Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies (25 page)

‘Tell me as we walk,’ said the American. ‘I need the exercise, I’m told.’

They walked along the Thames, heading east, as Button ran the situation past him. Yokely nodded as he listened, and his jaw tensed when she told him what had happened to Shepherd. When she finished she put a hand on his elbow. ‘I need your help, Richard.’

‘You sure do,’ he said. He exhaled through pursed lips. ‘You have yourself one hell of a situation. Why did you ever agree to let the Paks handle it in the first place?’

‘It’s their territory,’ said Button. ‘The way you handled the Bin Laden assassination caused a lot of ill feeling, so there was no chance they’d ever allow us to send in the SAS. And they had the intel on where Raj was being held.’

‘This Raj, he was moved before the attack, was he?’

Button shrugged. ‘We don’t know. It might have been a set-up, and they knew the attack was coming. Or it might just have been that they were well prepared.’

Yokely nodded. ‘What’s the position now with the Paks?’

‘They’ve battened down the hatches. Huge embarrassment all around, obviously.’

‘But they’re looking for Shepherd, presumably.’

‘That’s what they say, yes.’

Yokely looked pained. ‘Their intelligence services and their military are among the most corrupt in the world, you know that? That’s why they were cut out of the Operation Neptune loop.’

‘We can’t afford to get on their wrong side,’ said Button. ‘They’re in the Commonwealth. So officially we can’t do anything without their approval and cooperation.’

‘Well, you’ve seen how far that’s got you. The thing is, the only way for anyone to get promoted in politics or the military is to embrace the corruption. The same goes for the police and the intelligence agencies. Anyone who rocks the boat ends up out on their ear, or dead. You’re not going to get anywhere if you involve the Pakistani authorities at any level.’

Button smiled tightly. ‘I’m all too well aware of the position I’m in, Richard. And I’m equally aware of how few options I have. MI6 screwed up in the first place by allowing Raj to be captured. Then they compounded it by letting Spider fall into their clutches.’

‘So no more Mister Nice Guy, is that what you’re telling me?’

‘I want my man back, safe and sound. And I want Raj back, too. I’m going to call in every single marker I have to make sure that happens.’

Yokely nodded slowly. ‘As I said, I owe you and I pay my debts. But there’s no way I can help you if the Paks are involved.’

‘They won’t be,’ said Button.

‘Off the books?’

‘Totally.’

‘No official sanction, is that what you’re saying?’

‘You know exactly what I’m saying, Richard.’

Yokely started walking again and Button kept pace with him. ‘You’re asking a lot,’ said Yokely. ‘But you know that.’

‘I can offer you a carrot,’ said Button. ‘If one’s needed.’

‘A carrot would be good, considering the resources that I’ll be using.’

Button glanced over her shoulder to check that no one was within earshot. ‘The intel we have is that Akram Al-Farouq was involved in Raj’s interrogation.’

Yokely flashed her a sideways look. ‘That would be the same source that led to the botched rescue mission, of course.’

‘The intel seems good,’ said Button. ‘They had an inside man and he reported that Al-Farouq was at the compound. Is that a good enough carrot for you?’

‘It’s one hell of a carrot,’ said Yokely. ‘One of the biggest darn carrots there is. He’s up near the top of our ten most-wanted.’

‘A big enough carrot for you to get involved?’

‘I’ll need to see the intel,’ said Yokely.

‘I’d rather not,’ said Button. ‘I wouldn’t want it traced back to me.’

‘I protect my sources, Charlotte,’ said Yokely. ‘And with respect I probably do a better job than you do.’ He smiled tightly. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ said Button. She reached into her inside pocket and slid out a single sheet of paper, folded in half and half again. She passed it to him. Yokely studied it for several seconds, then put it in his jacket pocket.

He saw the look of concern on her face. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I promise to swallow it when I’m done.’ He patted the pocket. ‘There is a problem, of course. A big one. We don’t know where Spider is, right?’

‘Not at the moment. But I’m working on it.’

‘Charlotte, we’re talking needle in a haystack. Remember how long it took us to find Bin Laden? And that was using all the resources we have in the US of A. No offence, but all you have is GCHQ and most of their data comes from us.’

‘Why is it that whenever you say “no offence” you always go on to be offensive?’

Yokely chuckled. ‘I don’t mean to be, it’s just that sometimes the truth hurts.’

