Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies (12 page)

‘Yeah, I am. His name’s Raj. Calling him anything else just seems disrespectful.’

‘You’re a funny bugger, Shepherd.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m the funny bugger that’s going to be risking his life in Pakistan to rescue the guy you put at risk, so you’re going to have live with it.’

Willoughby-Brown’s eyes narrowed, but then he nodded. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Raj it is.’ He went back to his desk and pulled open a drawer. He took out a manila folder, sat down and opened it. It contained several dozen photographs, most of which appeared to have been taken from CCTV cameras. Willoughby-Brown flicked through them and then slid one across the desk towards Shepherd. ‘You should know that Raj’s appearance has changed a bit.’

Shepherd looked at the photograph. It was split in two, a full head-on shot and a side view. He frowned. The profile was markedly different from the Raj he remembered. He looked back at Willoughby-Brown and found him grinning. ‘We gave him the scars, lengthened the nose and added to his chin. On top of that, he’s grown quite a respectable beard.’

‘So that he couldn’t be recognised? So you knew there was a risk?’

‘A calculated risk.’

Shepherd glared at him. ‘A calculated risk when the downside is torture and beheading? Who the hell made that call?’

‘Raj was OK with it.’

‘Raj is a kid. He’s easily led, as I’m sure you know.’

‘He wanted to go. He was insistent.’

Shepherd shook his head in disgust.

‘He believes in what he’s doing. He’s a patriot. Proud to be British.’

‘And you played on that, I bet?’

‘He wants to serve his country, I helped him to do that.’

‘And now he’s being tortured in the bloody desert,’ said Shepherd. He tossed the photograph on to the desk. ‘What about his parents?’

‘His parents?’

‘Have they been told?’

‘Of course not.’

‘They need to know what’s happened,’ said Shepherd.

‘I’m not sure there’s any advantage in keeping them in the loop until we have a clearer idea of where we stand.’

‘Do they know he’s in Pakistan?’

‘He told them he was going there for a friend’s wedding and to do some travelling. A few white lies. It’s no big deal.’ Willoughby-Brown passed him another photograph, a surveillance picture of a young Asian leaving a mosque. ‘Naseem Naeem,’ he said. ‘He’s the one who flew out with Raj. He’s a mechanic, Bradford born and bred. Third-generation, his grandparents came over in the fifties to work in the mills.’

Shepherd studied the photograph. The man looked younger than his age and could easily have passed for a schoolboy. Willoughby-Brown pushed the file towards Shepherd. ‘The rest of the pictures are young men who flew on the same flight, and on other Pakistan flights the day before and the day after. We’ve weeded out the ones who were working or who went to Pakistan for genuine family reasons.’

Shepherd flicked through the photographs. There were more than fifty. ‘That’s a lot.’

‘You’re telling me. And that’s just three days. It’s a lot of needles in a bloody enormous haystack, which is why we needed Raj there. If we can get him back, he’ll be able to tell us who the naughty boys are.’

‘Was Raj able to communicate with you or anybody while he was at the camp?’

Willoughby-Brown shook his head. ‘We couldn’t take the risk of him taking any sort of communication device with him. He had a mobile with GPS but they took it off him when he arrived in Pakistan. We were able to get a look at him from an American spy satellite.’

Shepherd frowned. ‘Run that by me.’

‘We spoke to the Yanks and they gave us access to the feeds of satellites moving over that general area of north-west Pakistan. Most of the scans showed nothing. The Yanks tell me that al-Qaeda know the times and orbits of most of their long-standing surveillance satellites, but there’s one that they don’t seem to know about.’

He went back into the drawer and pulled out a couple of photographs, grainy and with the colour washed out. One showed a group of men doing some sort of exercise. Press-ups or planks, it was hard to see. Willoughby-Brown tapped one of the figures. ‘We’re pretty sure this is Raj.’

Shepherd peered at the picture. The faces of most of the figures were hidden and he wouldn’t have been able to recognise anyone from the grainy photograph. Willoughby-Brown pushed over the second photograph. The men were on their feet, facing a bearded man dressed in white. The figure that Willoughby-Brown said was Raj was still blurred.

‘We’ve had them enhanced, and we’re reasonably sure it’s him.’

‘When were these taken?’

‘The time and date and map reference are on the back,’ said Willoughby-Brown.

Shepherd turned the photograph over. It had been taken four days earlier. His mobile phone beeped. He’d received a message. He took a quick look at it. It was Charlotte Button.

