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Authors: Alan Porter

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BOOK: Sleeper Cell
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‘Arrested?’ Golzar said quietly. ‘I was shot when I got off the bus at Tsvi Krokh Square. If I’m going on trial I will defend myself.’

‘Is that a threat?’

‘Make of it what you want. If you know who I am, you know what I’ve done. If I go down, I take a lot of people with me.’

Donald Aquila closed her file and leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees.

‘You know how this has to go,’ he said. ‘By your own admission, you’re a danger to them. For fifteen months you’ve been safely out of sight. All the people who mattered thought you were dead.’

Golzar gave him a non-committal shrug.

‘If they’ve already trumped up charges against me,’ she said, ‘it won’t make any difference what I say.’

‘No it won’t, which is why it’s my job to make sure this never gets to trial. Anything you might have told your doctors here was either coerced or said in confusion as a result of your arrest. They won’t believe you of course, but it’ll smooth the first stages of the process.’

‘You know about my first interview?’

‘Enough.’

‘Do you know who was behind it?’

‘British Secret Intelligence. That’s why they were so convincing. It was never a debrief. It was a trap to make sure you could be detained here with no awkward questions. Penhalligan swallowed the lot and fortunately you’ve been smart enough never to retract it. It was the one thing that, ironically, kept you safe.’

Golzar studied him for several seconds. She leaned back.

‘And who do you work for, Mr Aquila?’ she said.

‘You.’

‘But who sent you? I’ve seen enough Legal Aid lawyers in here to know you’re not doing pro bono. Someone’s paying you and by the look of you, you charge well.’

‘The few people on the outside who knew you were still alive needed you contained. Now they want to change your containment. It’s my job to minimise the damage. Believe me, there are people on the outside working in your best interests.’

‘As long as I stick to the script.’

‘For now, yes.’ Aquila looked at her for a moment. ‘We’ve got a very narrow window of opportunity. British officials have spoken to Penhalligan and he’s happy that you meet the criteria for transfer. He just needs to tick some boxes, fill some forms, and you’ll be on your way.’

‘And if I don’t want to be on my way? What assurance have I got that you can keep me alive once I’m out?’

‘None. The problem is, you’ve got very little choice. You’ve seen what they can do. Even if you stay here, do you really think they can’t get to you? Miss Golzar, things are going to move. The process has already started. They will play this out however you choose: trust me and you might survive it; try to do it alone, and you have very little chance.’ He stood up. ‘Are we agreed?’

‘I tell them what they want to hear, you minimise the damage. It doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me.’

‘It’s the best you’re going to get. Do what you’ve got to do. I’ll see you in Holloway.’

He picked up his file and left. The meeting had lasted barely four minutes.

Golzar was taken back to F wing and uncuffed. She sat at a table in the central association area and massaged the burning itchy rings left on her wrists by the cuffs.

This was only the second time in fifteen months that she had spoken to anyone from the outside. British Intelligence had always known who she was and where she was being held, yet they had sat on her for all this time.

So what had changed? Why did they want her back in play now?

Jean Gerber shuffled over and took a seat across the table. Without a word she laid out the chess pieces and moved queen’s pawn forward two spaces. Gerber was the only person Golzar had allowed anywhere near her during these months of incarceration, and that was largely because this skinny waif of a woman had never uttered a single word to her. Their regular chess games started spontaneously and ended as soon as one of them was defeated. Always the same, win or lose, Gerber would gather up the pieces and shuffle away again. Golzar liked that – the result was irrelevant; only the process mattered.

Golzar sat for several seconds with her finger on her king’s pawn.

This was what she had been waiting for. But were they offering her a new beginning, or a final end? Would they really dare to put her on trial with all she could expose in the process?

She moved the pawn out. Gerber replied with queen’s bishop. Same aggressive opening as always.

Over the years, Raha Golzar had killed somewhere approaching six hundred people… that she knew of. Even by the standards of the inmates on the Primrose Programme that was an extraordinary total. But unlike most of her eleven fellow pilgrims on the road to redemption, she was not a monster. She could count on the fingers of one hand the people she had killed close up. The rest had just been her job, experiments in the laboratories in Russia and Kazakhstan, and always willing victims. Prisoners in Russian jails often found the idea of a quick death and a few roubles for their families preferable to the hell of the ex-Soviet prison system. Golzar certainly did not consider herself insane.

