Rogue Elements (21 page)

‘He’s part of an ongoing investigation by another service.’

‘Damn right he is. DEA, NCA, a dozen other counter-narcotics units. I’m sure they’d all like to know what a British intelligence director is doing hobnobbing with a drug baron.’

‘This is not something I can discuss with anyone beyond the fourth floor.’

She sat back, temporarily winded. ‘The Chief knows?’

‘He does.’

‘So you’d have no objection if I raise it with him?’

‘Knock yourself out.’ He was smiling again, at ease and confident.

Wraye shook her head. ‘What kind of pig shit are you swimming in these days, Tony? Rodrigo Salis, my God.’

That smug look didn’t waver a jot.

She was out of ammunition. He had stonewalled perfectly, giving away almost nothing. She stood up. ‘How do you feel about your country, Tony?’ It was an old joke from their earliest days together: the question Oxbridge tutors were supposed to ask of their brightest students over a cup of tea before steering them towards SIS.

‘I love it dearly,’ said Watchman. ‘And I’m fighting to preserve it in the most effective way I can.’

It was a moment of odd sincerity that left her feeling more unsettled than anything else he’d said.

This time he did not dress up.

A receptionist wearing hoop earrings guarded the front entrance of the clinic. Beyond her, a pale green passageway led to four consulting rooms. Arkell approached with a large envelope and a clipboard.

‘Klara Richter?’

The receptionist held out her hand for the envelope. Drawing back, Arkell mimed a signature on his clipboard. He was pointed to a seat but chose to stay standing. When Klara appeared, she stared at him in confusion and then in silent accusation.

‘Step outside?’ he suggested.

On the street, Klara said, ‘You’re not a priest.’

He waited for a pizza delivery boy to saunter past. ‘I expect you’ve probably guessed by now that I work for British Intelligence.’ When she didn’t speak, he added, ‘And you’ll have understood this is about Gavriel.’

‘What do you want?’ Anxiety scratched every word.

‘Ms Richter, do you know what your boyfriend does for a living?’

‘He’s a businessman.’

‘He’s not a businessman.’

She frowned. ‘He sells engineering equipment for Rovman Industries.’

‘Look, Klara,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s no easy way to tell you. Gavriel Yadin is a former Israeli intelligence officer, trained to kill. An assassin.’

She stared at him in disgust. Off-centre. One incensed eye out-glaring the other. ‘Is this meant to be a joke?’

‘Three weeks ago he poisoned the prime minister of the Netherlands. Two days from now he will attempt to kill the president of Brazil or the prime minister of Canada – or possibly both. I have to stop him, and I need your help to do it.’

She laughed hollowly. ‘Excuse me, I have to go back to work. Please don’t come here again.’

‘I’m going to show you something. It’s not pleasant. This is what Gavriel does.’

Before she could move he had ripped open the envelope and pulled out a large black-and-white photograph. She twisted violently away. ‘You’re insane!’

‘Klara!’ He gripped her arm. ‘Gavriel did this because he was ordered to by the Israeli government. Now, he’s working for someone much more dangerous.’

‘Why do you have this picture?’ she cried, struggling to get free. ‘What kind of sick man are you?’

‘I know this is hard for you to –’

‘It’s bullshit!’

He waited for her breathing to settle, then let go of her. ‘Why don’t you call him and ask?’ he suggested softly.

She looked towards the clinic but didn’t move.

‘You don’t have his phone number, do you? Why do you think that is?’

Angrily, she said, ‘Yes, he’s married, I know that. I’m not naïve. He told me in the beginning. I’m not doing anything to break up his family.’

‘Is that why you agreed to travel on a false passport? Why you both used false names when you went on vacation?’

She blinked at that, but quickly recovered. ‘His wife’s father works for the Israeli Police. Gavriel didn’t want to . . . leave a trail.’

‘Klara, he’s not married.’

‘He told me early on,’ she said dogmatically. ‘That’s why I can’t call him. In case
she
picks up.’

‘So instead you leave messages with a violent criminal named Dejan.’

She looked at him in amazement. ‘Dejan is Rovman’s German sales agent.’

Arkell pulled out his smartphone, found the Rovman website, and searched for the German contact details. He showed her the screen. ‘Do you want to check that?’

She stood very still, not responding.

‘Or you could call them and ask about Gavriel.’

Still no answer. He pocketed the phone.

‘Klara, we know you were in Tobago with Gavriel three weeks ago. A lovely vacation, lots of sun, lots of bird watching. How much of the time were you together?’

‘All the time.’ A chill, scared note had crept into her voice.

‘That’s not true, is it? At least on the last day – and I’d guess several others – you split up for a few hours, didn’t you? On the north side of the island? Somewhere around Englishman’s Bay?’

‘How do you know these things?’ she whispered. Her bunched shoulders were trembling. ‘Were you spying on us?’

