Confessor (21 page)

He had heard himself referred to as a giant hawk, and he laughed at the description, for in many ways that was what he was—a night hawk, deadly and undetectable in the job at hand. The entire operation had been entrusted to him, and nobody else—not even the Leader in one of his many palaces or hiding places—knew the full scope. All they had been told was that the Gatekeeper could, and would, bring their old enemies to their knees.

He was laughing now, having just received, via
Yussif
in Great Britain, the news that the arrangements had gone well between his
Intiqam
squad in London and the splinter group of the IRA: the FFIRA. The “putty”—the message said—would be delivered for the price of four lives. Only four? he thought. There was some irony there, for thousands of lives would be forfeit. The “putty” was, of course, Semtex, and even that was a blind; naturally, they would use it, but it was not the heart of the great terror that this one man was near to unleashing.

The decadent forces of the West thought solely in terms of bombs and assassinations. It was as though they could see freedom fighters or revenge soldiers—terrorists, as they liked to call them—only as men and women who dealt death by dagger, pistol and explosive.

Certainly the Coalition Forces, during the Time of the Wars, had been concerned about what they called weapons of mass destruction. Mainly nuclear holocausts, though there was a little panic in the United States now concerning the possibility that some troops had been in contact with biological agents.

The West was made up mainly of fools who could not see that nuclear warfare was a self-destructive way to go. For the years preceding the war, the work in Iraqi laboratories had been concerned with neutron bombs, those that would kill men and women but leave the ground relatively intact. The Americans and British used propaganda that persuaded people to think that the countries in the Middle East—and in particular the organizations they considered terroristic—were fighting to get their hands on nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them by rocket, if only to use as a powerful bargaining chip.

Certainly the Gatekeeper had played a significant role in the development of neutron devices, but
his
first aim had been something he considered more deadly and less destructive.

When the men and women came to Iraq from the so-called International Atomic Energy Agency, they looked mainly at the plants in which work on the development of nuclear weapons had been going on. Of course, the nuclear road was one to be taken, yet the thinking within the powerful circle of military and scientific advisers to the leader was that the old way—the great balance of power, using nuclear arms as the compensatory spring—was now dead. In four or five years they would be able to use a nuclear threat, complete with the means to deliver warheads to every major city in Europe and the United States, putting them on equal terms with what was known as the nuclear club. In the meantime, the West would become terrified and even more unstable by the use of other means.

As he started to draft instructions to both the
Intiqam
teams, the Gatekeeper wondered how long it would be before either the Americans or British would pick up on the real power he wielded.

His country’s enemies constantly referred to the fact that Iraq was bankrupt. They had not the wit to think of the old saying “When the money is gone, you must make more to take its place.”

He was amazed that when the IAEA had sent their men and women to sniff out nuclear plants, they had actually visited the modern building where the money was, in fact, being made. They had been told that this was a new printing plant for books—textbooks for schools. The Leader set great store by the education of children. The group from the International Atomic Energy Agency had nodded gravely and left after twenty minutes. They had not descended to the lower floors where the four German forgers worked.

The making of money had begun almost six years before, and they had searched the world for the people with the greatest skills, finding them in what had been the former DDR—East Germany. These men were so adroit that only in the past few months had the American FBI stumbled across the forgeries of one-hundred-dollar bills, and they had publicly admitted that this currency was all but undetectable from the real thing. Even with that announcement, the American and British media had played down the threat.

Already, billions of the forged hundred-dollar bills were circulating and in use in America and Europe, as, indeed, they had been during the time of Desert Storm. The forgeries had brought in billions in real currency, hidden away in banks, which meant it was simply great riches on paper. They could, as the Gatekeeper had told his Leader, buy anything they wanted. The great forgery campaign had given them the wealth of ages. With it, Iraq was the most prosperous country in the world. The trick was getting the weapons of choice over borders, across seas and through airspace to beat the arms embargo. With time, and the
Intiqam
teams, there would be no problem in bringing anything they desired into the country. Then the world, fractured by this current operation, would be held to ransom. Their time would come and the great age of Islam would be at hand.

