The Afghan (22 page)

Two minutes later Marek Gumienny took a call in bed in Old Alexandria. He woke up, listened, smiled, murmured ‘way to go’ and went back to sleep. The Afghan was still on course.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

With a good wind from the south, the
Rasha
hoisted sail, closed down her engine and the rumbling below was replaced by the calm sounds of the sea: the lapping of the water under the bow, the sigh of the wind in the sail, the creak of block and tackle.

The dhow, shadowed by the invisible Predator four miles above her, crept along the coast of southern Iran and into the Gulf of Oman. Here she bore away to starboard, reset her sail as the wind took her full astern and headed for the narrow gap between Iran and Arabia called the Strait of Hormuz.

Through this narrow gap, where the tip of Oman’s Musandam Peninsula is only eight miles from the Persian shore, a constant stream of mighty tankers went past; some low in the water, full of crude oil for the energy-hungry West, others riding high, going up-Gulf to fill with Saudi or Kuwaiti crude.

The smaller boats like the dhow stayed closer to the shore to allow the leviathans the freedom of the deep channel. Supertankers, if there is something in their way, simply cannot stop.

The
Rasha
, being in no hurry, spent one night hove-to amid the islands east of the Omani naval base at Kumzar. Sitting on the raised poop deck in the balmy night, still clearly visible on a plasma screen in a Scottish air base, Martin caught sight of two ‘cigarette boats’ by the light of the moon and heard the roar of their huge outboards as they sped out of Omani waters to make the crossing to south Iran.

These were the smugglers he had heard about; owing allegiance to no country, their operators ran the smuggling trade. On some empty Iranian or Baluchi beach they would make rendezvous at dawn with the receivers, offload their cargo of cheap cigarettes and take on board, surprisingly, angora goats so valued in Oman.

On a flat sea their pencil-slim aluminium boats, with the cargo lashed midships and the crew clinging on for dear life, would be powered by two immense 250-hp outboards to over fifty knots. They are virtually uncatchable, know every creek and inlet, and are accustomed to driving without lights and in complete darkness right across the paths of the tankers to the shelter of the other side.

Faisal bin Selim smiled tolerantly. He too was a smuggler, but rather more dignified than these vagabonds of the Gulf whom he could hear in the distance.

‘And when I have brought you to Arabia, my friend, what will you do?’ he asked quietly. The Omani deck hand was at the bow, handline over the side, trying for a fine fish for breakfast. He had joined the other two for evening prayers. Now was the hour of pleasant conversation.

‘I do not know,’ admitted the Afghan. ‘I know only that I am a dead man in my own country; Pakistan is closed to me for they are running-dogs of the Yankees. I hope to find other True Believers and ask to fight with them.’

‘Fight? But there is no fighting in the United Arab Emirates. They too are wholly allied to the West. The interior is Saudi Arabia, where you will be found immediately and sent back. So . . .’

The Afghan shrugged.

‘I ask only to serve Allah. I have lived my life. I will leave my fate in His care.’

‘And you say you are prepared to die for Him,’ said the courtly Qatari.

Mike Martin thought back to his boyhood and his prep school in Baghdad. Most of the pupils were Iraqi boys but they were the sons of the cream of society and their fathers were keen that they would speak perfect English and rise to rule great corporations dealing with London and New York. The curriculum was in English, and that included the learning of traditional English poetry.

Martin had always had one favourite: the story of how Horatius of Rome defended the last bridge before the invading army of the House of Tarquin as the Romans hacked down the bridge behind him. There was a verse the boys used to chant together:

‘If I can die
shahid
, in the service of His jihad, of course,’ he replied.

The dhow master considered for a while and changed the subject.

‘You are wearing the clothes of Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘You will be spotted in minutes. Wait.’

He went below and came back with a freshly laundered dishdash, the white cotton robe that falls from shoulders to ankles in unbroken line.

‘Change,’ he ordered. ‘Drop the shalwar kameez and the Talib turban over the side.’

