Rogue Elements (10 page)

For Madeleine Wraye, the skies were darkening. Memories of gnawing distrust, previously swept under the Vauxhall Cross carpet in the name of corporate unity, now surfacing once more. Tony Watchman, flatly denying the surveillance operation he’d run against her asset in Warsaw. Jane Saddle, whispering poison in the Chief’s ear about the declining productivity of the Counter-Proliferation section.

Dig deeper. Dig further back.

Freetown.

Jeremy Elphinstone wanting back-up in his little civil war intervention. ‘Not your patch, of course, no right to drag you away from the comforts of Abuja, but if you could possibly spare a couple of days . . .’

They were supposed to be meeting the president; to what end, Elphinstone would not specify. Courteous as always, he was being maddeningly holy with his secrets. Wraye knew a little of Valentine Strasser, the Krio soldier who had led a protest march on State House at the age of twenty-five and found himself running Sierra Leone. Nigeria was supporting with troops and aircraft his campaign against the Revolutionary United Front, and Wraye had collected copious intelligence on Abuja’s intentions. That was why Elphinstone wanted her there: she could be presented as the shadowy leverage Britain exercised over Sierra Leone’s military backer. He was much more vague on what he was hoping to achieve.

‘There are interests,’ he had muttered. ‘We need to reassert our influence.’

By then she knew Jeremy Elphinstone and his chess master’s mind well enough to anticipate that there would be more to it than that.

They were kept waiting for long hours, in a ramshackle hotel with no electricity, in the back of an overheated army truck, in an abandoned mosque, in a primary school with bullet holes in the wall, in at least three different bars the president was said to like. Their minders were sullen privates from the Northern Province who handled their Kalashnikovs like playthings. Refreshments were irregularly offered, the choice limited to warm Cokes or a dusty enamel cup of water from an unknown source.

Elphinstone, effortlessly cool in spotless linen jacket, appeared immune to flies, sweat and dirt. He passed the time writing his diary, but beneath the surface he grew increasingly tense. He seemed to take the endless delays as a personal snub, made worse for having to be endured in front of Wraye. His deep-rooted civility was sorely tested, his conversation grew curt and dismissive, until she said in exasperation, ‘Jeremy, I’m missing important meetings in Lagos. If you want me to stay, I need to know exactly why we’re here.’

He had concocted a sort of answer then, concerning UN votes and the Royal Navy’s unfettered access to Freetown’s port, but she knew he was lying. When eventually Strasser appeared, complete with beret, aviator sunglasses and combat jacket, she was shut out of the meeting after just six minutes. She received a perfunctory apology from Elphinstone at the airport before flying back to Lagos in a state of infuriated bewilderment.

Only when the mercenaries of Executive Outcomes arrived in Freetown did Wraye begin to understand just what kind of game Jeremy Elphinstone might have been playing – with her unwitting collusion. ‘We aren’t a superpower any more,’ he had said some time afterwards. ‘But we are still good at making connections. You know that as well as I do, Madeleine. This business was never just about collection.’

On the top floor of Wraye’s new house in Markham Square was a single open-plan room, a sloping-walled sanctuary in the converted roof space, with a row of secure filing cabinets along one side. Her most sensitive documents were not stored here; a three-hour journey and a great deal of anti-surveillance dry cleaning in the lanes of Herefordshire were necessary any time she wanted to access those. These filing cabinets contained moderately confidential material that ought to stay out of the hands of burglars – or intelligence officers posing as burglars – but there was nothing in them that might incriminate her or lead to a conviction under the Official Secrets Act. Madeleine Wraye was ever mindful of the possibility of a visit from SO15, the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command, with a search warrant helpfully arranged by one of her former colleagues.

Sitting on a cushion on the floor, her aching back against the wall, Wraye contemplated the prickly question of ASH’s sponsor. It was not SIS policy to assassinate friendly premiers, therefore ASH must be serving some other entity determined to maintain the Prohibition status quo. Had the same sponsor also instructed ASH to suppress the GRIEVANCE warning? Was ASH the agent of a single master, following orders for almost a decade? Or might ASH be a rogue spymaster, for sale to the highest bidder, using the Firm’s resources – and Yadin – to fulfil commissions from a range of clients?

