Hellfire (25 page)

‘Right,’ Spud said. ‘So I guess you just ask him if he’s best mates with a major international terrorist?’

‘No,’ Eleanor said with exaggerated patience. ‘I ask him some carefully considered questions that will help me make an informed decision about whether he’s a threat or not. Remember, I’m a Muslim. He’ll trust me much more than he’ll trust you.’

Spud shrugged. ‘You’re the boss,’ he said, and he looked at the photograph again. If he was going to put in surveillance on the cab firm, he needed to commit his target’s features to memory.

13.35 hrs. London.

Daniel Bixby’s wheelchair trundled across the operations room in the bowels of the MI6 building: a large space, filled with computer terminals, satellite phones and three large screens – each of them nine or ten square metres – showing real-time black and white satellite images of the Nigerian coast.

He went through the variables in his head again. The intel from the SAS team on the ground told them that Mr Chiu, or whatever his name really was, had left their location by car at approximately 13.00 hours the previous day. Unless he’d managed to get on an aircraft – and Bixby didn’t think that was likely because they had a man in Nigerian air traffic control who had provided them with flight data for the past twenty-four hours – the analysts’ best estimate was that it would take him twelve hours to get back to Lagos, which took them to 01.00 that morning. So Bixby had had almost his entire staff poring over satellite imagery stills from midnight to right now, searching for a needle in a haystack: a tiny passenger boat – probably no bigger than a RIB – heading out to sea to RV with a larger vessel.

He looked up at the large screens. Little dots, slightly lighter than the grey ocean, were just visible. There was no getting away from it: the waters were crowded. There had to be at least 150 vessels in the 100 square kilometres off the Lagos coast, and there was no way to be sure that their target would be on any of them. Bixby was perspiring heavily. He didn’t see how they would
ever
find their man.

One of his subordinates strode up to him. ‘Mr Bixby, we’ve been through everything. There’s no sign of what we’re looking for.’

Bixby swore.

‘But we think the Americans might have separate imagery of the same area over the same time frame. I’d like permission to contact Langley to see if they’ll share that information.’

Bixby thought for a few seconds. Strictly speaking he should clear this with the Chief. But Seldon was acting strange. Stressed. Probably the pressure. Bixby decided to make the call himself, and deal with the fallout later.

‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Call the Americans. I want everything they’ve got, as quickly as they can send it.’

14.00 hrs

Eleanor’s all-nighter had caught up with her. She was asleep in the passenger seat, breathing heavily, her body occasionally twitching. Spud kept his eyes on the cab firm, as he had done for the past two and a half hours. There were now only two cars parked outside: a black Peugeot estate and a metallic green Honda.

A shabby old tramp swayed past the cab firm, carrying a bottle of Thunderbird. That was the fourth time Spud had seen him. He passed every forty-five minutes. Ordinarily, a regular appearance like that would ring alarm bells. But Spud could see that the level of liquid in the bottle was decreasing each time, and the tramp’s gait was increasingly erratic. Now, a young mum with a kid in a pushchair and another in the oven came in the opposite direction. She wrinkled her nose and avoided the tramp. Spud was satisfied that he was nothing but an old wino circling the block.

A third vehicle pulled up. It was an old white VW, its side panel slightly dented. Spud watched the driver climb out. As soon as he caught sight of his face, he nudged Eleanor. ‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘Your man’s here.’

Eleanor started. Her eyes pinged open and she looked around as though she didn’t know where she was.

‘Over there,’ Spud said.

Kalifa al-Meghrani wore a shapeless tan-coloured leather jacket, and dark woollen gloves. He was clean-shaven and his black hair was neatly combed. He had some kind of shoulder bag over his left shoulder.

‘There’s two cab drivers ahead of him,’ Spud said. ‘We wait till the Peugeot and the Honda have gone, then we move in.’

It didn’t take long. After three minutes a young couple entered the cab office and were ferried away by the Peugeot. A minute after that, the Honda pulled out into the traffic without a passenger – Spud assumed the driver was on his way to carry out a telephone booking.

