Firefight (6 page)

'You all right in there?' Kate shouted from behind the
door.

He turned off the shower. 'Fine,' he said, before climbing
out, throwing on the towelling dressing gown and roughly
drying his hair. The mirror was steamed up, so he wiped
his hand over it to get a look at himself. Why was he doing
that? he wondered to himself as he ruffled his dark hair
into position. He glanced down at the clothes on the floor.
Should he put them back on? Imperceptibly he shook his
head. Will knew where this was leading.

I shouldn't be here, he told himself. It isn't right. But
then he thought of his own flat in Hereford. Bland.
Unwelcoming. He had gone to the pub to forget his
troubles, but who would blame him if he tried to find
oblivion in the arms of this woman who seemed to be
making her intentions perfectly clear.

It had been a long time. A very long time. He took a
deep breath and caught a glance of himself in the mirror
once more.

When Will finally stepped out of the bathroom and
looked down the corridor, Kate was waiting for him, framed
in the doorway to her bedroom. She had changed clothes:
gone was the business suit, replaced by a pair of tightly
fitting jeans and a sapphire blue top that accentuated the
curve of her hips and her breasts. She leaned nonchalantly
against the edge of the doorframe, a mischievous smile
playing on her lips.

Will took a step forward. That unfamiliar trembling of
anticipation washed over him and suddenly it was all he
could do not to run towards her. 'Do you pick up a lot of
hooligans in bars?' he asked lightly.

Kate arched one of her eyebrows. 'Are you a hooligan, Will?'

'When I want to be.'

'Well, I might start bringing home a few more, if they
all look like you.'

'They don't,' Will replied. 'Mostly they look like that
bloke with the broken nose.'

'Ah,' Kate replied, and Will thought he heard a slight
tremble in her voice. 'In that case, I think I'll stick with
you.' She turned and stepped into her bedroom.

It was dark outside by now and Kate had dimmed the
lights. She stood at the end of the bed, her smiling eyes
looking widely up at him as he walked in. Will approached
and put one arm round her, against the small of her back.
She needed no encouragement to press herself against him
and as he felt the warmth of her body and the hotness of
her breath against his, a world of stress and worry seemed
to fall from his shoulders.

They kissed - tentatively at first, but with increasing
passion. Will's free hand slid up her top and she took in a
deep gulp of pleasure as his fingertips brushed her breasts.
She pulled on his dressing-gown cord, then lightly placed
her hand on his chest muscles, before taking a step back
and removing her top in one deft movement.

Will approached her again, then pulled her roughly
towards him, feeling that long-forgotten thrill surge through
his body. She looked up at him with undisguised longing
in her face and their lips met again. The kiss was more
passionate this time, more serious, and Kate moaned with
pleasure as their lips met, digging her well-manicured nails
firmly into his skin. Will pushed her on to the bed. She
gazed up at him, then closed her eyes with an expectant
smile as he lowered himself eagerly on to her body.

*

The basement of his safe house was illuminated only by a
single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Below it was a
large, square, wooden table at which he sat, the constituent
parts of a disassembled Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine
gun spread out in front of him. A small, oil-filled radiator
on one side of the room emitted a surprising amount of
warmth, so despite the cold outside he wore nothing but
a pair of jeans and a vest that displayed the contours of his
biceps. His beard was neatly trimmed and his dark skin
shone in the lamplight.

On the corner of the table was a television. The sound
was muted, but the images showed the British Prime Minister
and the American President shaking hands and smiling for
the cameras. Ahmed's lip curled and he reached over to
switch off the set. There were some things he couldn't bear
to watch. Instead, he went back to his work.

