In Cold Blood (10 page)

He took the man’s hand and jumped down to the deck. The briny tang of the sea filled his nostrils and the damp breeze was refreshing. He turned to the west and gazed out. They were twenty miles from land. They were too far out to be seen from here.

“I’m Lieutenant Commander Shawn McMahon. Officer in charge of the on board operation.”

“Good to meet you,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the whine of the fading engines.

“Likewise. If you’ll follow me, captain.”

They walked away from the Knighthawk towards the middle of the ship.

“Good trip?”

“Nice and easy. Any updates?”

McMahon shook his head. “Nothing much. There’s a Global Hawk on station at sixty thousand feet and they’ve re-tasked a couple of NSA satellites so we’ve got eyes on the town. They’ve holed up in the house on the coast. You’ve seen the pictures?”

“Yes. The hostages?”

“They haven’t killed any more of them, if that’s what you mean.”

“Just a matter of time.”

“I think so, too.”

“When did you get here?”

“Six hours ago. We jumped in, got picked up and my men are getting themselves ready now.”

McMahon opened a door and they went inside the ship.

“Do you need anything now, sir?”

“Can you show me to my room? I need to make a call.”

“Sure.”

POPE HAD been assigned officer’s quarters. It was a small room, with everything packed in tight: six curtained bunks with rows of drawers beneath them, small stainless steel sinks, and, through a bulkhead, a rec room with a TV, some chairs, a pull-out metal desk and lockers. The turgid, stale air was circulated by a fan.

He put his suitcase on the bed, unlatched it, opened it and took out the equipment that he needed. He left the satphone on the bed and switched on the multi-channel bug detector. Pope was ostensibly a friend aboard the
Tortuga
but he was not naïve enough to think that the privacy of his communications would be respected. There was too much at stake for niceties like that.

The detector had been designed in the labs in the basement of the MI6 building next to the Thames and was good to detect bugs transmitting on practically any frequency. He directed it around the small room until the unit buzzed gently, the numbers on the readout stopping at ninety, indicating a wifi listening device. He used the scanner to isolate the signal, eventually finding the little transmitter inside the plug that powered the TV in the rec room. He carefully disassembled the housing and withdrew the bug.

He went back into the other room, took the satphone from its case and switched it on. It used military encryption and he was as confident as he could be that, if he was still being eavesdropped, his call would be secure.

He sat on the edge of the nearest bed and dialled the number he wanted.

“Global Logistics,” the woman at the end of the line intoned. “How may I direct your call?”

“This is Michael Pope,” he said. “I’d like to speak to the Managing Director, please.”

It was standard procedure. Global Logistics was the cover for Group Fifteen.

“Just connecting you now, Mr. Pope.”

The line was poor quality but, despite that, the next voice was distinctive and easily recognised. “Hello, Pope. Can you hear me?”

The voice belonged to Sir Benjamin Stone, the man otherwise known as ‘C’.

“Yes, sir. Loud and clear.”

“Where are you?”

He spoke quietly. “Aboard the ship.”

“Very good. How did it go?”

“All to plan.”

“She got where she needed to go?”

“I took her to Kenya, as we discussed. Whether she can get across the border or not is something for her. We’ve done all we can to help.”

‘C’ nodded. “She’s in play now. The random element. Should make things interesting.”

“Quite so.”

Pope had found out as much about Stone as he could. He was his superior, after all, and he liked to know who he was working with. Control going rogue had thrown the intelligence community into confusion and Stone’s predecessor had been forced to fall on his sword. It had been ‘C’ who had visited him in hospital while he was convalescing to offer him the job as the head of Group Fifteen.

Little was known, at least publicly. He had been born in Warwick, studied physics and philosophy, and then spent time at Harvard. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and made fast progress through the ranks, serving as a political officer in Damascus and then as a desk officer in the European Union Department. He worked in Washington for a time, and then became Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister. He was Ambassador to Egypt and a Special Representative in Baghdad. The off the record information that Pope had uncovered revealed surprisingly little more than what was already known. He liked tennis. He liked to cook. He liked horses.

