Skinner's Rules (38 page)

‘His first job tonight was to get Fazal into that Hall with his Uzi. So he arranges an “accident” for his SAS unit, to keep them away from the very operation that he has planned. Then he attacks and cuts up a young girl, to lure the police away from the door of the debating chamber. Finally, he follows Fazal inside, unnoticed, through the open door. And when Fuzzy opens up with his Uzi, hitting everyone and everything but his target, he stands in the darkness behind him and puts Al-Saddi away with a single shot from a silenced pistol.

‘In concept and execution, it was awful and brilliant. But he made one huge mistake, although he couldn’t have known it at the time.’

Skinner produced one of the Betacam cartridges from the right-hand pocket of his jacket, and waved it in the air.

‘He allowed himself to be filmed. If he hadn’t done that, then neither nor anyone else would ever have cottoned on.’

He paused for a second, allowing Allingham to take in what he had said. He placed the cartridge on a long rosewood coffee table.

‘That’s what I know. But there’s a big piece missing, and that is:
why?’
What was the brief to Mortimer and Jameson involved with that made it so lethal?

‘Tell me, Allingham. Tell me now.’

The white-faced man lifted dark, haunted eyes and looked into Skinner’ face.

‘Don’t make me. I warn you, there are some things that it’s safer not to know. Man, I’m police, like you. I lived in your world not so long ago. But now I’m part of another where, as you said, the game is played in a different way, where the stakes can be whole countries and millions of lives. In that game, rule number one is this simple: there are no rules.

‘When it’s a matter of protecting the state, even the planet, you do what is necessary. That’s why we have Maitland. There is no one better than him at doing what is necessary.

‘He isn’t SAS of course, not in the sense of being a regular officer. He was Special Boat Services once, at the time of the Falklands, when his unique talents were first noted during certain operations on the South American mainland. Now he works with the Special Forces on occasion, but on a consultancy basis.

‘Maitland isn’t his real name, by the way. He was Captain Lawrence in the SBS, but that may have been false too. But whatever his real name, he is, shall we say, the principal executive arm of the Security Services.’

‘You mean he kills people that the Government wants out of the way?’

‘Not the Government. The politicians don’t know about him, not even the Prime Minister. Although the Security Services report to the PM, there are some things that even he isn’t told. That he can’t be told. For example, the fact that he himself, the whole Cabinet, and the entire Opposition Front Bench are kept under permanent surveillance.’

Skinner whistled. ‘Holy Shit!’

‘It goes back to a standing order given by Macmillan after the Profum Affair. He told them to do it forever, as standard practice, and never to refer back to him or any of his successors on the matter.’

He paused. ‘But that’s got nothing to do with this business. As for Maitland, very few people know about him. Those who are aware of his existence sometimes refer to him as “The State Executioner”.’

Allingham looked into Skinner’s face. ‘Now that you know more about him, do you still want to know the rest of it?’

Skinner’s eyes were hard as flint. His voice was soft, but filled with power and a terrible menace. ‘Friend, it’s as simple as this. Your man Maitland recently killed seven people, of whom only one could possibly be described as an enemy of the State. He’s a cold, calculating murderer, without a thought for the sanctity of life. I recognise the fact of the existence of your secret set-up, but I don’t recognise its right to exist. There’s only one society in this country, not two. Your man Maitlan is an outlaw. I’m the posse.

‘Now. Tell me why.’

Allingham sank back into the big green couch, shaking his head.

‘Doomsday.’ The word seemed to crackle. ‘That’s what it’s all about. The brief which Mahmoud gave to your two Scots advocates was going to be used all right, but as a defence.

‘For over a year now, the Western Intelligence community has had whispers that Syria and Iraq had settled their blood feud in private, and had come to a secret understanding on cooperation against Israel. The CIA weren’t too worried at first. They thought that the UN and the coalition air forces had pretty well emasculated Iraq’s nuclear and chemical capac ity. But gradually doubts crept in. Recently the satellites have picked up some movements between Syria and Iraq that were highly suspicious. And some other odd things have been noticed in the mountains to the north of Iraq, where the intelligence community has always suspected that they had kept a top-secret store of goodies.

