The Angel

Chapter Thirty-Two

Isabella killed the engine of her Kawasaki and rested it on its side stand. She unlocked the brand new door and pulled it up, then went into the dark space and disabled the alarm. The place felt secure now. She was pleased with the work that she had arranged and ran her fingers across the cold steel lockers.

Today was a big day.

The delivery was arranged for the afternoon. The ancient white Vauxhall Astravan turned off the Route de Safi and bounced across the uneven approach road to the row of industrial units. The driver drew to a halt and got out with a clipboard in his hand.

‘Sabrina Atika?’

‘That’s right,’ Isabella said.

‘You need to sign here.’

She took the clipboard and signed where he indicated.

‘What?’ he said when she held on to the clipboard.

‘Can you move them inside, please?’

‘You have to. I don’t do that.’

‘I’ll give you an extra three hundred dirham if you do.’

The man grunted his assent and went to the back of the van. He opened the doors. The space was crammed to the roof with wooden packing crates of various sizes. The man took one of the larger ones and hauled it out. It slid off the back of the van and crashed onto the ground.

‘Careful!’ she said.

He cursed under his breath. ‘What do you have in there?’ he asked.

‘Equipment.’

‘Heavy equipment.’

‘Stop moaning,’ she said. ‘You want your money — or don’t you?’

They moved the crates from the van into the unit. Isabella paid the driver his extra money and watched him get into his van and drive away.

It was just past dusk, and she paused outside the unit for a minute, just letting a sense of the place sink in. The neighbouring properties were empty. Some of them were vacant, as advertised by the signs of the realtors that were fixed to the doors or the walls. Those that had been busy earlier were empty now, their occupants packed up and returned to the city. The occasional car hummed along the Route de Safi, headlights snapping on as the desert approached, but there was nothing else.

She pulled the drawstring to turn on the light, shut and locked the door, and set to work.

Isabella had packed the equipment from the garage into the crates, protecting it with balled-up newspaper and old blankets. The crates came in several different sizes. There were those that were long and thin and others that were square. She had sealed them carefully, driving nails through the lids so that they could only be opened with deliberate effort and not accidentally.

She had a claw hammer on the floor, and using the end, she pried off the lid of the nearest box and stood it against the wall. The inside was stuffed to the top with newspaper; she cleared it out to reveal an M-15 ArmaLite flat-carbine. She pulled it out. It had the M4 collapsible buttstock and forged lower receiver, the mid-length hand guard and gas system, a chrome-lined sixteen-inch heavy barrel, a rail front gas block and a flash hider. The chamber had elongated M4-style feed ramps for more reliable feeding with heavier bullet weights. It was an excellent weapon. Beatrix had shown her how to use it.

Her mother had left her an impressive armoury of weapons. She pried open the lids of the other crates and started to sort through the contents. There were semi-automatic pistols, rifles, submachine guns, shotguns. She took out a TAR-21 bullpup assault rifle and an MK249 with ten one-hundred-round soft-pack ammo bags. There was a Mossberg 500 shotgun and an M110 sniper rifle with bipod. Flashbangs. Knives, frag grenades, night-vision goggles, a radio set, and boxes upon boxes of ammunition of all different calibres.

She arranged them carefully in the lockers: the rifles went into one locker, the revolvers and semi-automatics in another, the shotguns in a third. She matched the various calibre ammo with the relevant firearms. She opened a box of 9mm rounds, and they glittered in the light.

She intended to break each firearm down so that it could be cleaned and maintained, but it was late by the time that she had unpacked, and she decided that she would start that task another day. She was pleased with what she had done. She felt good about the weapons. They were safer here. She didn’t know how she could make them much safer.

She opened the door, switched off the light and stepped outside. It was cold now. She put on her leather riding jacket, pulled down and locked the door, got onto her Kawasaki and rode back to Marrakech.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Pope visited the dead drop every day for the next three days. On the third day, the chalk mark on the seat indicated that there was something waiting for him. He walked on to the tree, waited until the path was clear and then retrieved the small slip of paper that had been left inside the nook. It gave a code that he knew referred to a motorway service station on the M25, a date and a time. The location was correct, but Pope deducted a day and an hour from the time to find the correct details for the rendezvous.

