Fortress (35 page)

‘I’m sorry I haven’t any concrete news. I’m making enquiries but as you can imagine it’s very tricky, very delicate, okay?’

‘And with your fancy new job you don’t have time for your brother, while here am I crying not sleeping. That’s right, isn’t it, Jimmy?’

Sam heard a non-committal grunt from Jimmy somewhere in the room. ‘Of course I do. I’ve had a meeting with the people who sent him to Syria.’

‘Oh, a meeting, very good. And do they know, your government employers, that you have a brother in Syria? I bet you’ve hidden that from them. Pretending he doesn’t exist, like you always did.’

There was another off-screen mumble from Jimmy.

‘Jimmy says I’m too hard on you. He’s probably right. It’s my grief, my grief for my Karza. No one else.’

She broke down into floods of tears. Jimmy appeared from behind and put an arm round her, nodding at the camera and giving a half-hearted little wave. At least Sam didn’t have to put up with this every day, like he did. The man’s patience was something to behold.

‘Look, Mum, the good news is he’s alive.’

At this she shrieked and pushed the long-suffering Jimmy away. ‘Who said he wasn’t? I never doubted he was alive. That’s why you must help him. Tell your bosses you have to go and help your brother or I will ring them up and tell them and tell the papers. They have people right here in Spain, the tabloids do.’

‘For God’s sake, have you any idea what that would do? It would hurt
him
, not me. Just think!’

Sam cancelled the call and his mother’s face disappeared from the screen. But there were no tears of desperation this time or any self-pity. Instead he felt a cold, dark, vengeful rage. ‘Fuck them all.’

Only then did he become aware that Nasima had slipped into the room and was watching him. During the past twenty-four hours she had been cool and distant. He had tried to phone her from work but the line seemed to be dead. When she finally called back it was from another phone.

He looked at her. ‘My whole life has been a mistake, a lie. I’ve spent all this time pretending I was something I wasn’t. I tried to belong, played the game, learned the moves. The Party – I thought they hired me to tell them what to think. Now
they’re
telling me what to think, or not to think anything at all, just be there, like a bit of set dressing so they can say, “Look, we’ve got a nice little Muslim boy on our podium.”’

He stared out of the window at the darkening sky. ‘You know who I feel I have most in common with in all the world? Karza.’ He gave a mirthless, sardonic laugh that he barely recognized. Then he turned back to Nasima. ‘So, I’m sorry. Sorry if you thought I was something else, if I misled you. If you had the impression I amounted to something, or ever would. You’re wrong and I apologize for being so fucking pathetic. I’m finished with this. I’m done. I don’t know what hopes you had for me but I’ve got nothing to offer you. If you want to go I’ll understand …’

While he was speaking she hadn’t moved, but remained on the other side of the room, watching and listening without expression. Now she came forward and gently put her arms round his shoulders. Then she pressed herself against him. ‘Make love to me.’

77

Afterwards they lay still for some time. Nasima seemed calm and complete, with her beautiful face so close to his. He was intoxicated by her smell, the sound of her breathing. Once he might have wanted to jump up and down on the bed and celebrate, let his joy burst out round the room – the world. Now it was different. He knew that beyond the bed, outside the door, the world hadn’t changed; the same forbidding problems lay out there. He had only to listen to the endless drone of police and emergency-services sirens outside. How familiar they were now, as trouble rumbled on. But with her he felt closer to peace than at any time he could remember. He had spoken from the heart, confessed his darkest thoughts, and now she was reaching out to him.

‘You’ve been very patient with me. You’ve respected my privacy. Yet there are so many things you must have wondered about me.’

She pulled him back towards her. ‘When you were speaking just now, I got it absolutely. You said so much about how I have felt so often, never more than now.’

He reached forward and kissed her. ‘Tell me something then. About yourself.’

She turned away, her face clouded with regret. ‘Do I have to? There’s so much that is sad and ugly.’ Then she turned back to him. ‘Does it matter? Does what we have here right now have anything to do with what has gone before? Can we just be us together and not think about all that stuff before?’

He smiled and touched her cheek with his lips. ‘Sure, but I want to know you. Properly. And one day I would like to feel that you can tell me.’

‘Thank you for not prying, for being so patient. You will be rewarded.’ She rolled on to her side, still facing him, pulling the sheets up to cover herself. He sensed the mood changing.

