Cold Kill (35 page)

She took him through to the interior office, which contained a big oak desk and a high-backed executive chair, with two smaller ones facing it. A large whiteboard bore several dozen photographs, head and shoulders shots.

Button sat down in the big chair and motioned him to a seat. ‘Congratulations on the money run. I gather Europol are happy with the way things went.’

‘They’re not busting the Albanian guy who’s running the show,’ said Shepherd, ‘but, yeah, it went well.’

‘We’re keen to follow up the Passport Agency angle,’ said Button. ‘We’re not going to pull the Uddin brothers in until we’ve nailed their contact.’

‘Okay,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m going in to their office today at five to get my money.’

‘I’d like you to wear a wire. You’ve established enough trust with them, haven’t you?’

‘They’ve not given me a second glance at the last couple of meetings.’

‘She slid an envelope across the desk. ‘Give them these details, and we’ll be watching to see who enters them into the system.’

Shepherd took the envelope. ‘What happens to the money I get?’

‘You keep it,’ said Button, and grinned at the surprise on his face. ‘Joke,’ she said. ‘Take it home with you and I’ll arrange to have it collected.’

‘So that’s it?’ he said. ‘I’m now employed by SOCA?’

‘Welcome aboard,’ she said.

‘I thought there’d be more to it. Paperwork and stuff.’

‘That’ll be on its way. Your next pay cheque will be from the Met, but after that you’ll be on SOCA’s payroll.’ She smiled. ‘With a pretty hefty increase.’

‘Thanks for that,’ he said.

‘Someone from Human Resources will talk to you about pensions, holidays and all that stuff. Any prob lems, let me know, but I’m sure there won’t be.’

‘Logistics? Vehicles and equipment?’

‘I’ll introduce you to our people as and when we need them. But you know Amar Singh from NCIS?’

‘He’s been working on the currency case.’

‘He’s on our tech team.’

‘That’s good to hear.’

‘I’ll get him to call you later to arrange the wire.’

‘And what about the other undercover operatives?’

‘The same applies. As and when you work with other team members, you’ll be introduced. But there’ll be no office parties or group hugs. There might be times when you come up against other members of the team without knowing it.’

‘That could be dangerous.’

‘On the contrary, it could be a life-saver. The fewer people who know what you do, the fewer people there are who can betray you.’

‘What about Jimmy Sharpe?’

Button nodded. ‘He’s in. First-class operator. You can use him today as back-up.’

‘Paul Joyce?’

‘Decided he’d prefer to remain with the Met. I wanted him on board – it was his call.’

Shepherd wanted to run a number of other names by her, but there would be time for that later. ‘What about cases? Do you have some lined up?’

Button smiled thinly. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘My bosses have given me a list of targets. High-profile villains they regard as priorities. But one step at a time, Spider. We’re hitting the ground running but we’re not rushing into anything. The Uddin brothers and their passports are your priority.’

‘It’s a small deal, financially. Ten grand a passport.’

‘But a huge deal politically,’ said Button. She stood up and went to the whiteboard. ‘Look at this.’

Shepherd joined her and stared at the photographs. There were forty in all; most were in colour but a handful were black and white. All but two were men. A few weren’t even photographs but artists’ impressions.

‘Let me tell you a story,’ said Button. ‘It goes back to 1992 when the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina held a referendum on independence. The result was a call for independence and separation from Serbia, and the result was civil war, with Bosnian Serbs murdering thousands of Bosnian Muslims. Ethnic-cleansing on a massive scale, just a few hours’ flight from London. Muslim fighters from all over the world, America, Russia and Europe, piled into the former Yugoslavia to help. Now jump ahead a few years. The UN peacekeepers are in, the civil war is over. Money is pouring into Bosnia to pay for reconstruction. Millions of dollars. A big chunk comes from Saudi Arabia. Muslims helping Muslims. Nothing wrong with that. King Fahd puts in $100 million from his own pocket. The Saudi government pours in $450 million, restores water supplies, rebuilds schools and mosques, and takes care of seven thousand orphans. A whole raft of Saudi-funded aid agencies and charities moves in. And that’s where the trouble starts. Move ahead to 2001. The Americans invade Afghanistan a few weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2003, they invade Iraq. Elements of the Muslim world see America as the enemy and want revenge. The
jihad
begins in earnest. Muslim terrorists carry out atrocities around the world. Terror has a new face – Arab men with beards and baggy trousers. The world goes on high alert. Every Arab who gets on to a plane is watched. Every Arab family is regarded with suspicion. Arabs and Asians get stopped more often by the police. Their passports are looked at more closely. It gets harder and harder for Arabs to travel, to apply for visas, to book into hotels, to hire cars. And that’s when we come back to Bosnia.’

