Three Great Novels (31 page)

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Authors: Henry Porter

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‘Before Colonel B outlines his thoughts, I want to say what happens after we have got Khan. The immediate aim will be to restore him to a condition where he is able to talk about what he knows. This will not be a simple matter. He is likely to be quite badly injured, to say nothing of the psychological trauma of torture. What I have in mind is this: we do not attempt to exfiltrate Khan immediately, but keep him in Egypt at the safe location being prepared at the moment by some unusual associates of ours. It is important that Khan sees some friendly faces - people he knows he can trust.
‘His oldest friend, Sammi Loz, will be on hand. Loz is an excellent doctor and I am hoping we can rely on him to treat Khan. Also at this location will be Robert Harland who has been shadowing Loz, and Isis Herrick who saw Khan in custody in Tirana a couple of days ago. It will be Isis’s job to question him, and since she has already attempted to intervene to prevent him being hurt, I believe he will be inclined to trust her. There will be backup but we will keep them out of sight. Once Khan has given us what we need, we will bring him to this country and provide safe asylum. Any questions?’
The only question in Herrick’s mind was why the Chief believed Khan knew enough to risk mounting the operation, but no one asked a question and she decided to keep quiet. It was clear the members of SIS in the room had decided to pay him the supreme compliment of taking him on trust.
‘I should point out that if any of you are caught in Egypt,’ continued Teckman after a brief pause, ‘Her Majesty’s Government will deny all knowledge of you. However, I am satisfied that we stand a very good chance of success, and that even if we do not get Khan out, all of you will be able to disperse and leave the country without difficulty. The one problem is that our friends at the CIA will be in evidence. We should of course make every effort to avoid injuring these people. They may be misguided, but they are still our allies, and in the end I believe they will come to see the error of their ways in this matter.’
He handed over to Colonel B, a compact man in his mid-forties with sandy hair, a freckled tan and pale crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. The colonel stood and opened a laptop which sent a series of maps, diagrams and satellite photographs to a large screen at the end of the table. Over the next hour and a half, he roughed out several plans, each of which required intensive surveillance of the route between the police headquarters and the prison. Meeting places, covers and arrangements for communication between members of SIS and the snatch team were then settled.
After two hours, including a break for coffee and sandwiches, the colonel closed his laptop and looked around the room. ‘Generally, I find in these operations that we have to be very light on our feet and willing to adapt to new circumstances. Everything we have sketched out may fall apart. Success
will
come, but only if we are prepared to change our plans at a moment’s notice.’ He shook the Chief’s hand with military firmness and made for the door with his two silent lieutenants.
Before leaving, Teckman drew Herrick aside. ‘A lot of this operation relies on your ability to gain the trust of Khan and Sammi Loz, but you will have to watch Loz like a hawk. Harland will be with you, armed. He is on his way to Egypt with Loz now.’
He reached over to a dark blue plastic box the size of a computer case. ‘This is the medical equipment which Loz will need to treat Khan after his ordeal. It contains all the usual drugs - antibiotics, vitamins, anti-inflammatory drugs, painkillers, sleeping pills - and some unusual ones, together with bandages and syringes. Our people have tried to allow for the sorts of injuries Khan will have sustained at the hands of The Doctor. Loz will know what to do with them. If not, there are instructions for each. In the unlikely event of your being questioned by Egyptian customs, you will say this is the emergency pack for the elderly patient you and Christine Selvey are accompanying.’
‘Which elderly patient?’ she asked.
A flicker of a smile escaped the mouth that had been set in grim purpose for the past two hours. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely open with you, Isis, but there has been very little time. Your father has agreed to take part in the operation.’
‘What! You can’t be serious. He’s in his eighties.’
‘It’s only a very minor capacity and I still have the highest regard for his abilities.’ He put up a hand to silence her objection. ‘Besides, what would be better cover than you and his devoted nurse travelling to see the Pyramids at Giza and Saqqara?’
‘But it is such a liability. I can’t think of a worse way of going about an operation.’
‘Nonsense. The moment Khan is in our hands, your father will travel home with Christine Selvey, with whom, by the way, he gets on splendidly.’
‘With Christine Selvey!’
‘Security and Public Affairs are not all she knows. She gave up field-work a dozen years ago because there was no one to look after her ailing mother in the evening. She was an excellent operative. Quite superb.’
Herrick shook her head in disbelief. ‘It’s so bloody unorthodox, sending two related people on the same job.’
‘The whole thing is bloody unorthodox, Isis.’ He didn’t smile. ‘Now, all you have to concentrate on is getting Khan to a point where he can tell you what he knows. I believe you are right about Bosnia and I’m sure that line of inquiry will prove fruitful. In the meantime I will tell Spelling that you’re doing some work for me.’
She wondered fleetingly whether to tell him about the package from Beirut that she had forwarded to the address in Oxford before getting to the office, then decided that there wouldn’t be any point until she had got the results.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A large wheel was fitted into a wooden beam in the ceiling. Through it ran a dirty brown rope that had been stretched and pulled until it had the appearance of a rusty cable. One end of this hawser led through a pulley fixed on the stone floor, then to a two-handed winding mechanism, allowing the load to be lifted to the ceiling and held there by a ratchet. The other end was attached to a number of chains and manacles designed to be fastened round human limbs.
Though elementary, the capstan provided several options. A man could be hauled up by both arms, or just one; he could be suspended with one arm behind his back and bound to his leg; or he might be winched up by his neck only, so that for what seemed like many minutes he experienced the sensation of being garrotted. Usually, being hung by his arms for several hours was all any normal man needed to persuade him to talk.
