The Excalibur Codex (5 page)

‘And the results of all this activity are?’ the Home Secretary demanded.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ The word emerged almost as a groan.

‘All indications are that there was no apparent abnormal behaviour from any of our known or suspected threats. To all intents and purposes, the people who carried out this attack are ghosts.’

‘Don’t be melodramatic,’ the minister snapped.

The DG frowned. ‘Could they have been brought in for a one-off job?’

‘It’s possible,’ Nick acknowledged carefully, knowing his boss was as aware of the answer as he was. ‘But it would be risky to bring the personnel
and
the weaponry through customs. We have a good record of hampering or stopping the movement of terrorist suspects, whether by air or by sea. They’d have to be very good, but then I suppose they’ve proved they are.’

The Home Secretary drew in a long breath through her nose and Nick was reminded of a bull about to charge. ‘So what
do
we have?’

The MI5 man snapped open a green folder on the desk in front of him. ‘From forensic analysis of the ammunition fired during the attack we know that the weapons they used were Heckler and Koch 416C assault rifles, a very effective automatic weapon popular with special forces troops both here and in the United States. Further analysis and liaison with our friends in the CIA have confirmed that these particular guns came from a batch that went missing en route from the States to Afghanistan, while they were going through a supply
depot in Peshawar, Pakistan. The word on the ground at the time was that they’d probably bring someone a nice profit in the weapons bazaars up north. It turns out the word was wrong. The terrorists also had the use of Soviet-era RPG-7 missiles of unknown origin, and at least one Stinger missile, ditto.’ His voice turned apologetic at the disturbing list of intelligence failures, but this wasn’t his first high-level meeting and his eyes met the minister’s accusing gaze without flinching. ‘As you’ll know, Stingers are not commonly available on the arms market, and that may give us our best route into the terrorist supply chain. From the surveillance film recovered from the downed helicopter we know that there were twelve attackers, physically fit, weapons trained, with faces masked to conceal their identity, as you would expect. The ammunition was generally delivered in clinical three-round bursts, which is very professional and, in its own way, quite surprising. Our Islamic brethren have a tendency to get excited and blow the hell out of everything in sight.’ He saw his boss’s icy glance at this detour into subjectivity and returned swiftly to his brief. ‘The perpetrators escaped on twelve off-road trail bikes and we can track their movement across the fields, but once they reached the road they appear to have split up and rendezvoused with other getaway vehicles – again, type and origin unknown, but they must have been large enough to accommodate bikes and riders.’ He paused and took a sip from the bone-china cup in front of him, his face wrinkling with
distaste when he realized the tea was stone cold. ‘We believe we have discovered the remains of five of the bikes at sites across the Midlands and southern England, all burned out and with any serial numbers filed or etched off with acid. It’s possible we can restore the numbers, but the likelihood is that the bikes were stolen to order. Still, if we can track down the previous owners it might provide us with a concrete avenue of inquiry. Finally, we come to the lorry that caused the traffic jam. It was definitely stolen, two weeks prior to the attack, from an overnight truck stop outside Leicester. The owner/driver was sleeping in the motel and didn’t know anything about the theft until he woke in the morning. By the time it was driven on the day of the attack, the number plates had been changed and it had been given an expert paint job. That means it must have been kept in a garage or a warehouse for up to fourteen days. The police have several teams across the Midlands and the south attempting to locate that warehouse, but I’m sure you can imagine the scale of the task. We’re also pretty certain the terrorists must have made at least one dry run, so we’re studying film from traffic cameras along the route. Again, that will take time. More than a million people use the M25 every day, so it’s like looking for a needle in a field of haystacks.’

‘Gerald.’ The Director General nodded to a second aide. ‘You’re our special ops expert.’

