Three Great Novels (12 page)

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Authors: Henry Porter

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BOOK: Three Great Novels
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This discussion with himself ended when Captain Nemim came back with a sheaf of papers and an open notebook. A look of animated curiosity had entered his expression. Khan realised that Nemim now saw him as an opportunity, a gift to an officer who could speak English and harboured ambitions way above his present tenure as the chief in a mountain station.
‘So, Mister Khan, or is it Mister Jasur? What do we call you?’
‘Khan - Mister Khan.’
‘Then why you are carrying these documentations belonging to Mister Jasur?’
‘Mister Jasur died when we were chased by Macedonian security forces. I took his possessions so I could tell his family when I reached safety.’
‘Ah yes, the terrorist party executed by the Macedonians. You were with them?’
‘Yes, and so was Jasur. But we were not terrorists. You have to believe me. He was a Palestinian. A refugee. He died of a heart attack while we were escaping.’
‘Of course we Albanians are used to these stories about terrorists. To the Macedonians and Greeks we are all terrorists and we do not believe what they tell us. But the Macedonian army say there were eight terrorists on the road.’
‘That’s right. We were just looking for work. We wanted to go to Greece. Those men with me were all innocent. None of them was carrying a weapon.’
‘But, Mister Khan, you are not understanding what I am saying to you. Maybe you do this on purpose - not understanding me?’
‘No, no. I am trying to understand what you want.’
‘They say there were seven terrorists and one other who escaped after he was cutting the Macedonian with knife.’
‘Yes, that’s right. That was me. I stabbed him and took his gun.’
‘Look at these photographs. Mister Khan.’ Captain Nemim flourished a newspaper and showed him a photograph of a mortuary in Skopje. Seven bodies were lined up and at their feet lay an assortment of automatic weapons, pistols and grenade launchers. Khan recognised the men - the Kurdish trio, the Pakistanis and the rest of them, laid out like trophies with their killers standing behind them.
‘They weren’t carrying these weapons,’ he said.
‘We know that,’ said Nemim. ‘This weapons used by the Macedonian security forces. But you make not to understand me again. I am not stupid man, Mister Khan. You see? Which is the Palestinian gentleman please?’
Khan peered at the picture. ‘He’s not here. They must have left him on the hill. Maybe they didn’t find him.’
‘But you say seven men were killed. There are seven bodies here but where is Mister Jasur?’
‘Hold on,’ said Khan, adding up the members of the party again.
‘Maybe he was ghost. Maybe this Jasur has flown away.’ Nemim seemed pleased with his sarcasm and looked to the junior officer who had come into the room, as if to say this is how it is done; you are watching a master at work, a man who is going far.
‘But the soldier I injured with the knife knew there were two of us who escaped. He would have reported this to his senior officer. There were nine people in our group.’
‘No, this is what they say. The Macedonians like to boast about this murders so there is no reason for them to lie. They say seven men were killed and one escaped. That is you. There is no other man.’
‘But they saw the other man…’
Nemim shook his head. ‘There was no other man.’
There followed a hurried exchange with the junior officer during which Nemim’s eyes never strayed from Khan’s. Then the junior left and Nemim folded his hands on the table with a look of satisfaction.
‘You know we weren’t terrorists,’ said Khan. ‘You said yourself that these weapons belong to the Macedonians. So why are you holding me here?’
‘It is necessary for us to know who you are. I have spoken to Mr Vajgelis.’ He nodded several times to signal that this was the first of many trump cards. ‘Mr Vajgelis says you are fighter. He saw you attack the security forces with a machine gun and then you were wounding his men with your head and arm like this.’ He threw his elbow backwards and did a head butting action. ‘He say you are professional Mujahadin. And you tell him you are Mujahadin. You are saying this to Mr Vajgelis. That is why he gives you to Mr Berisha and Mr Berisha gives you to me. They are good men.’
Khan’s shoulders sagged, as much out of fatigue as frustration. ‘Good men?’ he said. ‘What are they taking to the coast - peanuts and Coca Cola? These are good men in your country, Captain Nemim? No, they are drug smugglers. If these are good Albanians, I pity your country.’
