Hellfire (40 page)

The only image of Ahmed bin Ali al-Essa that he had seen had shown a neat, confident man with a well-trimmed goatee beard and full Arabic dress. Buckingham had spoken of a proud, determined businessman, used to giving orders.

The man who sat on that sofa was anything but.

He wore a plain, white robe, but it was stained down the front. His face was gaunt, his beard scraggly and his hair unkempt. His eyes looked red and sore. He was the picture of a broken man. The sight of Danny’s handgun didn’t seem to worry him. He stared instead at Buckingham.

‘You came, Mr Buckingham,’ he whispered.

Buckingham was about to speak, but a deadly look from Danny silenced him. Danny himself stepped forward. ‘Who else is here?’ he demanded.

Ahmed looked at Danny as though for the first time. The gun still didn’t seem to worry him. ‘Nobody,’ he said. ‘It is just us.’

Danny spoke into his radio. ‘Tony, Caitlin, what you got?’

Caitlin clocked in first. ‘
Nothing, unless you count being eyed up by a few lecherous old Arabs.
’

Tony: ‘
Kitchen staff. Nothing else.
’

Danny didn’t like it. Like Morgan had said, the chances of this guy having no CP were a thousand to one.

He moved suddenly forward, past the mirrored-glass coffee table, up to the sofa. With one strong hand, he grabbed the front of Ahmed’s robe and pulled him up from the sofa. Ahmed’s limbs flopped weakly – he seemed to weigh almost nothing. Danny pressed his weapon hard into Ahmed’s temple. ‘Who have you got watching us?’

Ahmed closed his eyes. Danny felt his body start to shake.

‘Nobody,’ he whispered.

Danny made a dismissive hissing sound. He spun Ahmed round, then forced him to his knees so he was facing back towards where Buckingham was standing. With his handgun still pressed against the Arab’s skull, Danny grabbed his left arm pulled it behind his back, forcing the joint up to breaking point. Another inch, he knew, and the bones would snap. Danny was aware of Buckingham taking a couple of steps back, his eyes bulging. The bulk of his attention was on Ahmed.

‘Listen to me,’ he said, his voice very quiet and very menacing. ‘You might have all those twats in the Firm fooled, but I don’t trust you any further than I could fucking throw you. If I don’t get the answer I want, I’ll break this arm and then start on the other. Trust me, five minutes and you’ll be begging to give me information. So I’m going to ask you one more time: who have you got watching us?’

To add a final piece of emphasis, he squeezed the joint just a fraction of an inch harder. Ahmed whimpered.

‘For God’s sake,’ Buckingham breathed. ‘He’s our only . . .’

‘You’ve got five seconds, Ahmed. Five . . . four . . .’

‘Jesus, man,’ Buckingham said. ‘Look at him . . .’

Danny stopped counting. He forced Ahmed’s head forward so that he was bending over the mirrored coffee table. He looked at Ahmed’s reflection. At first, his eyes were closed. But a second later, he opened them again. They were brimming with tears. Ahmed blinked. The tears dripped down his face. A couple of them splashed on to the coffee table. Ahmed’s face was etched into an expression of complete despair.

‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Look . . .’

His reflection nodded towards the pile of magazines on the opposite side of the table. Lying on top, face down, were several sheets of photographic paper. Danny hadn’t noticed them before.

‘Look at them,’ Ahmed breathed.

Danny hesitated for a second. Then he looked over at Buckingham. ‘Spread them out on the table,’ he said.

Buckingham’s eyes tightened slightly at being told what to do. But he stepped over and picked up the images. He looked through them, and visibly paled. With trembling hands he laid them out on the table.

Even Danny, who had seen things most people could never conjure up in their worst nightmares, was sickened by what he saw. An old lady lying back, her rictus grin matched by the open wound on her throat. A man in the same position, his eyes and tongue gouged out. A fat man on the floor, lying in a pool of his own blood. And more blood on the walls scrawled into Arabic lettering.

‘What does it say?’ Danny demanded.