Only one thing was constant from all the information that he uncovered: Benjamin Stone was a careerist, he was brilliant, he had incredible connections, and he was utterly untrustworthy.

“How was she?” he asked.

“Determined, sir.”

“Her state of mind?”

“Very focussed.”

“She better be.”

“Do the Americans know about her?”

“Not specifically. They know we have an asset in play. That’s it.”

Pope frowned. “Shouldn’t we front up now, sir?”

“Let them start the operation first.”

“Really? It might be better for her if they knew everything.”

“Yes,” he said, his irritation obvious, “it probably would, but it’s not better for us, is it? What if they disagree? They could pull the whole bloody thing if they think we’re interfering. It’ll just cause a headache. We’ve decided this is the way we’re going to do it and we’re not changing tack now. They’ll know when they need to know and not before.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s very useful that she came to you, Pope. We can’t leave Control in play like this. We need to find him. He’s much too dangerous. The secrets he has, God only knows what the Chinese would do if they knew he was out there. The Russians. The bloody
Americans
. You think she’ll be able to get to him?”

“She wants him more than you do, sir. If anyone can do it, she can.”

“And, of course, she can use methods that oversight committees might get a little, well, squeamish, about.”

Stone was the kind of operator that Pope had no time for. He had ridden a desk all of his career, never once dirtying his hands with the reality of modern intelligence, and yet he was blithely happy to send agents into the field with scant regard to their safety. Not telling the SEALs about Beatrix was a case in point. That kind of leadership might have worked with Pope’s predecessor, but he had promised himself that it would not work with him. He would do everything he could to watch over her.

“I’ll keep you posted, sir.”

“Very good, Pope. Please do.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, but ‘C’ had already ended the call and the handset was full of static.

IT TOOK BEATRIX two hours to reach the border. The road from Dadaab was like a broad, parched river bed. The surface had been so abused over the years that now it felt as if she was driving in a shallow bowl flanked by river banks and layered in different textures of sand, from the rock-hard to the soft desert grains.

She passed through a handful of scattered villages, wattle huts where local tribes made their homes. The road crested a final hill and then descended to a checkpoint with a pair of mesh gates closed across it. A dilapidated fence stretched away for a hundred feet in both directions and a wooden door had been hung between posts just next to a ramshackle gatehouse. A mobile phone mast stood ten yards behind the gatehouse and half a dozen armed soldiers faced each other on either side. Beatrix stopped the jeep while she was still three hundred yards away and assessed her next move.

The Kenyans looked tough and fierce, but their attention was focussed to the north. It must have been different here, once, before the resurgence of the jihadist fighters in the mangrove swamps just across the border. There had been many instances of hostile incursions, culminating in the attack on the shopping mall in Nairobi that had killed so many people not long before. This was one of the most dangerous border crossings in the world and the young soldiers would have been hopelessly inadequate if al Shabaab came at them in numbers. That must have been the reason behind the obvious surliness with which they examined those coming south.

On the other side of the gate, the Somali guards were more relaxed, yet she couldn’t ignore their AK-47s. They laughed and joked and had an easy, natural arrogance that Beatrix thought might well be dangerous. She had been hoping for a quieter crossing, but that was not going to be possible here. Attitudes towards women were prehistoric among the jihadists and she was sure that there would be an incident if she tried to make her way across the line here.

Beatrix had made a career out of listening to her gut and she wasn’t about to stop now.

She turned around and drove the sixty kilometres back to Dadaab.