‘There is a way to save Karza. Without money. And there is a reward. A big one.’

78

Tom’s phone buzzed.

Woolf was on a speakerphone. ‘Bingo. We have a match. The hair we lifted from Vestey’s prayer mat is one of Nurul’s.’ He was practically hyperventilating with excitement.

‘For sure?’

‘A hundred per cent. Good call, Tom. Bloody well done.’

Mandler was in the room as well.

‘So you got your red meat,’ said Tom.

Woolf didn’t wait for his boss to reply. He charged on: ‘This changes everything. Nurul stayed with Vestey, which connects Vestey with the hostel. And here’s another thing: MI6 has put together a record of Nurul’s time in Syria. The rebel group he was with wanted him as a sniper, as you learned from your conversation with his mother, and he was bloody good at it. They only let him go home because he couldn’t cope with all the carnage he saw. He was on his way to full-blown PTSD and would have been no use. With his connection to Vestey and his marksmanship, this puts him bang in the frame for the Walthamstow shooting.’

‘We have to bring Vestey in.’

It was Mandler’s turn. ‘Steady, Tom. Let’s think this through. We do that, it could put Rolt on alert and might blow your cover.’

‘I don’t remember that being a problem before.’

‘Not to mention letting the trail go cold. Which
would
be a problem.’

Tom felt that the value of potentially getting something out of Vestey outweighed the risk of tipping off Rolt. ‘The man’s complicit in blowing up his own on top of the shooting of a civilian, for fuck’s sake. If you don’t talk to him, I will.’

‘Now, Tom, careful. I suggest you calm down a bit, and think before you speak.’

‘Why? I don’t work for you, remember.’

He heard Mandler’s trademark weary sigh down the phone.

‘You do, you know you do. Tom, whether you like it or not, and I don’t care which, you’re in our gang. Let’s not fall out now. This is important and we need you. But don’t imagine you’re indispensable. No one is.’

‘So what? Look, the fact is you don’t have a choice. Rolt made it pretty clear there’s something big in the pipeline. He said that, whatever it was, Stutz’s people would be in the frame. Maybe they’re complicit in the hostel and sourcing Nurul. You’ve got half the fucking White House landing in twenty-four hours so you have to take the risk. We lift Vestey and find out what the fuck is happening.’

There was silence.

Eventually Mandler spoke. ‘And we can’t just put him back on the streets after we’ve talked to him. You’d better think about
that
.’

79

Vestey’s voice was croaky, full of sleep. ‘Who is this?’

‘Tom Buckingham. Rolt told me to call you. We need to talk.’

‘You seen the time?’

It was just gone two.

‘Yeah, but this can’t wait. It’s about the hostel.’

There was a long silence at the other end.

‘Is there a problem?’

‘Yes. I’m outside. The Prius.’

‘You’d better come in, then.’

‘No. The car’s safer.’

It was a risk, but one worth taking. Would he go for it? They could have gone in and lifted him from his bed, but that would have meant noise and vans, and some civic-minded neighbour might have called the police. Getting him to leave the house voluntarily was Tom’s idea, but as a precaution Woolf had placed three of his team round the house just in case Vestey was a lot more switched on than they thought and took flight.

Three minutes passed and Vestey had still not shown himself. But that wasn’t a problem just yet. GCHQ were monitoring his landline, email and mobile to see if he was checking up on Tom’s story. But there was nothing to listen to or read from the house: he was just getting dressed. Then the front door opened. Tom flashed his interior light on and off and Vestey moved towards the car.

‘Sorry about this, mate,’ said Tom. ‘Get in.’

As soon as the door shut, he moved off.

‘Put your belt on – we don’t want to get stopped.’

One good thing about a Prius, and there was only one: no starter, no revving – it just glided away soundlessly.

‘What’s happened?’

‘We have a problem with the bomber. The police know he didn’t blow himself up.’

‘Who’s saying?’

Tom took a left at the bottom of the road, then sped up to a roundabout, took the third exit onto the bypass and pulled into a layby, the designated meeting point. He came to a sharp halt behind a white Transit.

‘What the fuck’s this?’

As the Transit’s rear doors opened, and Woolf’s team of heavies spilled out, Tom cleared the Prius.

