Authors: Stephen Leather
‘And the test, was it successful?’ asked Malik.
Khalid shrugged. ‘Mostly.’
‘Mostly?’ said Chaudhry. ‘What do you mean, mostly?’
‘One brother didn’t turn up,’ said Khalid.
‘What happened?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Khalid. ‘But we wil find out.’
‘Do you think he’s a spy?’ asked Malik, and Chaudhry tensed.
Khalid turned to look at Malik. ‘Why would you ask that, brother?’ he said quietly. He stopped suddenly, catching the two men unawares.
Malik looked over at Chaudhry, a look of panic in his eyes.
‘We were talking about it earlier,’ said Chaudhry. ‘We thought that you didn’t trust us, that you suspected there might be a spy in the organisation.’
Khalid continued to stare baleful y at Malik. ‘That’s what the police are doing, isn’t it?’ said Chaudhry. ‘They put spies in the mosques and they pay informers to betray our brothers.’
‘It is not the police,’ said Khalid, stil looking at Malik. ‘It is MI5, the security service.’ He started walking again and the wind tugged at his dishdash. Chaudhry and Malik matched his pace. ‘The brother who let us down is not a spy, I am sure of that. But he has shown that he cannot be relied upon so we wil have to deal with him.’ He laughed softly. ‘But a spy? No.’
‘So when do we do it for real?’ asked Chaudhry.
‘You are eager,’ said Khalid. ‘That’s good. But we have to wait until the moment is right.’
‘And the backpacks?’ said Malik. ‘Why did we have to have backpacks?’
‘That was to test the logistics,’ said Khalid. ‘Why do the backpacks concern you?’
‘You know why the backpacks worry us,’ said Chaudhry.
‘Brothers, the backpacks were a test of our logistics. To see if we could get a dozen pieces of equipment to a dozen brothers and get them to a specific location at a specific time.’ He smiled. ‘You thought you were carrying explosives, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘We didn’t know what to think,’ said Chaudhry.
Khalid nodded slowly. ‘You thought that there might be explosives in the packs, but stil you went. That showed commitment, brothers. And don’t think that commitment wasn’t noticed and appreciated.’
‘You wanted to see if we were prepared to become shahid?’ said Chaudhry.
‘Was there any doubt about that, brother?’
Chaudhry sighed. ‘I had hoped that I had already proved my loyalty,’ he said. He nodded at Malik. ‘Harvey too.’
‘The two of you are too valuable to become shahid,’ Khalid said. ‘A lot of time, trouble and money has gone into training you and it would be a waste to make you martyrs. The operation we are planning wil involve guns, not explosives. And provided you fol ow your instructions you wil kil more kaffirs than died in the Twin Towers and you wil live to fight another day.’
‘That’s what he said? You’re sure?’ asked Shepherd. ‘He said explosives weren’t going to be used?’
Chaudhry nodded. ‘Word for word, pretty much.’
‘Guns,’ said Malik. ‘He said we’d be using guns.’
They were sitting in a coffee shop in Camden, close to the market. Chaudhry and Malik had spent twenty minutes walking among the market stal s before Shepherd had cal ed Chaudhry and assured him that they weren’t being fol owed. They sat in a corner away from the windows.
‘No explosives but lots of casualties?’ said Shepherd.
‘More than died in Nine-Eleven,’ said Chaudhry. ‘That’s what he said.’
Shepherd raised his eyebrows. ‘With guns? Did he say what type?’
Malik shook his head. ‘He said there would be lots of casualties and that we would get away.’
Shepherd sipped his coffee. It was important intel igence that he’d have to pass to Button as soon as possible. There had been about a dozen men at St Pancras, but how could a dozen men kil three thousand civilians with guns?
‘How far do we take this, John?’ asked Chaudhry.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We went to the station with backpacks. What if there had been bombs in those packs and they’d been detonated remotely?’
‘That was never going to happen, Raj. Like Khalid said, you’re too valuable to waste on a suicide attack.’
‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Chaudhry. ‘Suppose they target the Prime Minister? Or the US President? You don’t think they’d worry about sacrificing me or Harvey if they had a target like that?’
‘They’ve never talked about using you for an assassination,’ said Shepherd. ‘And none of your training has been for that.’
‘We were taught sniping in Pakistan,’ said Malik.