In one hand he held a rag doused with cleaning solvent
from the small pot by his side and he meticulously, thoughtfully,
rubbed away at the grey metal of the barrel. He liked
the smell of the cleaning solvent. There was something
comforting about it. Warming. Even before the Americans
had trained him, when he was just a boy, the importance
of cleaning your weapon had been impressed upon him
by his mujahideen instructors. Indeed, he had barely been
a teenager the day he first saw the horrific results a poorly
kept weapon could have on the user. They had been firing
guns in the wasteland on the edge of his village - just
target practice. An older man had been laughing, bragging
about what a good shot he was. He took aim at a pebble
placed on a rock some twenty metres in the distance and
fired. The gun exploded in his face, shredding his skin so
that he appeared like a piece of meat. His howls echoed
far and wide as, blinded, he was taken back to the village.
The women had attempted to care for him, but the wound
soon became septic and he had died only a few days later.
A miserable, painful death.

The men had said that it was because he had not cleaned
his gun. Even as a boy, Ahmed doubted that - it was probably
a faulty, cheaply made weapon - but he knew then
that he would never take the risk. At that young age he
had decided on two things: never brag about how good a
shot you are, and always clean your gun.

Back then, in Afghanistan, they had used something
different - a thick oil that stuck to your fingers and stained
your already dirty clothes. He had liked that smell too, just
as he had enjoyed stripping down the weapons - mostly
AK-47s in those days, taken from dead Soviet soldiers or
supplied by the Americans.

He stopped for a moment and sneered. He really had thought
the Americans were their friends back then, when they gave
them money and ammunition. But not now. No, now the
Americans had shown their true colours; shown exactly what
the life of a Muslim was worth to them. He snorted heavily
to himself and continued to clean the gun barrel.

No one would ever find him here, of that he was certain.
The first thing he had done when he arrived in England
was establish a number of safe houses - places he, and only
he, knew about. He would never tell anyone where these
safe houses were, no matter how close they were to him
or how much he trusted them. That was the rule: these
were places where he could disappear utterly, for weeks,
even months at a time. They were chosen at random, so
that nobody could second-guess where he would be staying;
and they were always rented under false names - names
that could never be tracked back to Faisal Ahmed.

The gun barrel was clean. He held it up to the light and
looked through it. The shiny curve of its interior pleased
him. Ahmed placed it back down on the table, picked up
another piece and continued to polish and clean another
of the satisfying metallic components.

When the cleaning process was finished, he clunked all
the pieces together in order, grunting in satisfaction when
the last one slotted in. He caressed the gun momentarily,
as if caressing a woman, then scraped his chair back, picked
up the MP5 and carried it to the side of the room. Along
each wall were rows upon rows of metal shelving, firmly
bolted together. The shelves were packed from floor to
ceiling. Boxes of Semtex, G60 stun grenades, lined up neatly
like toy soldiers. A couple of bulky Claymore mines with
their long reels of detonating cord. There was an abundance
of guns, too: a C8 carbine and grenade launcher, a
Remington 870 with RIP tear-gas rounds and a selection
of handguns. Faisal Ahmed knew that no amount of
weaponry, ammunition or explosives were a substitute for
his own clear thinking and tactical awareness; but the time
would come when he would need firepower and it was
good to know that everything was in place.

He put the MP5 where it belonged on the shelf, then
turned his attention elsewhere. There was a sleeping bag and
a rolled-up foam mattress. He unfurled them on the floor.
Then he checked that the door to the basement was locked,
before taking a small handgun from the shelf. He slotted a
loaded magazine into it, rested it by his makeshift bed and
turned off the light. In the darkness he clambered into the
sleeping bag, but it was a long time before he fell asleep.

Sleep never comes easily, he found, when you know that
someone wants to kill you.

*

The first time they made love it had been frenzied and quick.
Kate had continued to dig her sharp fingernails into his back,
noisily and vigorously responding to his enthusiasm. When
it was over, they didn't speak a word: they simply lay there,
her arm draped over his chest, her leg hooked over his. How
long they lay like that, Will couldn't have said; but after a
while he felt her hand moving gently over his torso and she
was snuggling up meaningfully to him. It felt good. He rolled
her over and pinned her down by her arms; Kate closed her
eyes and groaned in anticipation as he kissed her.

It lasted longer the second time, but was no less passionate.
When they had finished, they both fell into a deep, satisfied
sleep.