Nemim leaned forward and hit him hard with the back of his hand on both sides of his face. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing here in our country?’
A rotten taste spread in Khan’s mouth, which at first he imagined was some physical manifestation of his fear, but then he realised that the blow on the left side of his face must have burst an abscess. It was months since he’d cleaned his teeth properly and he had been aware of a swelling on his gum. In Afghanistan he had periodically developed these infections, lancing them himself and treating them by washing his mouth out frequently with salt water. He supposed the bacteria had never cleared properly and in time built up to form another abscess. But this gush of decay in his mouth was something else entirely and he was disgusted - by this taste and also, now he came to think about it, the stench that rose from every part of his body and seemed to fill the room.
‘I will tell you about myself, Captain, but I must wash. I need to do this, sir. You can hit me as much as you like, but I will talk better if I am allowed to do this. For our religion I should wash before I pray this evening.’
The Captain considered this for a few seconds then gave some instructions to a policeman standing outside the door. Khan was taken to a tiny chipped basin at the back of the building under which was a large container of water. He took the block of soap and for ten minutes washed all over his body. He cleaned his mouth once again and then dried himself with part of his shirt.
He sat down now opposite Nemim determined to bring some reason to the interview. ‘I told Vajgelis I was a Mujahadin fighter because I wanted him to accept me,’ he began. ‘I wanted to escape and I needed his help so I shouted out the first thing that came into my head. The reason I hurt his men was because three of them tried to assault me. You know what I mean. Any honourable man would have done the same.’
‘Before this, where you come from?’
‘Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran.’
‘With all these men?’
‘No, we came together in Turkey. Then we went by truck to Bulgaria, but were cheated many times. Our money was stolen by men who promised to take us to Greece by boat. There was no boat.’
‘You say you are Karim Khan - not Jasur…’ he checked the notes and the identity card he had in front of him. ‘Not Jasur al-Jahez. Or Jasur Faisal or Jasur Bahaji. The man with many names. You are not him.’
‘No, I am Karim Khan.’
‘How can I believe this?’
‘Because it is the truth. Look at the picture of him. He is younger than I am and he is different. Look at him. Jasur has curly hair. I have straight hair.’ He touched his damp head.
Nemim shrugged, then moved on to examine the photograph in Khan’s passport. ‘Why you are not black like Pakistani man? You are like an Arab man, I think. You are Palestinian terrorist, no? You are Mister Jasur?’ He held one or two of the passport’s pages to the bulb above them, which had attracted a swirl of small black flies. His brow furrowed. Then he brought it down on the table and began to scrape at the page that included Khan’s details and photograph.
‘This passport is changed - here.’ He held it out to reveal the spot where the expiry date had been altered. ‘And here the paper. Where is the paper? Why no paper here?’
The page had been razored out by the man in Quetta who’d suggested that an entry stamp for Afghanistan at the tail end of 1996 was enough to put him in jail. The same man had changed the date, quite expertly, Khan had thought, but he had to admit that the passport was barely tested. He had crossed from Pakistan to Iran along the Siahan range without being stopped by a border patrol, and the man on the Turkish border with Iran had not looked beyond the twenty dollar note folded in the front.
Nemim flipped through the passport again and came to a page containing a British visa.
‘So you go to London City in nineteen ninety-one?’
‘Yes, that was my second visa. I was studying to be a doctor. I was at school in London before then.’
The policeman looked at him sceptically. Khan had the odd thought that perhaps he had dreamed his past; everything before Bosnia and Afghanistan had been a kind of fantasy to protect him from things he had done and seen. Nemim was talking but he didn’t hear properly and asked the policeman to repeat himself.
‘This British visa is dated. This makes your passport thirteen years old,’ he said. ‘No passport can be that old. This passport is dead.’
He closed it and swept the notebook and Jasur’s documents up from the table. ‘We understand you. We know who you are. You are international terrorist,’ he said. He got up abruptly and marched from the room.