‘You’re over-thinking it,’ said Shepherd. ‘Trust me, you’re worrying about nothing. Everything that happened at St Pancras points to a large-scale operation using a dozen or so men. And even a dozen men with suicide bombs wouldn’t kil more than a hundred or so people.’ He shrugged. ‘That sounds blasé and I don’t mean it that way, but it’s a matter of effectiveness. The four bombers in London on 7th July 2005 kil ed fifty-two people and injured seven hundred, and while that’s horrific it’s stil not the thousands that Khalid is talking about. Suicide bombs are terrible things but a bomb in a crowded station is effective only within twenty feet or so; there are simply too many bodies around absorbing the shrapnel. You get horrific injuries close to the source of the explosion but beyond fifty feet it’s survivable and at a hundred feet you’d be unlucky to get a scratch. What Khalid is talking about is something much, much bigger.’
‘So what’s the plan, John?’ asked Chaudhry. ‘What do we do?’
‘We wait and see what Khalid does next. I’l talk to our technical people and we’l see about increasing our electronic surveil ance. Now we know he won’t let you take your phones with you we’l have to come up with something else.’
‘Tracking devices in our shoes?’ said Malik. ‘Real secret-agent stuff?’
‘Something like that,’ said Shepherd. ‘The stuff they have these days is incredibly smal . It’s not like it was in the old days when you used to have a metal box taped to your crotch and a microphone stuck to your chest.’
Malik looked at his watch. ‘Do you mind if I push off, John?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a five-a-side match later.’
‘Sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘I think we’re done. Good job.’
Malik got up to leave. ‘I’l stay and finish my coffee, brother,’ said Chaudhry. Malik nodded and left. Chaudhry stirred sugar into his coffee. ‘So how long have you been working with MI5?’
‘Fifteen years, give or take,’ lied Shepherd. He’d already agreed with Button not to reveal his police or SAS background to Chaudhry and Malik.
She’d decided that they’d react best to him if they thought he was career MI5 and believed he was fairly senior in the organisation, rather than an SAS trooper turned undercover cop who had been with the Security Service for less than two years.
‘How did you deal with the stress? The constant lying?’
‘I compartmentalise the job,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can’t be on al day every day. So you make sure you have time on your own, or with your family, when you can be yourself.’
‘But I can’t do that, John, can I? I have to lie even when I’m with my parents. My dad, he’d probably be proud of me, but my mum would hit the roof.
And even if they were cool with what I was doing I can’t tel them, can I? I can’t tel anyone that I helped kil The Sheik. Or that I’m working against terrorists who are planning to kil thousands of civilians. I have to lie to my family, to my friends, to my fel ow students. There are only two people that I can be honest with: you and Harvey.’
‘I understand,’ said Shepherd.
‘Understanding is al wel and good, but I need to know how to deal with it,’ said Chaudhry.
It was a good point, Shepherd knew, but he wasn’t sure how to respond to it. Chaudhry was right, undercover work was stressful. Most operatives couldn’t do it for more than a few years. Divorces, breakdowns and career burnouts were common, which is why his bosses at the Met, SOCA and MI5 insisted on six-monthly psychological evaluations for al its undercover people. But Chaudhry and Malik didn’t have the luxury of a psychologist; al they had was Shepherd, and al he could offer them was the benefit of his experience.
‘Do you feel guilty about lying, is that it?’ asked Shepherd.
‘With my family, of course. They ask me how my studies are going and I say great and they ask me what I do in my free time and then I’m a bit evasive, and I real y had to lie about the whole Pakistan training-camp thing. But that’s not where the stress comes from. It’s when I’m talking to Khalid and the others that it gets to me. My heart starts beating like it’s going to burst and sometimes I can feel my legs trembling. My mouth goes dry, which means I sometimes stumble over my words. If they see that they’re going to know that something is wrong.’
Shepherd nodded sympathetical y. ‘You have to try to believe in what you’re saying,’ he said. ‘You’re like an actor playing a part, and you have to convince yourself that you are what you’re pretending to be. That conviction wil then flow out of you. But to be honest, Raj, you’re worrying too much.
You’re not pretending to be someone else; you’re yourself. It’s only your beliefs that you’re misrepresenting. Al you need to do is to convince Khalid and the rest that you’re an Islamic fundamentalist who has embraced jihad. Al the hard work has been done. You went to Pakistan, you went right into the lion’s den, you went through with the rehearsal at St Pancras. You’ve already proved yourself.’
‘But sometimes Khalid looks at me like he doesn’t believe me.’