Vestey, wide awake now, had taken the precaution of pocketing a weapon and was struggling to reach it as he tried to undo the seatbelt. But it was all too late.

Woolf’s guys pulled the door open, grabbed the small .22 revolver from Vestey’s front jeans pocket as the belt was cut and, in a swift and smooth motion, bundled him into the back of the van.

The whole action took less than ten seconds and they were on their way.

80

The safe-house was in the grounds of an old hospital, a modest pebbledash structure from the 1930s that had once been the home of the caretaker. Although it was superficially furnished like a normal house, the lack of detail among the uniform Ikea fittings – no postcards on the mantelpiece, no messages on the fridge, plus a lingering smell of disinfectant only just covering something organic and ominous – gave the place an institutional feel. A flat-screen monitor mounted above the kitchen counter showed a grainy image of Vestey seated at a table, his hands manacled to a bar. He had been there for four hours.

Tom was on his third coffee, wondering why he was there, when Woolf emerged, looking drained.

‘It’s hopeless. He’s saying nothing and I’m running out of ideas, not to mention time. Plus I’m getting to the point of wanting to resort to the sort of career-ending tactics we aren’t supposed to use on detainees any more.’

‘Let me have a go. You don’t get him. He’s still a soldier and that will never leave him. You spooks know nothing about people like him.’

‘Go for it, then. See what you can get out of him.’

Tom let himself into the room, and told the guard to unlock Vestey’s cuffs. The man hesitated. ‘Go on – there’ll be no drama.’

He did so, and lingered by the door.

Tom took the seat opposite. ‘You want a drink?’

Vestey made no response; his eyes were fixed on some invisible point in the middle distance. Tom filled the plastic mug that was on the table and pushed it towards him.

Vestey stayed in the same position.

‘Mick, you have to remember what they taught you. Your conduct-under-capture training? You take food and drink whenever you can because you don’t know when you’ll get more. Here.’ Tom placed the water closer.

It took a couple of seconds but Vestey broke his focus and drank the water as fast as he could – just as he’d been taught, in case it was taken away from him.

‘Look, mate, you’ve done your job not talking to the people who are avoiding the pain route. But we’re both switched on and we know how this works. You know what’s going to happen now, don’t you? We both know I have a job to do. We both know that I’m going to crack on with mine and there will be pain.’

Tom took a breath, checking that what he had been saying had sunk in. It had. ‘But I’m thinking I don’t have to do that. I’m thinking that there is another way.’

Tom leaned closer, his hands flat on the table. ‘Mate, we’re both from the same tribe. We’re soldiers – we have standards. And values, that bind people like you and me together, makes us special, better than all those pencil necks the other side of that door. You remember those values, Mick, you remember what we’re about? Courage, discipline, respect for others?’

Vestey kept his focus on the floor as Tom continued with the fundamentals, which every soldier knows and which have saved lives during a fight.

‘You remember integrity, loyalty, selfless commitment? I know you remember them. I know you once believed in them.’

Tom let Vestey stew a little. ‘I met Nurul’s mother yesterday. Did you ever meet her? She’s a nice lady, a GP. Spent her life serving the community. She’s wondering where she went wrong with her poor little boy.’

Vestey didn’t move. Neither did he tell Tom to shut the fuck up. So Tom kept talking. ‘Did you know Nurul was her only child? And now she’s got to live with the knowledge that her son is a notorious suicide bomber, the first returnee from Syria to blow himself up in the UK, and the one who’s pretty much split the country in half. Only we both know he didn’t do it, don’t we, Mick? Was it you who shot him? They’re still sifting through the wreckage. And eventually they’ll find the piece of him where the round entered.’

Tom refilled the mug. Vestey brought it up to his lips, then paused. ‘He wanted to die: it was his choice.’

Something – which was always better than nothing.

‘And you understood that, probably better than anyone. He must have trusted you, recognized a kindred spirit who, like him, loved guns but had seen too much war. Most people would have just written him off as a crazy jihadi. Probably Rolt would have, but you saw beyond that because you’d been there too – your mind full of those pictures you couldn’t stop. The dismembered kids in bomb craters, the families dead in their beds. I know those pictures. I’ve got them too: Kandahar, Kajaki, Basra, all those shit holes.’