‘Go,’ he said, as the vehicle pulled away. He and Eleanor alighted from their Renault and crossed the road. Seconds later they had entered the cab office. It was a cramped, dingy little place. A couple of threadbare seats along one side and an enormous, laminated map of the Birmingham area on the wall. There were only two people in there: the controller behind the desk, and al-Meghrani himself.

‘Cab to the Bullring, please,’ Eleanor said. Spud found himself double-taking: she had exaggerated a Middle Eastern accent that she didn’t have in real life. He almost found himself smiling at her subterfuge.

The cab driver looked them up and down. Hardly a surprise: they must have looked a strange couple. But he didn’t seem suspicious. ‘Alright, babs, follow me,’ he said in a very pronounced Birmingham accent. He nodded at his controller, then led the way to the car. Spud stood back to let Eleanor go first, then followed her out on to the pavement.

‘You go round the other side,’ he breathed. He wanted to make sure he was sitting directly behind their man. In the absence of a weapon, he’d have to make do with the driver’s seatbelt if anything went wrong.

Once they were installed into the back seat, and al-Meghrani had dumped his shoulder bag on the front passenger seat, he started the car. ‘Rocket Man’ by Elton John played softly from the radio and he turned it up a fraction as he pulled out into the traffic. ‘I blimmin’ love this song,’ he announced to his passengers, and as he accelerated along the road he started humming along.

Eleanor gave Spud a sidelong glance. A glance that said: how many terrorists do you think listen to Elton John?

Spud just kept his eyes fixed on the back of the cab driver’s head.

‘Have you been busy?’ Eleanor asked.

‘What’s that, love?’

‘Have you been busy?’

‘Oh, yeah, crazy busy.
Don’t you know it’s gonna be a long, long time . . .
’

‘I suppose you get some time off over Ramadan,’ she said.

‘Not really, babs.’

‘How come?’

‘Lots of cabbies take time off over Ramadan. More work for the rest of us. Got to earn a living, you know.’

Eleanor pursed her lips disapprovingly. Spud had to hand it to her: her performance was a fucking masterclass. He saw the cab driver glance at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘You don’t approve?’ he said quietly.

Eleanor shrugged and looked out of her window. ‘Either you obey the Qu’ran,’ she said, ‘or you don’t.’

The cabbie frowned. He killed the radio, cutting off Elton in mid-song. ‘You’re not one of those crazy ones, are you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Eleanor asked.

‘Some of the Muslims round here, they want to go off and fight stupid wars. Some of the other cabbies, they’ve got badges for that Islamic State in their cars. You one of
those
crazy ones?’

‘Maybe they’re not so crazy,’ Eleanor said.

The cabbie looked at her over his shoulder. There was no doubt about it: his expression was one of disgust. He slammed the radio back on and turned it up much louder than it had been. Elton John had given way to One Direction, but the cabbie didn’t sing along this time. He accelerated on to a busy ring road and started overtaking wherever he could. It was obvious what he wanted to tell them:
I don’t like what you’ve just said, and I want you out of my car.

It took fifteen uncomfortable minutes to get to the centre of Birmingham. Al-Meghrani pulled up in a cab rank outside the Bullring. ‘Seventeen pounds,’ he said.

Eleanor handed him twenty. ‘Keep the change,’ she said. But the cabbie made a big show of finding the three quid – he fumbled a little because of the woollen gloves he was wearing – and handing it back to her. Eleanor shrugged again, then stepped out of the car. Spud did the same, and the cabbie pulled out again immediately he’d slammed his door shut.

‘I think that went pretty well, don’t you?’ Eleanor said.

Spud watched the cab disappear into the traffic.

‘Coffee?’ Eleanor said. They were standing outside a McDonald’s, and she pointed towards it.

Spud nodded. Two minutes later they were sitting at a small table in the window, their conversation drowned by the noise of the busy restaurant.

‘You’re a good actress,’ Spud said.

‘Why, thank you.’ She fluttered her eyelashes at him.

He looked at her over the brow of his polystyrene cup as he took a sip of scalding hot coffee. ‘You should consider al-Meghrani a person of interest,’ he said quietly.