‘My instinct is that these people are home grown.’ Gerald’s pale eyes roamed the table, daring anyone to
challenge his opinion. His long fingers worked at a pencil with an intensity that made his junior colleague wonder that it didn’t break. Nick had joined Five straight from university and, if he was being honest, the former SAS officer sometimes intimidated him. ‘An operation of this complexity and scale and carried out with such precision would require months of preparation and training. They knew the terrain, how the traffic would be affected by an accident of a certain type, and the reaction time to the second of the police helicopter. They would have reconnoitred the target and the escape routes in minute detail. Their leader would have run them through the mission a hundred times, practising for every eventuality, timing their getaway and familiarizing them with their weapons.’ He rapped the table top with the pencil. ‘That means somewhere remote and outdoors. I have our people checking every out-of-bounds school, adventure-training facility and large-scale paintball course in the country. Their choice of weaponry was designed to fit the scenario exactly as it happened. It would have been simple enough to smuggle in the assault weapons, grenades and RPGs in a batch of engineering equipment – we know they have the covert backing of some very powerful business people.’ He shrugged. ‘The Stinger would have taken a little more doing, but these people are professionals. Personally, I have my doubts whether the supply chain will give us anything.’

‘You’re telling me we have got precisely nowhere.’ The minister had her head in her hands.

Gerald and his chief exchanged glances, while Nick studied his notes before answering.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, ma’am. There are several avenues of inquiry open to us, and we’re still hoping to get a lead from GCHQ about the type and method of communications they used. The NSA is helping with that. There’s also satellite surveillance. The Americans say their birds don’t cover the United Kingdom, but we know that to be a little white lie and we’re pushing for a look at anything they’ve got. And we have identified the driver of the lorry.’

The blond head rose and the minister fixed him with a predator’s eyes.

‘His name is – rather, was – Rasul Mohammed. British-born of Pakistani origin. Age thirty-four. He was a karting champion – that would be racing go-karts, ma’am – at age fourteen, wanted to get into Formula One, but his career stalled in one of the lower Formulas. He looked for other ways to carve out a career as a driver, and stumbled on truck racing, where the big money is in America. By all accounts he made a decent living and was known for the tricks he could do with a forty-tonner. That led him to part-time work as a stunt driver for film companies.’

‘Al-Qaida?’

‘No radical links, as far as we can tell, at least not until recently. A month ago his bank account received a major payment well above anything he’d ever been given for appearing on a film set. The payment has
been traced back to a dormant account in the Cayman Islands, known to have been used by Al-Qaida in the past.’

‘So Al-Qaida.’ The Home Secretary’s voice took on a note of command. ‘We bring in his wife, his family and his friends and we squeeze them until the pips squeak.’

The chief of SIS ran a lazy eye over his political master. ‘If he was mainstream Al-Qaida, Minister, I suspect he would be out there with them and not left dangling like a bullet-riddled piece of bait to tempt us in the opposite direction from that which we—’

‘I’m perfectly aware of that,’ the Home Secretary huffed.

‘The reason he was killed is precisely because he was not Al-Qaida and therefore could not be trusted to keep his mouth shut,’ the Director General continued remorselessly. ‘He was probably paid half in advance with half due on completion. Instead, his accomplices delivered the second part of the payment at a muzzle speed of about four thousand feet per second which, I presume, was much less welcome.’

‘So what do we do? I must have something to take back to the Prime Minister.’

‘Do? We follow the leads we have, which are mainly connected with the transport. Twelve men on motorcycles transferring to some other form of vehicle. Someone must have seen something. We have the cooperation of many in the Islamic community. These men all have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and lovers.
All it takes is one whisper and we’ll have them all. Oh, and we pray.’

‘Pray?’

It was Gerald who answered. ‘Yes, Minister. We pray that they’ve gone into deep cover and they’re not already planning their next spectacular.’

The images flickered across the screen of the television in the sparsely furnished room at the secure compound in the far north of Pakistan. The watcher frowned, taking in for the fourth time the smoke billowing from the burning petrol tanker and the lines of trapped cars filled with the dead and the dying. He signalled to the young man standing politely by the doorway to approach.

‘We must discover who is spilling the blood of the infidels in my name.’

‘Of course, al-Amir,’ the younger man agreed.

