Payback (13 page)

Hutchings opened his mouth to speak, but Westwood beat him to it.

‘Why the hell would some American be filming the last words of a Syrian suicide bomber who’s just about to kill himself in support of a political group that’s been effectively
non-existent for a quarter of a century?’

‘Sir, I have not the slightest idea, and neither has anyone else. That’s one reason for organizing this operation. The second noteworthy thing about this attack,’ he went on,
‘is that just a week before, a middle-aged Englishman named James Holden walked into the British Embassy in Dubai and described it in considerable detail.

‘He painted a fairly accurate word-picture of Saadallah Assad, and even got his name pretty much right. The only thing he didn’t know was exactly where and when the attack was going
to take place. And he said that the reason he didn’t know these two crucial pieces of information was that he had actually dreamt the whole thing.’

British Embassy, Government Avenue, Manama, Bahrain

‘Bill,’ said Caxton as he strode into Evans’s office, ‘I’ve just heard from Vauxhall Cross. They’re convinced this is a case of
mistaken identity, no matter what Mazen’s source claims. The latest intelligence suggests that bin Laden is still holed up somewhere in northern Pakistan, and London simply doesn’t
believe he could have got all the way to Bahrain without somebody seeing or hearing something.’

‘So what do they want us to do now? Sit on our arses and pretend that nobody saw anything? We can’t just ignore a report like this, no matter what some geek analyst sitting thousands
of miles away at a workstation in London might think.’

‘If you’d just let me finish, Bill,’ Caxton said mildly. ‘Vauxhall Cross don’t want
us
to investigate – their view is that nobody from this embassy
should get involved overtly – but they do want the report followed up.’

‘So how—’

‘Bill, just be quiet and listen. There’s somebody on his way out to Dubai right now, to investigate some other unrelated matter. He’s going to be retasked to come to Bahrain
instead, and should be arriving here sometime tomorrow morning. I’d like you to act as his liaison officer, so go and meet him at the airport. Give him a full briefing and any help he needs,
and with luck we should be able to finish this thing no later than Thursday.’

‘That’s more like it. What’s his name, this SIS man?’

Caxton glanced down at the sheet of paper he was holding. ‘He’s called Richter,’ he said. ‘Paul Richter. Do you know him?’

Evans shook his head. ‘Nope, never heard of him.’

Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

‘Sounds like bullshit to me,’ Grant Hutchings muttered, and John Baxter’s nod suggested that he wasn’t alone in this view.

To his surprise, Stevenson nodded as well. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘It does sound like bullshit. Every time anything like this happens, a bunch of crazies crawl out from under
their stones, and almost always they’re just that – crazies. But everything we have on file about Holden suggests he’s a normal, regular guy. According to the Brits in Dubai, he
seemed really disturbed by his premonition. Initially they assumed he was just some crackpot and tried to get rid of him, but he wouldn’t leave until they agreed to write down everything he
could recall. He insisted the attack would occur within a short time, probably inside a month. The embassy staff said he seemed so upset they suggested he go see a shrink.’

Stevenson checked his notes again. ‘What Holden claimed was
really
accurate, far too exact to be dismissed as mere guesswork. He said the bomber would be a Syrian national, aged
under twenty, first name beginning with the letter “S” – he thought it might be “Sayeed” – and his last name was “Abbas” or “Assad”. He
gave a physical description that wasn’t quite detailed enough for you to pick him out of a line-up, but was real close all the same.

‘When he claimed the attack would be carried out on behalf of “the brothers”, everyone assumed this referred to his fellow Muslims. Nobody at that stage made the connection
with the
Jamiat
, of course, but even if they had, it probably wouldn’t have helped. But it does show how accurate Holden’s premonition was.’

‘So what exactly did the British Embassy do about this report from their eyewitness-in-advance?’ Hutchings demanded, in a tone edged with sarcasm.

‘They filed it,’ Stevenson said. ‘What else could they do? All they had was a physical description, and the possible name, of a possible suicide bomber, who might be intending
to carry out an attack at an unspecified location, in an unknown country, within an indeterminate period of time. They ran a basic “anything known” check on Holden, which came back
negative, so they just filed the report.’