She blinked. ‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Spud, the guy almost kicked us out of his car for mentioning the Qu’ran.’

‘Did you notice his shoulder bag?’

She frowned. ‘Yeah, I guess . . .’

‘What did it look like?’

Eleanor screwed up her face, clearly trying to remember. ‘Green?’ she said tentatively.

‘Khaki,’ Spud said. ‘Canvas material.’

‘So what? It was just a bag.’

‘It wasn’t just a bag. It was a Claymore bag.’

She looked at him for a moment. Then, suddenly, she started to laugh. ‘Oh, Spud,’ she said. ‘You really
did
want him to be the bad guy, didn’t you?’

Spud stared her down. She stopped laughing. ‘Do you know what a Claymore mine is?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said patiently. ‘I
know
what a Claymore is. I also know that you can probably get those bags off eBay for ten a penny.’

‘Not like that one,’ Spud said. ‘I’ve carried those things halfway across the world and I know the difference between one that’s been in the field and one that’s come from army surplus. It was all scuffed. Well used. Frayed round the edges. I think there were even bits of sand in the canvas. Trust me, that bag didn’t come off eBay.’

They exchanged a long look. Finally, Eleanor reached out and put one hand over Spud’s. She squeezed it slightly. ‘Look, Spud,’ she said. ‘I
know
this must be hard for you. I
know
you must miss your old way of life. But you have to understand that we can’t afford to chase shadows. We have to make sure we see what’s there, not what we
want
to be there. He’s just a cabbie, going about his business. We need to do the same. We’re going to head back to London, and we’re going to carry on looking through files. I’m sorry if you think it’s boring, but that’s intelligence work.’ She drained her coffee cup and stood up. ‘Your army days are over, Spud. The sooner you come to terms with that, the better. Coming?’

She walked away from the table. Spud stood up quickly to follow her. He winced as a sharp pain cut through his abdomen. It was almost as if his body was telling him that the cute spook in the hijab was right. Maybe he should be listening to her after all.

Your army days are over.

He frowned. Fuck that, he thought. And fuck
this
. He wasn’t going to be an MI6 lackey for the rest of his working life. He caught up with Eleanor just as she was opening the door out on to the street. He held up the car keys. ‘Yours,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Take them. I’m through with this. You can drive yourself back to London.’

She looked at him warily as she took the keys. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to Hereford,’ Spud said.

On the outskirts of Lagos, no more than a couple of miles as the crow flies from the grand residences of some of the wealthiest men in Africa, a very poor fisherman was preparing to go home.

His name was Randolph and home, for him, was a single room in a shack. The shack itself sat on rickety stilts protruding from the waters of Ajegunle, a vast slum. Randolph had heard people call Ajegunle the Jungle. A bad name, he always thought. In the jungle, things grow. Nothing could ever grow here. The streets, such as they were, were thick with debris. Plastic bottles, waste packaging, faeces, urine: everywhere. The bank leading down to the water was impossible to see, and the water itself was fetid and filthy. Its surface was slick with oil – the same oil that made a handful of Nigerian families super-wealthy, while the rest of the population, like Randolph, struggled on in poverty – and swarming with rubbish, since the inhabitants of this slum had no way of getting rid of their waste other than throwing it into the water. Nor was there any proper sanitation. The cleanest thing the inhabitants of Ajegunle could do was to urinate and defecate directly into the water. It made the water smell foul, but Randolph had lived here for so long that he didn’t really notice the stench any more.

Randolph’s creaky shack housed not only him, but also his twin nine-year-old children, both girls. Their mother had died in childbirth, all those years ago, and Randolph did the best he could to bring them up. They were the only joy in his life, always smiling despite the hardship of their existence. Barely enough to eat, and shunned by their peers – not because they were poor or orphaned, but for the silliest of reasons. Randolph was always perspiring: his face was constantly drenched in sweat, and the one shirt he possessed always had dark stains under the armpits. Here in the slum, nobody smelled too great, but Randolph smelled worse than most, and his precious daughters were taunted for having a stinky dad. He knew how much it upset them, even though they tried never to let it show in front of him.