Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide (27 page)

The warder responded, ‘This is not a spa, M’sieur.’

Once within the high white walls of the interview room, Martin remained standing until Amir Khan was brought in. He watched as, closely escorted by a warder, the young prisoner shuffled to a chair on one side of the table and sat down heavily, resting his manacled hands on the metal table top. Martin thought he looked older than the scrawny youth he had seen in the photograph. He seemed to have put on several pounds, presumably from lack of exercise and the stodgy prison food, and had let his beard grow, which made his face seem fuller.

As the Frenchman sat down opposite him, Amir Khan slumped forward in his chair and stared down at the table, avoiding his gaze. He looked relaxed but his hands and legs were shaking, gently vibrating the light chain that connected them, setting up a faint metallic tinkling.

‘Well, Amir,’ Martin began, ‘I have good news.’ Khan lifted his eyes momentarily to look at him and then dropped them again.

‘Do you want to hear it?’

Khan responded with a slight nod.

‘It should be possible to arrange your transfer to the United Kingdom. This could happen in a matter of weeks, possibly even sooner, depending on our conversation today. I assume this is acceptable to you – you can of course fight the extradition if you like. A court will appoint a lawyer to act on your behalf if you do. Would you like that?’

There was no response.

‘You understand that if you are extradited you may be tried in a British court, and if found guilty, sent to prison there. On the other hand, there may not be enough evidence to convict you, and then you would be released. Where would you go then? Back to your family in Birmingham? If that happened, I would expect the British security authorities to be keeping a very sharp eye on you and your contacts there – and on your family, of course. Perhaps that would not make you very popular in your part of Birmingham. What do you think?’

Still the prisoner did not look up or speak. The only sounds in the room came from the tinkling of his chains and the armed guard’s shuffling feet.

‘You have been away from Birmingham a long time,’ continued Martin. ‘Firstly with your trip to Pakistan to visit your relatives and then with all the other exciting journeys that you described in such detail to my British colleague when she visited you. You must miss your family. I understand they have not been to see you. Perhaps they don’t approve of your activities.’

Khan moved uneasily in his chair, then slumped forward again and said nothing.

‘I don’t suppose you care whether your parents approve or not. Who doesn’t want to rebel against their parents at your age? And I understand from the British that your father is fiercely traditional, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he disapproved of you. But what about Tahira, your sister? What does she think, do you imagine?’

At the mention of his sister’s name, Khan looked up and stared at Martin, his eyelids flickering with surprise. Martin pressed on. ‘I would have thought you would be worried about her. Though of course she is a woman, and I suppose that means she doesn’t matter to you.’

He paused and watched an expression of resentment spreading over Khan’s face.

‘I’ve noticed that your group of friends was all male. It’s almost as if you don’t like women very much . . .’ He let the implication hang in the air for a moment, then added with the trace of a sneer, ‘Though I gather your sister’s nothing special.’

Khan suddenly sat up straight in his chair, exclaiming in protest, ‘You know nothing about my sister, or me, or my friends!’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Amir. I know a great deal about you and your family and your sister and your friends. And as I say, you and your mates don’t seem to like women very much.’

‘That’s not true,’ Khan suddenly shouted. ‘Ask Malik. He thinks my sister’s –’

Then, realising he had lost control, he shut his mouth like a trap.

‘What’s that? He fancies your sister, does he?’

Khan’s face was full of fury, and he tried to stand up. The guard moved quickly towards him but the prisoner was forced back into his chair, yanked by the chain; the prison officer went back to his post beside the door. The silence in the room was broken only by Amir Khan’s sniffing as he wept quietly.

Martin let the silence hang for a time and then he said, ‘Look, Amir, I think your sister needs you. I think she may be in some danger from these people you call your friends. From what I’ve heard, they may not be quite such good friends as you think. But there’s not much you can do to help her, sitting here in this prison. Why don’t you try being a bit more frank? You may be able to do her a lot of good if you talk a bit more truthfully about what happened to you. If you don’t, you could be here for a long time – doing no one any good.

‘There are lots of ways in which I can help you and your sister – but that means you’ve got to stop telling lies, and we all know you have been. I know, the British know, and you know. Just think about it – and if you want to talk to me again, tell the warders and I’ll come straight away.’

And with that, he stood up and nodded to the guard, who opened the heavy metal door. A warder, standing outside in the passage, came in and led Amir Khan shuffling away.

Martin left the Santé feeling reasonably satisfied. He had certainly shaken up young Amir Khan and was hopeful of hearing from him before too long. He had got one name out of him at least – Malik. He would send his report over to Thames House that afternoon and hope that the name would mean something to Liz and her colleagues.

Chapter 40

Dave Armstrong poked his head round Liz’s office door minutes after she had read the message from Martin. ‘Just the man I want to see,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard from the French. They’ve been to see Amir Khan again.’

‘Any luck?’

‘No breakthrough yet, though there may be a chink of hope. But there was something that’s got me thinking. He was needled into saying that one of his group in the mosque has a bit of a thing for his sister, Tahira.’

‘Not very pious, that.’

‘Hmm. She’s a beautiful girl. And it’s somehow comforting to know that even an extremist has human feelings.’

‘Do you know which one it is?’

‘Yes. It’s Malik, that guy who attacked me.’

Dave took this in for a moment. ‘Is that all they got out of Khan?’

‘Yes, for the moment. But it could help us a lot. Depending on Tahira, of course.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. I know what you mean.’ He thought for a minute. ‘A4 have a good sense of her routine now, so I’m sure I could set up another meeting with her pretty easily.’

‘Okay,’ Liz said without enthusiasm.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘You said she’d offered to help – and that was before this landed in our lap. If Malik is going to Pakistan, maybe she can chat him up and find out when . . . maybe find out more about this mysterious Westerner in London. This is just the kind of break we need.’

