Belgrade. As soon as Milosevic fell, the USA began to negotiate its purchase. Just a third of it, thirty-three pounds or fifteen kilograms, would be enough for one bomb.

The other thing was that a vicious Serbian gangster and intimate at the court of Milosevic wanted out, before the roof fell in. He needed 'cover' news papers, protection and a place to disappear to. Devereaux knew that place could never be the USA. But a banana republic.... Devereaux cut him a deal and he cut him a price. The price was collaboration.

Before he quit Belgrade, a thumbnail-sized sample of Uranium 235 was stolen from the Vinca Institute, and the records were changed to show that a full fifteen kilograms had really gone missing.

Six months earlier, introduced by the arms dealer, Vladimir Bout, the runaway Serb had handed over his sample and documentary proof that he possessed the remaining fifteen kilos.

The sample had gone to Al Qaeda's chemist and physicist, Abu Khabab, another highly educated and fanatical Egyptian. It had necessitated his leaving Afghanistan and quietly travelling to Iraq to secure the equipment he needed to test the sample properly.

In Iraq another nuclear programme was underway. It also sought weapons-grade Uranium 235, but was making it the slow, old-fashioned way, with calutrons like the ones used in 1945 at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The sample caused great excitement.

Just four weeks before the circulation of that damnable report compiled by a Canadian magnate concerning his long-dead grandson, word had come through that Al Qaeda would deal. Devereaux had to force himself to stay very calm.

For his killing machine, he had wanted to use an unmanned high-altitude drone called the Predator, but it had crashed just outside Afghanistan. Its wreckage was now back in the USA but the hitherto unarmed UAV was being 'weaponized' by the fitting of a Hellfire missile so that it could in future not only see a target from the stratosphere but blow it to bits as well.

But the conversion would take too long. Paul Devereaux revamped his plan, but he had to delay it while different weaponry was put in place. Only when they were ready could the Serb accept the invitation to journey to Peshawar, Pakistan, there to meet with Kawaheri, Atef, Zubaydah and the physicist Abu Khabab. He would carry with him fifteen kilos of uranium; but not weapons-grade. Yellowcake would do, normal reactor fuel, isotope 238, 3 per cent refined, not the needed 88 per cent.

At the crucial meeting Zoran Zilic was going to pay for all the favours he had been accorded. If he did not, he would be destroyed by a single phone call to Pakistan's lethal and pro-Qaeda secret service, the ISI.

He would suddenly double the price and threaten to leave if his new price was not met. Devereaux was gambling there was only one man who could make that decision and he would have to be consulted.

Far away in Afghanistan, UBL would have to take that phone call. High above, rolling in space, a listener satellite linked to the National Security Agency would hear the call and pinpoint its destination to a place ten feet by ten feet.

Would the man at the Afghan end wait around? Could he contain his curiosity to learn whether he had just become the owner of enough uranium to fulfill his most deadly dreams?

Off the Baluchi coast the nuclear sub USS Columbia would open her hatches to emit a single Tomahawk cruise missile. Even as it flew it would be programmed by global positioning system (GPS) plus Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) and Digital Scene Matching Area Correlation (DISMAC).

Three navigational systems would guide it to that hundred-square-foot and blow the entire area containing the mobile phone to pieces, including the man waiting for his call-back from Peshawar. For Devereaux the problem was time. The moment when Zilic would have to leave for Peshawar, pausing at Ras al-Khaimah to pick up the Russian, was moving ever closer. He could not afford to let Zilic panic and withdraw on the ground that he was a hunted man and thus their deal was null and void. Avenger had to be stopped and probably destroyed. Lesser evil, greater good.

It was 20 August. A man descended from the Dutch KLM airliner straight in from Curacao to Paramaribo airport. It was not Professor Medvers Watson, for whom a reception committee waited further down the coast. It was not even the US diplomat, Ronald Proctor, for whom a crate waited at the docks.

It was the British resort-developer, Henry Nash. With his Amsterdam-delivered visa he passed effortlessly through customs and immigration and took a taxi into town. It would have been tempting to book in at the Torarica, far and away the best in town. But he might have met real Britishers there, so he went to the Krasnopolsky on the Dominiestraat.

His room was top floor, with a balcony facing east. The sun was behind him when he went out for a look over the city. The extra height gave a hint of breeze to make the dusk bearable.

Far to the east, seventy miles away and over the river, the jungles of San Martin were waiting.

Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

The Jungle

IT WAS THE AMERICAN DIPLOMAT, RONALD PROCTOR, WHO LEASED the car. It was not even from an established agency but from a private seller advertising in the local paper.

The Cherokee was second-hand but in good repair, and with a bit of work and a thorough service, which its US-army-trained new owner intended to give it, it would do what it had to.

The deal he made the vendor was simple and sweet. He would pay ten thousand dollars in cash. He would only need the vehicle for a month, until his own 4x4 came through from the States. If he returned it absolutely intact in thirty days, the vendor would take it back and reimburse five thousand dollars.

The seller was looking at an effort-free five thousand dollars in a month. Given that the man facing him was a charming American diplomat, and the Cherokee might come back in thirty days, it seemed foolish to go through all the trouble of changing the documents. Why alert the taxman?

Proctor also rented the lock-up garage and store shed behind the flower and produce market. Finally he went to the docks and signed for his single crate, which went into the garage to be carefully unpacked and repacked in two canvas kit bags Then Ronald Proctor simply ceased to exist.

In Washington, Paul Devereaux was gnawed by anxiety and curiosity as the days dragged by. Where was this man? Had he used his visa and entered Surinam? Was he on his way?

The easy way to indulge the temptation would be to ask the Surinam authorities direct, via the US embassy on Redmondstraat. But that would trigger Surinamese curiosity. They would want to know why. They would pick him up themselves and start asking questions. The man called Avenger could arrange to be set free and start again. The Serb, already becoming paranoid at the thought of going to Peshawar, could panic and call the deal off. So Devereaux paced and prowled and waited.

Down in Paramaribo the tiny consulate of San Martin had been tipped off by Colonel Moreno that an American pretending to be a collector of butterflies might apply for a visa. It was to be granted immediately, and he was to be informed at once.

But no one called Medvers Watson appeared. The man they sought was sitting at a terrace cafe in the middle of Parbo with his last purchases in a sack beside him. It was 24 August.

What he had bought had come from the town's only camping and hunting shop, the Tackle Box on Zwarten Hovenbrug Street. As the London businessman Mr. Henry Nash he had brought almost nothing that would be useful across the border. But with the contents of the diplomat's crate and what he had acquired that morning, he could think of nothing he might be missing. So he tilted back his Parbo beer and enjoyed the last he was going to have for some time.

Those who waited were rewarded on the morning of the 25th. The queue at the river crossing was, as ever, slow, and the mosquitoes, as ever, dense. Those crossing were almost entirely locals, with pedal bikes, motorcycles and rusty pickups, all loaded with produce.

There was only one smart car in the queue on the Surinam side, a black Cherokee, with a white man at the wheel. He wore a creased seersucker jacket in cream, off-white Panama hat and heavy-rimmed glasses. Like the others he sat and swatted, then moved a few yards forwards as the chain ferry took on a fresh cargo and cranked back across the Commini.