Jean Gerber had killed only twice, but her methods amused Golzar and drew her to this odd, silent inmate. F Wing’s grapevine had it that eleven months earlier she had murdered her ex-husband and his new wife with a nail gun. She had then nailed her own feet to the floor and laughed while the police tried to arrest her.

Golzar liked that too: such creativity.

3

Twelve minutes after the bomb had brought chaos to the western end of Hyde Park, Prime Minister’s Questions had been suspended in the House of Commons.

Richard Morgan was driven back to Downing Street for the emergency COBR meeting in the Cabinet Room. By the time he arrived, forty-five minutes had elapsed since the bombing and cars were bringing the major players into the heart of government. Morgan’s own vehicle was followed by another carrying Sarah Forsythe, his Deputy Prime Minister, and Emma Whitehouse, the newly-installed Home Secretary.

Richard put his head around the usually-locked door of the diplomatic knights’ rooms by the front door. Lord Silverton, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Security and Counter-Terrorism, was in hushed conversation with the former ambassador to Israel. Richard left without interrupting and walked along the corridor to the rear of the building.

He paused. He had five minutes. Time to make a call, put his mind at rest.

He ran up the main stairs, past the stern portraits of his predecessors, and into the private flat at the top of the building. Mary, his wife of twenty-seven years, was in Brussels for a conference and the flat was exactly as he had left it. He dialled Ruth’s number as he walked to the bedroom for a change of jacket. It rang until the voicemail message took over. He disconnected the call and dialled again. Gavin answered his phone after three rings.

‘Gavin, it’s Richard. I’m trying to get in touch with Ruth. Could you pass the phone to her?’

‘I’m sorry sir, she’s not with me. I’m at the bomb site.’

‘Then where is she?’

‘I left her at the palace.’

‘How long ago?’

‘About two minutes after the bomb.’

‘She’s all right?’

‘She’s fine. Good ride this morning, nothing out of the ordinary. No one paying any undue attention. She was a long way from the bomb when it went off.’

‘You’re certain she’s safe now?’

‘She’s in probably the safest place outside of where you are right now. The royal couple were expecting her, so she’s under their protection now.’

‘Good. Thank you. Tell her to call me when you see her. Her phone’s off.’

‘Probably Palace security being over-cautious. I’ll let her know.’

Richard dropped his jacket onto the bed and, without replacing it, jogged back down to the Cabinet Room on the ground floor. He had used this light and airy room at the back of the building as the COBR committee room throughout his term as PM. He hated the stuffy underground chamber that the media loved to call COBRA, a place and a name that embodied far too much menace for Richard’s liking.

Already at the table were Sarah Forsythe, Lord Silverton and Emma Whitehouse. The Foreign Secretary, Oliver Grant, was in Washington and was being briefed separately on any implications for the Foreign Office. As Richard took his place at the table the door opened again and an aide ushered in the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command. James Thorne was the only person in the room in uniform, and it struck Richard that during his two years as PM, he was the only one who ever had been. It had, to date, been a very peaceful tenure.

Two large computer monitors stood at the end of the table, onto which were patched feeds from John Nash at the government’s listening facility GCHQ, and David Bates, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service.

‘So what do we know?’ Richard said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning so we’re all on the same page.’

All eyes turned to the man in black uniform at the end of the table. Thorne glanced at his file then began.

‘At twelve noon an explosion destroyed part of the Park Hotel on Kensington Road and caused some superficial damage to the Embassy of Israel in Palace Green. We are awaiting reports from the Ambassador. Significant damage was also caused to shops and residential flats opposite the hotel. Search and Rescue are going through the area and the buildings will be made safe and screened so Kensington High Street to the west and Kensington Road to the east can be reopened by the end of the day. A number seventy bus, eastbound, has been destroyed along with six private vehicles in the vicinity at the time. Again, these have been evacuated and screened and will be removed as soon as we can get heavy equipment into the area. Kensington Palace is undamaged.’

‘Do we have and reason to believe this was accidental?’ Richard said.