If the truth were known, the Gatekeeper did not care much for their Leader. The man was, to his mind, unbalanced and not a person who was a true Muslim, but that mattered little. What did matter was that Islam would at last become the leading religion of the world. It was of no consequence that people would be drawn into the faithful by fear. Fear was a good and holy weapon by which the decadent infidels and their leaders would seek the truth. To seek the truth, they first must be humbled.

Big Herbie Kruger could not sleep. He dozed for a couple of hours, then got up again, showered, shaved, dressed and went down to Gus’s old study. There, at the Confessor’s desk, he read a book of magic history and learned about the eighteenth-century Isaac Fawkes and how he used an egg bag—a common device still in demand—from which he produced dozens of eggs; about his prowess with playing cards and how he would make pips change to court cards; and also about how he performed the old Indian trick of growing a small tree in a matter of minutes. The book said that this made one wonder if there were any new tricks under the sun.

Also, he read of Matthew Buchinger, born in 1674 without legs, thighs or hands—simply a trunk with a head and stumps growing from his shoulders. He was most amazing because he could perform the cups and balls—magic’s oldest trick—with amazing dexterity. Herbie had seen magicians doing the cups and balls. Balls appeared and disappeared from under and above three metal cups; finally, a lemon or some such fruit seemed magically to have taken the place of the little balls. In Buchinger’s performance, live birds would appear from the cups at the end of the routine. This strange, handicapped man also became well known for his drawings and calligraphy. The book had reproductions of some of his work, which was so deft that you could hardly believe that it had been done by a man with only malformed stumps and no hands.

Herbie considered there was far more to magic than pulling rabbits from hats, making women appear from boxes, or escaping, like Houdini, from chains and straitjackets. This was incredibly absorbing stuff.

At seven o’clock he heard stirrings in the house, but by then he was back into Gus’s files, leafing through every contact the man had made with terrorist groups.

The telephone rang at just before eight. Worboys on the secure line from London.

“Herb, something damned odd is going on.”

“So what’s new?”

“Our friends in the Security Service have been tipped that there will be four more bombs in London today. They even have the locations and times.”

“These IRA Freedom Fighters, or whatever they’re calling themselves—FFIRA?”

“Our sisters say no. They’re telling us the main terrorist group here, and in the States, is called the Vengeance of Iraq. Not the kind of thing we’d want to appear in the newspapers.”

“The ruthless Arabs, eh?”

“Iraqis, yes, but this isn’t their style. They don’t issue warnings. What would your opinion be? Our sister service receiving this kind of information?”

“You tell me where it’s going to happen?”

“Sure. This afternoon, between six and seven. One at Piccadilly Circus Underground, another in Bond Street. They also say there will be a big one at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square; and a medium-sized bomb near Berwick Street Market in Soho.”

“And America? We know anything about Vengeance of Iraq in America?”

“Very nasty. One
inside
the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in L.A.; a second one in New Orleans—the French Quarter—and a third in Grand Central Station, New York.”

“We’re taking it seriously?”

“Of course we are. But the Security Service has asked the police to be discreet. Discreet! I ask you!”

“Only one reason.”

“Tell me, Herb?”

“They’ve got one of the team on their payroll.”

“That’s what we think, but it’s irresponsible if that’s what it’s all about.”

“When did any of us get responsible, Tony?”

“As from this minute. We have a meeting with the DG of the Security Service in the Prime Minister’s office in an hour. We want the sites watched and the bomb placers pulled in.”

“They won’t go with it, Tony. They’ll want the credit for rolling up the whole team, and I’d bet the Americans are thinking the same way.”

“Well, we want at least the placers rolled up.”

“Let me know how it goes.”

“Any progress at your end?”

