Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide (35 page)

Tahira, moreover, was now effectively a recruited agent and vital to the investigation. If she were suddenly brought over here, she would have to be pulled out of the operation, which would mean they’d lose their one means of contact with Malik. And what’s more, as Amir himself understood, just bringing her to the prison to talk to him might put her in serious danger. This would need careful thinking about.

Amir was watching her closely; Liz could see from his face that if she said the wrong thing he was going to refuse to speak. She had to take a risk.

She said, ‘Amir, I’m very glad that you have decided to help us. We also want to stop others getting involved in all this. I’m going to explain what I can do to meet your terms. First, about Tahira. I’ve met her and talked to her.’ Amir looked surprised, but Liz went on, ‘She is terribly worried about you. She wanted to come and see you but your father wouldn’t let her.’

He nodded as if that were no surprise.

‘I’m sure she would want you to know that she is helping us, and I’m equally sure that she would want you to help us too.’ Amir frowned and Liz went on quickly, before he could speak. ‘I can promise you that when this is over, we’ll look after her. But I don’t think it would be a good idea for her to come over to Paris to see you now. If she did, I could not guarantee to keep her safe, as we couldn’t be sure her trip would remain secret – not right now, at any rate. But I will ask her to write to you and I’ll either bring the letter myself or give it to my French colleagues to give to you.’

‘What is she doing to help you? Are you putting her in danger?’

‘She is only doing what she wants to do.’ Liz’s eyes were focused on Amir. ‘No one is putting any pressure on her. She’s helping us because she wants to help you. You are lucky to have such a sister.’

‘I know.’

‘Now about your position, Amir. As you know, it hasn’t yet been decided whether you should be charged, or even whether you should remain in France or return to the UK. I can’t give you any guarantees. But if you talk to us truthfully, that will certainly be taken into consideration, both by us in the UK and,’ she looked at Martin with raised eyebrows and he nodded, ‘by the French.’

‘But if I talk to you, they’ll kill me if they can.’

‘If you talk frankly to us, we and our French colleagues will have the responsibility of looking after you – and Tahira, of course. And if that meant you couldn’t go back to Birmingham, then we would help you go somewhere else.’

Amir had been staring at Liz as she explained all this. Now he was hesitating, clearly trying to make up his mind what to do.

Martin said gently, ‘My advice is that you should tell us your story.’

Amir nodded. ‘I haven’t got a choice really, have I?’

And he began to talk. He’d first gone to the New Springfield Mosque with Malik and had been fascinated by the preaching of Imam Bakri and his message of the duty of all true Muslims to wage war against the infidel. Amir described how he’d been asked to join an inner group of true believers which had met weekly for several months. Then they had all gone three times to a mosque in North London where they had met a woman – a white woman, who spoke beautiful Arabic and talked enthrallingly about
jihad
.

‘She was a witch. A blonde witch,’ he said. ‘She enchanted us and took away our souls. She told us we had been chosen to be on the front line of the fight and we would be blessed. No one told us where we would go, but we thought it would be Afghanistan.’

The officials of the New Springfield Mosque had made all the travel arrangements and they were kept very secret. ‘They told me to go to my uncle in Rawalpindi, where I would be contacted, so I did. One day three men came to see me there, and I went with them. They gave me Pakistani travel documents and arranged for me to go to Athens.’

He went on to describe how he had got to Mombasa by ship, then by road to Somalia where he joined a group of Arabs who ran a training camp in the desert. ‘It was very difficult getting there overland – we arrived ten days later than expected.’ It was then that the decision was taken to take new recruits in future directly from the ships off the Horn, rather have the human cargo unloaded a thousand kilometres away in Kenya and wait for it to make its way north to Somalia.

So the Arabs moved camp, to a compound that was already inhabited by Somali pirates, on the coast about ten miles south of Mogadishu.

Liz interjected, ‘And the Arabs then tried to hijack the
Aristides
?’

