The Ultimate Truth (12 page)

His eyes darkened as he went on to tell me about his work with the FRU, and I could see that it pained him to talk about it.

‘We had to recruit informants who had inside information,’ he explained, ‘and that meant working with people who were still active members of terrorist groups. So we knew they
were personally involved in the planning and execution of all kinds of atrocities – bombings, murders, assassinations – but most of the time we couldn’t do anything about it.
Because if we did, we’d be putting our informant at risk and in the long term that could lead to the loss of more lives. So sometimes we just had to accept that we were dealing with killers,
paying them for information looking after them, keeping them safe.’ Grandad shook his head. ‘It wasn’t an easy situation to live with. What made it even worse was that we
didn’t have any control over what we were doing. We were soldiers, we worked for the army. We did what we were told. The army did what it was told by the British government. And the
government was constantly being influenced by other forces – MI5, Special Branch, counter-intelligence services, the Royal Ulster Constabulary. There were so many different organisations
involved, all of them with different strategies and different motives, that sometimes it was almost impossible to get anything done Grandad looked at me again. ‘I know it all sounds a bit
complicated and confusing, Trav, but the point I’m trying to make is that it was
so
complicated and confusing that after a while a lot of us became totally disillusioned with it all.
There were people like me who just hated what we were doing and didn’t want to be part of it any more, and there were others who really believed in it, but were sick of being constrained by
all the rules and politics of intelligence work. They wanted the freedom to do their job properly, and to them that meant no rules, no restrictions and no accountability.’ Grandad got up then
and began pacing quietly around the room. ‘I first heard the rumours about an organised group of disaffected intelligence officers in the mid-1980s,’ he continued. ‘There was no
real substance to the rumours, no evidence to back them up and the so-called facts about this secret organisation kept changing all the time, depending on who you listened to. But the basic story
was always the same – a small group of intelligence officers had got together and formed an unofficial security service. Some of them were still active in their official units others had
resigned or retired, and they came from all kinds of different backgrounds. Army Intelligence, FRU, MI5 MI6, Special Forces . . .’ Grandad stopped at the window and gazed out into the night.
‘There was a lot of speculation about this rogue security service – who was involved, how big the organisation was, where they got their funding from – but no one really knew
anything. Even when people began referring to the group as Omega, there was no way of telling if that’s what
they
called themselves, or if it was just another rumour.’

‘What did people think this group was actually doing?’ I asked.

Grandad turned from the window. ‘The general consensus has always been that Omega works for the good of the country. They do the same kind of work that all the official security services
do – counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism, internal and external national security – but they do it on their terms.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘They do what they think has to be done,’ Grandad said. ‘No rules, no restrictions, no accountability. Whatever it takes to get the job done, they’ll do it. No matter
what.’

‘So you think Omega really exists?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve never been able to make up my mind. Sometimes I think it’s all a myth, just one of those stories that people like to talk about, especially people in the
security services. But strange things have happened over the years, things that can’t easily be explained unless you accept that Omega
does
exist, or at least an off-the-grid
organisation like Omega.’

I looked at the photo on my mobile, staring at the Omega symbol tattooed on the man’s wrist. ‘Is that how they identify themselves?’ I asked Grandad. ‘With the
tattoos?’

‘I honestly don’t know, Travis,’ he said. ‘Someone once told me they’d seen an Omega symbol tattooed on the wrist of a man whose body was found at the scene of an
attack on a suspected terrorist cell in Glasgow. When the official report into the attack came out, there was no mention of this body, and no conclusive evidence was found as to who carried out the
attack.’

‘Is that the kind of thing Omega would do?’ I asked. ‘I mean, would they carry out an attack on suspected terrorists?’

‘Well, from what I’ve heard, they’d definitely carry out an attack on
confirmed
terrorists. They wouldn’t care how they got their evidence either.’

‘So if Omega
is
real . . .’ I said slowly, turning my attention to the photograph again. ‘If it really exists, and this man is part of it . . .’ I shook my head,
unable to finish the question. I was so confused now that I didn’t even know what to ask any more.