It was today’s date. He had three hours to get there.

He drove to Junction 9 of the motorway and came off at Cobham services. There was a branch of Costa Coffee, with a number of tables arranged outside. Vivian Bloom was sitting at one of them. He was wearing a knitted waistcoat under his tweed jacket, despite the warmth in the air. His tie was knotted loosely and bore a stain just before it disappeared into the waistcoat. He looked particularly ecclesiastical today, Pope thought. Tweedy and donnish.

Pope sat down next to him, and the spook shook his hand.

‘Good afternoon, Control. Can I get you a coffee?’

‘No, sir. I’m fine.’

A man passed them. Bloom waited until he was gone and then leaned forward. ‘Well done.’

‘No problems?’

‘None,’ he replied. ‘It was very well done.’

Bloom was thinner than Pope remembered him. There was a lilt in his voice, a sibilance to his consonants that gave him an effeminate aspect that Pope did not remember from before. He did remember the bookishness, the way he steepled his fingers when he was thinking, the sense that he was being assessed when Bloom fixed his rheumy gaze on him. He remembered the thin lips that whitened when he smiled, the mousiness, the same apologetic loyalty to decisions that he professed to find ridiculous. He remembered, too, the obvious sharpness of his wit and counselled himself to keep that in mind. Bloom had been a player in the intelligence community for many years. Pope was reminded of an old joke that had attached itself to the man during the Cold War. In the case of nuclear attack, it was said, the only things that would survive were cockroaches and Vivian Bloom.

‘Where’s Hussain now?’

Bloom chuckled. ‘You know better than to ask that, old boy.’

Pope knew enough to have a pretty good guess. The CIA had black sites on the territory of several compliant states, and given the limited range of the Gulfstream that had taken off with Hussain, he would have put money on Vilnius in Lithuania or Ain Aouda in Morocco. The location was irrelevant. He would have been taken to an anonymous cell in an anonymous building. As far as Hussain was concerned, he could have been anywhere. But Pope doubted whether it would have been something that would have had much of his attention. The treatment he would have been receiving would have been the main thing on his mind.

‘Did you get anything useful?’

Bloom took a pipe and a packet of tobacco from his pocket. He reached into the packet with his thumb and forefinger and drew out a wad of tobacco. ‘He has been very cooperative,’ he said as he pressed the tobacco into the bowl. ‘He’s confirmed that he was responsible for radicalising the three boys. His mosque ran a conference last year and flew in a handful of jihadi clerics. Two of them have been banned from Britain since then. Shouldn’t have been let in at all, you ask me, but there you go. The other one’s on the US no-fly list. Hussain admitted that he met Bashir and Hakeem at the conference, and that Bashir introduced him to Aamir. He spent the next six months grooming them.’ He put a match to the bowl and puffed until the tobacco was alight.

‘What about the others? The shooters?’

‘He says they had nothing to do with him. He says he just supplied the bombers. He says there’s another man.’

‘You believe him, sir?’

‘Our CIA friends believe him. They seem confident that he wouldn’t be inclined to lie to them. You know how thorough they are, Control. I think we can rely on their assurances.’

‘The organiser — does Hussain know who he is?’

‘Unfortunately, no. Only that he’s still in the country and that there will be follow-up attacks. The word he chose was that there would be a “wave” of them.’

‘That’s not very helpful.’

‘No,’ Bloom said, puffing on the pipe. ‘But it does get a little better.’

He laid the pipe on the table and took a printout from his briefcase. He gave it to Pope. It was a photograph of a man and looked like some sort of promotional shot. The man was wearing a pristine white dishdasha topped with a red-and-white keffiyeh. He was handsome, with a well-trimmed beard and clear, laughing eyes. He looked confident. He looked like money.

‘His name is Salim Hasan Mafuz Muslim al-Khawari. Bit of a mouthful, I know. Prominent Sunni cleric, naturalised Lebanese, partly resident in the UK until last year, lived in a big place in Mayfair. His family made their money in oil, he inherited it and now he’s as rich as Croesus. Hussain says al-Khawari is the financier behind the attack.’

