Fortress

19

Gusts of wind blowing across the airfield rattled the ancient hangar, which creaked in protest. Hastily painted white during some brief conscription for a UN project, it was revealing its much hardier original khaki, showing through here and there, the last remnant of its Battle of Britain glory days. From outside, the only suggestion of activity, apart from a few parked cars, was a mobile scanner, its ten-metre dish pointing skywards to send and receive all encrypted communications. Inside, the resident pair of Cessnas had been shunted to one side to make room for Woolf’s makeshift operations base. Half a dozen work stations had been erected, along with a couple of large flat-screen monitors and the long table, at the head of which stood Woolf. He hated presentations but Mandler had insisted. ‘Think of it as a peer review,’ he’d suggested unhelpfully. But Woolf knew there would be no arguing. MI5’s section heads would have to be brought into the tent sooner or later.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, my apologies for dragging you away from your desks to this godforsaken backwater.’ Mandler gazed down at the group. ‘What you’re about to hear is known only to myself, Woolf and…’ he glanced at his notes while he tried to remember the names of Woolf’s team ‘… these two bright young things who have been watching his back.’

Cindy and Rafiq smiled in unison. Mandler smiled back, reflecting silently that Cindy, with her pierced lip, and Rafiq, with his iPod lead permanently trailing out of his trouser pocket, were both less than half his age.

‘The Joint Intelligence Committee has yet to be informed, same for SIS, GCHQ and DIS. Why we are keeping this so close to our chests should become apparent. So…’ he paused to frown at Woolf ‘… only the home secretary has been given a sneak peek inside the kimono in case we need to bring her on-side.’

He rubbed his hands together. ‘You all know James. He doesn’t just think outside the box. He tends to squash the box flat, toss it in the bin and leave us to pick up the pieces.’

There was a ripple of amusement.

‘Any questions, don’t hold back.’

He motioned to Woolf to begin. The group stared at him stone-faced, except Cindy and Rafiq, who maintained their frozen smiles.

Woolf stepped in front of the screen. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, meet the new face of British terrorism.’

He tapped a key to bring up the next shot, a soldier in dress uniform: gingery hair, freckles, intense gaze. ‘Retired Corporal Mick Vestey. Household Cavalry sniper, commended for killing two Taliban from more than a mile away. Here he is in his prime: Kandahar, 2007.’

The image changed to a shot of Vestey beside a Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicle, posing with his crew, tanned and oozing confidence.

‘Three days after this was taken the armoured vehicle he was travelling in hit an IED. He was blown clean out of it, suffered just cuts and bruises. The rest died underneath it, despite his frantic efforts to reach them. Two months later he was out of the Army, dishonourably discharged after attacking his CO with a knife.’

Woolf clicked onto the next picture. ‘Here he is that Christmas.’

Vestey was already looking the worse for wear: florid face, sunken cheeks and an air of defeat.

‘And by the following summer…’

He was almost unrecognizable in a police mug shot, eyes glazed and emaciated, in a filthy hoodie.

Woolf turned back to the group as the next photo appeared. ‘But here’s our same Mr Vestey just a few months ago.’

He was transformed, a slightly older version of the man he had been in Helmand, showing none of the scars of his trip to the dark side, in a sports jacket, white shirt and blue tie.

‘Quite a comeback, wouldn’t you say? Clean as a whistle, gainfully self-employed in VIP security, guarding the rich and famous.’

A man at the back raised a forefinger. ‘Membership of shooting clubs?’

Woolf grinned. ‘Aha. Since you ask…’ He hit the pad and up came a still of the gated entrance to what looked like a very well-defended hotel. To the side of the gate was a large sign in gold lettering — ‘Invicta’.

‘This organization should need no introduction. Since the post-Nine/Eleven wars it has become Britain’s foremost charity for ex-service personnel.’

Woolf flicked through a sequence, which showed an impressive campus of buildings surrounded by mature trees and rolling lawns, a lecture theatre, an Olympic-sized pool, an extensive gym and a golf course. ‘This is their HQ in Hampshire. Among the state-of-the-art facilities there does indeed happen to be a shooting range.’

The screen changed to another shot of Vestey, this time in Iraq, posing with his L115a3 sniper rifle.

‘Now, let me take you back to the early hours of June the twenty-eighth this year.’

A series of images from the Suleiman shooting flicked past, with blurred images of the police SCO19s, their faces hidden by their baseball caps. Then a full-face photo of Suleiman.

