Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) (26 page)

Farsi was suitably
unimpressed.  “They know that the world’s most wanted man is in the UK,
but they don’t feel the need to share that with us?  That’s bullshit.”

Ellis agreed.  “Andrew, you
know someone over there who can speak off the record.  Any chance they’d
know anything about this?”

“I can try,” Harvey said. 
“What did they make of the news you gave them?”

“I didn’t tell them,” she
said.  “I got as far as saying Mansour was on his way when they dropped their
bomb.  If that’s the game they want to play, they’ll find it works both
ways.” 

It made sense to Harvey, at
least from a bargaining point of view.  He pulled out his mobile and moved
to a quiet corner of the office.  Doug Wallis answered on the second ring.

“Andrew, how’s things?”

“I’m good, Doug.  Can you
make lunch today?”

Wallis sensed the urgency in his
voice and agreed to meet up within the hour.  Harvey thanked him and hung
up, then told Ellis about the upcoming meeting.

“I don’t know how helpful he’ll
be,” Harvey admitted.  “Our arrangement does have its limits.”

Ellis was glad to hear it. 
She wanted to press him on the information they’d previously shared, but
decided to save that conversation for later.

Harvey printed off the list of
possible targets and gave it to Ellis before helping Farsi with his
workload.  While Hamad went through the list of informers and undercover
operatives, he started on the facial recognition logs.

After uploading the most recent
image of Mansour and setting it as the search parameter, he waited for the
system to go through all entries for the last seventy-two hours.  With
over ninety-five thousand passengers arriving each day, the system would have
to compare the image with well over a quarter of a million faces.  Harvey
decided to filter the list to disregard planes arriving from the West, which
cut the number in half but still left a huge amount to go through.  After
setting the match threshold to sixty percent, he hit the Search button and left
it running while he went to meet up with Wallis.

He arrived at the sandwich shop
five minutes early and ordered an egg and cress baguette to take away.
 When Doug arrived he waited until his CIA counterpart chose a bacon,
stilton and cranberry on wholemeal before they headed towards the river.

“My boss is a bit pissed with
you guys,” Harvey opened the conversation when they found an empty bench. 
“She doesn’t like the fact that you kept Abdul Mansour’s arrival to
yourselves.”

“Thought it might have something
to do with him,” Wallis said, before taking a bite of his sandwich and taking
his time chewing it.  Harvey realised he was asking a lot from his friend,
perhaps even stretching the relationship, but he had to at least try.

“Not really much I can give you,
I’m afraid,” Wallis eventually said, to Harvey’s obvious disappointment.

“Can you at least pinpoint his
arrival time?”  Harvey pressed.  “We know how he got in, why he’s
here, and his probable target.  If we knew when he got here we’d have a
better chance of tracing him.”

Wallis was taken aback. 
“You’re kidding, right?”

“Deadly
serious, Doug.
  We even have the genetic make-up of the virus and a
good idea of which bio-defence he plans to circumvent, but, as you say, maybe
this stuff is above our pay grade.”

He had Wallis’s attention. 
The American looked at his watch and did a quick calculation. 

“I suppose it will be on the
news soon enough,” he said.  “Mansour gave us the co-ordinates to Azhar
Al-Asiri’s current home.  We have a drone en route to take him out.”

It was Harvey’s turn to be
shocked.  “You get a note claiming to be from a known terrorist and you
send in the bombers, no questions asked?”

“Don’t be facetious, Andy, it
doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m not trying to be, Doug, but
if you’d shared this with us you could have got the whole picture. 
Doesn’t it seem strange that Mansour is handing you Al-Asiri on a plate, and
shortly afterwards we’re given a tipoff that could help take Mansour out?”

Wallis had to agree that it was
too much of a coincidence.  “Can I share that with my people?”  He
asked, and Harvey said it would be better if it came through official
channels.  “Tell your people to contact Ellis and give her everything you
have, and she’ll share the details we received.”

