Allegiance (15 page)

‘He meets someone?’

‘I am assuming. You have the means and resources to identify who he meets. I just want a share of that information.’

‘Why?’

‘To confirm what I believe to be true. That the sheikh has sold his soul to the West. He’s come back to the car with a suitcase on two occasions. He’s on a payroll.’

‘Funny you should mention that. The
IAC
is an anagram of the
CIA
.’

Amina had held out as long as she could and tried Ahmed’s cell number again. It was past 10 p.m. She wasn’t really worried or surprised, because it was happening more and more frequently. She sat at the dining room table with her head in her hands and considered her options. She could phone a few of his friends and ask if they’d seen him, but this would humiliate him and he’d be angry with her for checking up on him. She could drive to his office and see if his car was still there or check with his secretary to see what time he’d left . . .

Yet it was pointless denying the obvious, she was only fooling herself. It was happening too often, these unexplained late nights, the defensive answers, the excuses. She didn’t deserve it. She’d given up her career for Ahmed, a career which had barely started and which she loved: intelligence. Her mind took her back to the days she was in the heart of the intelligence machine. She thought of Kevin. Perhaps she should call him? She looked at her watch. It was too late; she didn’t want him to worry. What could he do, anyway? This was a personal issue, an issue she had to sort out in her own way.

She stood up and walked to the front door which she latched from the inside. Ahmed’s study door was unlocked and she switched the light on and went in. She opened a desk drawer and flipped through some papers. Receipts for ink and oil. A quote to repair one of the printing press rollers. Nothing interesting. Perhaps there was nothing. This was her husband after all, not a target. What if she was wrong? What if she just didn’t understand her husband and how he worked? She sat in his desk chair and let her eyes wander across the photographs on his desk. Ahmed and his friends. A picture of his stupid car he called ‘The Boss’. Him holding up a fish and smiling. At least the fish made him smile. She thought back to a tradecraft course she’d attended at the Intelligence Academy a few years back. Where was the best place to hide something? In plain sight, she remembered. She looked at a row of lever-arch files on the shelf above the computer. She pulled down one marked ‘Maintenance Records’, glanced at the contents and returned it to the shelf. The fourth one she pulled down was labelled ‘Customer Invoices’ and after a few seconds of looking at the contents, she laid it down on the desk and started reading through the columns of names.

It was 20:30 the next Tuesday when Shabalala got a call from Ruslan indicating that he was about to leave the centre and take the sheikh to the address in town he’d mentioned. Shabalala knew there was no time to mobilise the surveillance unit and phoned Durant and asked him to meet at a street intersection in fifteen minutes for an ad lib surveillance operation. Durant arrived in eighteen minutes and Shabalala told him to take up a position near the street Ruslan had mentioned on the phone. When he saw the sheikh’s car, he was to phone Shabalala and he would go on foot to the drop-off and try to follow the sheikh to wherever he went.

Ruslan had deliberately driven slowly to the drop-off, hoping the extra time would be enough for Reno to get a good shot at observation. He turned into the alley and didn’t notice Durant’s Land Rover parked across the road outside a used-car lot, which lent natural cover. Shabalala got Durant’s call and quickly left his car and went on foot in the direction of where Ruslan had stopped the Mercedes and where the sheikh was getting out. As the car drove off, the sheikh looked around briefly, and then shuffled off in the opposite direction to where Ruslan had driven off. Shabalala tried to stay close enough to keep track of the sheikh’s movement, but it was too quiet to get very close and risk compromise. Should the sheikh challenge him, he had his cover story ready – he would pose as a Nigerian and try to sell him his Rolex watch, which he knew was fake anyway, because he’d bought it from a Nigerian for R120. It took the sheikh less than a minute to reach the door, which he tapped twice with a fist. He looked around, saw nothing, banged again and then stepped inside the building when the fire escape door opened. Shabalala was close enough to hear the customary Islamic greeting, ‘Salaam aleikum.’

‘Aleikum salaam,’ said a voice from inside and the sheikh went in. Shabalala fumbled for his cellphone and dialled Durant’s number.

‘The target’s gone into a building, um, it’s the back of, looks like an old theatre or something.’

