Authors: James Barrington
Evans glanced at the wall clock and stood up. He walked down a short corridor, knocked on a door and opened it without waiting for a response. Inside, a pretty, dark-haired woman of about thirty
looked up from her laptop and smiled at him.
‘Carole-Anne,’ Evans began, ‘I’ve just had a call from Tariq Mazen. He wants an urgent meeting so I’ll be out for a while. Could you please record that I’m
meeting him, subject and duration unknown, and I’ll write up my work diary when I get back. But if I don’t make it here by close of business, can you stick all my stuff in the safe and
lock it?’
Carole-Anne Jackson – officially an American expatriate employed at the embassy as a typist, but in fact a CIA officer on exchange – nodded.
Evans made a drinking gesture, but she shook her head.
‘No, not tonight, Bill. Prior engagement and all that.’ Evans’s face darkened in mock anger. ‘Who with?’ he demanded.
‘You find out,’ Carole-Anne replied, her smile turning into an impish grin. ‘After all,’ she added, ‘you are
supposed
to be a spy, aren’t
you?’
Saratov, Russia
Dawson stopped the truck on the dockside just after five. The transit documents supplied by Borisov had been scrutinized at the gate, and no eyebrows had been raised. The
cargo-carrying motorized barge they’d booked space on was already waiting alongside the dock. It was scheduled to sail at six-fifteen, so their timing was just about perfect.
Wilson walked up the gangway and onto the barge, while Dawson opened the rear doors of the lorry. A waiting forklift truck lifted out the crate and deposited it next to a crane, and minutes
later it was swung into the cargo hold and the barge’s hatches then closed.
Wilson came back down the gangway, having concluded his arrangements with the barge master. The crate was an unscheduled addition to the vessel’s cargo that the Americans had booked only
two days earlier, so payment in cash had been agreed, half in advance and the rest on delivery to Volgograd. The barge master wasn’t interested in paperwork, only in the money, and the
operating company would know nothing about the unscheduled load, which suited everyone just fine.
The vessel would take about four days to cover the two hundred and fifty miles down the river. While the barge was heading south, Dawson and Wilson would ditch the truck. They’d already
located a commercial vehicle park on the outskirts of Atkarsk that would do nicely. It would be bad luck if anybody took any notice of one extra truck, but even if it did get spotted and questions
were asked, the pursuit would at least be stalled for some time in the town. From Atkarsk, the two Americans would take a train back to Saratov, and from there on to Volgograd.
‘OK,’ Wilson said, hauling himself up into the passenger seat, ‘let’s get out of here.’
Dawson fired up the diesel, engaged first gear and drove back towards the dockyard entrance. Unless they met any unforeseen problems, they calculated that they should be in Volgograd by
mid-evening.
Manama, Bahrain
Evans strode out of the embassy and paused for a moment, looking round. He spotted Mazen’s dusty Mercedes parked about seventy yards away, but gave no sign of
recognition. He turned in the opposite direction and began walking slowly along the pavement. Two minutes later Mazen pulled up beside him. Evans quickly opened the door and climbed in.
‘Tariq,’ Evans acknowledged. ‘I gather you’ve got something for me?’
Evans spoke fluent Arabic – a requirement in his posting – but he knew Mazen was proud of his linguistic abilities and preferred to conduct their meetings in English.
‘It’s just a story, Bill,’ Mazen said, accelerating gently down the road, ‘and it may all prove to be a false alarm, but I believe it’s worth looking
into.’
Forty minutes later, having discussed everything from the strength of the Bahraini dinar to the latest problems in Israel, Mazen finally broached the actual subject of their meeting with a
somewhat dramatic announcement.
‘We could, my friend,’ he said, ‘be sitting about two kilometres away from where Osama bin Laden is lying helpless in a hospital bed, plugged into a kidney-dialysis
machine.’
Stratford, East London
The sports centre lay at the end of Gibbins Road. It wasn’t an ideal location, because Tango One was a full half mile away, but it had a car park where the unmarked
white Transit vans – the ‘horses’ Jessup had referred to – and the ARVs could park without attracting undue attention.