‘What was his reason? Did he want to hike faster than you? Did he say you scared off the birds?’

‘He . . . he’s been suffering . . .’ She stared at her ankle boots. ‘How do you say? Mid-life? He’s been depressed. He wanted time with himself . . . to think.’

‘In the hills above Englishman’s Bay?’

She nodded.

‘Were you aware that the Think Again event during which Prime Minister van der Velde died was taking place above Englishman’s Bay on the last day of your vacation?’

She closed her eyes and did not open them for over a minute. Simon Arkell felt acutely the pain of her comprehension.

‘Then this is all a terrible coincidence,’ she said, her last, hopeless bid. ‘Like those poor people locked up in Guantanamo. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now you are going to lock up Gavriel too.’

‘You don’t really believe that.’

‘He’s not a murderer!’ She was choking on the words. ‘He’s not a murderer! He’s not!’

Her resistance collapsed then. She sat down heavily on the pavement and buried her head in her hands.

Crouching beside her, hating the role he was required to play, Arkell said, ‘It’s a really simple choice, you see. We can have you arrested now on a charge of conspiracy to murder Anneke van der Velde, as well as a range of other charges of obstructing justice and so on. That will mean at least three years in prison. You will find it very difficult to get any kind of health-care work with a criminal record. Or you can help us prevent another murder, and in return we’ll make sure you stay out of court.’

The General Directorate for Investigations, or Mabahith, is one of the world’s busier domestic intelligence services. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has had no shortage of internal threats to keep it occupied, from belligerent citizens returning home after the 2001 fall of the Taliban to the sparks from the Arab Spring that threatened to set light to the Wahhabi tinderbox. The jihadist targets – petroleum refineries, foreign compounds, government offices, royal palaces, Mecca itself – are plentiful and precious enough to keep the officers of the Mabahith very twitchy indeed.

Madeleine Wraye met Ahmed al-Hadlaq a few hundred metres from the Mabahith’s `Ulaisha Prison. She had found it necessary to enter the prison on two occasions during her long career with SIS, and was glad not to have to do so again now. Many of the detainees had never faced trial; a few had been tortured. The two Iranian officials al-Hadlaq caught comparing uranium enrichment notes with a particularly ambitious Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda were in a pitiful state by the time Wraye was invited to interrogate them. It was not a pleasant environment.

‘My apologies,’ said al-Hadlaq, gesturing around the mean coffee bar in which they were seated. His diamond cufflinks glittered in a smooth arc. ‘You understand, as it’s not official . . .’

‘I’m very comfortable here,’ smiled Wraye. ‘And I’m grateful you could interrupt your schedule for me.’

Al-Hadlaq waved away any suggestion of inconvenience. ‘Whatever I can do.’ His rich, silky tones were hypnotic. Wraye had witnessed the command they had over sleep-deprived and disorientated prisoners. She had immense respect for the man’s professional capabilities.

The Mabahith officer made a coded gesture to a waiter. He pulled a laptop from a steel briefcase and flipped it open. ‘The man you asked about: Sidney Dawson. Our records confirm he entered the country through King Khalid international airport. He arrived on a British Airways flight direct from London Heathrow. As a declared MI6 courier, he was met by officers from my service at Immigration and provided with a courtesy escort throughout his stay in the Kingdom.’

‘He was under Mabahith observation the entire time?’

‘Just like MI5 we prefer to know what foreign intelligence assets – even friendly assets – are doing within our borders.’

Two coffees arrived, small and very dark. Wraye listed cardamom among her least favourite spices, and loathed sugar in coffee, but she sipped hers with the appreciation she knew was expected.

‘Are there any notes from the escorting officers?’

‘Of course.’ One-handed, he typed a series of commands on the Arabic keyboard. ‘Routine procedurals. Subject arrived. Subject welcomed. Drive to Safarat. No traffic. Security forces checkpoint: credentials accepted. Drive to Residence of United Kingdom Ambassador. Subject entered Residence 22:47. Subject left Residence 22:53. Drive to Radisson Blu. Subject checks in 23:21. Subject goes to room. Subject receives room service 23:44. Subject receives breakfast room service 06:29. Subject exits room 07:05. Drive to King Khalid. Subject checks in to British Airways flight 07:42. Subject passes through Immigration 07:48. End report.’

‘Is there a picture?’

Al-Hadlaq tapped two keys and turned the laptop towards her. A standard passport photograph next to a CCTV image. It was not Yadin. ‘You know him?’

‘Yes,’ Wraye admitted. Yes, she had met the man. Short and overweight, owlish glasses on a fleshy face, ill-fitting clothes. One of the deniable scavengers Tony Watchman used from time to time to smuggle firearms across unchallenging borders and perform the occasional clumsy burglary. Low grade but harmless. Certainly not the type to slip out of a hotel room under Mabahith guard, talk his way back into a secure diplomatic quarter and make a murder look like a natural death.