A family of four, laughing and joking, strolled past. Pope waited until they were out of earshot.

‘Were we watching him?’

‘Of course we were, but we didn’t have a clue he was anything other than an Arab playboy who comes over here to get the things he can’t get back home: booze, whores — you know. Hussain says he’s heavily involved with the Kuwait Clerics Union, which we know has channelled tens of millions of dollars to ISIS and other jihadi groups in Iraq and Syria. He’s made a big PR play about a big collective fundraising trust he set up for Syria involving a host of Kuwaiti charities. But Hussain says that’s all bollocks. The money’s been sent to fund the caliphate, and a million of it was earmarked to help those boys blow up the House of Commons.’

‘You think it’s credible?’

‘There’s always a financier. The Qatari who provided ‘financial support’ for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before 9/11. The Saudi prince who paid for training and equipment for 7/7. I don’t think it’s beyond the pale at all.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Switzerland. His European businesses are headquartered there. He’s not usually in the same place for long. Tends to live in hotels. But his family is there. His wife — one of them, anyway — and his children.’

Bloom put the stem of the pipe back into his mouth and inhaled. Pope felt that he was being assessed.

‘Sir?’

‘How close were you to the third bomber?’

‘Very close.’

‘What happened to McNair? You saw it, didn’t you?’

‘I was very close to that, too.’

‘How do you feel about that afternoon?’

It was a strange question. ‘If you’re asking if I’m all right, I am. I’ve seen a lot of death in my time.’

‘But not like the bomb? The civilians?’

‘Are you asking whether I feel angry? I do.’

‘Surely more than anger, Control?’

Pope found the questions irritating, and he spoke with sudden heat. ‘Are you asking if I want to be involved in making sure it doesn’t happen again? Yes, sir. I do.’

‘You’ve said it yourself, Captain. You’ve seen a lot of death. And in my experience, most men have a tolerance for that which cannot be exceeded without consequences. Episodes. Breakdowns. Your friend Captain Milton is a perfect example of what can happen if a careful watch is not kept on these things.’ He smiled benignly. ‘I suppose what I’m saying, Captain Pope, is that I want to be quite sure, if we are to continue with this, that you have the mental capacity to carry out my instructions. What comes next has the potential to be rather more difficult than abducting a one-legged, one-eyed man from his bed.’

Pope found his watery gaze discomfiting, but he held it. He saw the street outside Westminster station, the man with the rucksack on his back, the certainty in his stride as he walked into the middle of the crowd of shocked onlookers; he saw the flash as he scrubbed himself from existence; he saw the flayed skin and the blood; he smelled the cooked flesh. He put firmness into his answer. ‘Let’s stop with this charade, sir. I haven’t reached my tolerance yet. You don’t need to worry about that.’

‘You are happy to continue?’

‘I am.’

Bloom nodded at his conviction. ‘I believed that would be your answer, but you’ll understand why I need to be sure. We are already in choppy waters. Conditions will get worse before they get better.’

For God’s sake, thought Pope, I’ve told you that I’m in. Get on with it. ‘You want me to have a word with him?’

‘I’d like that very much, but I’m afraid al-Khawari will be rather more difficult. It isn’t Moss Side. His security is rather more effective than a couple of sleepy bobbies. The direct approach is unlikely to be successful.’

Pope had the impression that he was being very mildly belittled. ‘So?’

‘We need evidence of his involvement. Interrogating him would be best, but we think that will be too much to ask. There’s the problem with him being on neutral territory, of course. You know how the Swiss would play it if we took him. That prized neutrality.’ He shook his hand as if waving away an unpleasant smell. ‘We need to go about things more quietly. We need to get into his computer.’

Pope frowned. ‘So give it to Group Three?’

‘Yes, of course, we’ve tried that already. Our friend is very particular with what our specialists describe as ‘network hygiene.’ Very particular, and lavish with the funds he spends on it. I’m told access is possible but that it needs to be done in situ.’ Bloom smoked his pipe for a while and then said, ‘You’re familiar with Cottonmouth?’