‘What about the location?’ Westwood asked. ‘Did Holden’s dream give any hints?’

‘With hindsight, sir, that was accurate too. He said the bombing would take place in a dark passage, with lots of people walking about. Not a bad description of a typical Arab
souk
.’

‘Or an underpass or a railroad station or a bus terminus or pretty much anywhere else,’ Hutchings added dismissively.

‘Agreed, but he also described the roof as metallic and curved with lots of small holes in it. That didn’t mean anything to anyone at the time, but one of the distinctive features of
the Al-Hamidieh
souk
is its roof. It’s metallic, semi-circular in cross-section, and the metal is pierced by thousands of small holes. And that is almost a word-for-word match with
what Holden described.’

There was a short silence, before Hutchings spoke again. ‘OK, maybe it’s not pure eighteen-carat bullshit, but it sure sounds to me like we’re getting into
X-Files
territory here. You briefed Mulder and Scully yet?’

Westwood chuckled and the other agents smiled. Stevenson shook his head. ‘No, but the Fibbies are taking a keen interest in all this.’

‘And what exactly is the Company planning on doing now?’ Hutchings asked.

‘We’ve been in discussion with the authorities in the UAE and the other Gulf States. You have to bear in mind that Dubai, in particular, is a very sensitive area. There’s been
a huge level of investment in the Emirates over the last few years. The rulers know the oil revenues are finite, and they’ve been spending enormous sums in diversification, building up Dubai
as a financial capital, a real estate investor’s paradise and a holiday destination. Even the slightest possibility that the city could be hit by a terrorist bomb frankly terrifies them. The
four of you are going out there for two reasons. The first is obvious: we want you to talk to this James Holden and find out whatever you can about him.’

‘Bit of a stable-door reaction, isn’t it?’

‘Not really,’ Stevenson said. ‘The Damascus bombing is history as far as we’re concerned, and how Holden managed to predict it isn’t what’s important. What
we’re really interested in is what happens next, and that’s the second reason for this mission. The Dubai authorities want our assistance because they’ve so little experience of
suicide bombers and terrorist activity. You’ve been chosen to go precisely because you
do
have the relevant expertise. They want you to work closely with the Dubai police, to make
absolutely certain that the city hasn’t been targeted—’

Westwood interrupted. ‘David, you still haven’t explained why they’re suddenly so worried. I’m not aware of any credible threat.’

‘A lot depends on how you define the word “credible”, sir. What’s concerning them is that Holden has been back to the British Embassy again to tell them about another
dream he’s had. This time he says he can see a major hotel in one of the northern Gulf States getting hit by a biggie, maybe even a tactical nuke. That really
does
interest us, and
it’s already scared the shit out of the people in Dubai.’

Wednesday
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dubai

The Speedbird had landed at Dubai at ten-fifteen local time the previous evening, but as far as Richter was concerned it was only quarter past six, so he knew he was going to
have a bad night. He had never been very good at long-haul flying, in either direction. He sometimes said, half-joking, that the only time he hadn’t got jetlag on reaching America was when he
travelled there by ship.

The International Airport is close to the city centre, and it was only a short ride in the beige Dubai Transport taxi to the hotel. Along Shaikh Zayed Road, Richter experienced a brief feeling
of déjà vu: the area is considered the commercial centre of Dubai, and the road is lined with modern skyscrapers, very reminiscent of parts of New York. Then the taxi had pulled up
outside the Crowne Plaza.

The hotel was a surprise. Simpson didn’t normally approve costly accommodation for his operatives and Richter had been expecting a budget or at best a middle-range hotel, but the Crowne
Plaza was neither. Unfortunately, the air-conditioned room and comfortable bed hadn’t helped. He turned off his mobile and slid between the sheets at twelve-thirty local, eight-thirty UK
time, and lay there, eyes closed but with his brain still enthusiastically keeping him wide awake for over two hours. Then he’d finally dropped off, to be awoken what seemed like fifteen
minutes later – but eight-thirty local time according to his alarm clock.

