The Ultimate Truth (26 page)

I opened my mouth to say something, but all of a sudden everything speeded up. Bashir’s hand flashed in and out of Winston’s jacket, and before anyone had a chance to do anything,
he’d grabbed Evie around the neck, dragged her to her feet, and was holding the gun to her head.

‘What the hell—’ Evie gasped.

‘Shut up!’ Bashir hissed.

I’d jumped to my feet as soon as he’d grabbed her, and Mason and Lenny were already halfway across the room, but there was nothing any of us could do. Bashir was holding Evie in
front of him, the gun jammed to her head, his left arm curled tightly around her neck.

‘Get
back
!’ he snapped at Mason and Lenny.

They stopped in their tracks.

‘Over there,’ he said, jerking his head to the left. ‘Against the wall.’

They backed up slowly and stopped at the wall.

‘You, sit down!’ he barked at me.

I slowly sat down.

Bashir turned to Winston. ‘If anyone moves, I’ll kill her,’ he said simply.

Winston didn’t say anything, he just stood there, looking back at Bashir and casually buttoning his jacket as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I glanced over to see what Shaved
Head and Goatee were doing. They were both on their feet, both watching Bashir’s every move, but they weren’t doing anything to stop him.

What’s the
matter
with them? I thought. Why aren’t they
doing
anything?

And what the hell’s Bashir up to anyway?

I looked at Evie, desperate to help her, but I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t understand
any
of this.

Bashir was approaching the doorway now. I saw him glance quickly over his shoulder to see how close he was, and as he did so a familiar muscle-bound figure appeared from the corridor and stepped
quietly into the doorway, blocking his exit. Bashir glared at Muscleman for a moment, then tightened his grip around Evie’s neck and jammed the gun harder into her head. Evie winced,
grimacing at the sudden pain, but she didn’t cry out.

Bashir turned back to Winston. ‘Tell the musclehead to move,
right
now, or I swear I’ll pull the trigger.’

‘It’s all right, Evie,’ Winston said softly, looking her in the eyes. ‘You’re going to be OK. I promise. Nothing’s going to happen to you.’

‘You think I’m
bluffing
?’ Bashir spat.

Winston ignored him for a moment, concentrating on Evie, silently asking for her trust. She calmly held his gaze, the message in her eyes saying –
go ahead, do what you have to do
.
Winston turned his attention to Bashir. ‘No, Bashir,’ he said, fixing him with an icy stare, ‘I don’t think you’re bluffing. I think you’re perfectly capable of
shooting an innocent girl in the head.’

Bashir hesitated, momentarily confused.

‘You see, we know who you
really
are,’ Winston told him. ‘We’ve known all along. What you are, what you’ve done, what you’re planning to do.’
Winston smiled. ‘Do you really think we’d let a man like you get anywhere near a
loaded
gun?’

Bashir grinned coldly. ‘Nice try. Now tell the big guy to get out of the way or I’m going to put a hole in the girl’s head.’

Winston sighed, looked down at the floor, then looked up again and began walking deliberately towards Bashir.

‘I mean it!’ Bashir warned him. ‘Come any closer and I
will
shoot her.’

Winston kept walking. ‘Go ahead,’ he said casually. ‘Pull the trigger.’

As Bashir stared back at him, desperately trying to decide what to do, I couldn’t take my eyes off Winston. Was he telling the truth? Was the gun really empty? Or was he calling
Bashir’s bluff ?

It was impossible to tell.

Winston’s face was a mask.

He was about three metres away from Bashir when Bashir made his decision. Without letting go of Evie, he suddenly straightened his right arm and levelled the pistol at Winston’s head.
Winston stopped and stood perfectly still, his eyes never leaving Bashir’s. Bashir paused for just a moment, then steadied his arm and pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked emptily.

I breathed out.

‘It’s over,’ Winston said quietly to Bashir. ‘Let her go.’

Bashir slowly lowered the gun, but he didn’t let go of Evie.

‘Let her go, Bashir.
Now
.’

Bashir dropped the gun. But he still didn’t let go of Evie.

Winston had had enough. He glanced over at Shaved Head and Goatee, and they began moving towards Bashir.