He could have told Wallis that
he’d effectively given him every morsel they had, but in order to get the
agencies talking to each other he knew he would have to keep that to
himself.  It meant jeopardising their friendship as well as their
professional relationship, but Harvey knew the time would come when he would
have a chance to rebuild that bridge.

They parted company, Wallis
dumping his half-eaten sandwich in a bin before walking away with his phone to
his ear.

*
* *

The BBC news channel opened with an announcement that the Bank of England
planned to inject another forty billion into the economy in an attempt to
kick-start the recovery, but still no reports of an air strike in Quetta. 

Mansour wasn’t particularly concerned as he knew it would take some time
for the US government to sanction the hit on Al-Asiri’s home.  In his
note, he’d said that Al-Qaeda’s leader would only be at the location for a
short period, hoping that the idea of a forty-eight hour window of opportunity
would force their hand.

Apparently not.

The sound of laughter floated upstairs, heralding the return of the men
from their morning’s testing.  He went to join them and found the four of
them in the living room, surrounded by their new toys.  After a quick
greeting he asked how their morning had gone.

“It was fun,” the younger one said, but his levity wasn’t well received by
Mansour.

“I didn’t send you out to have fun,” he said, wiping the smile off the
teenager’s face.  “Are you able to control them using the phone app?”

“It was tricky at first, but we have the hang of it now,” another said, as
Mansour picked up one of the remote-controlled helicopters.  The machine
was twenty-four inches long and sturdily built, with a purported range of over
five hundred yards, but they told him it was only really effective at four
hundred.

“After that, it becomes erratic.”

Mansour wasn’t concerned.  That was more than enough for their
purposes.

“How long will it take to fit the attachment?”

They told him it would take less than two hours.  “I want you to go
out and test them again with the smoke canisters attached.  Let me know if
it affects performance.”

The plan was a simple one.  The four men would launch the helicopters
close to the Palace of Westminster and guide them over the building, where the
canisters would release their contents.  The yellow smoke would be
interpreted as a chemical attack, causing the triggering of the building’s
defences. 
Those inside would consider
themselves
safe from harm,
but in fact they would be the only people exposed to his virus.

At the same time as the building
was being locked down, he would have his note delivered to the security
services, letting them know the fate of those inside. 

And what a fine collection they
would be.  The Queen would be delivering her speech at the State Opening
of Parliament, where the Prime Minister and his entire government would be in
attendance. 

This single strike would be the
greatest victory in Al-Qaeda’s history, bigger and bolder than anything the
organisation had ever attempted, cementing his reputation for all time. 
Once Al-Asiri was gone, he would assume control of the organisation, and few
would dispute his right to lead the struggle towards ultimate victory.

The only part of the plan
remaining was to hand the inhalers to the BBC cameraman who would be filming
the event, and Mansour would do that personally the following day.

Chapter
14

Wednesday
May 9th 2012

The sun had barely shown its
face when Andrew Harvey reached Thames House and took the stairs up to the
office.  He expected to be one of the first in but the place was already a
hive of activity as the search for Abdul Mansour continued apace.

He took a seat at his desk and
turned on the monitor, then entered his username and password combination to
unlock the screen.  He saw that the search he’d left running overnight had
finished, but the number of matches was low.

Hamad Farsi arrived a few
minutes later, armed with coffee and a sandwich.

“Any word from
the street?”
  Harvey asked, but Hamad shook his head. 

“No-one’s heard a thing. 
I’m beginning to wonder if the note was disinformation, just to get us chasing
our own tails.”

“Or to see who we go to for
answers,” Harvey offered.  “Maybe they just wanted to see which cages we
rattled so that they could spot those who’d infiltrated their operation.”

Hamad agreed that it was
possible.  “I thought with the CIA confirming his presence on UK soil it
was a certainty, but he could have written that note anywhere in the world and
had it flown in by a courier.”