He’d just found himself a seat in Cappuccino’s coffee shop, on the second floor, when one of the girls from the reception desk appeared beside his table. On showing her his passport,
he received a white A4-size envelope in exchange. It was marked ‘URGENT. Strictly Private and Confidential’. He didn’t think was a good sign at all, so he waited until he’d
finished his coffee before opening it.

The envelope contained a single sheet of paper with a brief message printed on one side only. Like all communications that might be intercepted or read by third parties, the text was innocuous
and capable of more than one interpretation.

It was the kind of communication that any ordinary businessman might receive, but for Richter the hidden meaning was perfectly clear. ‘Parent company’ meant SIS, and
‘Evans’ was the name of the officer who would contact him when he reached Bahrain. The rest of the message was essentially padding, but by implication the local Six office had
discovered something they needed help to resolve. Or, even more likely, there was some kind of a dirty job that needed doing, and Richter had been volunteered by Vauxhall Cross, via Hammersmith, to
do it.

‘Bugger,’ he muttered. His investigation of James Holden would just have to wait.

Al-Ramool district, Dubai

As Richter was heading for his room in the Crowne Plaza, James Holden walked into the tiny space he called his study – actually the third bedroom – sat down at
the desk and turned on his computer. Until his wife left him a couple of weeks earlier, he’d invariably locked the door before switching on the power. Now there was no point in turning the
key because there was nobody else in their small apartment to see what he was doing.

Holden was a long-time resident of the Middle East, and for most of his career he’d been employed as an accountant in the oil industry, but that job had ended abruptly five years earlier.
He’d been reduced to working part-time as a waiter – the only job he’d been able to find. He hadn’t been entitled to a pension due to the circumstances of his dismissal from
the oil company – in fact, he’d been lucky to escape prosecution when details of his attempted theft of almost half a million dollars had been revealed.

So when he’d been approached just over a year earlier and invited to participate in a scheme likely to make him a great deal of money, he’d jumped at it.

Holden first opened Outlook Express and checked his inbox. He’d been expecting at least one email, and he grunted in satisfaction when he recognized the sender’s name. He read
through the short text, then copied the message itself and the three jpeg files attached to it into a hidden directory on his hard drive, before he looked at the pictures.

The quality wasn’t as good as he’d been hoping, but they were clear enough. Holden studied each picture for a couple of minutes, then he closed the directory, deleted the original
message from his inbox, and purged the ‘deleted items’ folder as well.

Once he’d shut down the computer, Holden sat in thought for a few minutes, then took a pen and a slightly crumpled sheet of paper and began scribbling notes, just single words and
disjointed phrases, scrawled apparently at random across the page. Then he reread what he’d written, folded the paper and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

Ten minutes later he walked away from the apartment building. He hadn’t arranged an appointment, but he was sure his new friends at Al-Seef Road would be pleased enough to see him, bearing
in mind what he’d told them before.

Kamyshin, Russia

Vaslav Litvinoff stood on the quayside and watched the scene unfolding in front of him. The motorized barge was almost alongside, its crew out on deck ready to throw
mooring lines to the waiting stevedores. Some twenty police and FSB officers were standing in position around the berth, their Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifles trained on the approaching vessel.
Beyond the barge, and in a low hover over the dark waters of the Volga, was the reason the barge’s captain had been persuaded to deviate from his planned itinerary.

When Litvinoff had deduced that the stolen nuclear weapon was probably stowed in the cargo hold of the barge, he’d contacted the closest military base – Volgograd – and
requested an armed helicopter. He’d explained to the base commander that he believed the barge was carrying stolen weapons – he’d not mentioned the nuclear bomb – and
emphasized the vital importance of stopping it.

The officer had believed him, and had dispatched what amounted to a one-aircraft army, and every tank commander’s worst nightmare; a Ka-50 Black Shark or Werewolf. The helicopter
wasn’t normally based at Volgograd, which is primarily a MiG-29 repair facility, and was simply passing through, but it was undeniably the ideal tool for the job.