When Martin was changed Bin Selim handed him a new headdress, the red-flecked keffiyeh of a Gulf Arab and the black cord circlet to hold it in place.

‘Better,’ said the old man when his guest had completed the transformation. ‘You will pass for a Gulf Arab, save when you speak. But there is a colony of Afghans in the area of Jeddah. They have been in Saudi Arabia for generations, but they speak like you. Say that is where you come from, and strangers will believe you. Now let us sleep. We rise at dawn for the last day of cruising.’

The Predator saw them weigh anchor and leave the islands, sailing gently round the rocky tip of Al-Ghanam and turning south-west down the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

There are seven in the UAE but only the names of the biggest and richest – Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah – spring to mind. The other four are much smaller, much poorer and almost anonymous. Two of these, Ajman and Umm-al-Qaiwain, are cheek by jowl alongside Dubai, whose oil riches have made it the most developed of the seven. Fujairah alone lies on the other side of the peninsula, facing east on to the Gulf of Oman. The seventh is Ras-al-Khaimah.

Ras-al-Khaimah lies on the same coast as Dubai but far up along the shore towards the Strait of Hormuz. It is dirt poor and ultra-traditional. For that reason it has eagerly accepted the gifts of Saudi Arabia, including heavily financed mosques and schools – but all teaching Wahhabism. Ras-al-K, as westerners know it, is the local home of fundamentalism and sympathy for Al-Qaeda and jihad. On the port side of the slowly cruising dhow, it would be the first to be reached. This occurred at sundown.

‘You have no papers,’ said the captain to his guest, ‘and I cannot provide them. No matter, they have always been a western impertinence. More important is money. Take these.’

He thrust a wad of UAE dirhams into Martin’s hand. They were cruising in the fading light past the town, a mile away on the shore. The first lights began to flicker among the buildings.

‘I will put you ashore further down the coast,’ said Bin Selim. ‘You will find the coast road and walk back. I know a small guest house in the Old Town. It is cheap, clean and discreet. Take lodgings there. Do not go out. You will be safe and,
inshallah
, I may have friends who can help you.’

It was fully dark when Martin saw the lights of the hotel and the
Rasha
slipped towards the shore. Bin Selim knew it well: the converted Hamra Fort, which had a beach club for its foreign guests, and the club had a jetty. After dark it would be abandoned.

‘He’s leaving the dhow,’ said a voice in the ops room at Edzell air base. Despite the darkness, the thermal imager of the Predator at twenty thousand feet saw the agile figure leap from the dhow to the jetty, and the trader reverse her engine and pull back to the deeper water and the sea.

‘Never mind the boat, stay with the moving figure,’ said Gordon Phillips, leaning over the console operator’s shoulder. The instructions went to Thumrait and the Predator was instructed to follow the thermal image of a man walking along the coast road back towards Ras-al-K.

It was a five-mile hike but Martin reached the Old Town section around midnight. He asked twice and was directed to the address of the guest house. It was five hundred yards from the family home of the Al-Shehhi, whence had come Marwan al-Shehhi who flew the airliner into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. He was still a local hero.

The proprietor was surly and suspicious until Martin mentioned Faisal bin Selim. That and the sight of a wad of dirhams cleared the air. He was bidden to enter and shown to a simple room. There were seemingly just two other paying guests and they had retired.

Unbending his attitude the room-keeper invited Martin to join him for a cup of tea before turning in. Over tea Martin had to explain that he was from Jeddah, but of Pashtun extraction.

With his dark looks, full black beard and the repeated references to Allah of the truly devout, Martin convinced his host that he also was a True Believer. They parted with mutual wishes for a good night’s sleep.

The dhow master sailed on through the night. His destination was on the harbour known as the Creek in the heart of Dubai. Once simply that, a muddy creek smelling of dead fish, in which men mended their nets in the heat of the day, it has become the last ‘picturesque’ sight in the bustling capital, opposite the gold soukh, beneath the windows of the towering western hotels. Here the trading dhows are berthed side by side and the tourists come to stare at the last portion of ‘old Arabia’.