‘Yes. They saw how easy it was – the pirates had been doing it successfully for years, so the Arabs decided to do it themselves. That way they’d get their new recruits and also make money by ransoming the ships and stealing the cargoes.’

‘Didn’t the Somali pirates object?’

Amir shook his head. ‘Their leader wasn’t happy, but he was frightened of the Arabs. So was I, to tell you the truth; and the Arabs knew it. The leader was a tall, thin man with burning eyes – I think he was mad – who made me go with the others on a pirate raid because he claimed it would make me brave. I think he just wanted an eye kept on me.

‘It was terrifying. They made me go up the ladder first and when the French Navy boat came up, they sailed off and I fell in the sea. And that’s how I got captured. The others were captured, too, and they told me if I said anything they’d find out, and then they’d kill me. Are some of them are here in this prison?’

He looked at them both with frightened eyes. Martin shook his head. ‘They’re not here, and there is no way they could know anything about what’s happened to you.’

I hope you’re right, thought Liz, as she sat and listened to Amir’s story unfold. And as she and Martin questioned him further about the details over the next two hours, she couldn’t get out of her head her first visit to this prison, and the man with the book in the back pocket of his jeans whom she had felt sure was following her. Was he Al Qaeda too? Possibly, which meant Amir was right to worry about his safety and Tahira’s if she ever came here.

Chapter 53

‘I have some news for you,’ said David Blakey, leaning forward in his chair and putting his elbows on the desk. There was a self-satisfied air to the man which surprised Liz, since she had come to his office after getting back from Paris, expecting to be the one who did the talking. But she let him speak first, knowing that nothing he was going to say would alter the facts that had come to light.

He went on: ‘Mitchell Berger in Athens has been doing a little investigating of his own. He’s grown suspicious of the man who arranges the leasing of our ships there. His name is Mo Miandad and it turns out he isn’t entirely what he seems. Berger has discovered that he’s been meeting a woman who works in the UCSO office. Her name’s Claude Rameau – she’s been with us a long time. Quite senior; she’s a roving co-ordinator for our local aid supplies. Travels all the time, mainly in Africa.’

‘Why is she based in Athens?’

‘There’s no real reason – I inherited her, she’d got a routine, and frankly, I didn’t see any reason to change it.’

‘Why does this mean that Miandad is the source of the leak?’

Blakey seemed a little taken aback. ‘Well, we haven’t got any hard evidence, if that’s what you’re driving at. But Rameau has always been a bit of an anarchist – she’s very anti-American, for one thing. And of course it means Miandad has a secret life.’

‘Cheating on his wife doesn’t make him an Al Qaeda agent.’ Liz sighed at Blakey’s reasoning. None of this would stand up in court; none of it, in fact, was standing up with her.

‘I think you’re missing my point. It’s not his choice of bedmate that’s at issue here.’ Blakey looked at her resentfully. ‘I thought you’d be interested in this. Berger’s convinced Miandad’s up to no good. Remember, you don’t know the people we’re talking about.’

‘That’s true,’ said Liz. ‘But there are some other things I’ve discovered which you ought to hear.’

‘About the Athens office?’

‘Actually, no. A bit closer to home.’

Blakey looked uncomfortable for the first time. Liz said, ‘There’s another woman we’ve had under surveillance. Not Rameau, though this one’s also blonde. She attended a mosque in North London that we’ve been investigating for some time.’

‘What’s that got to do with the leak from UCSO?’ asked Blakey.

Liz ignored him. ‘Radical Islamists have taken this mosque over; we suspect they’ve been recruiting young British Muslims and sending them to Pakistan for training in their camps. This woman addressed some of the recruits, and a week later, bingo, off they went to learn how to wage
jihad
.’

Blakey was listening intently.

‘Then the scene shifts to Athens. I don’t think the woman seeing Mo Miandad is Claude Rameau.’

‘You don’t?’ It was impossible to tell if Blakey’s surprise was genuine.