There were also two saloon cars there, in one of which Richter had hitched a ride from New Scotland Yard, sharing the back seat with a slim young man with reddish hair and an embryo moustache
that didn’t look as if it was going anywhere. The other passenger had ignored him for the entire journey, and Richter guessed he was probably one of the ‘pimply-faced geeks’ from
the Security Service that Jessup had complained about earlier.
There are few activities more tedious than waiting for something to happen, especially when creature comforts are somewhat limited. There was nowhere to sit except inside the cars, and nowhere
to go apart from a handful of cafés in the nearby streets.
They’d already been waiting for over four hours before the first message arrived:
‘
Standby all units. Players Five and Six returning direction Tango One
.’
The mood changed now that it looked as if the endgame was near. There were few cars and fewer pedestrians around as the armed officers – which was most of them – checked their
weapons.
Richter pulled out the Glock, extracted the magazine and inspected it carefully. Then he reloaded the pistol and pulled back the slide to chamber a round.
Fifteen minutes later, GT sent a further message:
‘
Players Five and Six now inside Tango One. All units move to FUP and report readiness.
’
Immediately the car park was filled with the sound of engines starting, and within seconds all six vehicles were mobile. Minutes later, they pulled to a halt in Bridge Road, their designated
forming-up point.
Now speed was important. Vehicle doors opened and officers piled out, donning Kevlar quick-release vests and equipment belts. As they checked their weapons again, a group of teenage boys
standing on a nearby street corner stared at them wide-eyed, then retreated a cautious fifty yards, several of them pulling out mobile phones and taking pictures. Shoppers and pedestrians paused to
look at the increasingly familiar sight of armed police on the streets of London, then philosophically continued about their business.
Once all the final inspections were complete, the group leaders used their standard-issue 75 radios to check in with the baseman at GT. Then it was just a matter of waiting.
‘All units stand by Go signal. Estimate minutes zero four.’
And three minutes later they were mobile. No sirens, screeching tyres or flashing lights, just a gentle and steady drive for the two hundred yards that still separated them from their
destination.
The target flat – Tango One – was situated on the third floor. Four CO19 officers took the lift, the rest climbed the stairs. Three armed police stayed in the lobby to cover the
building’s main entrance. On the landing, one burly officer produced an enforcer – the steel battering ram that has become a trademark of CO19 operations – and waited beside the
apartment door. The rest made a final check of their weapons, because professionals check everything repeatedly, and waited.
Up to that point, they’d tried to keep as quiet as possible, but when the enforcer smashed into the apartment door, just above the lock, everything changed. The door crashed open, and
suddenly the building resounded with bellowed shouts of ‘Armed police, armed police!’ as the CO19 officers surged inside the apartment.
Richter was right behind the first group, making him the sixth man to enter. The hallway was long and narrow, three bedrooms and a bathroom opening off it, with a combined lounge and dining room
at the far end, next to a tiny kitchen.
Two men were in one of the bedrooms – they’d apparently been using a laptop computer that sat on a wooden desk against one wall – and they stared in shocked bewilderment as a
couple of officers raced into the room, weapons aimed straight at them. A third was taking a shower, the bathroom door closed but not locked, his terrified face peering at the arresting officer
from behind the shower curtain.
The other three were in the lounge, with a television set blaring. The CO19 men ran down the corridor so fast that two of them were still sitting down when the lounge door burst open.
The Glock ready in his hand, Richter ran into the lounge directly behind two of the police officers. More shouts of ‘Armed police! Don’t move,’ echoed around the apartment.
Richter had already checked the suspects in the bedroom and bathroom as he stormed down the corridor. None of those had been Salah Khatid, but as he looked across the lounge he immediately
recognized the slim dark-haired figure standing beside the window, despite not having set eyes on him for several years.
Richter stepped slightly to one side, ensuring that both the CO19 officers were clear of his line of fire, and brought his Glock up to the aim. ‘Remember Abu Sabaawi,’ he shouted
– the precise but incomprehensible message Simpson had given him.
Khatid stared across the room at him, and almost visibly flinched. Then he tried to run, but it was too late for that.