‘Yes. I’ve used it.’

Group Six had perfected a wide range of devices that could be used to bug the IT equipment belonging to persons of interest. Cottonmouth was a particularly neat piece of kit that they had invented. It was a USB plug bugging device and was disguised either as a keyboard’s USB plug or as a type of USB extension cord that could be connected unnoticed between a peripheral and the computer itself. It could send and receive radio signals and made it possible not only to monitor the bugged computer and its compromised network but also to send commands to both. They were small and so discreet as to be almost undetectable unless you knew to look.

‘Wonderfully clever piece of kit,’ Bloom said, ‘but we need someone to go in and fit the device. And that isn’t going to be easy to do. I’m open to ideas.’

Pope felt himself being sucked deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, but he was committed now. He knew he wouldn’t be able to pull back. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to. There was no guarantee that the Firm would be able to find the jihadist who had promised Hussain that there would be additional operations. More would be killed. This might be the best chance they had to track him down.

Bloom looked down at his pipe for a while. Pope puckered his lips for a moment before settling on a recommendation. ‘Surveillance first. Let’s see what we can find out. Everyone has a blind spot. You just have to know where to find it.’

‘The same parameters apply. We’ve never spoken about any of this.’

‘I know, sir.’

‘And if you get into a sticky situation, you’ll be on your own.’

A driver wandered a little too close to their table.

Pope waited until he was gone. ‘I’ll need to communicate with you online.’

‘Visit the dead drop before you go. I’ll leave instructions.’

Bloom stood. There were no goodbyes. He turned and set off into the car park.

Pope waited for him to leave. A police van sped along the motorway, its lights flashing and siren wailing. A helicopter buzzed overhead, a mile to the west. There were two armed soldiers at the entrance to the services. Again he noticed that London felt as if it was under siege. Pope watched as Bloom’s sleek, expensive car pulled out into the sluggish traffic and headed onto the slip road.

He put on his sunglasses and started the walk back to his car.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Pope decided that he would conduct the surveillance himself. But since a target like al-Khawari would be difficult to track alone, he pegged Number Nine and Number Twelve to assist. It wasn’t just a question of numbers. Hannah Kelleher was from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and was the best undercover surveillance operative that he had; it made sense for her to be included. Snow, on the other hand, needed confidence. Number Twelve had tried to brush off the mauling that he had received at the hands of the steering committee, but Pope had seen through it. It was not surprising that he felt bruised. Add that to the guilt he would be feeling over the death of Fèlix Rubió, and it was important that the soldier got back on the job as quickly as possible.

They flew to Geneva on separate flights, using false diplomatic passports. They took rooms at the Ibis Geneva right next to the airport. They had arrived late, and Pope decided it made more sense to get a full night’s sleep so that they could start early the following day. It was a bland, anonymous hotel. Beige walls, beige carpet, identical layouts. They could have been anywhere in the world. They ate room service in Pope’s room, discussed what they would do tomorrow, and then went to their own rooms for sleep.

Pope showered, undressed and lay on the bed for thirty minutes with the BBC News channel playing on the flat-screen TV. It was a week after the attack, and there was still practically nothing else that made the bulletin. New CCTV footage had just been released of the shooters trying to force their way into the Commons. Pope saw the men and remembered their professionalism, their familiarity with their weapons and the ingenuity of their plan. They had been lucky that the casualties inside the House were so minor compared to what might have happened. They had McNair to thank for that.

The news anchor cut away to an interview with the prime minister. Pope reached for the remote and turned up the volume. The report began with the moment, preserved forever on the cameras inside the chamber that had been recording PMQs, when the boom of the first explosion in the Underground station had interrupted the childish squabbling between the PM and the leader of the opposition. A particularly effective riposte had seen the MPs on the government benches waving their motion papers at their rivals across the chamber. Their boorish laughter had been interrupted by the muffled crump of the blast. The PM’s coup de grace died on his lips. The chamber was quiet when the second bomb detonated. This one was in the open, nearer the palace, and deafeningly loud. The windows nearest the blast were blown in by the pressure wave. There were screams and shouts of panic.