THE ROADS quickly became busy with people and traffic, and she had to lean on the horn several times to clear stray donkeys from her path. She drove into the enormous refugee camp. There were structures made of wood, canvas, and sheeting material with the word USA printed on it. The streets disappeared off in all directions, some servicing neat lines of UN tents and others picking paths through accommodations with no sense or design. It was nothing like the other refugee camps Beatrix had seen. This one had an air of dogged permanence about it, and the facilities that would be associated with a town of a similar size had all sprung up like mushrooms on a compost heap: shops, bars, makeshift offices.

Beatrix found her way to the UNHCR Reception Centre in Dagahaley and asked for directions to somewhere she could stay for the night. The clerk behind the desk gave her directions to a small area where tents could be hired for a few pennies. She drove the short distance to the facility and took one.

She hoisted her rucksack over her shoulder and went out again into the dusty street. The camp was labyrinthine. An open sewer trickled alongside the gutter, choked here and there with dung and fetid strips of plastic. There was a camel butcher who advertised that, for religious reasons, he only slaughtered his animals at 3am. Next to that was the Candaalo Beauty Salon where you could have your hair braided and cut and henna tattoos applied. She passed men and women who were bedding down in the doorways of their tents, the better to watch the stars above and the people who passed by.

She stopped a local for directions and walked on for a hundred yards until she found the metal shack that he had described. It was called the Sabrina Hotel and was in the Ifo 2 area of the camp. A metal sign daubed with black paint greeted visitors in English and Arabic “with open hands.”

She pushed her way through the door into just the kind of bar she was looking for. Most of it was open, with a collection of mismatched patio chairs and tables spread out across a dusty yard. The bar itself was fashioned within the corrugated tin walls, a long plank of wood suspended on two piles of bricks with a collection of bottles arranged on another shelf behind it. Beatrix approached and ordered a beer. The bartender handed her a lukewarm bottle of Tusker Premium and she paid for it with five dollars.

“Anything else?” he asked her when he noticed that she was looking at him.

“You might be able to help me,” she said. “I’m looking for a guide.”

“A guide for what?”

“I need to get into Somalia.”

“I doubt it.”

“Unofficially.”

“Why would you want to do something like that?”

“I’m a journalist,” she explained. “I’m writing a story about the jihadists.”

“Then you’re crazy.”

She smiled patiently at him. “I need to be over there to write what I need to write and I won’t be able to explain myself if I have to cross at a checkpoint. They won’t let me in.”

“For which you should be grateful. You know what it is like over there, yes? No place for a lady.”

“Can you help me?”

“I can’t,” he said, and turned away.

She stayed at the bar and sipped the beer. The bartender looked over at her now and again and she made sure to hold his gaze.

After ten minutes she finished her beer and, when he was looking in her direction, she tapped her finger on it.

“Yes?” he said.

“Another.”

He nodded and popped the top of a second bottle. She paid him again.

“I know you can help me,” she said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There’s a hundred dollars in it for you.”

She slid a note across the bar.

He paused.

“Come on. It’s my funeral, right?”

“You want a smuggler.”

She kept her hand across the note. “I suppose I do. You know any?”

“In a place like this? Of course, I know many.”

“So you can help.”

“Yes.”

She had expected the need to grease a palm or two and it was going to be necessary here. He might be spinning her a line, but what choice did she have? She was a fish out of water. She lifted her hand.

He folded and pocketed the bill. “Wait at the bar. The man I am thinking of usually arrives at ten.”

“Fine,” she said.

She drank the second beer, grateful for the moisture in her dry throat, and was about to start a third when she noticed the bartender speaking to a newcomer at the other side of the bar. They looked over at her and she held their eyes.

The newcomer came across and stood before her.

“My name is Bashir,” he said.

“Beatrix.”

She looked at him: average height, a mouthful of yellowing teeth, hair that was as black as pitch. He was dressed in Levis and a pair of cowboy boots, ostentatiously expensive in a bar where everyone else was dressed in dirty t-shirts, shorts and flip flops.

“My friend tells me you want to get into Somalia.”

“Yes.”

“And you are a journalist?”

“That’s right,” she said impatiently. “Can you help me?”