Richter aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger. His first shot missed, the sound appallingly loud in the small room, the nine-millimetre bullet screaming past the young Arab’s head and
smashing through the window, but his second found its mark. The left side of Khatid’s chest bloomed red, and his body slammed back against the wall before crumpling to the floor.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ one of the CO19 officers yelled, swinging his Heckler & Koch round to cover Richter. ‘He was unarmed, no threat to anyone. That was just a
cold-blooded fucking execution, you stupid bastard spook.’
Richter ignored him and walked across the room to kneel beside Khatid’s broken body. He checked for a pulse, then nodded in satisfaction, stood up and looked at the CO19 officers, now
joined by three others. Pointing at the two young Arabs who were staring at Richter and the body of their fallen comrade with a kind of sick fascination, he ordered: ‘Get them out of here.
I’m taking over this scene as of now.’
‘I’ll see you in court, you bastard,’ one of the CO19 officers shouted. ‘I don’t care who you are – you’re not above the law.’
‘Just do it,’ Richter snapped, ‘and get Jessup in here.’
At that moment the inspector himself walked into the lounge. ‘What the hell’s happened?’
‘This fucking spook just slotted an unarmed man, that’s what happened. And now he’s trying to take over.’
Jessup stared across at Richter, and then at the two frightened Arabs. ‘Get them out of here,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll sort this out.’
He stepped across to Richter and held out his hand. ‘Give me your weapon.’
‘No,’ Richter said simply.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Jessup said. ‘You’ve just shot an unarmed man in front of two police officers. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your orders were,
you’re under arrest for murder. Now hand over your weapon.’
‘No,’ Richter repeated. ‘Get these officers out of here, and then I’ll tell you why I had to do what I did.’
For a moment Jessup just stared at him, then turned round and pointed at the remaining two Arabs. ‘Take those two outside, caution them and arrest them, and the other three, on suspicion
of CPIA under TACT – you know the form. Then just wait outside.’
Once the other police officers had left the room with their captives, Jessup turned back to Richter. ‘This had better be fucking good,’ he snarled.
‘Oh, it is,’ Richter said. ‘I can guarantee that.’
And, directly behind him, Salah Khatid stood upright again, with a broad smile on his face.
Monday
Manama, Bahrain
They left the Chevrolet in a car park lot abutting the King Faisal Highway and walked from there to the Al-Jazira Hotel, which they’d chosen primarily because of its
constantly changing clientele. The car was parked far enough away that, unless somebody was already following them, which O’Hagan was pretty sure was not the case, nobody could connect it
with them. And even if someone – some section of the Bahrain security apparatus – did seize or search the vehicle, there was nothing inside it to incriminate anyone. The weapon
components, the discovery of which would certainly have resulted in the immediate arrest of the two Americans, were now in the large briefcase Petrucci was carrying.
Stratford, East London
Jessup pushed open the door of the café and they walked inside. Richter sat down in a booth at the back. ‘Just coffee?’ the inspector asked, received
two answering nods, and walked across to the counter to place the order.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Richter said, looking across the table at Khatid.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you pointing that pistol at me. And then the code-phrase. It was lucky I still remembered it. Simpson gave it to me before I went to Afghanistan
after 9/11.’
‘Presumably it meant you were about to be extracted?’ Jessup asked, sitting down beside Richter.
Khatid nodded. ‘I think he had a less dramatic exit in mind, but that was the general idea.’ He opened his jacket to reveal the huge red stain on his shirt. ‘What is this
stuff?’
‘Something the boffins at Vauxhall Cross cooked up, I believe. It’s a mixture of dye, some kind of powder and a binding resin. The resin holds the round together when it’s
fired, the powder provides the knock-down effect when it hits, and the dye itself looks remarkably like blood. You’ll have a bad bruise on your chest for a couple of weeks.’
‘But the first round was live?’ Jessup asked.
‘Yes. My boss wanted this execution to be as realistic as possible, so I deliberately missed with the first shot to prove that my weapon
was
firing live ammunition. Only the second
bullet was a dummy.’