Despite their own misgivings,
and until told otherwise, they had to assume the threat was real.

“I’ve had no luck with the
facial recognition.  Closest we got was someone four inches shorter than
Mansour, and that’s not easy to fake.”

Farsi walked round to Andrew’s
desk and took the mouse off him.  He clicked the filter option, selected
zero percent for an eye match and ran the query against the current set of
results.  “Let’s see if Gerald’s idea pans out.  If Mansour really
did come through Heathrow, it’s likely he used countermeasures to fool the
software.”

While the search ran, they pored
over the chatter coming through the normal channels, but there was no mention
of Mansour or a biological threat.  Harvey was about to go and grab a
coffee when a notification blinked in his taskbar and he opened it to see that
the search had finished, producing just thirty-one results.

Farsi joined him as he flicked
through them, seeing a blind male but discounting him because of his tender
age.  Another male was wearing sunglasses, but again, he was too short. 
Harvey came across a woman in a
burqa
and quickly moved on to the next
image.  One by one he went through the selection until he came to the end.

“Nothing.”

“Go back to the start,” Hamad
said, and Harvey went to the first image.

“Okay, flick through them until
I say stop.”

Harvey hit the Next button, then
again.

“Stop.”

“Hamad, I know you don’t get out
much, but that’s what we in the real world call a ‘woman’.”

Farsi ignored the jibe. 
“Got beautiful lips, hasn’t she.”

“How can you tell when she’s
wearing...that...
veil.
”

Farsi clapped Harvey on the
shoulder.  “The boy cottons on fast,” he smiled.  “Send me the
arrival time and I’ll follow her through the airport.”

He returned to his desk and
brought up the airport security system.  He set the date and time to three
minutes before the flight arrived and then started to fast forward until the
passengers emerged from the gangway.   While he watched the target
make her way through the terminal, Harvey collated the details of the other
veiled women in the search results and sent them to Hamad’s screen.

“I’ll start at the bottom of the
list, you take the top.”

They studied the recordings for
two hours before Farsi called Harvey over.

“Check this one out.” 

Farsi rewound the footage and
they watched the woman walk from the arrival gate through to the immigration
area.

“Play it again,” Harvey said,
and Farsi obliged.

“Definitely something not right
in her gait,” Harvey noted.  “If she gets to immigration and they don’t
ask her to lift her veil, I’d say we had a hit.”

Farsi fast-forwarded to that
point, and both were disappointed to see the woman’s companion lift the veil
and the border guard study the face, comparing it against the passport.

“Damn!”  Farsi said,
throwing the mouse across the desk.  “I thought we had him.”

“Me, too.”
 
Harvey stood and checked his watch.  “I have to go and check on our
guests.  Let me know if you get anything from the other possibilities.”

*
* *

The resident security officer at
the safe house looked at the monitor and recognised Harvey standing at the
front door.  She hit the door release and went to meet him in the hallway.

“Morning, Andrew.”

He approached the lady and gave
her a peck on the cheek.  “Morning, Linda.  You’re looking gorgeous,
as ever.”

The fifty-year-old gave him a
coy smile. 
“Charmer.”

“How’s everyone doing?”

“Fine,” Linda told him. 
“Just finished breakfast and they’re washing up.”

Harvey thanked her and went
through to the kitchen where he found Vick with her hands in the sink and Gray
doing his fair share with the towel. 

“Ready for
your big performance, Tom?”

“Hi Andrew,” Gray said, almost
dropping the plate he was drying.  “To be honest, I’m crapping myself.”

Harvey laughed, unable to
envisage Gray caving in under the pressure.  “I’m sure you’ll be
fine.” 

“I’m surprised it’s still on,”
Gray said.  “You said yesterday that something big was on the cards. 
I expected that to take priority.”

“I checked with Ellis on the way
over, and she’s happy for this to go ahead.  We’re at a bit of an impasse
at the moment.”