Bashir smiled. ‘It’s never over, Winston,’ he said ominously. ‘You of all people should know that.’ In one swift movement he let go of Evie’s neck, grabbed
her arm and twisted it up behind her back, while at the same time reaching round to the back of his trackpants and whipping out a short-bladed kitchen knife.

‘Tell your men to move back against the wall,’ Bashir ordered Winston, holding the knife to Evie’s throat.

Evie choked back a cry.

‘Do it,’ Winston told them, staring at Bashir.

Bashir waited while Shaved Head and Goatee cautiously moved back, then he turned to Winston again.

‘Now tell the big guy to join them.’

Winston nodded at Muscleman, and the big man reluctantly moved away from the door and crossed over to the far wall.

Bashir looked over at the three of them. ‘Lie down,’ he barked, ‘face down on the ground, hands on your heads.’

They glanced over at Winston. He nodded. They got down on the ground. Bashir shot a look at Mason and Lenny, who’d both moved away from the wall, and they held up their hands and moved
back.

Bashir looked around, making sure he was safe, then he started edging back towards the doorway, taking Evie with him. ‘I’m walking out of here now,’ he said. ‘If anyone
tries to stop me, if anyone follows me, the girl’s dead. Understand?’

‘No one’s going to follow you,’ Winston assured him.

‘They’d better not.’

I stared helplessly at Evie, wanting to help her, wanting to go after Bashir, but I didn’t dare move. As long as he had the knife to her throat, I knew I couldn’t take any risks. All
I could do was sit there and watch as he dragged Evie out through the doorway . . .

The arm that flashed out from somewhere behind him moved so fast that at first I didn’t even realise what it was. I just saw a blur of movement and a shape snaking out of the shadows. But
then, as Bashir’s knife hand was suddenly jerked away from Evie’s throat and yanked to one side, I saw the figure behind him. It was a man, an old man . . . with a grizzled old face and
grimly determined eyes . . .

‘
Grandad?
’ I heard myself whisper in disbelief.

He was twisting Bashir’s right hand now, bending it back at the wrist to make him drop the knife. Bashir’s face was screwed up in pain, but he was doggedly holding on to the knife.
Grandad drew back his left arm and started hammering his fist into Bashir’s side.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Bashir groaned, and Grandad yanked on his right arm again, and this time the knife
dropped to the ground.

Bashir let go of Evie then, and as she took her chance and ran back into the room, Bashir spun round to his right, swinging his left fist at Grandad. Grandad leaned back to dodge the punch, but
he wasn’t quite quick enough and Bashir caught him square on the chin. As Grandad staggered backwards, momentarily dazed, I was already on the move, jumping to my feet and running towards the
doorway. But as Bashir moved towards Grandad, his fist drawn back, ready to hit him again, I knew I wasn’t going to get there in time.

‘Grandad! I shouted out, trying to warn him. ‘
GRANDAD!
’

I knew it was hopeless. Grandad was half dazed, and I was still a good couple of metres away from him, and Bashir was about half a second away from smashing his fist into Grandad’s head .
. .

Courtney Lane must have made some sound as she came racing along the corridor, but I swear I didn’t hear anything. One moment there was nothing, and then she just streaked into view,
speeding towards Bashir like a missile. She was moving so fast that Bashir never even saw her. I watched, awe-struck, as she launched herself at him, leaping off her feet and slamming her shoulder
into his back. The air exploded from his lungs and he flew face first into the breezeblock wall, crashing into it with a sickening thud. He slid down the wall and slumped to the ground like a
broken doll. Courtney was onto him in a flash, leaning over him with her fist drawn back, ready to finish him off, but it was clear that he wasn’t going to get up again. He was out for the
count.

Courtney stooped down and put two fingers to his neck, checking his pulse, then she straightened up, let out a relaxing breath, and looked over at Grandad to make sure he was OK. He gave her the
thumbs up, then turned to me.

He was still a bit unsteady on his feet, but his eyes were clear, and for a wonderful little moment we just stood there looking at each other as if nothing else in the world really mattered.

Someone said something then. I don’t know who it was or what they said, but it broke the silence, and a second later everyone else started talking. Winston and the Omega men, Mason and
Lenny and Evie, all of them muttering away in quiet relief. I let out a long sigh of relief myself and watched as Grandad went over to where Bashir was lying and stood there gazing down at him.

‘I thought he was supposed to be the good guy?’ Grandad said to me.