To answer that question, she needed Linus Marshall. The great spycatcher. The man who should, by rights, be conducting this investigation. But Linus was as good as dead these days – to the Firm and to Wraye. She closed her eyes, wearied by regret for a lost partnership.

She would start with Linus, she decided. He could only say no, after all.

The temporary Shabak interrogation centre had been established in an abandoned block of apartments near Shu’fat, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem. The building lay hard against an anonymous highway interchange in the Israeli-controlled sector of the West Bank, a short distance from the Shu’fat Refugee Camp and the infamous separation wall. The current function of the building was not advertised, but two plain-clothes officers with silver mirror aviator Ray-Bans and unconcealed hip holsters stood guard at the entrance. No pedestrians strayed anywhere near the place.

Arkell parked the Hyundai directly outside the interrogation centre. He left it unlocked. No one was going to try stealing a vehicle under the gaze of the Shabak.

‘Rafi Hayot,’ he requested of the men at the front door.

One of them lifted a radio and muttered a single rapid-fire sentence in Hebrew. Four tense and silent minutes later, the door opened and another man looked out. Older than the two guards, he was a hardened forty-something, with a receding hairline trimmed to within millimetres of his scalp. His short-sleeved shirt was damp with sweat.

‘You are Chester?’ he demanded in English.

Arkell nodded. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

‘Thank Boim,’ he said brusquely. ‘Come.’

The Shabak officer led Arkell into an unlit hall that reeked of mould. ‘The elevator’s broken,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe it never worked. Arab building. What can you expect?’ Leading the way to the stairs, he added as an afterthought, ‘Air con’s broken too.’

Shouted orders came from above, a mixture of Arabic and Hebrew. Arkell raised his eyes and saw seven more floors above. Squares of deadening halogen light picked out patches of the stairwell. A film of dust coated every surface.

‘How about your computer system?’

‘This is not broken. You want to know about Gavriel Yadin? The Shabak database is very modern. You will know everything we know in five seconds.’

At the third floor, Hayot used a passcode to open a newly fitted security door. From habit, Arkell memorized the six digits. A long grey corridor stretched out ahead, with twelve doorways to left and right. The original apartment doors had been removed, and as they passed the first Arkell caught a glimpse of a large metal cage. Three men stood inside, their hands shackled to the bars. All were naked.

Across the corridor, another room held a single prisoner strapped face down to a table. Two Shabak officers stood over him with plastic sticks in their hands. A third was seated at the same table, his notebook and audio recorder vying for space with the prisoner’s bound thigh. The seated officer spoke in a low voice. When no reply came his colleagues hit the prisoner three times across the back with their sticks. Each blow produced a scream.

Barely bothering to look, Hayot said, ‘That one climbed over the wall with a suicide vest. They’re asking him who it was for. You understand we must discover the intended martyr’s identity.’

‘And those?’ asked Arkell, sickened by the sight of two teenage boys tied to small sloping chairs, both of them naked, with hessian sacks over their heads. The chairs were constructed at a seventy-degree angle, putting the boys’ joints and limbs under intolerable stress.

‘A Jewish supermarket was burnt down. Those were identified by an informer. If they did it, we will know soon.’

Arkell resolved not to look into any more of the improvised cells. This was not his war.

Focus on Mayhew and Andrade. Focus on Emily.

Despite the cries and groans, he would have made it to the end of the corridor without deviation had one voice not cut through the rest: loud, terrified, and speaking English.

‘Please listen, God, I’m just a student, I’m just a tourist!’

Arkell paused by the last apartment-cell and stared at the shivering figure inside. From his accent, he was American. He looked not quite old enough to order a beer at home. Thick black curly hair, fleshy nose. A light, incomplete stubble took the shine off his pink cheeks. The once-white T-shirt featured Homer Simpson and a couple of spots of blood. Arkell couldn’t tell whether he was wearing anything else: from the waist down he was immersed in a tank of water.

One of his two interrogators picked up a bucket and tipped a couple of kilograms of ice into the tank.

‘I’m American. Jewish! I’m on your side!’ His voice quavered with the cold and fear.

Arkell asked, ‘Is he a suicide bomber or an arsonist?’

Hayot glanced back impatiently. ‘That one is unlucky. A thief who picked the wrong mark.’