The man in charge of the interrogation understood perfectly well that most people would talk when confronted with the prospect of this treatment, but in his trade there was a saying, which translates as ‘squeezing the lemon dry’. It summarised the belief that when a man was broken he could always find something more to blurt out - the name of a street or a person, some old gossip about the activities of a neighbour. There is always another drop to coax from the crushed fruit. Even if the persistence of the interrogators produced stories and lies - for it was often the case that the man really had nothing more to tell the security forces - the process was still vindicated. The suspect was
talking
, wasn’t he? And talk in all its forms - babbling, whispering, crying, pleading or cursing - is less threatening to the state than silence. Put simply, the information that came from a man experiencing such brutality was the operation’s product and, like any diligent workforce, the men who stepped into this hellish place every day had standards of productivity, a yardstick by which they measured their output. The stories and lies were merely the husk of the operation, the off-cuts that would eventually be discarded after the creaking security apparatus had checked out the statement through its thousands of investigators and informers and established which parts were unlikely to be true. But even this might result in some innocent being lifted from the street and given similar treatment.
Karim Khan entered this brutal world at precisely 7.30 a.m. local time and was straight away hoisted by his arms so that his whole body was suspended four feet from the ground. The Doctor was in the cell with him but an Egyptian was in charge and gave the order for Khan’s feet to be beaten by two men with long rubber truncheons. Khan cried out that he would tell them anything they wanted. They stopped and the Egyptian shouted questions at him in Arabic. Khan pleaded that he could only speak English. The men returned to beating him and soon the pain in his feet, together with that in his arms and shoulders, took hold of his mind, though he did experience a fleeting astonishment that strangers would take such care to hurt him. After several minutes they let him down to the ground with a bump so that the force of his weight shot through the injuries on his feet.
The Egyptian officer approached him and spoke in English. ‘You will talk to us now.’ He said it like a reprimand, as though Khan had been impossibly obstructive.
Khan nodded.
‘And make full statement of your plans to make terrorist attacks.’
‘I will do this.’ Khan understood the pretence that he was Jasur Faisal had been dropped.
He was put on a tiny stool which required him to use his feet to balance, and the only way of doing this was to turn them in so that the outside of his soles rested on the floor. The Egyptian lit a cigarette and offered one to The Doctor, who shook his head, and then with fastidious care replaced the packet and lighter in the pocket of his jacket. With the cigarette in his mouth and one eye closed against the smoke, he put out a hand to one of the men who had been beating Khan and snapped his fingers for the truncheon. He slapped it gently into the palm of his left hand, then leaned forward and brought it down on Khan’s collar-bone. Khan fell from the stool screaming and had to be lifted up and held straight by the two thugs.
‘I was… in Afghanistan,’ he stammered. ‘I was trained to use explosives. I was trained for political assassination and to eliminate large numbers of civilians. I know the plans. I know what they are going to do.’ He threw these lines scattershot, hoping that one of them would interest them.
‘We know all this. Where were you trained?’
‘Khandahar… for six months in 2000. I learned about political assassination. I know the plans to attack buildings in the West.’
‘Which buildings?’
‘Christian buildings, embassies and water supplies also.’ This was remembered from one or two newspapers that Khan had read in Pakistan and Turkey.
‘Which buildings?’
‘A big church in England - London.’
‘When are these attacks due to take place?’
‘Soon - next month.’
‘Next month? Then how were you expected to be in place? A man like you with no money walking through the mountains? ’
‘That was the plan, to enter Europe illegally. Then if I was caught, I would say that I was a man looking for work. That is all. They send you back to where you came from, but they don’t put you in jail. They know terrorists have money and travel on planes, so they are watching the airports. But with all these men on the road they don’t know who people are. It’s much safer. I came with many other men. Many, many men. And I know who they are, where they went, what their plans are.’
The Eygptian turned to The Doctor, who shook his head. ‘These are stories,’ said the Egyptian.
Khan looked up at him. ‘Ask yourself why you’re questioning me. Ask yourself if I would lie about these things when I know what you can do to me.’
The officer threw the cigarette away into the gloom of the cell and returned the look. Khan noticed the whites of his eyes were muddied and that his skin, a degree or two darker than his own colour, was very thick and plump, as if blown up slightly from the inside. The Egyptian shook his head and without warning stepped behind and hit him several times. ‘
You
will answer my questions.’
‘I am,’ he cried out. ‘I am trying.’
Khan now understood the game he had to play. The Egyptian must be seen to win. If he failed to make this happen The Doctor would take over, and this he had to avoid at all costs. So the Egyptian became a kind of ally. Khan had to work with him and make it look as though it was his skill that was persuading him to talk, and that there was no need of The Doctor’s expertise. But this meant he would have to endure much more pain while letting the information out slowly.
He was terrified by this conclusion. He was taken up to the ceiling again and began to experience a quite new level of pain. He lost count of the times he passed out during these hours but the investment of pain seemed to be working. The gaps between the beatings grew longer and a man was summoned to write down what he said in English, which was a slow process because he had to stop and ask Khan how to spell certain words. This gave Khan time to collect his thoughts, however, and add convincing detail to the story of his training in an al-Qaeda camp. He found that the things he just made up out of desperation were the most readily accepted by the Egyptian.
Night came and the questions continued under a naked bulb. At some point in these hours, Khan’s faith in humanity, more particularly his assumptions about his fellow men, slipped away. He had been changed, although his mind was in no state to hold such an idea or to know what it meant.

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