Bin Selim hailed a taxi and instructed it to take him three miles up the coast to the Sultanate of Ajman, smallest and second-poorest of the seven. There he dismissed the taxi, ducked into a covered soukh of twisting alleys and clamouring stalls and lost himself to any following ‘tail’ – should there have been one.

There was not. The Predator was concentrating on a guest house in the heart of Ras-al-Khaimah. The dhow master slipped from the soukh into a small mosque and made a request of the imam. A boy was sent scurrying through the town and came back with a young man who genuinely was a student in the local technical college. He was also a graduate of the Darunta training camp owned and run by Al-Qaeda outside Jalalabad until 2001.

The old man whispered in the ear of the younger, who nodded and thanked him. Then the dhow captain went back through the covered market, emerged, hailed a taxi and returned to his freighter in the Creek. He had done all he could. It was up to the younger men now.
Inshallah
.

That same morning, but later due to the time difference, the
Countess of Richmond
eased out of the estuary of the Mersey and into the Irish Sea. Captain McKendrick had the conn and took his freighter south. In time she would, keeping Wales to her port side, clear the Irish Sea and Land,s End to meet the Channel and the eastern Atlantic. Then her course lay south past Portugal, through the Mediterranean to the Suez Canal and thence to the Indian Ocean.

Below his decks, as the cold March seas flew up over the bow of the
Countess
, was a cargo of carefully protected and crated Jaguar saloons, destined for the showrooms of Singapore.

Four days passed before the Afghan sheltering in Ras-al-Khaimah received his visitors. Following his instructions he had not gone out, or at least not as far as the street. But he had taken the air in the closed courtyard at the rear of the house, screened from the streets by double gates eight feet high. Here various delivery vans came and went.

While in the courtyard he was seen by the Predator and his controllers in Scotland noted his change of dress.

His visitors, when they came, did not arrive to deliver food, drink or laundry, but to make a collection. They backed the van close to the rear door of the building. The driver stayed at the wheel; the other three entered the house.

The lodgers were both away at work, the room-keeper by agreement out at the shops. The team of three had their directions. They went swiftly to the appropriate door and entered without knocking. The seated figure, reading his Koran, rose to find himself facing a handgun in the grip of a man trained in Afghanistan. All three were hooded.

They were quiet and efficient. Martin knew enough of fighting men to recognize his visitors knew their business. The hood went over his head and fell to his shoulders. His hands came behind his back and the plastic cuffs went on. Then he was marching, or being marched, out of his door, down the tiled corridor and into the back of a van. He lay on his side, heard the door slam, felt the van lurch out of the gate and into the street.

The Predator saw it, but the controllers thought it was another laundry delivery. In minutes the van was out of sight. There are many miracles that modern spy technology can accomplish, but controllers and machines can still be fooled. The snatch squad had no idea there was a Predator above them but shrewdly choosing mid-morning for the snatch rather than midnight fooled the watchers at Edzell.

It took three more days before they realized that their man no longer appeared daily in the courtyard to give the sign of life. In short, he had disappeared. They were watching an empty house. And they had no idea which of the several vans had taken him.

In fact the van had not gone far. The hinterland behind the port and city of Ras-al-K is wild and rocky desert rising to the mountains of Rus-al-Jibal. Nothing can live here but goats and salamanders.

Just in case the man they had snatched was under surveillance, with or without his knowledge, the kidnappers were taking no chances. There were tracks leading up into the hills and they took one. In the rear, Martin felt the vehicle leave the tarred road and start to jolt over pitted track.

Had there been a tailing vehicle, it could not have avoided detection. Even staying out of sight, its plume of rising desert dust would have given it away. A surveillance helicopter would have been even more obvious.

The van stopped five miles up the track into the hills. The leader, the one with the handgun, took powerful binoculars and surveyed the valley and the coast, right back to the Old Town whence they had come. Nothing came towards them.