He led Arkell into the end apartment, recently repainted a stern white and furnished with military-issue desks and chairs. Computer terminals, box folders, Post-it notes and coffee cups covered the desks, with a scattering of handcuffs and batons to remind visitors not to get too comfortable. Hayot kicked a chair out for Arkell and took another in front of a terminal.

‘What kind of thief?’

‘Gavriel Yadin . . .’ muttered Hayot, entering a long sequence of letters and numbers to gain access to the Shabak database. ‘The American kid? This kind,’ he replied, gesturing to the computer. ‘Very clever with a keyboard.’

‘You’re torturing a hacker?’ Arkell couldn’t hide his disgust.

‘A cold bath.’ Hayot’s eyes fixed momentarily on him. ‘You call this torture? Your country dominated the world. How was that done, I wonder?’

Arkell said nothing. The frantic pleas of the American boy could be heard even through the apartment door.

Hayot sighed. ‘OK. I’m not proud of this. The man whose bank account he emptied is well connected. A rich Russian Jew. An “oligarch”, you say? He has demanded retribution as the price of his continuing investment in Israeli industry.’

He stabbed another couple of keys, and Yadin’s younger face appeared on the screen. ‘There. Everything the General Security Service knows about ex-Mossad officer Gavriel Yadin. Avraham Boim says you are to take what you want. So take.’ He stood up.

Arkell scratched his chair forward across the tired linoleum. The screen was filled with Hebrew square script. ‘Would you mind translating?’

‘I have work to do.’

‘I only need the relationship details. There should be mention of a girlfriend in Germany?’

With a show of irritation, Hayot bent over the terminal. He scrolled through the lines of text. ‘We have his mother’s address . . .’

‘Just the girlfriend, thank you.’

‘Germany?’ The sweat line on his back had extended another centimetre. ‘Here . . . Hamburg. Klara Richter. Steindamm 53. Flat 86. You need a pen and paper?’

‘No. Thank you. Anything else about her?’

Hayot gazed at the screen for a moment. A minute shift in the shape of his mouth suggested a smile, but he said, ‘That’s all there is.’

On the way out, Arkell couldn’t help looking in at the American boy again. He was still standing in the ice bath, but now one of the interrogators was gripping his shoulders from behind. As Arkell watched, the interrogator seemed to lapse into a frenzy, violently shaking his suspect back and forth so that his head rolled uncontrollably about. A long stuttering cry came from the boy’s lips.

‘What the hell?’ muttered Arkell.

Hayot glanced into the apartment-cell. ‘A good technique to make people talk.’

‘But you don’t need him to talk.’

Hayot shrugged. ‘A good technique to make people regret stealing from oligarchs.’

‘You know it can cause blood clots in the brain?’

‘Those cases are rare,’ said Hayot, continuing on.

Arkell gave himself the length of the corridor to think very fast through the consequences of action. In just five seconds he ran two scenarios, estimating his chances in each. Then he made his decision.

He let Hayot get as far as the cell with the built-in cage. ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ he said. ‘So I’m sorry about this. It’s not personal.’

Hayot turned, frowning. ‘What –’

Arkell hit him full in the face, and again in the stomach to rob him of the air to shout. His third punch landed less than a second after the first, and propelled the Shabak officer into the cage cell. His fourth knocked the man unconscious.

With a finger to his lips to silence the astonished prisoners, Arkell quickly removed the Jericho 941 from Hayot’s belt. He cuffed the Shabak officer’s right hand to the cage, and tossed his radio across the apartment. With the semi-automatic pistol concealed inside his shirt, he started back along the corridor.

The pain was subsiding. Danny Levin didn’t know whether that was a bad sign. His legs were numb, his feet dead lumps of rock. His balls, gone. And now the pain was going too. Was he ever going to feel again? Would he walk again?

Another bucket of ice. Like the water could get any colder.

I’m just a tourist!

Numb.

Places like this, people like these, he’d seen them in movies.

Black sites.

Please . . .

He could feel the frostbite take hold. His toes, dead already. Have to cut them off. His dick too. How would he piss?

I’m just a kid!

He was slow to notice the new arrival. Senses dulled by the cold. The two interrogators had stopped still, were staring open-mouthed.

What?