‘Anything important?’ asked Willoughby-Brown.

‘Not really,’ said Shepherd.

Shepherd left the MI6 building and walked back to his car, deep in thought. A black Lexus was parked behind his SUV. As he reached his car the rear door of the Lexus opened and Charlotte Button climbed out. She was wearing a Barbour jacket and dark green corduroy trousers and she thrust her hands into her pockets as she walked towards him, her shoulder-length chestnut hair blowing in the wind. ‘How did it go?’ she asked.

‘As well as can be expected, I suppose,’ said Shepherd.

He climbed into the front seat of his BMW as Button walked around to the passenger door. He left the engine switched off but sat with his hands on the steering wheel. ‘How much do you know about what’s going on?’ he asked as she sat down and pulled the door shut.

‘Very little,’ said Button. ‘Just that there’s a problem with Raj and that your expertise was required.’

‘But you’re my boss, why wouldn’t you be in the picture?’

Button shrugged. ‘Five and Six are separate entities and their operations do tend to be more secretive than ours.’

‘How well do you know Willoughby-Brown? If that is his name.’

Button frowned. ‘By reputation only. Is there a problem?’

Shepherd’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. ‘I don’t know if it’s a problem. But I’m being asked to do something above and beyond the call of duty and I’m getting a bad feeling about it.’

‘They’re putting you in harm’s way?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘Very much so. If it was you asking me to do it, that’d be fine. But Willoughby-Brown and I have a history.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Yeah, I ran into him in Sierra Leone. He used me and a few mates on a couple of operations, which was fair enough, but I never really trusted him.’

‘He was with MI6 back then?’

‘Yeah. Strutted around in an MCC tie as if he owned the place. Have you met him?’

‘No. I haven’t even spoken to him. There’s surprisingly little mixing between the two agencies.’

‘And they’ve told you nothing about what they’re asking me to do?’

Button shook her head. ‘If you’re not happy, you can always turn it down.’

‘I can’t. Raj’s life is on the line.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I need to talk this through with you.’

Button looked pained. ‘I can’t, Spider. I’m sorry. This is a Six operation, it’s nothing to do with Five. I shouldn’t even be here.’

‘That’s not good enough. I need your advice, if not your help.’

‘I can’t do that, Spider. I’m sorry.’

‘So I’m on my own?’

‘You’re not on your own. You’re attached to Six.’ She folded her arms. ‘I need a drink.’

‘You and me both.’

She flashed him a tight smile. ‘Find us a bar,’ she said. ‘You’re buying.’

Shepherd parked outside a pub in Battersea. There were two bars either side of the main door. There was a pub quiz going on in the bar on the left so they turned right. Button went to a table in the corner while Shepherd went to the bar and paid for a glass of white wine and a Jameson’s whiskey with ice and soda. He went over to the table, gave Button the wine and sat down. He toasted her and sipped his whiskey.

‘What is it you want, Spider?’ she said.

‘I want someone watching my back,’ said Shepherd, leaning towards her. ‘I want someone who knows what I’m doing and why so that if the shit hits the fan I’m not out on a limb.’ He smiled. ‘Forgive the clichés.’

‘I told you, it’s not my operation. If it was …’ She shrugged. ‘There’s no point in my finishing that sentence because if it had been any operation of mine I wouldn’t have involved Raj.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I was told to put you in touch with Willoughby-Brown and facilitate your secondment to Six. The actual details of the Six operation are need-to-know.’ She stared at him for several seconds, then took a long drink of wine. She raised her eyebrows appreciatively. ‘Good choice.’

‘The barman recommended it.’

She took another sip then put her glass back down on the table. ‘Officially I can’t know anything,’ she said. ‘And officially we never had this conversation.’

‘Understood,’ said Shepherd.

‘This is putting me in a very difficult position, you realise that?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘Not half as difficult as the position I’m being put in, believe me.’

‘And you have a problem with this Willoughby-Brown?’

‘I don’t trust him,’ said Shepherd. ‘And if it was you asking me to go to Pakistan, of course I’d do it, no questions asked.’

She smiled. ‘That’s good to know,’ she said. ‘OK, tell me everything.’

Shepherd quickly laid out what it was that Willoughby-Brown wanted him to do. Button listened, her face a blank mask, until he’d finished. ‘I can see why you’d be uneasy,’ she said eventually.