‘A few months ago, our friend Fazal Mahmoud contacted his old flame Rachel Jameson, and offered her a commission. Miss Jameson, as you will be aware, was a PLO sympathiser in her student days. It seems that she kept that allegiance. When Mahmoud telephoned her and asked her to meet him to discuss business, she told her fiance, Mortimer. She must have told him the whole story, because Mortimer didn’t fancy the idea of Ms Jameson having clandestine meetings with one of his predecessors, and so he took over the negotiation. It seems that he was pro-Palestinian, too , because he agreed to accept the instruction on a joint basis.

‘We knew about the meeting in advance of course. Mahmoud was under routine surveillance, and that involved a telephone tap. But we knew very little of what it was about. After that first meeting, the trail went cold for a while. Naturally, the spooks kept a weather eye on the two advocates, but since they didn’t seem to be involved in any extra-curncular activ ity, it was concluded that the instruction from Mahmoud must have been purely academic in nature.’

Skinner held up a hand, interrupting the narrative. ‘Wait just a minute . They kept them under observation? On my patch? Without me knowing?’

Allingham looked at him nervously. ‘It was done through Fulton . There are resources outside the police force, Skinner.’

‘That’s being brought home to me. Were any ot my men involved?’

‘No one currently serving. That’s all I’ll tell you.’

‘We’ll go into that later. Go on.’

Allingham lit a cigarette and drew deeply. Skinner handed him a rarely used ashtray.

‘As I said, the trail went cold. But then, in October, Mahmoud contacted me.’

‘He contacted you?’ Skinner was surprised.

‘Yes. Most of the diplomats know me as someone to whom they can speak off the record as well as officially. They think of me as a chum. You think of me as a sort of escort. What they and you don’t know is that I’m also a part of the Intelligence services. I maintain my baggage-carrier cover rather well, don’t you think?’

He carried on without waiting for Skinner’s answer. ‘Anyway, Mahmoud was in a fearful state. He asked for a meet under total secrecy. I set it up. Mahmoud was an experienced intelligence operative, but he wasn’t the top man. The Syrians run quite an extensive undercover operation through the Lebanese Embassy. He showed me a signal from Damascus to his head of section. He had read it, although it was not for his eyes, and had taken a secret copy.

‘It was encoded, but he translated it for me, using a secret cipher that not even Langley can crack. It turned my blood cold.

‘It made it clear that the Iraq-Syria love-in story was true after all. The signal briefed Mahmoud’s head of section on a joint operation called Day of Deliverance, a plan jointly drawn up by Al-Saddi and the Iraqi leader.

‘On that day the Iraqi-Syrian Alliance, which had been forged by Al-Saddi even before he made himself President, would launch a preemptive strike against Israel, using Iraqi Scuds and Syrian aircraft. The weaponry would be chemical, not nuclear.

‘Everyone knows that Iraq had stored chemical weapons and wasn’t squeamish about using them. We thought they had all been neutralised, but not so. The real stuff and Iraq’s last-resort nuclear weapons were holed up in that mountain store. What no one knew either, until we asked and the Russians confirmed it, was that, during his mercifully brief reign in the Kremlin, Andropov supplied the Syrians with some very sophisticated chemical weapons as a deterrent against, of all people, the Iraqis. He did it to keep them from drifting into the American camp.

‘On the Day of Deliverance, massive strikes using these weapons were to be made against Tel Aviv, Haifa, Eilat, and all the populous areas of Israel. Only Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank would be spared. There, supposedly spontaneous armed insurrection would break out. Simultaneously, there would be a chemical-backed conventional attack across the Golan Heights, using paratroops to encircle the defending garrison. They anticipated little or no resistance there, once news of the attacks on their cities had reached the Israelis.

‘The legal arguments, commissioned by Mahmoud and prepared by Jameson and Mortimer, were to be used as a sort of second strike. On the Day of Deliverance, petitions based on their work would be presented in the International Court of Justice, and in the United Nations itself. They would seek to have the 1948 Declaration set aside as invalid. The Syrians were sure that, on strictly legal grounds, they would succeed.

‘In other words, the case prepared by Mortimer and Jameson was to be used to justify an act of genocide in the eyes of the world.’