‘The target: a blameless community worker, widely respected for his campaign against drug-dealers and gangs. A devout Muslim but also an avid promoter of integration. Absolutely nothing to connect him with crime or terrorism. But whose killing apparently by the Metropolitan Police, despite their strenuous denials, brings the entire British Muslim community out on the streets in protest.’

Woolf paused to glance at Rafiq, who nodded his agreement. ‘And the rest, as they say, is history.’ He scrolled through a sequence showing the worst of the riots, looting even in ‘respectable’ areas, and more than one police van on fire. ‘The most widespread civil unrest in my lifetime, certainly. And no sign of its abating.

‘The Met insist they were acting on flashed intelligence about a purported mobile bomb factory in the back of a Transit van, also carrying a passenger suggested to be a returnee from Syria. Their source, not one of ours, you’ll be glad to know.’

Woolf looked round the table. The assembly stared back at him.

Ferris, group director for the north-east, chipped in: ‘We get about a hundred and fifty false leads like that a day. Does there have to be a conspiracy here?’

Woolf nodded eagerly. He was in his stride now. ‘Quite so. But here’s the thing.’ He punched up another slide: a middle-aged man in a police uniform. ‘SCO19 control room officer: John Philip Vestey.’ The next shot showed both men.

‘Mick’s brother. He was on duty the night of the shooting — though unable to communicate with his team on the ground due to an alleged radio fault. Make of that what you will.’

Woolf stood back to let this revelation sink in. Now the room came alive.

‘Are you watching him? Mick.’

Woolf smiled ruefully. ‘You know how many bodies surveillance takes.’ He pointed at Cindy and Rafiq. ‘This is the sum total of my team.’

‘Listening to his calls?’

Cindy shook her head. ‘He doesn’t use a phone.’

‘Ever?’

‘Turns it on every couple of days for just a few minutes. The rest of the time it’s off and he leaves it at home.’

‘Somewhat incriminating.’

Jedburgh, ex-Special Branch and a notorious sceptic, launched in: ‘So you’ve got a classic loner, who’s conquered his demons and trained himself to channel his rage. What’s holding him back? Chances are that having started he’ll probably keep shooting. I suggest you pull your finger out and bring him in before he does any more damage.’

Mandler agreed. ‘Good point. Keep them coming.’

Molly Downham, the only other woman in the group, never spoke up unless she had something pertinent to say. ‘James, can you share with us exactly why you’ve been playing your cards even closer to your chest than usual?’

Woolf nodded. ‘That brings me neatly on to part two. We’ve covered the who, but now comes the why. Why kill a perfectly decent liberal-minded community worker who’s been commended for his work with disaffected youth?’ He leaned forward and hit the space bar again. ‘Recognize him?’

The next sequence was a video of a man in his early thirties standing at a podium, receiving an award from the Mayor of London in front of an audience, who were giving him a standing ovation. ‘Vernon Rolt, founder of Invicta.’

‘So his facility is being used as a secret training ground for white British jihadis. That’s pretty far-fetched, isn’t it?’

Woolf glanced at the other two. ‘Yes. It’s crazy and everyone who’s heard it agrees.’

It was Molly’s turn again. ‘Are you actually pointing the finger at Vernon Rolt?’

Woolf raised his eyebrows inscrutably. ‘I wouldn’t want to go that far… just yet.’

‘But that’s why you’re keeping this in the family.’

Woolf nodded again.

Jedburgh cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, James, but I’m not buying it. Right now we’ve got an inundation of returnees from Syria. A lot of them have seen and done unimaginable things, been thrown together with the most out-there extremists. They’re trained, they’re battle-hardened and we can’t keep track of them because they’re using different names, keeping away from their families and so on. We just don’t have the resources or the intelligence.’

This Woolf knew to be true, to his frustration. And Jedburgh wasn’t done.

‘The sight of one of their own being all lovey-dovey and multi-culti with Christians, atheists and whatnot, they’re going to see that guy as the enemy even more than the Anglos. It’s a nice idea, but I think you’re going to find you’re barking up the wrong tree. Radicalization is the issue, nothing else.’

The meeting fell silent. Woolf glanced at Rafiq, then Cindy. Both were studying their hands intently.

Mandler got up and brought the meeting to a close with a speech about how grateful he was to them for sparing the time, and waited while the others filed out to their cars.

‘Interesting.’ He gave Woolf a mischievous look.

‘Really?’

‘You have to consider all sides of the problem. And the trouble is, what you’ve got here is conjecture. I think we might park this for now. Perhaps I can find something else on which you can train your enormous brain.’

It sounded like a compliment, yet also a putdown.

And with that he folded up his glasses and left.