She walked over to a window and looked down at the street below.

‘London is a target. As are most European cities. Our landmarks, our stations, our football stadiums. Al-Qaeda wants to kill, maim and destroy our way of life. And for that they need troops. Warriors prepared to die for the cause.’

‘Suicide-bombers?’

‘Right. But men and women who can blend, who can move through Western countries without attracting attention, who won’t get picked up by racial profiling. Al-Qaeda targeted two groups as fulfilling these criteria. The first are the Invisibles, second or third generation Muslims born in the West, of Asian or Middle Eastern heritage, but with full British citizenship. We think there are up to ten thousand Invisibles in the UK sympathetic to the al-Qaeda cause, and we know up to three thousand have been through some form of al-Qaeda training overseas. And they started looking for non-Arab Muslims, and Bosnia was the perfect hunting ground. Several of the charities there became recruiting centres for the
jihad
. The Americans discovered a stack of terrorist-related material at the offices of one of Saudi Arabia’s leading aid agencies, including instructions for using crop-duster aircraft to spray poisons from the air, US State Department identification badges, photographs and maps showing the location of government buildings. Half a dozen charities in Sarajevo have been shut down in the last few years because of suspicious finances. Money that was supposed to be used for the reconstruction of Bosnia has been channelled into terrorist networks. Millions upon millions of dollars.’

Button pointed at the photographs on the whiteboard. ‘Those are just some of the men and women we suspect have been recruited to the al-Qaeda cause out of Bosnia. And what makes them so dangerous is that none is an Arab. They can fly under our radar, assuming that their paperwork is in order.’

‘And you think they could be using the Uddin brothers for passports?’

‘We need to know who their contact is, and who he has supplied passports to,’ said Button. ‘It could just be that they’re helping economic migrants get into the country by the back door. Or something more sinister may be going on. That’s what we need to know. And we need to know quickly.’

Shepherd nodded at the photographs. ‘And these are all terrorists active in the UK?’

‘They’re all Muslims, and they were all in Bosnia at some point. And they’re all missing now – or, at least, unaccounted for. The Americans are looking for them. So are we.’

‘Isn’t there any facial-recognition system at the Passport Agency office same as there is for fingerprints? Cross-check these photographs with photographs submitted for passports?’

‘It’s been worked on, but there’s no system in place yet. Once we have biometric passports, that will change. But it doesn’t help us now. We need to find out who the Uddin brothers have supplied with passports and if any are on this board.’

‘And how am I supposed to do that?’

‘I’m not suggesting you can,’ she said. ‘But see how much the Uddin brothers know. See if they’ll tell you how many passports they’ve arranged over the years for what sort of customers. Anything you can get will help.’

‘When do they get busted?’

‘It’s still being discussed,’ said Button. ‘It depends how extensive the passport operation is, and how closely linked the passport guy is to the brothers. What we’ve got to decide is whether we pull in the passport guy as soon as we identify him, or let him run and watch him. My former colleagues in Five have been informed, and they’re pushing to leave him in place.’

‘So that we can see who else he’s supplying with passports?’

‘Exactly. If potential terrorists are using him, there’d be more to gain from watching and waiting. If it’s just economic migrants, we can bust him and plug the hole. It could be that we pull the Uddin brothers in for the currency-smuggling but leave the passport guy in place. It’s all up in the air.’

‘Okay,’ said Shepherd.