The guy with the gun was definitely not from around here. Blondish hair. Grey blue eyes. A casual, confident smile. Voice straight out of some old war movie:

‘Very quiet now. Nice and still. Step back against the wall. Hands high as they’ll go.’

British?

The man stood with feet at ninety degrees and well apart, his right arm fully extended and his left hand cupped under the butt of a gun. Looked kinda awesome.

He used his left hand to haul Danny out of the tank. Didn’t seem to find it much of an effort. Certainly didn’t spoil his aim.

‘I’m just a student. A t-tourist.’ Danny realized he was sobbing, still struggling to focus after that last bout of shaking.

‘That’s fine,’ muttered the man, gripping him round the waist. He seemed to know already that Danny had no control of his legs. ‘It’s time you gentlemen tested the water. Come here, please.’

Both interrogators approached the ice tank like they were headed for the slaughterhouse.

‘I’d like you to show me how tough Shabak officers are. You’re going to put your heads underwater and stay down for 120 seconds. Come up early and I shoot you dead, so count nice and slow. Understand?’

They nodded anxiously. The stranger beckoned them forward. ‘Big breath . . . Go.’

Then he dropped the gun, threw Danny over his shoulder, and ran.

Silently. Really, he made no noise.

Incredible.

Danny started to wonder, started to hope, but still – this was insane. You didn’t get to run out of a Shin Bet prison!

Sure enough, halfway down the corridor an officer stepped out of an apartment-cell, cigarette pack in his hand.

The British guy just ran him down.

The collision was effective but noisy. The officer swore loudly, hit the concrete floor with a solid smack. They lurched on to a security door with a keypad. The man seemed to know the code. A green light winked. Two more officers emerged further down the corridor. One yelled and drew his gun. Danny, upside down, clenched his eyes shut.

Then they were through the door and charging down the stairs, one flight, another, shouts above, chaos.

One floor from the ground, the stranger slipped from stairwell to corridor, heading for the front of the building. This floor was deserted, the apartment doors all smashed in. Some still hung from their hinges, others lay in pieces. In the end apartment, Danny was set on his feet, and together they looked down from a broken window at a car parked by the kerb.

Right under the window was a guard.

He was facing the entrance of the building, gun drawn, hyperalert. As they watched he called out to someone inside the building.

‘What’s your name?’ whispered the British guy.

‘Danny,’ croaked the boy, amazed to find he could speak at all.

‘How good are you at jumping off diving boards, Danny?’ He helped him balance on unsteady legs. Danny was wearing jeans, soaked through, but no shoes. Noticing this, the English guy kicked a piece of broken glass away from his foot.

‘All right, I guess.’

‘See that man down there? Reckon you could land on him? He’ll break your fall.’

Alarmed, Danny said, ‘He’s got a gun.’

‘I’ll take care of that. But we’ve got to jump together. And we’ve got to go right now.’

Danny stared fearfully down at the guard. ‘OK,’ he muttered, although it was definitely very far from OK.

‘Good lad,’ muttered the mad British guy, lifting him up on to the window ledge. He climbed up beside him, and as they heard the stairwell door thud open, he whispered, ‘Go!’

Danny dropped straight down, smacking into the guard’s back. Did not expect it to hurt that much. Cracked his jaw against something, maybe broke a tooth? But it worked! The guard just crumpled beneath him. The Brit, landing neatly beside them, chopped down hard on the guard’s wrist. Gun gone.

‘Get in the car.’

Danny staggered to the Hyundai, belatedly realizing he could feel his feet again. A commotion in the foyer of the building, two officers racing out of the stairwell. Another at the apartment window above. The British guy threw himself into the driving seat. Danny was having a hard time with the seat belt.

A shout from above. Running feet close by.

The stranger had the car moving almost on the first cough of the engine. He coaxed the gas – a split second of care before powering away.

The first round missed the car completely. The second entered through the roof and lodged in Danny’s seat.

‘Oh shit oh shit oh shit!’ The third round shattered the rear window. ‘We’re gonna die!’

But there were no more shots. The man had taken the stick shift so swiftly through the gears that they were already round the block and careering onto a busy street.

‘We’ve got maybe a minute before we need to ditch this car,’ he said, one hand bringing up the satnav on his phone. ‘What do you know about the West Bank?’