Skinner sat down in an armchair, his back to the door. He was stunned by what Allingham had just told him.

‘But what about the Americans? Wouldn’t their first reaction be to bomb the shit out of them?’

‘But would they be allowed to? Al-Saddi and the Iraqis thought they had that one figured out. The Americans and the rest are onside with the Arabs only to defend Kuwait, Saudi and the Gulf oilfields — not Israel. Anyway they only have enough ordnance out there to fight Iraq, not Syria as well. History tells us that the Yanks don’t think too quickly when it comes to strategic adjustments.

‘Al-Saddi and his new ally reckoned too, and rightly, that no Arab state, not even the Saudis, would allow its territory to be used as a base for the defence of Israel. The Americans and the other Allies would be completely exposed. They could not resort to nuclear retaliation. The Saudis would order us out. We would have to withdraw, or else fight a war against the whole Arab nation, and ultimately the whole nation of Islam — with limited resources and thousands of miles from home. By the time the UN got its act together, it would all be over. Iraq and Syria allied would control the whole region overnight. All that the Americans could do would be to garrison Turkey, and probably occupy Saudi. But offensive operations would be a non-starter.

‘Finally, as an insurance policy, Syria and Iraq were going to arrange for widespread native unrest to break out in all the Islamic republics in Asia.

‘So there you have it. An enormously sophisticated operation, brilliantly conceived by totally ruthless men, which would lead to the occupation of all Israeli territory. The Israeli survivors would be rounded up, interned, and expelled, or worse. Once the chemical contamination had been cleared, ostensibly the land would be settled by Palestinians, and renamed Palestine. But it would be ruled by the Syria-Iraq axis, just as the whole of the Arab world, even the Egyptians, the Iranians and the Libyans, would dance to their tune.

‘With the bulk of the global oil resource in the hands of a unified, militant Arab League, with Al-Saddi and the Iraqi leader at its head, the consequences for the rest of the world would be unthinkable. We would be talking about economic enslavement. That, Mr Skinner, is the secret. Are you happy now?’

Skinner was thunderstruck. And this unbelievable tapestry of world domination had been unfolded before him in his own living room, for Christ’s sake.

‘You say that Fazal contacted you in October?’ he managed at last.

‘Yes, after he had taken delivery of Mortimer and Jameson’s brief.

‘As I told you, the man was in a fearful state. He was, to be sure, pro-Palestinian. But in the final analysis he was also sane, and a humanitarian. He asked me what could be done to stop the madness.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘First, I double-checked with the experts on the cipher which he had used. It was the real thing, the Syrian Supercode. That meant that the document was genuine. It also let us crack the code without the Syrians knowing.

‘That done, we contacted the CIA. A conference was held within forty-eight hours. The situation was assessed, and an agreement was reached. It was clear that Al-Saddi was the key. He was the driving force, quiet and deadly, not brash and boastful like the Iraqi. He had taken Syria into the deal, and dragged his military with him, but it was reckoned that if he could be eliminated, they would fold and the whole operation would fall apart. The CIA said that if Al-Saddi could be taken out, then they could control what happened next.’

‘Why didn’t your people just tell the Israelis?’

‘Good God, man, we couldn’t do that.’ Allingham sat bolt upright. ‘If the Israelis had found out about this, there’s no doubting what they’d have done. They’d have got in first. They’d have nuked Damascus and Baghdad, even though that would have set off the biggest Holy War the world had ever seen. Even now the Israelis must never know.

‘The Yanks felt that we were best placed to take the lead in sweeping up, since the leak had come to us, since our nationals were in a sense involved, and since we were less polarised than them. They expressed the view that the necessary executive action should be coordinated by us. And, of course, the Yanks had heard of Maitland — even used him on occasion. Our Director General agreed. Maitland was called in.

‘Skinner, you have to believe me. When he appeared, I had no idea what he was, or what he was capable of. I thought that he would give your two advocates a good talking-to, warn them off, and tell them to forget all about it. Then, I thought, he would take care of Al-Saddi on his own ground. But no, that’s not his style. He never leaves possible loose ends — or loose tongues. Never.