‘I need to make a phone call,’ Grandad said abruptly. ‘And I need those registration numbers you’ve got.’

‘Which ones?’

‘All of them.’

I found a scrap of paper and copied down the numbers of the two Audis from my hand, then I looked at the photo on my mobile and wrote down the registration of the black BMW. I passed the piece
of paper to Grandad.

‘Tell me again what Courtney found out,’ he said, studying the numbers.

‘The BMW is registered to a company called Smith & Co Digital Holdings Ltd. They’re supposedly based in Dundee, but she couldn’t find anything about them on the
Internet.’

Grandad nodded. ‘And she couldn’t get anything at all on the first Audi.’

‘Her contact told her the registration record was restricted. She said she was going to try checking the other Audi’s number tonight.’

‘Right,’ Grandad said. ‘Well, let’s see what I can find out.’

‘Do you want to use my mobile?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘I’m going to use the phone box across the street.’

‘The phone box?’

‘Modern technology is all well and good, Trav, but sometimes the old ways are still the best.’

I didn’t know who Grandad was calling, but the only time I’d known him use a phone box before was when he’d had to get in touch with one of his old army
intelligence contacts, so I guessed he was doing something similar now. And I assumed from what he’d said about the old ways still being the best that he felt safer using a public phone than
a mobile or a landline because there was less chance of the call being bugged.

As I sat on the bed waiting for him to come back, it suddenly struck me how weird everything had become. Here I was, sitting in my room at eleven o’clock on a Friday night, while my
grandad was outside making clandestine phone calls from a telephone box, trying to find out the connection between a seemingly straightforward missing persons case and a shadowy security
organisation known as Omega whose agents might or might not have arranged a riot to cover up a break-in at my mum and dad’s office . . .

How had it all come to this? I wondered.

And where was it all going to end?

It was still too much for me to think about. I tried for a while, going back over everything Grandad had told me – trying to understand the bits I hadn’t understood the first time
round, and trying to make sense of the bits that I had understood – but there was just too much of everything again. Too much information for my brain to digest.

I looked at my watch Grandad had been gone for about twenty minutes now I got up off the bed went over to the window and looked down the street. The telephone box was about thirty metres away,
outside a pub called the Live and Let Live. I could see that Grandad was still in the phone box, and I could also see a bunch of young thugs hanging around outside the pub, shouting and laughing,
making a lot of noise. They looked like trouble, but I wasn’t worried for Grandad’s safety. He might be getting on a bit now, and he’s certainly not as fit and strong as he used
to be, but he’s still more than capable of looking after himself. He’s a
very
tough man, my grandad. He’s not aggressive or anything and I’ve never seen him lose his
temper, but I’ve seen him in action a couple of times. Once when he helped a woman who was getting mugged in the street, and another time when a fight broke out at a football match. Grandad
in action is an awesome thing to see. It’s not nice – he fights hard, and he fights dirty – but it gets the job done, and sometimes that’s all that matters. ‘If you
have to fight someone, Travis,’ he once told me, ‘and I don’t mean in the boxing ring, I mean a real, life-or-death fight, you can’t afford to mess around. You have to hit
your opponent before they hit you, you have to hit them as hard as you can – preferably with something other than your fists – and you have to hit them wherever it’ll do the most
damage. That’s all you’ve got to remember, OK? You put them down as quickly as possible, and you make sure they stay down.’

He was coming out of the phone box now, and even from a distance I could tell that he was deep in thought – walking briskly, his eyes fixed straight ahead, his grizzled old face determined
and grim. As he passed by the group of thugs, one of them – a mean-looking guy in a tracksuit – made some kind of stupid remark, laughing and pointing at Grandad. Grandad didn’t
even glance at him, just carried on walking as if he wasn’t there.