Two hours later Khan was shaken awake. He saw the bread, cheese and water that had been set in front of him while he slept. He snatched at it but managed to eat only a little before being taken from the room. Outside the police station quite a crowd was waiting, in the middle of which was a TV crew. Khan stood in the glare of the lights, feeling shrunken and exposed. Nemim was enjoying the moment, although he did not seem to know whether to present his captive as the heroic survivor of Macedonian brutality or a dangerous terrorist, and allowed for both options in his manner.
The media opportunity ended, but instead of being taken back into the police station, Khan was placed in a van and borne off into the night.
CHAPTER NINE
At 7.00 a.m. Isis Herrick arrived with her bag at the gentrified mews house - French shutters, geraniums, carriage lamps - not far from the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The door was opened by an American carrying a machine pistol. He explained - a little apologetically - that the house was part of the embassy and she was now on US soil. Then he showed her to a room where two men stood listening to Walter Vigo, installed in a revolving leather chair with a cup of coffee and the
Wall Street Journal
draped like a napkin over his lap. Vigo was in his element - the nexus of the ‘special relationship’.
‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, tipping the paper to the floor. ‘Here’s the brains responsible for RAPTOR.’ He introduced her to the two men. ‘This is Jim Collins and Nathan Lyne from the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. Both these gentlemen were with the Directorate of Operations and have experience in the field so they know the problems and pitfalls of an operation as complicated and wide-ranging as this. Jim is one of the people in charge of things out at Northolt and Nathan is running your desk.’ He stopped for the Americans to murmur hello and give Isis firm handshakes.
‘Northolt?’ she said.
‘Yes, we’ve moved the operation out there. I think you’ll be very impressed with what you’re going to see. We expect you to spend a week or two there before a transfer to the field but, as you’ll appreciate, things are and will remain very fluid. I hope, by the way, you won’t mind the accommodation, but it seems simpler and more secure if we’re not all being ferried to and from the Bunker in minibuses.’
‘The Bunker,’ she said, surprised. ‘Are we confined to barracks? ’
‘No,’ interjected Collins, a stout man with a pinkish complexion and a brush of fine blond hair. ‘But we’re trying to keep this as tight as possible, at least for the time being. There are not too many great restaurants in the area, but you’re welcome to leave for R&R when you need. It’s more a question of not having large numbers of American spook-types filling up the trattoria in Mayfair. Besides, the facility under Northolt has a great deal of space and there’s plenty of room for solitude. There’s even a restaurant and a gym.’
Collins nodded to Nathan Lyne, who rose and moved to sit on the sofa beside her. Tall, with a slow, understated manner, Nathan Lyne haemorrhaged high caste Yankee confidence, which she later learned was the result of Harvard law school and a short period with a Washington law firm.
‘You’re the only person we’ve brought on the team who doesn’t need the introduction so I’ll cut to the chase,’ he said. ‘We now have eleven suspects under surveillance. All of them passed through Heathrow on May fourteen and as far as we know at the present time, they are all lilywhites. No record of any misdemeanour and only tenuous Islamist affiliations. Certainly no training in Afghanistan. We’re making some progress on who they are and we have names for some of them.’
‘We’ve split the suspects into three groupings - Parana, Northern and Southern. The Parana group has a homogeneity of its own and it’s the one we’ve had most success with. Your work at the airport allowed us to trace three of the eleven suspects to the Shi’ite community in the tri-border region of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The river that flows through the area is named the Parana. There’s a strong Lebanese contingent in the area that has links to the Hizbollah organisation and its many business interests in Lebanon. The three men appeared to have been sheltered rather than trained in the towns and ranches, sitting out the worldwide hunt for terrorists and establishing unblemished credentials for themselves. A successful operation to penetrate the community by us put names to the stills from the Heathrow security film. These guys had the smell of North Africa about them, though no one was certain about their exact nationalities. Anyway, eventually the trail led to a man named Lasenne Hadaya, a former officer in the Algerian security forces who was reported to have undergone a religious conversion after seeing a sign written in a desert rock.

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