‘You need to ask?’ Ahmed said. Danny looked at his reflection again. His cheeks were wet. Danny tightened the arm another fraction, and Ahmed hissed in pain. ‘You are looking at my mother and father,’ he whispered. ‘That is what he did to them. That is the Caliph’s work.’ More tears splashed on the mirrored surface of the coffee table, and Ahmed’s body started to shake even more violently. Danny suspected that it was not just down to the pain he was inflicting. ‘That is what he will do to
me
,’ Ahmed continued, ‘if he finds out I am speaking to
you
. And he
will
find out if I allow
anyone
else to know that we are speaking. He has eyes and ears everywhere. There is nobody else here because nobody would dare to cross the Caliph, and I do not dare to let
anybody
know that this is what I intend to do.’

Danny stared at his reflection again. His eyes were still welling with tears, his brow still creased with pain. But there was something else in his expression. A grim severity. The determination of a man bent on revenge. Danny could see the hate in his eyes. It told him more than any words.

Slowly, he released the tension on Ahmed’s arm, and removed the gun from his head. He spoke into his radio. ‘Tony, Caitlin, make your way up to the penthouse.’

‘
Roger that.
’

Ahmed was still kneeling. He had buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders still shook. After a few seconds, though, he looked up again. He wiped his face with the sleeves of his grubby robe, then stood and addressed Buckingham. ‘I thought it was only
my
people who could be so brutal.’

‘You don’t know the half of it, old sport,’ Buckingham muttered.

‘Sit down,’ Danny interrupted them, ‘and shut up.’

Ahmed looked over at Danny and bowed his head acquiescently. He clearly had no wish to pick an argument with the Regiment man.

‘The situation is this,’ Danny said. ‘We think that the Caliph, whoever the hell he is, is orchestrating a bioweapon strike on the London Marathon. That’s tomorrow morning. We’ve got twenty-four hours to find him, or someone who knows what he’s got planned. The Firm played us your cryptic call to London. Whatever your big idea is, it had better be good, or a lot of people are going to be killed.’

It was as if Ahmed had suddenly forgotten what he’d undergone at Danny’s hands in the past couple of minutes. He stared at him, shaking his head slightly in disbelief. ‘Who would do such a thing?’

‘A sick fucker,’ said Tony. He and Caitlin had appeared at the door to the penthouse.

‘So if you know how to find him,’ Danny continued, ‘tell us now.’

‘Do we trust him?’ Caitlin demanded as she walked into the apartment. At first she seemed oblivious to the faint look of disapproval she received from Ahmed. But then she turned to him. ‘Don’t worry, darling, they’re only tits, they won’t bite.’

‘We trust him,’ Danny said, ‘as soon as we’ve heard his strategy for getting close to the Caliph.’

The unit were now standing round Ahmed in a semicircle. He seemed very small, hunched on the sofa in his plain white robe.

‘So let’s hear it,’ Tony said.

Ahmed bowed his head, then stretched out one hand to indicate their lavish surroundings. ‘I am a wealthy man,’ he said. ‘One of the very wealthiest. And I have learned something very important. Money opens doors. It buys you anything, except long life and happiness. Everybody has their price.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘Even the Caliph.’

He looked at each of them in turn.

‘Go on,’ Danny said.

‘Terrorism costs money. A great deal of it. Each bullet fired, each man trained is an expense.’ He gave a rueful smile that looked strange against his wet cheeks. ‘You could say that it is a very poor business model: all expenditure, no income.’

He had a point. Danny remembered Ntoga, the corrupt Nigerian official, who’d received fifty grand from Boko Haram for help in kidnapping Target Red.

Ahmed stood up and walked to the wide windows at the back of the penthouse. He lifted his left arm and indicated a line of skyscrapers along the waterfront. ‘Men like the Caliph have support in this part of the world, and not just because people fear him. There are rich businessmen in Qatar and Saudi Arabia who fund his activities – and the activities of people like him – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. They see it as their responsibility as good Muslims, while they rely on the West for their more worldly needs.’ He turned to look at them again. ‘We businessmen like to hedge our bets. If we invest in one stock, we also invest in another equal and opposite stock. If one goes down, the other goes up and so we minimise our losses. Those Qatari and Saudi businessmen who donate money to the Caliph and his like, they are doing the same thing: a spiritual hedge fund to guarantee them entry into Paradise, if it turns out Allah takes a dim view of their worldly wealth.’