It was still dark when Will awoke suddenly. He glanced
over at the clock by the bedside. Half-past four. He laid
back and stared into the blackness. His throat was dry and
he would have liked to get up and find a glass of water;
but he didn't want to wake the slumbering form next to
him. So instead he remained still, with only the darkness
and his thoughts for company.

Was it wrong, what he had just done? It felt strange,
being with a woman other than his wife. Had he been
sober, had he been thinking straight, perhaps he wouldn't
have done it the first time. But as he lay there, he found
that he didn't feel bad. He didn't feel he had betrayed
anyone.

Betrayal. That one word brought to his mind the image
of Faisal Ahmed. You can tell a lot from a photo, he thought
to himself. An awful lot. Ahmed was a good-looking man.
His eyes were calm. He seemed at peace with himself. At
peace with what he had done.

And then Will thought of the churchyard. The cold, lonely
grave where, thanks to that man, his family lay dead.

In the darkness, something became clear to him: wasting
the rest of his life was no way to honour his family. Their
death was only worth mourning if life was worth living.
Strange how it had taken a night in bed with someone he
barely knew for him to realise that.

Strange, too, how something else was perfectly clear to
him now. The two men at Thames House, unwittingly, had
offered him a lifeline. A way out of his bland existence.
They might want Faisal Ahmed dead for the best of reasons,
but in this moment of honesty Will knew one thing: he
wanted him dead so that he could avenge his family. Avenge
them, and move on.

As quietly as he could, he slipped out of bed. Kate stirred,
but did not wake, as he groped his way out of the bedroom
and into the bathroom, where he turned the dimmer light
on low. His clothes were still on the floor; they felt dirty
and greasy as he dragged them on. He was just pulling the
belt buckle tight when the door opened. Kate stood in the
doorway, naked and dishevelled. She eyed him seriously.

'Are you going?' she asked.

'I have to,' Will replied. 'I'm sorry.'

Kate inclined her head. 'I won't see you again, will I?'

Will hesitated. 'Probably not,' he answered, honestly. 'It's
best this way, I promise.'

'Another woman?'

Will smiled affectionately. 'No, Kate,' he said,'not another
woman. Just something I have to do.' He stepped forward
and kissed her on the cheek. 'You take care, Kate,' he said
kindly. 'And be careful who you take home from the pub
next time. They're not all like me, you know.'

'I wouldn't know,' Kate told him. 'That's the first time
I've done it. The last, probably.'

And with a half-smile, she watched as without any further
word of farewell, Will descended the steps and let himself
out of the flat.

It was freezing outside and Will had a raging hunger. It
took him twenty minutes to find a café that was open. An
inviting yellow light spilled out on to the street from the
misted-up shop windows and inside it was already nearly
full of workers guzzling down hot drinks and plates of fried
food. Will ordered the works and sat on his own, gulping
down mouthfuls of sweet tea and ignoring the tabloids
strewn over his table. When the food came, he devoured it,
then ordered more tea and prepared to sit it out until nine
o'clock.

At quarter-past, he was striding up to the front entrance
of Thames House. A security guard instantly stopped him
and Will realised he must look a state in his dirty clothes;
but that didn't prevent him saying what he had to say.

'I'm here to see Pankhurst,' he announced flatly. 'My
name's Will Jackson. I imagine he's expecting me.'

Within minutes he was being ushered up to the same
office as yesterday.

Pankhurst was by himself now, sitting behind his big
wooden desk. His suit was immaculate and not a hair was
out of place. He did not look at all surprised as Will was
shown in and once they were alone he indicated that Will
should take a seat.

'I'll stand,' he told the Director General.

'As you wish. I take it you've given some thought to our
discussion of yesterday.'

Will looked at him with intense dislike. He had only
known this man for twenty-four hours, but already he
loathed him. Loathed his self-satisfied demeanour. Loathed
the way he had manipulated him. Loathed the fact that they
had the same aim now. Different motives, but the same aim.
Like it or not, Will Jackson and Lowther Pankhurst were
on the same side.