‘No. I think it’s the same woman who was seen at the North London mosque. Which disqualifies Rameau.’

‘So who is it then?’ But Blakey’s question seemed rhetorical. The expression on his face had changed from scepticism to curiosity to alarm – he was clearly starting to draw his own conclusions. And not enjoying them.

‘I’m pretty sure you have as good an idea as I do.’

‘What do you mean?’ Blakey looked shaken.

‘Katherine Ball.’ Liz let the words hang between them.

‘You think . . .’ Blakey started to say, his voice rising, and then the possibility that she might be right seemed to stop him short.

‘I
know
that she has visited a North London mosque. I
know
that she’s addressed recruits there. And I
know
that she’s been your lover for some time.’

Blakey wanted to speak: his lips moved; a croaking sound came out of his mouth but there were no words. He was staring at Liz without really seeing her. Suddenly he dropped his head into his hands. Liz thought for a moment that he was going to burst into tears, but when he lifted his head again his eyes were dry, and he seemed to have pulled himself together. He said quietly, ‘What a fool I’ve been.’

‘How much does she know?’

‘Katherine? What about?’ Then, seeing Liz’s cold gaze, he said, ‘She knows the lot.’

‘That won’t do. You need to be more specific.’

Blakey threw his hands up in the air, almost in despair. ‘She knew I asked Geoffrey for help, and she knew when you came to see me.’

So the MI6 and MI5 operations had been blown from the beginning. Liz sighed, and Blakey seemed to sense her disgust. He protested, ‘I don’t see what use that would be to Islamic militants in Birmingham.’

Liz shrugged. ‘I wasn’t thinking of Birmingham; I was thinking of Athens. Did she know about that?’

Blakey flushed. ‘You mean, the girl?’

‘I do. Let’s give her a name,’ Liz said icily. ‘Maria Galanos.’

Blakey wouldn’t look at her, which gave Liz her answer. At last he said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, ‘Oh, God.’ He was rubbing his hands together now, as if trying to wash everything away. ‘But Katherine couldn’t have killed her,’ he said, almost hopefully. ‘She wasn’t in Greece when Maria was murdered. She was here.’

‘Enter Mo Miandad,’ said Liz.

Blakey’s hands stopped moving, and he stared at them as if they had been stained again by her words. Then he spoke without looking at Liz, averting his face, as if it would somehow make the horror less. ‘You have to believe me, I had no idea. She never gave the slightest indication of sympathising with Islam – I’d have bet you anything that she’d never set foot in a mosque in her life. Her husband was Middle Eastern, but from everything she ever said he was thoroughly Westernised – educated in the States, enlightened, liberal. And the information she got from me – well, I’ll be honest, it was me telling her; I wasn’t being pumped.’

Pillow talk, thought Liz bitterly, which had cost Maria Galanos her life. Blakey seemed to sense this, for he continued, ‘I have no excuse, I understand that. I’m just trying to explain things. Even now that I know, I find it hard to believe. If she was trying to entrap me, she did a miraculous job of disguising it. I made all the running,’ he said emphatically.

Yes, thought Liz. An attractive intelligent blonde woman who works in the same office didn’t have to do a lot to catch the interest of a known womaniser whose wife had left him. The smallest signs would do – the chance arrival at the lift when her target was leaving for the day, perhaps turning down the first invitation for a drink but making it clear a second offer would receive a different reception; a few sympathetic words about his personal troubles, a suggestion that she knew ‘how it was’ since she was lonely too. She’d played him very cleverly, you had to give the woman that – even now Blakey was thinking he had seduced her, that he had made all the running.

Blakey was waiting anxiously for her to say more. ‘When are you due to see Katherine next?’ she asked.

‘This evening. She’s at a meeting away from the office today; a get-together of other similar charities – it happens twice a year. She said she’d come round to my flat at seven or so. I can give you the address.’

‘We’ve got that already,’ said Liz. It was somehow worse having Blakey trying to be helpful.