‘Tell me, what’s the situation re surveillance drones and spy satellites in that part of the world?’

‘North-west Pakistan? There’s a watching brief, obviously. The problem is that the bad guys know what satellites we have and when they pass over. They just go inside and wait until they’ve gone. We have movable sats, obviously, so if there’s something in particular we need to look at, that can be arranged.’

‘And drones?’

‘Drones are terrific if the subject doesn’t know we want to look at him. But if it’s a training camp, they’ll post lookouts. Drones are small but a keen pair of eyes and a pair of binoculars is all you need. What is it you need?’

‘Ideally I want to know who was out at the training camp, but as I can’t even get a location for it I’m going to have to give up on that. But I do have a location for where they were keeping Raj. It would be helpful if you’d had eyes on it at any point.’

‘Give me the coordinates and I’ll run it by the NSA.’

‘Would you? That would be super.’ She reached into her pocket and took out a small slip of paper. She gave it to him and he glanced at it, nodded, and slipped it into his wallet.

‘In return, how about I tell you something you probably don’t know?’

‘Go for it.’

‘The intel for Operation Neptune Spear came from us.’

‘Get the hell out of here,’ said Yokely.

‘Specifically, from Raj.’

Yokely stopped in his tracks. ‘Are you serious?’

‘It’s not something I’d joke about, Richard. Raj penetrated an al-Qaeda cell in the UK and as part of that he went to Pakistan. He met Bin Laden in the compound in Abbottabad. He told us and we passed the intel on to the CIA.’

‘They kept very quiet about that,’ said Yokely.

‘We didn’t want the world knowing that we had an agent in place. And we didn’t want the credit because if it was known that a Brit had been involved, there could have been repercussions.’

‘What about al-Qaeda? Did they ever know that they had been betrayed from within?’

‘The CIA released a plethora of disinformation but unfortunately it wasn’t enough. Yes, they found out what Raj had done. And his colleague, another British Pakistani, Harveer Malik. Harvey, we called him.’

‘And where is this Malik now?’

‘Running a restaurant. Under a new name. He’s quite safe.’

Yokely nodded thoughtfully. ‘And who had the bright idea of sending Raj undercover after he’d been blown?’

‘Six thought he had value,’ said Button. ‘They moved him to Bradford, gave him a new identity and had him penetrate a group of hardliners in a mosque there. He was asked to go for specialist training in Pakistan.’

‘What sort of specialist training?’

‘Ground-to-air missiles. MANPADS.’

‘Ah,’ said Yokely. ‘Difficult to say no to that, I suppose.’

‘Six helped change his appearance. Gave him a couple of scars, changed his nose, had him grow a beard.’

Yokely grinned. ‘False moustache?’

‘His cover was good, Richard. I wouldn’t have used Raj, but Six felt it was worth the risk.’

‘I know, hindsight is a wonderful thing. But sending a man back undercover after he’d already been blown …’ He shrugged.

‘You’re preaching to the converted, Richard. I’ve already made my feelings known.’ She sighed. ‘The last thing Raj said to me was that he was going to go back to being a doctor and that he’d leave the fight against terrorism to me.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I tried to get him to join MI5 but deep down I thought he was doing the right thing. And he’d done his bit.’

‘So Six went behind your back?’

Button nodded.

‘Do you think his captors know about the Bin Laden connection?’

‘There’s no way I could know that,’ she said. ‘But I hope not.’

Yokely wrinkled his nose. ‘They’ll be torturing him, Charlotte. If he talks …’ He left the sentence unfinished.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘There’s something else you don’t know. Spider was also on Operation Neptune.’

Yokely’s jaw dropped. He opened his mouth to speak but then words failed him and he clamped his jaw shut.

‘He was there as an observer as quid pro quo for the intel.’

‘I’m stunned,’ said Yokely. ‘It’s not often I’m lost for words.’

‘Very few people know,’ said Button.

‘Well, let’s hope his captors don’t find out,’ said Yokely.

‘I don’t think things can get much worse, can they?’ asked Button.

‘If they find out he was involved in the assassination of the Sheikh, God only knows what they’ll do to him,’ said Yokely. ‘There are worse ways to die than beheading, Charlotte. Much worse.’ He shuddered and started walking again. ‘So how do we handle this?’ he asked.