‘That’s an understatement,’ he said. ‘The thing is, Raj is in danger so I can’t not help. But joint operations are never a good idea at the best of times and the Pakistani special forces don’t have the best reputation.’

‘They’ve had their moments,’ said Button.

‘There’s no way that this could be an off-the-books operation, is there?’

Button’s eyes narrowed. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘This whole need-to-know business worries me. You’re my boss so it seems only right that they’d want to keep you in the loop. In Sierra Leone, Willoughby-Brown seemed to be doing things off his own bat. I got the feeling that back then he was on a very long leash, getting us to do stuff without clearing it with the office. In fact some of the stuff he got us to do, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have got official approval.’

‘But you did it anyway.’

Shepherd grinned. ‘We were SAS, we were bloody invincible. A lot of the time we had nothing to do so it helped relieve the boredom.’ He took a sip of whiskey. ‘So that’s why alarm bells are ringing now. He’s screwed up, obviously. He was running Raj and Raj has been caught. I wonder if he’s using the SAS again to save his own skin.’

‘Without clearing it? I think that’s very unlikely.’

‘Unlikely or impossible?’

‘Nothing’s ever impossible,’ said Button. ‘But sure, it’s highly improbable, especially these days. What’s your main concern?’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘Where do I start? He wants me to go in with a team that I have zero experience with. He’s promised me a few rehearsals when I get to Pakistan, but storming a building with armed targets is a bloody dangerous business. Before I went with the SEALs to get Bin Laden I spent a week rehearsing entries in North Carolina and another week in Nevada practising helicopter assaults. And despite all that it ended up as a cock-up on the night; they crashed a helicopter and ended up having to blast their way in through the front door.’

‘Helicopters crash, they’re inherently unstable,’ said Button.

‘Agreed. But that’s more of a reason to be with a team you can depend on,’ said Shepherd. ‘When I was in the SAS, you knew everyone, you knew what they’d do in every possible situation. Most of the time you’d know where they were without looking. Once you start bringing new faces in, the risk goes up exponentially. A stray bullet in the back can seriously ruin your day. Happened in Sierra Leone, a warrant officer I knew got shot by a Para. He was wearing body armour so he was OK, but even so.’

‘They want you on the operation so that Raj will see a friendly face, presumably?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’

‘So you can hang back, take more of an observer’s role, same as you did on Neptune Spear.’

‘Sure. And I’ll do that. But the picture worries me. What if something goes wrong? I’m out there on my own. What if Willoughby-Brown denies all knowledge of me?’

‘You think he’d throw you to the wolves?’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time that MI6 had abandoned an agent,’ said Shepherd.

She sipped her wine. ‘What do you think I’ll be able to do?’ she asked.

‘Like I said, watch my back.’

‘From here? Thousands of miles away? What can I do?’

Shepherd rubbed the back of his neck. He could feel the tendons there, as taut as steel wires. ‘Keep an eye on the operation. Listen to the chatter. I don’t think Willoughby-Brown is telling me everything.’

Button smiled. ‘You’re asking me to spy on spies?’

‘Pretty much, yes.’

Button drained her glass. ‘Tell you what, get me another drink and it’s a deal.’

‘Thank you,’ said Shepherd.

‘Don’t thank me,’ said Button. ‘You’re one of my best men, I don’t want anything to happen to you.’

Rafiq didn’t know how many men were keeping him prisoner, but he knew how many had beaten him. Four so far: all Pakistanis, all in their thirties or forties, and all intent on causing him as much pain as they could without actually killing him. They tended to work in pairs, one carrying out the beating while the other one stood at the door holding a weapon, sometimes a handgun, sometimes an AK-47. The gun was unnecessary because Rafiq didn’t have the strength to fight back. All he could do was curl up and pray for the beating to stop. There were no questions and when he asked them what they wanted from him, they remained silent. They slapped him, they punched him and they kicked him. And once one of the men used a cane and whipped Rafiq’s legs and backside so hard that the welts bled. Sometimes Rafiq would pass out, but the men seemed skilled at what they were doing and would pull back just before his consciousness faded, waiting for him to recover, before starting again. Rafiq soon lost all sense of time. He wasn’t aware of the hours passing, he didn’t even know if it was day or night. He was either being beaten, or he was lying on the floor waiting for the next beating to start. That was his life now. There was nothing else. Just the pain. And the anticipation of the pain. They would kill him eventually, he was sure of that. He didn’t want to die. Nobody wanted to die. But he didn’t think he could take the pain for much longer.