I was sitting on my bed again when Grandad came back into the bedroom. He didn’t say anything at first, he just quietly closed the door, went over to the window, and
stood there with his back to me, gazing out at the night. I was desperate to ask him who he’d just called and what he’d found out, but I guessed he was still thinking things through,
and I knew better than to disturb him when he was thinking. So I forced myself to keep quiet and wait. After a minute or two I saw him straighten his back, take a deep breath, and let it out
slowly, and I knew then that he was ready to talk.

The only thing Grandad would tell me about the person he’d called was that he’d known him a long time, that he was still an active agent with one of the national
security services, and that he trusted him as much as he trusted anyone in the security business.

‘Which isn’t much,’ he admitted, lowering himself into the armchair. ‘Not that you can blame them for lying all the time. I mean, they’re spies, they tell lies for
a living. If you spend your whole life lying and cheating and twisting the truth, you get so used to it that you don’t even know you’re doing it most of the time.’ Grandad looked
at me. ‘That’s part of the reason I got out when I did. I didn’t want to end up as cold-hearted as the rest of them.’ He paused for a moment, thinking about something, then
carried on. ‘Anyway, I’m pretty sure my contact didn’t tell me everything he knows, but I’m also reasonably certain that he didn’t lie to me either. That’s
usually how it works with him. If there’s something he doesn’t want to tell me, or something he
can’t
tell me, he doesn’t lie about it, he just doesn’t tell me.
So the stuff he
does
tell me is almost always the truth.’

‘Almost always?’ I said.

Grandad smiled ruefully. ‘Never trust a spook, Trav.’

‘You used to be one,’ I said, grinning. ‘Does that mean I shouldn’t trust you?’

‘It’s pointless asking someone if you can trust them.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if you trust them in the first place, there’s no need to ask. And if you don’t trust them in the first place, you’re not going to believe what they tell you. So
either way there’s no point in asking the question, is there?’

‘I suppose not . . .’ I muttered, scratching my head.

He watched me for a moment, quietly amused by my confusion, then he lowered his eyes and his face became serious again.

‘Do you remember those spy stories I used to read to you when you were little?’ he said.

‘Yeah . . .’

‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I’ve got another one for you. Only this time it’s real.’

On 6 April 2009, two days after Bashir Kamal’s sixteenth birthday, his older brother Saeed was killed in a suicide bombing in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. Saeed
had been on holiday at the time – seeing the sights, visiting his parents’ birthplace – and as far as anyone knows, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The place was a street market, the time three o’clock in the afternoon. The suicide bomber was a twelve-year-old boy dressed in school uniform. The intended target was unknown. Twenty-one
people were killed in the blast, ninety-eight others were seriously injured. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibly for the attack, but according to CIA sources it bore all the hallmarks of an
al-Qaeda operation.

‘Although I don’t suppose it mattered to Bashir and his parents who actually did it,’ Grandad said bitterly.

‘All that mattered to them was that Saeed was dead. An innocent victim of a pointless atrocity.’

I stared at the floor, my mind numbed. I tried to imagine a twelve-year-old boy, walking through a market place at three o’clock in the afternoon with explosives strapped to his body . . .
a
twelve-year-old boy
, just a year younger than me . . . knowing that he was about to die . . . knowing that he was about to kill and maim dozens of people. How could he possibly
do
that? And why? Was he forced, threatened, brainwashed? What was in his head? How did he feel? What did he think about what he was doing?

I couldn’t even begin to imagine it. It was so far beyond me, so utterly incomprehensible, that I just couldn’t get my head round it.

‘I don’t know for sure how MI5 got to Bashir,’ Grandad continued, ‘but knowing the way they work, I’d be willing to bet they started watching him pretty soon after
his brother was killed.’

‘Why would they watch him?’ I asked.

‘Well, first of all, they’d want to make sure that Saeed really was just an innocent bystander. They’d have already checked out his background, so they were probably fairly
sure that he didn’t have anything to do with the bombing. But after all the mistakes they’ve made in the past, MI5 always double- and triple-check everything these days, just to be on
the safe side. Once they were satisfied that Bashir was clean, they would have started working out how to use him.’