“We’re talking to Carole this morning—”

Worboys began to say something, but Herb cut him off: “Tony, don’t you dare say not yet. We have to do it now …”

Instead of objecting, Worboys put on his quiet and conciliatory voice. “Herb, yes. You must talk with her. I agree. It is urgent.” He paused and Kruger waited.

“The problem as I see it,” Worboys continued without raising his voice, “is that all this other business—the Irish problem and the other terrorist faction—is starting to obliterate your main concern. Herb, your job is to find out what happened to Gus. Don’t lose sight of that. Focus on it and keep
that
job in your sights. Okay?” He closed the line before Herbie could respond. Three minutes later, Bex poked her head around the door to say that it was breakfast time.

Carole Keene still looked stunned, but at least she remained calm. Those who staffed the so-called guest wing under the earth on the grounds of the estate were experienced in all manner of things, from nursing and TLC to the psychological preparation for what Gus had called “putting them to the question.”

She greeted Herbie with a hug, kissing him on both cheeks, and was remarkably friendly when he introduced her to Bex. Carole, it used to be said, had little time for women, and less for women with power.

On their way over, they had agreed that Bex would do the main questioning, while Herb would jump in with the revelation regarding Gus’s involvement with the performing art of magic, which, he argued, was something that had to be dealt with simply because it was a secret part of Gus’s secret life.

As it was, Kruger’s mind reeled with what he had read so far. The little nip of the magic bug in his childhood had turned into a major bite during his recent visit to Vegas. Now, seeing all that literature on the art, he had started to imagine himself as a possible candidate for the magic wand. He wanted to learn something: to pull showers of golden coins from the air; to make chosen cards rise mysteriously from the deck; to cut a rope and then restore it immediately and in full sight of his audience. The Amazing Kruger, Kruger the Magnificent, even the Great Krugini. These were possible names that passed through his mind. Once this was over, he would find out where he could get books like those in Gus’s secret library, and where to buy the right equipment.

In this odd delirium, he truly saw a whole new career opening up for him, though if any true psychic could have looked into his mind, he or she would have chuckled at the very thought of this ungainly, uncoordinated man being able to do even the most simple sleight of hand or self-working card trick with success.

The thoughts were banished once Bex Olesker began her interrogation, for she proved herself to be a skillful and shrewd practitioner of the inquisitor’s art. Low-key to begin with, asking the immediate questions: Was Gus nervous when he left home that night? Had he recently received any mail that seemed to upset him? Had he been acting in any strange, even paranoid, way?

At this last, Carole had actually laughed. “Gus
was
always paranoid, Bex,” she said. “Few people actually saw it, though. He always appeared to be a man without a care in the world.”

“But you saw a different side of him?”

“I had worked with him for a long time before we first became lovers.” Just a hint of wistfulness. “Angela, his first wife, just didn’t understand the workings of his job. Gus taught me a great deal about the interrogator’s trade, Bex, and Gus was a kind of prima donna as far as that was concerned. I was the only one who ever saw him get worked up about an interrogation. If it was a difficult one, he would be jumpy, nervous.”

“He had doubts about himself?”

“All the good ones have doubts.” Carole seemed relaxed now. “Gus was no exception. He’d be like an actor getting ready to play the lead. That’s part of the job, being an actor and—for Gus at least—there is never a time when you can even think of failure. You just cannot fail. He used to worry about the great interrogators of the past—the men who couldn’t crack Philby, for instance. They were the best, but nobody ever even shook Kim Philby.”

Philby had been one of the Soviet’s longest running penetration agents within the British intelligence community. One of the Magnificent Five, as the KGB had dubbed them—Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and John Cairncross, all Cambridge undergraduates in the 1930s and all recruited by the Soviets as moles in the very fabric of the Intelligence and Security Services. In the end, while Burgess and Maclean were fingered by the authorities, they were never caught. Rather than that, they fled to Moscow. Blunt did a deal, while Cairncross went to live in France and escaped the worst. Philby, however, was interrogated with great hostility. Eventually, he also slipped the leash and ran to Moscow. No interrogator ever broke him.