‘You want Akram Al-Farouq. And this is a way of getting him alive. If I can find out where they are, you can send in a SEAL team or Delta Force or whoever, grab Akram Al-Farouq and rescue Spider and Raj.’

‘You make it sound so simple, Charlotte. If it’s that easy, why not send in the SAS?’

‘Because we’d have to tell the Pakistanis. You have a track record of keeping them out of the loop.’

Yokely rubbed his chin. ‘Where was this attack, exactly?’

‘Waziristan. A place called Parachinar. Just over the border with Afghanistan. We’re thinking that they won’t have moved them too far, they’ll still be somewhere in that area.’

‘Rough terrain,’ said Yokely.

‘Perfect for special forces.’

‘And jihadists.’

‘The advantage is that it’s far from prying eyes. Nowhere near as populated as Abbottabad and virtually no Pakistani military presence. It’s the badlands.’

‘I know it well,’ said Yokely. He nodded. ‘OK, it’s close enough to the border for a team to get in and out without setting alarm bells ringing. And that whole region is a grey area as to who exactly controls it. Pakistan has claimed it since 1947 but it could just as easily be claimed to be Afghan territory. And Akram Al-Farouq is a high-value target. You get me a location and we’ll see what we can do.’

‘Can you be ready to go at short notice?’

‘I’ll get the wheels in motion. But tell me, Charlotte, how on earth do you expect to find them? It took us years to locate Bin Laden.’

Button smiled. ‘I have a plan,’ she said.

Yokely grinned. ‘Off the books?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ she said.

Shepherd heard footsteps outside his door and then the sound of two bolts being drawn back. He was sitting with his back to the wall and he put up his hands to shield himself against the light. It was an electric light, he realised, a soft yellowish glow. There was a figure standing in the doorway, tall and wide shouldered wearing a floor-length dishdasha and a keffiyeh around his head. Shepherd braced himself for a dousing but this time there was no water. The man said something and then stepped to the side. Two men rushed into the cell. They were shorter than the man in the dishdasha and were wearing grey shalwar kameez. They were holding canes and began to scream at Shepherd. He got to his feet but he had been sitting for so long that his legs had gone numb and he stumbled backwards against the far wall of the cell.

The man nearest Shepherd lashed out with the cane and caught him on the upper thigh. Shepherd stepped forward, punched the man in the throat and felt the cartilage splinter and break. The second man raised his cane and took a step towards Shepherd but Shepherd was too quick for him, stepping to the side, grabbing the man’s wrist with his left hand, moving in close and driving his elbow into the man’s chin, knocking him out cold. Shepherd moved back as the man slumped to the ground, then he stepped over him and out into the corridor.

The man in the dishdasha was backing away, his hands fluttering in front of him. The corridor behind him seemed to be a dead end. Shepherd turned his back on him and moved in the other direction. There was a wooden door to his left, and another to his right, both with large bolts top and bottom.

‘Rafiq?’ shouted Shepherd at the top of his voice. ‘Rafiq? Are you here?’ He wasn’t sure how Raj would react to the sound of his cover name being shouted, he just hoped that he would recognise Shepherd’s voice.

He took a couple of steps. Ahead of him the corridor branched left and right. There were no windows, the only light came from bare bulbs hanging from the concrete ceiling.

‘Rafiq!’ he shouted.

There was the sound of footsteps and three big men in dishdashas came around the corner, holding AK-47s. The corridor was narrow so they had to stay in single file, not that numbers mattered. He was unarmed and naked and while his unarmed combat skills were second to none, there wasn’t much he could do against an AK-47.

Shepherd raised his hands. ‘Rafiq!’ he yelled again.

‘Yes! I’m here!’ The voice was muffled and some distance away but Shepherd recognised it.

He took a step back, his hands still in the air. The men waved their AK-47s menacingly. Their fingers were inside the trigger guards but Shepherd knew they wouldn’t shoot him, not deliberately anyway. ‘Easy, boys,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to my kennel like a good dog.’

He kept his hands high as he walked backwards until he reached the door of his cell. The man in the dishdasha had gone inside to check on his injured colleagues. He was kneeling by the side of the man that Shepherd had hit in the throat. He wasn’t dead but he would have trouble eating and breathing for a few days. The man in the dishdasha stood up, glaring at Shepherd with undisguised hatred. ‘I’ve been a naughty, naughty boy,’ said Shepherd.