The footage cut away to a head-and-shoulders shot of the PM. He was dressed in black. There were the usual questions about what had happened in the chamber when they had heard the bombs, and then the reaction when the Serjeant at Arms had sprinted past the Bar of the House to the Speaker’s Chair, and then the instruction from the Speaker, his ragged panic barely suppressed, that they were under attack and should begin an orderly evacuation. The anchor led the PM through some set questions so that he could deliver the sound bites that his scriptwriters had prepared for him. Pope shook his head at the dull predictability of it. The terrorists were cowards. The nation grieved. A debt of gratitude was owed to the men and women of the Metropolitan police.

He was about to switch off the screen when the interviewer posed her final question.

‘Prime Minister, do you have a message for those responsible?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’ He paused for a moment, as if composing himself, and then he turned from the quarter shot and looked directly into the camera. ‘We are under threat because we are a country of freedoms, and because we are a country of freedoms, we will neutralise threats and punish aggressors. No one should think that he can act in the United Kingdom in a way that is contrary to the principles of the United Kingdom, and attack the very spirit of this country: the idea of democracy itself. My thoughts today are with the victims. More than two hundred people have died, and many others are hovering between life and death. That is where we stand right now. We are committed to finding those responsible. They will be hunted down by our police and intelligence services. There will be nowhere for them to hide. And when they have been found, they should be in no doubt that we shall exact the full measure of justice. Thank you.’

Pope killed the screen.

The full measure of justice.

That was as near as he had ever heard to a politician making it plain that those guilty of the attack would never make it to court.

Vivian Bloom had provided him with a dossier of information on Salim Hasan Mafuz Muslim al-Khawari. His property in Switzerland was a sprawling mansion that had cost him £50 million when he had purchased it last year. It was in the small village of Genthod, on the outskirts north of the city. They hired two cars and set off, Pope in the lead car, with Snow and Kelleher in the car behind him. They drove north-east, the airport to their left, and followed the E25 to Chemin des Rousses in Bellevue.

Snow’s voice came over the radio. ‘How do you want to play this?’

‘We’ll take a look today. If we can get eyes on him, so much the better, but we’re going to have to be careful. If he is our man, he’s going to be on edge. And he can afford very good security.’

They reached Genthod and followed the picturesque streets down to the roads that overlooked the hugeness of Lake Geneva. As they drove to the north, the properties became fewer and farther between, set in vast grounds and secured by tall walls and wire-tipped fences.

‘Exclusive neighbourhood,’ Kelleher said.

‘Keep driving,’ Pope said. ‘You keep going. I’m going to have a quick look.’

‘Copy that.’

Pope slowed as he approached the gates, saw that there were security cameras there and pulled away again. He drove on for half a mile, took a turning that led him to a quiet country lane and parked the car out of sight.

He was able to stay off the main road, following a cycle path to the south-east. The terrain was hilly, rising up to a height of fifty feet to his right and then sloping down to the shore of the lake to his left. He turned off the path so that he could climb, forcing his way through the undergrowth until he reached the crown of the hill. There was a small clearing there, and as he turned and assessed the landscape to the east, he had his first good look at the property he was interested in.

It was a big house, four storeys tall. It was surrounded by enormous grounds and enjoyed perhaps half a mile of prime frontage onto the lake.

‘Control, Nine, Twelve. Report.’

‘We’ve stopped,’ Kelleher said. ‘Lay-by on the Route de Malagny. What’s your location?’

‘South of you. I’ve found a good spot for a look at the house. Hold your position.’

Pope rested the holdall on the ground, unzipped it and took out the binoculars he had brought with him. He raised them to his eyes and gazed out onto the mansion. He estimated that he was three kilometres away from the property. As he adjusted the focus, it came into clear view.

He could see why it had been so expensive to purchase. It was enormous, for a start, with three separate wings that had been constructed in a distinctly modernist style. There was a huge amount of glass, with generous picture windows to every aspect. The east-facing side of the building was just twenty feet from the start of the lake, suggesting that there would be stupendous views from inside. A path cut down the gentle slope to a boathouse and a jetty. There was a pool to one side, a pair of tennis courts to the other, and a separate complex that looked like it housed the staff. Pope scanned across and saw a car showroom to the left of the house. He watched a Bentley Continental GT and a Land Rover Discovery being washed and polished by two members of staff.