He studied the screen again, this time the picture was a close-up of the wreckage of a downed helicopter. The scale of the atrocity was impressive. Much more impressive than the organization’s Jihadis had achieved in their attack on the London transport system in July 2005. It spoke of excellent planning and coordination and was a great blow against the hated British, yet it perplexed him. ‘He who rides the tiger must always be in control of it, lest it devour him.’

‘Our friend in Washington has sent word that some of the equipment used in the attack has been traced back to one of our cells.’

The watcher nodded. The friend in Washington had made himself useful – keeping him one step ahead of the unmanned drones that had proved so deadly against his less well-informed rivals. Of course, he was much more secure now; as secure as any man who lived his lifestyle could be. He no longer used the satellite phones that the CIA had somehow used to track him in the past, and hard experience and heavy losses had taught him the folly of passing information on the Internet. No matter how sophisticated the technology, the Americans were always one step ahead, as the shameful execution of The Leader had proved. The infidel Americans and British believed the death of The Leader was the end. He intended to prove to them that it was only the beginning, may God strike them down.

Now he maintained contact with his organization through a single courier, a man who had been with himself and The Leader in the caves in Tora Bora and had served him well ever since. If the watcher trusted anyone, it was Jamal al Hamza. From this remote compound he controlled the mainstream Al-Qaida network through that single strand, and by proxy spread his will across a web of fellow travellers throughout the world. It was sometimes a frustratingly slow method of communication, as now, when he would have liked to unleash his wolves against the imitators who shamed him by acting without his consent. But his safety and security were paramount, and it must suffice. Still, he would do what he could.

‘Activate the security team.’

The young man, who was his son, and would be his successor, bowed and went to encode the message the courier would carry to Islamabad, where it would find its way to England.

Abu Ayoub al-Iraqi returned to his task of planning his great coup against the enemy. He dreamed of a dark mushroom cloud against a clear blue sky and a white house in ruins.

Jamie would have been quicker taking the Tube, but on some mornings he woke with a distinct aversion to train travel, brought on by an unfortunate experience when he’d made a closer acquaintance with the underside of the 12.20 to Euston than was good for a man. So today he boarded the No. 10 bus from Kensington High Street to Hyde Park Corner. From there it was just a short walk to the Mayfair mansion off Berkeley Square that Adam Steele laughingly called ‘the flat’. The elderly man in the next seat disembarked at the Albert Hall and Jamie absently picked up the newspaper he’d left behind. The date on it surprised him. He didn’t really do dates any more. His calendar was the number of days since Abbie’s death and today was number thirty-five.

For many, the initial anger and grief that had followed the M25 massacre had condensed into a bitter, festering hatred. The main picture on the front page
was of a burning mosque with masked white youths dancing in front of it. There’d been another running battle between whites and Asians, in East Ham. It was the same in Manchester, where BNP supporters had stormed through a Pakistani market, beating up customers and overturning stalls. Labour MPs in the House of Commons were demanding to know what progress had been made in finding the attackers and what guarantees the Government could give that there wouldn’t be another. The Prime Minister was even under attack from his own backbenchers. The headline across two pages read: ‘An act of extreme violence demands extreme measures’ and the accompanying news story had right-wingers calling for the mass round-up and detention without trial of anyone considered a threat to the nation’s security. Jamie struggled to rationalize his feelings as he read the paper. Six months or a year ago he would have said he’d never had a racist thought or knowingly uttered a racist word. He had black friends. His lawyer was an Asian. Once or twice he’d had to defend Abbie against bigots from both sides of the divide: young British men for whom all people of colour didn’t belong and young black men who despised her for being with a white man. Now he looked at the pictures and couldn’t find any sympathy for the dark-eyed, bearded men and veiled women looking so despondent outside their looted shops. Logic said
they
had nothing to do with Abbie’s murder. But logic couldn’t compete with the anger burning inside him, and that anger declared
them
at least partly responsible for what had happened. It was
their
community who harboured the men who had pulled the trigger. How could
they
have let that happen if they professed to be part of the same society he did? Yet even as the thoughts formed he could hear Abbie shouting at him to be the man she knew he was. This was not her way. Hatred and blame were not part of her world.