‘Very poetic,’ Danny said. ‘Get to the point.’

‘The point is this. I have heard rumours – and I must tell you that they are just rumours – that the Caliph is accustomed to accepting large financial donations from men like me. He is not independently wealthy, so how else could he operate? It is also true that I am able to make him a financial offer he cannot refuse. Excuse me for a moment.’

Ahmed left the room through the door at Danny’s two o’clock. When he walked back in twenty seconds later, he was carrying a metal briefcase.

‘What’s that?’ Danny said.

Ahmed put the briefcase down on the table. He clicked it open. Inside, neatly arranged, were piles of crisp, new American dollars.

‘Five million,’ Ahmed said.

Danny lowered his gun. So did the others. Something made Danny glance at Tony’s face. The greed in his eyes was plain to see.

‘I have another twenty cases waiting. A hundred million in all. I propose offering it to the Caliph, in return for my life.’

There was a silence in the room. It appeared that nobody could take their eyes off the money. Danny found it amazing, how little space five million could take up. It would be the easiest thing in the world to swipe it now, go off the grid and never have to worry about anything.

‘It’s all very well having the money,’ Danny said. ‘But the whole point is that we don’t know how to contact the Caliph.’

‘Yes we do,’ Ahmed said quietly. He stared meaningfully at Buckingham.

For a moment Buckingham looked confused. Then realisation dawned on his face. ‘Your driver,’ he said. He clicked his fingers excitedly. ‘The one you asked about the Caliph when we met in Riyadh. What was his name . . . Mustafa!’ Buckingham turned to Danny. ‘Mr Al-Essa asked his driver if he’d heard about the Caliph. He denied it, but he looked nervous, as if he knew something but was too afraid to say it.’

Ahmed nodded. ‘Mustafa was the only person who knew we discussed the Caliph. I mentioned it to nobody else. I didn’t dare.’

‘You think your driver was the Caliph’s man?’ Danny asked.

‘I doubt it. But it would only have taken Mustafa to mention our conversation to one person . . .’

‘Where’s Mustafa now?’ Danny asked.

‘He lives outside of Doha. I can have him here within a couple of hours.’

‘Do you think he’ll be happy to talk to us?’

Ahmed gave Danny a flat look. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not think he will be at
all
happy to talk to you. He will be scared for his life and for that of his family. He will need . . .’ – Ahmed bowed his head as if he did not like what he was about to say – ‘. . . persuasion.’

‘Fine,’ Tony said. ‘Persuasion we can do.’

‘He is an innocent man, my friend,’ Ahmed said quietly.

‘So are all the people who’ll die in London if we don’t get to the Caliph,’ Danny said. ‘Call him. Now.’

06.00 GMT.

Daniel Bixby felt like he hadn’t slept in days. The glare from the lights in the subterranean offices of the MI6 building hurt his head, and the noise of his electric wheelchair grated as he moved it along the corridor to the office where he knew the Chief was waiting for him.

Bixby hoped he didn’t look as bad as his boss, whose pale, drawn features looked out from the other side of his desk. His glasses had slipped a centimetre down the bridge of his nose. He looked like a man who was losing grip of the situation. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘There are no Qatari or Saudi nationals registered for the marathon,’ Bixby said. ‘We have two Yemeni men, three from Oman and five from the UAE. No women.’

‘So that’s ten suspects?’

‘If that’s what you want to call them, sir,’ Bixby said mildly.

‘You have addresses for them all?’

‘Of course. We just need your go-ahead to deploy the appropriate resources. SCO19 are standing by.’

The Chief hesitated for a moment. ‘You think there’s a low chance that one of these Arabs is involved in the strikes, don’t you?’