The place would be very, very difficult to breach. He saw security cameras around the estate, and he would have been surprised if it wasn’t protected by laser tripwires and motion detectors. He saw guards. They would probably be armed. There would be a direct line to the local constabulary. It would be difficult to get in even with a large, well-equipped team. As it was, there were three of them, and they had very little in the way of kit.

He could see no easy way to infiltrate.

He was getting ready to put the binoculars away when he saw activity from the front of the house. A large door had opened, and two figures emerged. Two men. Business suits. One was much bigger than the other. The big man had a shaved head. The other had his back turned, perhaps talking to someone still inside the property.

‘Control, Nine, Twelve. Come in.’

‘Nine, Control,’ Kelleher responded. ‘Copy that.’

‘Turn around and start coming back. There’s activity at the house.’

‘Copy. The target?’

‘I’m just waiting for him to turn around so I can get a look at him.’ The man was gesticulating angrily. His irritation continued for thirty seconds, the gestures becoming angrier and more impatient, and then a third figure came out of the property. It was a teenage boy. Brown skin and long dark hair. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He lolled and when the other man stabbed a finger in his face and then pointed away to the cars, he set off with an insolent slouch.

‘Twelve, Control. We’re half a mile away. What do you want us to do?’

‘Hold and wait for instructions.’

Pope squinted into the rangefinder, gently adjusting the focus, and then the third figure turned around. He tilted his head, and for a moment it looked as if the man was staring right into the binoculars. It was al-Khawari. The man was impossible to mistake. He looked like Omar Sharif, slight and dapper, his white hair standing out against the dark-tinted window that was behind him. Al-Khawari didn’t move, his eyes aimed right at him, and Pope wondered uneasily if he had betrayed himself. He dismissed that as foolish. The sun was behind him and it was impossible that he could be visible to the naked eye from there. The man turned to watch the teenager, and finally he set off in the same direction.

Pope panned right.

The big man was joined by another two who had been waiting in a small outbuilding. It was obvious now that these three were al-Khawari’s personal security detail. Pope saw that one of the newcomers had a long gun, although he was too far away to identify it. The man with the rifle got into the Land Rover. The big man got into the driver’s seat of the Bentley. The third man disappeared into the garage and drove out again in a second Land Rover. The three cars lined up in convoy, with the Land Rovers bracketing the Bentley, and set off up the sloping driveway to the gate and the road beyond.

‘Control, Nine, Twelve. They’re coming out. Our man is in a Bentley, and he’s between two Land Rover Discoveries. Three men in a security detail.’

‘What are our orders?’

‘Follow.’

‘And engage?’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Do not engage. There’s an unidentified teenage male in the car. Could be his son.’

‘Copy that.’

‘I need to get back to my car. We’ll run surveillance as a team. Update me on their location, and I’ll catch up.’

He put the binoculars into his bag and moved as quickly as he could through the undergrowth on the flanks of the hill until he was back down on the cycle path. He ran as hard as he could and reached the car in three minutes. He got into the car, turned it around and set off back to the main road.

‘Position?’

‘Heading north-east. Just going through Crans-près-Céligny.’

Pope looked at the satnav stuck to the inside of the windscreen. The convoy was three miles further up the road. He needed to get there as quickly as he could. He was driving fast, nudging the car up to eighty as he tried to catch up with them. The limit was seventy-five, and he knew that the road was usually heavily policed, but he couldn’t dawdle. If al-Khawari’s men were good, and he had reason to believe that they were, they would be skilled in counter-surveillance. It was very easy to identify a single pursuer. If they made Kelleher and Snow, all they would need to do would be to peel off onto a quieter road and see whether they followed. If they did, they would be suspicious. Another turn onto another quiet road would confirm their speculation. A two-car surveillance, though not optimal, would increase their chances of staying undetected. In an ideal world, Pope would have operated a ‘floating box,’ with multiple cars that could merge into and drift out of the pursuit. But this was not a perfect world, and they would have to make do with what they had.