‘What do you mean, specifical y?’
Chaudhry shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to explain. He stares at me, like he’s looking through me. He frowns sometimes, like he’s thinking that something’s not right. He does the same with Harvey.’
‘That’s your guilty conscience kicking in. You know you’re lying and you know that lying is wrong, and because you’re basical y a moral person you expect to be punished for what you’re doing. I’m not saying you want to be caught out, but part of you expects it to happen. Only sociopaths can lie without any sort of guilt.’
Chaudhry grinned. ‘That’s what my dad always used to say when I was a kid. He didn’t care what I’d done, provided I told the truth.’
‘That’s what al parents tel their children,’ said Shepherd. ‘Not that they always mean it.’
‘My dad did,’ said Chaudhry. ‘Even if I did something stupid, provided I owned up to it and provided I said I was sorry and tried to make it right, he wouldn’t punish me. Mind you, Dad didn’t have to punish me, it was enough to know that I’d disappointed him.’
‘He sounds like a good guy.’
‘He is,’ said Chaudhry. ‘He’s never laid a finger on me, my whole life. A lot of Asian parents reckon that if you spare the rod you spoil the child, but my mum and dad have been great.’ He smiled rueful y. ‘I wish I could tel him what I’m doing.’
‘You can’t,’ said Shepherd. ‘You know that, right?’
‘Oh, I had it drummed into me by Ms Button. But the fact that he doesn’t know means that I have to lie to him, and you don’t know how much I hate that.’
‘No, I understand. I have a son, and I hate having to lie to him. But when you work for MI5 it comes with the job.’
Chaudhry tilted his head on one side. ‘You said you weren’t married.’
Shepherd’s stomach lurched. He’d made the worst possible mistake that an undercover agent could make: he’d slipped out of character. He’d been so relaxed in Chaudhry’s company that he’d answered as Dan Shepherd and not as John Whitehil . He forced himself to appear relaxed, and smiled as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but he could feel his heart pounding. ‘She died, a few years ago,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ said Chaudhry.
‘Yeah, my life’s a bit complicated to say the least,’ said Shepherd. ‘Thing is, it always sounds strange to say widower, but I guess that’s what I am. Easier to say I’m not married.’
‘And you’re a single parent?’
Shepherd nodded. ‘He’s at boarding school, so it works out wel .’ He felt strange giving out personal information, which was something he almost never did when he was working. But having Chaudhry talk about tel ing the truth had struck a chord. Shepherd didn’t enjoy lying, even though over the years he had become an expert in the art of tel ing untruths.
‘I bet he misses you.’
‘I think he’s having too much fun at the moment,’ said Shepherd.
‘But he knows you work for MI5?’
‘To be honest, no.’
‘And you’re okay lying to him?’
‘It’s not like that,’ said Shepherd. ‘I very rarely look him in the eye and lie to him. On the very rare occasions I do then it’s because there’s a very good reason.’
‘And don’t you forget sometimes? Forget what you said before? That’s my nightmare, that I’l give myself away by forgetting something.’
‘I’m lucky,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ve got a photographic memory. I pretty much remember everything I see and hear.’
‘Eidetic they cal it, right?’ said Chaudhry. ‘Kid I went to school had it. But the funny thing was that he wasn’t that great at exams.’
‘Same with me,’ said Shepherd. ‘Just because you can remember stuff doesn’t mean you can write great essays. But it’s a big help when you’re undercover.’
‘I worry that I’m thinking too much before answering. Especial y with Khalid. It’s as if I have to run everything through a filter, checking that I’m saying the right thing. It’s so bloody stressful.’
Shepherd empathised. It was exactly how he worked when he was undercover. It was vital that he never said anything that wasn’t known by his character, so everything that came out of his mouth had to be analysed and approved. Often he would go into an operation ful y briefed on most of the people he would come across, but that didn’t mean his character had access to the same information. He had to be constantly aware of who he’d met and who he hadn’t, and what he had said to them. He understood exactly what Chaudhry meant about it being stressful, because he had to do al that without any sign of hesitation. Hesitation could easily be taken as evasiveness so it was important that conversations flowed. Humour was good, banter back and forth could slow down a conversation and give him time to think, but sometimes jokes weren’t appropriate. Props were good, especial y drinks. If a question blindsided him a sip of his whisky would give him time to get his thoughts straight. And as much as he disliked smoking, a cigarette was a perfect way of getting a few seconds of thinking time.