‘I’m sorry if it sounds a bit vague, but it’s complex. I know it’d be a lot easier if we were going after a drug-dealer or an armed robber. Catch them in the act and it’s on to the next case. As soon as there’s the possibility of terrorist activity, the game moves up a notch.’

Shepherd frowned. ‘Game?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Shepherd knew exactly what she meant. He’d worked with operatives from the intelligence services before, British and American, and they often treated their cases as an academic exercise. They enjoyed pitting their wits against an enemy who was their intellectual equal, took pleasure in every victory and were embittered by defeat. Button had said ‘game’ and that was what she meant. Her job didn’t involve putting herself in harm’s way: that was what Shepherd was for. He’d be the one on the ground, risking a bullet in the head or a knife in the gut, lying, cheating and doing whatever it took to take down the enemy. He’d be the one walking into the lion’s den with a recording device taped to his back. He didn’t regard what he did as a game. He put away criminals because they hurt other people physically, stole from them or plied them with drugs. Each case was a battle, and while he often doubted that he’d win the war, he was determined to win every battle he fought.

Button could sense Shepherd’s concern. ‘It’s an expression,’ she said.

It was – but it was more than that: it was an attitude. And when you were facing dangerous criminals, it could be a dangerous one. Generally spies didn’t shoot other spies, but drug-dealers most definitely put bullets into undercover cops. When he’d faced Kreshnik in the apartment in Paris, it hadn’t been a game, and it was important that Charlotte Button understood that. ‘No problem,’ he said. He remembered how she’d taken pleasure in telling him she’d followed him to the Ritz. She’d been playing a game then, no question about it.

‘I wasn’t minimising what I’m asking you to do, Dan,’ she said. ‘It really is just an expression.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Shepherd. He looked at the photographs and artists’ impressions on the whiteboard and wondered how many of those men and women thought of the
jihad
as a game.

Shepherd walked slowly along the pavement, checking reflections in shop windows, more from habit than any fear that he was being followed. The Uddin brothers’
bureau de change
was little more than a booth set in a row of shops, with a staircase next to it that led up to the offices. An Asian youth with slicked-back hair was sitting in a glass-fronted cubicle next to an electronic board that listed exchange rates in red numbers. He was engrossed in a book. Plenty of people were walking by, but no one seemed interested in changing money. It was a busy street. There was an Argos, a Woolworth’s, small shops selling electrical equipment and phone cards, and an amusement arcade packed with fruit machines. The bulk of the shoppers were Arabs, and along the street there were several Arab coffee shops with tables on the pavements where men in long white robes sat and sipped strong, sweet coffee and sucked on ornate hookah pipes.

Shepherd crossed the road at a set of traffic-lights. A huddle of women clothed from head to foot in black burkhas, with veiled letterbox slots at eye level, scuttled out of Argos weighed down with bulging carrier-bags. They waved frantically at a black cab and climbed into the back.

The youth didn’t look up from his book as Shepherd walked past him and headed up the stairs to Salik’s office. He had a tight feeling in his stomach. He always did when he was wearing a wire. He could feel the battery pack and the digital recorder in the small of his back, the wire that wound round his waist under his shirt, the microphone taped to his chest. He hated carrying digital recorders, but sometimes they were a necessary evil. Devices like the transmitting mobiles and long-distance microphones were all well and good but the quality was variable. Stand-alone recorders with good-quality microphones were pretty much foolproof, so long as they remained hidden. Shepherd only used them when he was sure he had the trust of the people he was talking to, and he knew the Uddin brothers trusted him. He had just brought in seven million euros of counterfeit currency for them and he hadn’t even insisted on being paid in advance.

On the first floor he came to a white-painted door with a plastic plaque that displayed the name of the
bureau de change
in large capital letters and underneath it half a dozen other company names in smaller type. Shepherd knocked.

An Asian youth opened the door. He might have been the elder brother of the boy downstairs, although his hair was longer and he was wearing horn-rimmed glasses.

‘I’m here to see Salik and Matiur,’ said Shepherd.