He saw them half a mile ahead and started to slow down so that he was travelling just a little faster than they were.

‘I’ve got a visual on you,’ he said into his mic.

‘Want us to drop off?’

He looked at the satnav again. ‘There’s a turning two hundred yards ahead on your right.’

‘I see it.’

‘It’ll pick up this road again in a mile.’

‘Copy.’

Pope watched as Kelleher and Snow decelerated, indicated and turned off.

He edged closer to the Land Rover at the rear of the convoy. He could see nothing through the darkened windows, but they were driving carefully, observing the speed limit. He marshalled the gap between them, getting a clearer view of the other two cars as they followed a gentle bend in the road. There was a uniform twenty feet between each car and the next.

They were on the E62. It was the main thoroughfare along the northern shore of the lake, and it would have appeared natural for Pope to have been behind the convoy. The roads coming off it were minor ones, not ones that it would be unusual to keep missing. Kelleher reported that she and Snow were back on the E62, and Pope told them to keep their distance in case he needed them, but as they travelled on, he grew more comfortable. They hadn’t been made yet, and he saw no reason why that would change.

He saw a sign for Rolle, and the lead Discovery indicated that it was going to come off the main route and follow the turn.

‘They’re coming off,’ Pope radioed. ‘I’ll go ahead and come around. You follow.’

‘Copy.’

Pope drove on for half a mile and then took the next left-hand turn off the E62, coming back on himself and entering the village from the north. He passed the Chateau de Rolle and the Île de la Harpe in the lake, an artificial island with an obelisk poking from between the trunks of a clutch of trees. Kelleher radioed their location and Pope navigated to the north-west, taking the Route de Gilly and then the Avenue du Jura until he saw the signs for the Institut Le Rosey and realised where the convoy must be going.

‘It’s a school,’ he radioed.

‘There’s a long driveway. They’ve turned onto it. We’re going on.’

‘I’ll go past for a look. Stop in Rolle. I’ll radio in fifteen minutes.’

Pope parked the car for a second time and followed the narrow road back to the south, retracing his route. The property to the east was demarked by a tall stone wall. He continued until he came to a pair of impressive stone pillars with ‘CHATEAU DU ROSEY’ engraved into each of them. There was a pair of security cameras on tall posts set just behind the pillars, so he continued onwards, following the lazy curve of the wall until he was far enough away from the cameras to be confident that he would not be seen. A young oak grew out of the verge between the road and the start of the wall, and after checking that the road was clear, Pope clambered up it.

He pulled himself onto the top of the wall and brought out his binoculars again.

The road wound its way through picturesque grounds until it straightened out into an avenue lined by elms. The road stopped at a collection of buildings that were half a kilometre away from his position. Pope’s eye was drawn to a chateau and, set around it, a campus comprised of a series of impressive buildings. He found the two Land Rovers and the Bentley. They had parked alongside a two-storey building painted a mellow yellow, with red tiles on the sharply sloping roof. He watched as al-Khawari and the boy he now assumed to be his son got out of the car. One of the heavies brought a suitcase down from his Discovery and hauled it to the entrance of the building that they were nearest to.

‘Nine, Control. What’s going on?’

‘That was the school run,’ he said quietly. ‘Ask around town. See what you can find out about this place.’

‘Will do.’

Pope watched the buildings a little longer. He saw a group of teenagers exiting one of the buildings, milling around near to the Bentley. Al-Khawari was talking to the boy, but as they noticed the newcomers, something was said, and they shared an awkward embrace. The boy turned and went to join the other pupils.

Pope had an idea.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Michael Pope was at the same motorway services as before. It was raining heavily and he had taken shelter inside. The building was arranged as a large atrium with fast-food outlets and coffee shops around its edges. The space in the middle was given over to seating and tables. It was busy, noisy and hot. Pope sipped at his cup of coffee and kept a cautious watch of the people around him: families struggling with children, businessmen and women stopping to use the facilities before heading off to wherever it was that they were needed. There was a big LCD screen on the other side of the room, and Pope glanced at it occasionally. It was showing the first pictures from inside the damaged ticket hall at Westminster. He had watched the footage in his hotel room when it had been released last night, but the broadcasters kept returning to it again and again. Pope found it all a little salacious. He had switched channels to try to find something else, but it seemed that every programme had some connection with the attack.