‘Okay, I’ve still got an A position here close to the drop-off point. Pretty quiet. Hang on.’ Durant slid down in his seat a little further as a set of headlights lit up the used-car showroom floor and a white
BMW
drove up the street slowly and then stopped and made a U-turn. Durant flipped open the cubbyhole to try to find a pen to write down the number plate, but couldn’t find one that worked. ‘Car acting suspiciously in my road,’ he said, and gave Shabalala the number plate over the phone. ‘Remember the number. Hello, are you still there? Hello?’

Shabalala’s phone had gone dead and Durant redialled it. It connected, then disconnected as quickly. The bmw was still idling further down the road and Durant couldn’t move. He dialled again with the same result. The sheikh’s Mercedes came past slowly and turned into the alleyway. Durant saw a figure get in and the Mercedes moved off away from Durant’s position. Another agonising minute went by. Durant phoned again. Voicemail. ‘Come on, Ced,’ Durant said out loud, ‘what’s happening?’

This was bad. A dead phone during an operation was a worst-case scenario. Did his partner need help? If he ran up the road now he would blow the whole thing. In the rear-view mirror, the light from a distant streetlight revealed a tall and slender man with Indian features approaching. Durant slid as low as he could in his seat and watched as the man walked past his Land Rover and climbed into the waiting
BMW
. Durant keyed the number plate into his cellphone at the same time as it rang. ‘Ced, you okay?’

‘You won’t believe what happened.’ Shabalala was out of breath.

‘You okay?’

‘Yes, fine. I was standing around and this guy comes up to me, Richard, someone I know, and starts talking to me.’

‘Someone you know? In this area?’

‘I know, annoying coincidence. Anyway, I couldn’t get rid of him. The target came out alone and left. I didn’t see anybody else. By the time Richard’s gone, it’s all quiet.’

‘The contact must have used another exit. He got into that BM. Geez, I’m gonna kill you. Don’t ever do that to me again. I need coffee. Where do you get coffee at this time of night?’

The owner of the First Act Club, Frisco, was a friend of Julian Dos Santos and let him use a private cubicle at the back of the club. Dos Santos entered through the kitchen undetected, and Cheyenne Ford through the main entrance.

On the phone he’d asked her to ensure she was not followed, to park her car at least two blocks away from the club and walk the rest of the way. It was exciting and now Ford surveyed Dos Santos’s face as they sat across from one another at the First Act Club. He seemed too young to be as influential and self-sacrificing as he was. He was a bit weird for her, although perhaps she was too conservative. The long, greasy pony tail bothered her a bit, but eccentricity was par for the course. He was a legend. Ford wondered what drove a man to live dangerously. Did he enjoy getting death threats, being called names? Being labelled a racist, a fascist, unpatriotic? Yet, perhaps he just loved truth. Driven by the belief to pursue it at any cost. And it did cost. Ford could see it in his face. He’d aged considerably since she’d seen him at the reception last July.

‘I shouldn’t be talking to you, but I know you’re a professional journalist and everything I tell you is off the record.’

Dos Santos’s dark eyebrows narrowed. ‘If I don’t treat my sources of information with the greatest discretion, I wouldn’t have any stories. No one would talk to me, Cheyenne.’ Dos Santos leaned forward when he spoke until his face was uncomfortably close to hers. Strangely, she knew he wasn’t in any way trying to come on to her, it was just how he engaged. Intimately, closely.

‘Please, everything I tell you is privileged. I’m only sharing this so that you can use your own sources and leads to get to the bottom of it. You can have the scoop; I don’t want anything in return.’

‘Why are you doing it, then? I don’t normally get cooperation from diplomats. Too diplomatic, most of them. At best we get a pre-written press briefing telling us a little less than we already know. Especially you American folks.’

Ford leaned forward. ‘I’m obviously not going to give you classified info, you know that.’

Dos Santos bowed his head towards her and she smelt alcohol on his breath. ‘All the best information’s classified. That’s why they classify it.’

Ford nodded. ‘I hear you. Here’s a little bite for you. You’ll know what to do with it. There’s a credible threat against the
US
here. I think it’s important you know it’s Islamic and it’s specifically extremist. That’s all I’m giving you.’

‘Was the threat local or foreign?’

‘It was local. That’s all I can tell you.’ She scratched the back of her head uncomfortably.