‘It’s too early to say, but the explosion being in the hotel’s car park strongly suggests a bomb. We’ve cordoned off the area and have bomb squad technicians on the way.’

‘Casualty figures?’ Richard said.

‘Unknown within the building,’ Thorne said. ‘Eight are confirmed dead on the main road, with multiple injuries. We are liaising with the Embassy as we speak, but they are unlikely to be very forthcoming. Unless you can pull some strings, PM?’ Richard did not have chance to reply before Sir Malcolm Stevens, MI5’s Director General, arrived.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Traffic’s a nightmare. Where are we?’

‘CTC are filling us in on casualty figures,’ Lord Silverton said. ‘So far, not as bad as it might have been.’ Richard caught the hint of a smile in his voice. He’d tried to rid his government of the old networks of Eton and Sandhurst, but there was little he could do about the outside agencies.

‘Mortality within the parking garage and the west side of the hotel could push the figures far higher,’ Thorne said. ‘It’ll be several hours before Search and Rescue get through it. There may be more survivors trapped. Hospitals are on a major incident footing and blood is being helicoptered in from surrounding facilities.’

‘If this is a bomb, any idea who did it?’ Richard said.

Those assembled in the meeting room turned to the screen where David Bates was talking to one of his staff over at SIS HQ at Vauxhall Cross. He turned to face the camera.

‘No one has claimed responsibility yet,’ he said, ‘but that would not be unusual at such an early stage. We should have credible attribution soon. All live agents in the field have been updated. We’ve got moles in a number of the major players.’

‘Was this designed to derail the peace talks?’ Richard said.

‘We can’t rule it out, but right now it’s perhaps not the most likely scenario. Any of the groups with the motive to sabotage the talks would likely lack the means. Hassan Nasrallah has his devotees, and Hezbollah make plenty of noise on the internet, especially when it comes to Israel. But there’s no significant support in Britain. Same for the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. They’ve been more active in Israel since the leaking of the peace talks and they’ve got support from extremist wings of both Fatah and Hamas, but no credible overseas operatives. Likewise Islamic Jihad: no activity outside the area and no meaningful links to anyone in the UK. To get anywhere near a group the politics and contacts to do what we saw this morning, we’d have to go right the way out to Palestinian fedayeen…’

‘Who had links with the IRA…’

‘And that’s one hell of a stretch. The IRA splinters are so well infiltrated that it seems impossible that we wouldn’t have known about a plan like this.’

‘Which I fear may leave us with the Armageddon scenario,’ Commander Thorne said.

‘Which is?’

‘ISIS have sleeper cells in Europe,’ Bates said. ‘It’s a natural progression from near-enemy insurgency to far-enemy terrorist organisation. We’ve expected it for months, and with Britain’s recent support for air strikes on northern Iraq, that looks like the most probable source for today’s events.’

‘Do we have any evidence?’ Richard said. ‘The last thing we want to do is give credit to ISIS unless we’re certain. The boost it would give to home-grown sympathisers could be disastrous.’

‘I agree,’ Bates said. ‘However, only two groups exist that are capable of an attack like this: completely undetected, right in the heart of the city, with what appears to be a sophisticated bomb.’

‘ISIS and al-Qa’ida.’

‘Yes. We can rule AQ out – the proximity to the Embassy just doesn’t fit their ideology right now. But it could fit Islamic State. Any allegiance that existed between Israel and ISIS back in 2013 is long dead, and the Embassy would be a good symbolic target if they are stepping up operations.’

John Nash, over at GCHQ in Cheltenham, cleared his throat and leaned slightly towards the camera.

‘We have been monitoring a new organisation,’ he said. ‘We gave them no real credibility as they seemed to have come out of nowhere, but in light of today’s attack we are revisiting what we know of them.’

‘And they are?’

‘Harakat al Sahm – The Movement of The Arrow. They first appeared on the social media feeds of third-tier ISIS fighters three months ago. They appeared to be nothing more than a sub-sect who shared ISIS ideology. Their Twitter and Facebook accounts attracted a few curious sympathisers, but posts were infrequent, non-specific and clearly not written by anyone on the front line. It was as if they were just populating extremist feeds with links that went nowhere.’

BOOK: Sleeper Cell
11.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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