‘Well, yeah . . .’ I replied. ‘He was.’

Grandad frowned. ‘So what happened?’

‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ I said, turning to Winston for the answer.

Winston smiled tightly at me, then looked at Grandad. ‘It’s somewhat complicated, Mr Delaney. Might I suggest we deal with a few practicalities first? And then I’ll be more
than happy to explain everything to you.’

‘Bashir Kamal is a key member of a terrorist network known as al-Thu’ban,’ Winston told us, ‘which roughly translated means “the Snake”. As
far as we know, Bashir was recruited by al-Thu’ban operatives at the age of eleven for the specific purpose of infiltrating British security services. It was a long-term mission. It took
almost five years of indoctrination, re-education, conditioning, and training before al-Thu’ban finally thought he was ready. Two days after his sixteenth birthday, al-Thu’ban put their
plan into operation.’

‘The suicide bomb in Islamabad,’ Grandad said quietly, shaking his head in disbelief.

Winston nodded. ‘It was made to look as if Bashir’s brother was a random victim of the bombing, but the ugly truth is that Saeed Kamal was actually the target. He was murdered by
al-Thu’ban in order to provide Bashir with the perfect cover for infiltrating the intelligence services.’

‘Hold on,’ I said, frowning at Winston. ‘You mean al-Thu’ban murdered Bashir’s brother just to make it
look
as if Bashir had a genuine reason to hate
terrorists?’

‘Exactly,’ Winston said.

‘Did Bashir
know
?’

‘We think so.’

‘God,’ I muttered, ‘that’s unbelievable.’

‘It is,’ Winston agreed. ‘And that’s precisely why it worked. No one would ever suspect that Bashir’s hatred for his brother’s killers wasn’t genuine.
Why should they? And from MI5’s point of view, he
was
the perfect undercover agent. A young British Pakistani with a profound hatred of terrorism, ready and willing to work for them .
. . what more could they ask for?’

It was past midnight now, and there were only the four of us left in Bashir’s room. I was on the white settee with Grandad and Evie, and Winston had pulled up a chair and was sitting in
front of us. Courtney had taken Mason to the hospital to get his ribs checked out, and Lenny had gone with them. Bashir had been carried off by Shaved Head and Muscleman, and I guessed he was being
held somewhere in the warehouse. Presumably the other Omega men were either guarding him or getting on with whatever they had to do.

‘So when did Omega find out that Bashir was a double agent?’ Grandad asked Winston.

Winston furrowed his brow. ‘Omega?’

Grandad glared at him. ‘I’m not in the mood for games.’

A brief flash of irritation flickered in Winston’s eyes, but he quickly composed himself and carried on. ‘We began to have our doubts after MI5 broke up a terrorist cell in Stratford
that Bashir had infiltrated. The cell was supposedly planning an attack on the American Embassy in London, and on the surface it seemed as if MI5 had successfully foiled their operation. They
certainly thought they had. But there were some strange inconsistencies about the case, odd little things that just didn’t add up. The more we looked into it, the more we began to suspect
that something wasn’t right.’

‘Did you share your suspicions with MI5?’ Grandad asked.

‘Would
you
have?’

‘Probably not,’ Grandad admitted.

‘They had too much invested in Bashir. They wouldn’t have listened to us. We had no proof anyway.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘We went looking for proof.’

‘Did you find any?’

Winston waggled his hand. ‘We found some, but it was mostly just bits and pieces. It was more than enough to convince
us
that Bashir was a double agent, but we knew we needed a lot
more to convince MI5 that their security was compromised.’ Winston took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘You see, that’s exactly what it amounted to. Britain’s national
security service had been fatally compromised by a double agent. An al-Thu’ban terrorist had infiltrated MI5. We
had
to deal with that.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t consider neutralising him,’ Grandad said.

‘Oh, we did. And if we’d thought it was the best option, we would have gone ahead and done it. But then we realised that if we could prove to MI5 that Bashir was a double agent,
there was a chance they could turn him. They could make him into a
triple
agent.’

Grandad nodded knowingly. ‘So al-Thu’ban would
think
he was their inside man at MI5, pretending to be an informant but passing on information to them, whereas Bashir would
actually be working
for
MI5, passing on false information to al-Thu’ban and gathering real information about them to pass on to MI5.’