‘I suppose it is.’ But Liz’s voice still lacked enthusiasm. ‘It’s just that asking Tahira to sidle up to Malik is like asking Daniel to enter the lions’ den.’

‘That turned out Okay.’

Liz smiled. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Of course I do. But we’ve got to take the risk.’

‘Even if it means putting Tahira in harm’s way? Look what happened to Boatman.’

‘Yes, I know. But from what I’ve seen of Tahira, I think she’s a whole lot brighter than Boatman.’ Dave was emphatic. ‘There will be many more people in danger than Tahira if we don’t do this.’

‘Yes. But we’re asking a lot of someone who’s got no experience in our line of things. It’s not as if Tahira’s an extremist we’ve managed to turn. She’s just a nice Muslim girl who works in her father’s shop, for goodness’ sake.’

Dave sat down on the other side of Liz’s desk. She looked at him and sighed. She said, ‘I know what you’re going to say. But it used to be a lot easier: there were people on one side trying to blow things up, and there was us on the other side, trying to prevent them. We didn’t use anyone to help us who wasn’t part of the fight – and who didn’t really understand the danger of helping us. In fact, we made jolly certain that they did understand.

‘It’s not that simple any more. We have to get help from anyone who offers it – we haven’t the luxury of saying, “Leave it to us, you’re not a professional so you can’t get involved.”’

‘But Tahira volunteered to help; wants to help. I’m sorry, Liz, you have no choice. You can’t say no.’

‘I know,’ she said. And later Dave’s words stayed with her, only partly allaying the anxiety she felt about asking Tahira to put herself in harm’s way.

Two days later Liz was sitting in the A4 transit van in the car park of a small industrial estate on the outskirts of Birmingham. She had driven up from London through very heavy rain and her eyes felt strained from peering through the spray thrown up by the lorries she’d overtaken on the motorway. Eventually the rain had given way to a sullen drizzle. She’d parked her car two miles away at another small group of factory outlets, and had managed to step in an enormous puddle as she’d run through the downpour to the waiting transfer vehicle that had driven her here. Now she sat with her shoes off, her sodden feet under a folding table. In another corner of the van an A4 officer called Felix sat crouched on a stool, reading the
Daily Mail
.

So far so good – Dave had left another note for Tahira in her father’s shop the night before, just at closing time. They knew that this was the day each week when she came here, driven by her cousin Nazir, to buy bulk quantities of supplies from Costco for her father’s shop. While she walked the aisles putting her order together, Nazir – not the sharpest knife in the drawer apparently – would cross to the other side of the overpass and visit an amusement arcade, playing pinball for an hour. They were relying on Tahira to have thought up some excuse to delay him there this morning for an extra half hour, while she met Liz in the van.

Liz leaned down and felt her toes; they were still cold, but just dry enough for her to slip her shoes back on. There was a tap on the van’s back door and Felix sprang up and opened it. Liz caught a glimpse of Dave Armstrong, then another figure emerged from behind him and with his help climbed up into the van. Felix hopped out and closed the door behind him. He and Dave would watch outside from a waiting car; there were two other A4 cars parked at the front perimeter of the industrial estate, occupants ready to spring into action if needed.

‘Sit down, Tahira,’ said Liz, pointing to the chair on the other side of the table. ‘I hope you didn’t get soaked out there.’

‘No, it’s almost stopped raining.’

‘Good. We haven’t got much time, so let me tell you why I wanted to see you.’ She explained that her French colleagues had talked to Amir in prison and that he was well. It was possible he might be returned to Britain, where he would be remanded in prison while it was decided if he should face charges.

At this, Tahira’s face lit up. ‘My father wouldn’t let me go to France to see Amir,’ she said. ‘But if he comes back home, I want to visit him. Will I be allowed?’

‘Yes, but possibly not for a while. Remember, he’s been involved in an attempt to hijack a ship. That’s a very serious thing.’

‘I know,’  Tahira said, and her face grew sombre. ‘But it’s not just the ship you’re worried about, is it?’

‘No, as I told you, we’re concerned because we think he was sent to Somalia to take part in terrorist activities, after being trained in Pakistan. But what worries us most is that we’re pretty sure he was recruited here.’

‘At the mosque,’ said Tahira bitterly.

‘It seems so. And if he was recruited at the mosque, then others might have been recruited there too.’

Tahira said, ‘I promised to try and find out more about Abdi Bakri. But I’m afraid I haven’t been very successful.’

‘Don’t worry.’

‘I will keep trying.’

‘No, please don’t.’ Liz saw the puzzled look on Tahira’s face. She took a deep breath. ‘Actually, there’s something else I’d rather you did instead.’

Chapter 41

It was another gloomy day, precociously autumnal in its dankness. In Thames House Liz was writing a report of her meeting with Tahira when she became aware that someone was standing in the doorway of her office. She looked up – and groaned a secret groan. It was Geoffrey Fane. She hoped that at least he would have something interesting to tell her.

He did, though as usual he took his time getting to the point. ‘I like this new office of yours,’ he began inconsequentially, pointing out of the window. ‘I find a river view lifts the spirits on a gloomy day like this. Even on a floor this low down in the building.’

Liz suppressed a sigh, thinking of Fane’s eyrie high up in Vauxhall Cross. She said tartly, ‘I’m suited for life at this level. I wouldn’t want to develop ideas above my station.’

Fane allowed a smile to touch his lips. ‘Touché, Elizabeth. But
à nos moutons.
I’ve been considering this hijacking business of yours. Bruno in Athens has been speaking to our friend Berger and there’s another UCSO shipment planned for two weeks’ time. Same vessel – the
Aristides
– and to Kenya again. The same route as before, right by the Horn of Africa.’