Damn it. She had wanted it to be Tony.

‘Do you have access to the passenger arrivals records for that day?’

‘All passengers?’

‘Adult male Caucasian.’

Al-Hadlaq typed swiftly. ‘No name?’

‘I’ll know him when I see him.’

‘Saudis too?’

‘It’s possible he was travelling as one. But start with the foreigners.’

The passport photographs began scrolling across the screen. Face after face after face. They flickered for an instant and were gone again: both intelligence officers were well practised in this art.

More coffees were brought, and still the faces kept coming. Arab, Western, Indian. Wraye hardly blinked. ‘Stop,’ she murmured. ‘Back two.’

The name was Dieter Rheinhardt. Chemical engineer. It was almost funny.

Poor Rupert Ellington hadn’t stood a chance.

‘I know him,’ muttered Al-Hadlaq. ‘We’ve had a Request for Identification from the Canadians.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s why you’re here?’

‘Yes.’

‘We found a match.’

‘Oh?’ Wraye sat back. CSIS had told her no service had been able to offer anything on the Yadin image.

‘He was in Bahrain recently. We thought he was one of yours – an MI6 asset, I mean. There has been bad blood recently with Canada over carbon pricing, so we chose to favour our British friends and say nothing.’

‘Abu Ali,’ said Wraye slowly, ‘what made you think this man was one of ours?’

Ahmed Al-Hadlaq returned to his keyboard, a touch of embarrassment showing for once on those smooth cheeks. ‘Please remember, Bahrain is going through difficult times. We have to be rigorous in our surveillance on behalf of our ally. Mr Vine is a highly valued friend of Saudi Arabia but, as I have said, we prefer to know what our friends are doing.’

The photograph filled the screen. George Vine had a glass of mint tea raised to his mouth, his lips caught in an unfortunate pucker on their approach to the rim. By contrast, his companion in the Bahraini hotel lounge was perfectly composed. It seemed he had resisted Vine’s inveterate hospitality, for there was nothing on the table before him. Instead of a glass, he held a tablet computer. And where Vine was dressed in slacks and open-neck shirt, this man wore a dark grey suit and crimson tie. On this occasion, it seemed, Gavriel Yadin was all business.

There was still time before her flight home, and Madeleine Wraye wanted to satisfy herself on one particular point. The detour would be noted in the Mabahith records, but it was important to be sure. Rather than head straight for the checkpoint off King Khalid Road, she had the driver take her due west from `Ulaisha into Wadi Hanifa, the valley that runs through the western suburbs of Riyadh.

On the way, she called Joyce. ‘I need you to get me a meeting with George Vine as soon as possible. I’d call him myself but I don’t want him working out where I am.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Can you meet me at Heathrow tomorrow morning? Bring everything you have on Vine.’

They followed the wadi road north-west, past orange groves and palm plantations, past warehouses and a dam, until Wraye’s smartphone GPS told her they were skirting the back of the diplomatic quarter.

‘Please don’t be alarmed. I just want to take a quick look,’ she told the driver as she stepped out of the car. He was presumably an officer of the Mabahith, but he raised no objection.

Her shoes were flat, which was good; they were expensive Italian patent leather, which was not. They were ruined by the scramble up the side of the wadi. Nevertheless there was nothing especially challenging about the ascent. A wall ran along the edge of the quarter, but it was not the sort of barrier to trouble a man like Yadin. At night, even with the occasional patrol, he could have been up this slope and over the wall in less than a minute.

That was all she needed to know.

Klara Richter didn’t seem surprised to find a young American in the back of the hire car. She did not respond to Danny’s cheery greeting. Arkell stopped off on Steindamm just long enough for her to collect a bag of clothes and jam a black felt fedora low over her eyes. The drive south to Strasbourg took more than six hours, and other than Danny’s occasional attempts to connect, the journey passed in silence.

At a service station outside Hanover, Arkell bought coffee and belegtes Brot, which she accepted with a muttered thank you. Passing Frankfurt airport, he realized she was crying. He kept his eyes on the road, pretended not to notice.

As they crossed the Rhine into France, he thought about the Legion and the jail cell that still awaited him. Nothing happened: no gendarmes, no flashing lights, no cries of betrayal. On impulse, he said suddenly, ‘Look, I know how it feels.’ She did not seem to have heard.

It was almost dark when they drove into Strasbourg. Arkell lodged Danny and his laptop in a corporate hotel with plentiful Wi-Fi, three streets from the pension he’d reserved for himself off Grand Rue. ‘José Cumes,’ he reminded him at the reception.

‘Whatever,’ said Danny wearily. ‘Man, that was
the
most depressing road trip in history. Seriously, dude, you need to lighten up with that Fräulein.’

At the pension he gave Klara the bed and slept on the floor, blocking the door. His first night on French soil in over seventeen years was plagued by dreams of mutilated corpses – Yadin’s victims, who had somehow become his own.