‘Okay.’

‘And we kinda know the area the threat call was made from.’ She didn’t look at him.

‘Durban?’

She folded her arms. Too much. She couldn’t give him more. ‘Yes, but I can’t be more specific.’

‘It’s fine. At a guess, there are only one or two areas I can think of. We’ve recently started looking at the subject of extremism in local mosques and are trying to identify imams who are preaching a radical form of Islam.’

Ford’s curiosity was prickled. ‘Have you found any that we should be interested in?’

‘We have found a few.’

‘The name Sheikh U-Haq come up?’ She couldn’t hide the excitement in her voice.

Dos Santos smiled. ‘Should it have?’

‘I can’t say.’ She leaned back and folded her arms defensively.

‘You don’t have to.’ He laughed and she smelt alcohol again.

‘You’re putting words in my mouth, Julian.’

‘Relax; I’m just doing my job.’

‘Which is to extract as much information out of people as possible without them knowing it?’ She hoped the words wouldn’t offend him.

‘The truth. The public has a right to know the truth. I would never publish a single word that is not the absolute truth. That’s my first rule. My second rule is I will never reveal my sources. Everyone benefits.’

Ford nodded. He was right. No harm done.

‘All I’m asking is that you use whatever resources you might have to identify and expose this threat.’

Dos Santos frowned. ‘And you want nothing in return?’

‘I’m just tired of everyone sidestepping this issue of extremism. We are so polite and accommodating. Afraid of offending anybody. No editor wants to even mention the words “Islamic” and “extremism” in the same article.’ The words came out fast, uncontrolled. Undiplomatically.

Dos Santos grinned. ‘This sounds personal, Cheyenne. You’ve added a lot of editorial.’

‘They won’t be happy until the last unbeliever is killed. And we’re unbelievers. Think about it.’ That was it. She wouldn’t say anything more.

‘So was this threat directed at you personally? I mean the threatening call?’

‘It was directed at my country. So it is personal. And I’m a target. I don’t like being a target.’ Ford looked angry. ‘Do you?’

Dos Santos made of note of something on his phone. ‘You’re asking the wrong person. You think I have better sources than the
CIA
?’

‘You’re connected everywhere. I don’t know how seriously anybody else is taking this. I’m not going to just sit back and accept this. I’ve got a problem with the pope kissing the Quran. We’ve totally compromised ourselves.’ She was tired of all the talk. Somebody had to do something.

‘I hear you.’

‘You can get away with writing the truth. When I say it in my reports they call me a bigot.’

Dos Santos chuckled. ‘I’ve been called worse names than that.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I think timing is important on this one. Let’s wait a bit, do our research and then when the time’s right, we go for a spectacular headline. What do you think?’

‘How will we know when the time’s right?’

There was silence for a few seconds. ‘Trust me, we’ll know.’

The morning at the office passed by quickly. Durant was confident Shabalala would return soon with good news. Identifying the owner of the bmw had suddenly become a priority, a small piece of the puzzle which, he hoped, would make the whole picture clearer. In intelligence work, it was often the small details that counted. The tedious but necessary slog work that finally cracked the case. Durant was on his third cup of coffee and catching up on paperwork when his colleague entered his office.

‘I ran the number of the BM on the eNatis system and it comes up as a blue Mazda two-ton pickup.’ Shabalala sounded tense as he handed Durant the printout.

‘Damn,’ Durant said. ‘False plates. Thought it seemed a bit too easy.’

Shabalala frowned. ‘Sure you took the number down right?’

‘Ja, definitely. I put it in my phone after I called you. Flip. Who is the sheikh meeting?’

‘Somebody who clearly wants to stay anonymous.’ Shabalala sat down, Durant noticed, without wiping the chair first.

‘Well, not for long. Let’s get some money’s worth out of our rates.’ He scrolled down his cellphone contact list. ‘I’m going to call the metro police’s traffic camera centre and see if we can track that vehicle from
CCTV
cameras. They’re everywhere.’

Shabalala grinned. ‘Good idea. What are you going to tell them?’

‘That it’s a suspected low-grade con artist or something.’ Durant snapped his fingers. ‘Got it. Only thing is we don’t want to get them too interested and start arresting people.’