He saw Vivian Bloom at the entrance, gave a slight tilt of his head and waited for him to come over.

‘Bloody weather.’

Bloom was wet. He took off his dripping overcoat and folded it over the back of the chair.

Pope took the envelope of photographs and passed them across the table.

Bloom looked at them, picked one up and looked at it more closely. There were twelve in all. Pope had sent Hannah Kelleher to Marrakech the afternoon following the surveillance of al-Khawari on the way to Le Rosey. She had located the target and put her under close surveillance.

The photographs had been taken with a long lens from positions that would have made it very difficult for the subject to know that she was being observed. Pope recognised the locales from his own visits to Marrakech to see the girl’s mother two years ago. There was a picture of the central square, Jemma el-Fnaa, the girl bartering with a local tradesman for a bag of fresh oranges. There was another as she came out of a grocery store with a bag of supplies. Another showed her disappearing into the mouth of a narrow, darkened alleyway, the sort that made close surveillance almost impossible in the city.

The subject of the series of photographs was Isabella Rose. Pope knew that the girl was fifteen, although, as he had confirmed when he had met her on the South Bank on the day of the attacks, she could easily have passed for much older than that. These photos, though, had captured something in her that he hadn’t noticed when they had met. The girl had always looked like her mother. She had the same blonde hair, the same blue eyes, the same porcelain skin. But she had grown up. She was taller. Her hair was longer. More fundamental than either of those changes was the severe cast that lay behind her beautifully defined features. Her mother had had the same edge to her appearance, an otherworldly bleakness that Pope had always found unnerving. Isabella had it, too. It was chilling in one so young.

Now, the likeness between mother and daughter was truly striking.

The final shot was in profile. The girl was wearing a sleeveless top and was turned so that her right-hand side was presented to the camera. There were tattoos of two roses on her right shoulder and arm. Beatrix had had the same tattoos, adding another each time she eliminated one of the names on her list. She had never had the chance to add the final rose, the one that would denote her murder of Pope’s despicable predecessor as head of Group Fifteen. Her daughter had completed the set for her.

As far as he knew, there were no photographs of Isabella Rose that existed in the information held by Her Majesty’s government. There had been an entire file on the girl, but Pope had arranged for Group Two to have that deleted, together with every official reference that she had ever existed. It was a last favour for Beatrix, the request of a dying woman who had been so badly wronged by her country. He had been unable to refuse it.

Bloom dropped the photographs on the table and looked up with a sceptical expression on his face.

‘You’re serious?’

‘I am.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘You want to send a fifteen-year-old girl to spy on al-Khawari?’

‘I do.’

‘And you know how foolish that sounds, Captain?’

‘She’s not an ordinary girl. Her mother worked for Group Fifteen. She was Number One before John Milton and before me.’

‘What? That’s Beatrix Rose’s girl?’

‘That’s right. Isabella.’

‘I thought we lost her?’

‘No, sir, that’s not strictly true. I gave Beatrix my word that I would hide her. We didn’t think it would be safe for her after what she was planning for Control. Her mother made some very influential enemies.’

Bloom nodded. Beatrix’s quest for revenge had caused ripples around the world. Control and his five rogue agents had been working for Manage Risk, a large and powerful American private military contractor. Beatrix had eliminated them, one after the other, and the fight had concluded on American soil near to The Lodge, Manage Risk’s vast headquarters in North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp. Isabella had murdered Control and two guards in a North Carolina hospital. Pope and Milton had arrived in time to get the girl to safety.

‘What are you proposing, Control?’

‘Isabella is an unusually talented girl. Her mother trained her thoroughly in the year they had together before she started to work her way through her list. She’s had weapons training, she’s fit and strong and she’s been given the rudiments of surveillance and counter-surveillance. She has no family and no friends that I can find. She won’t be missed. I am proposing that we give her a new identity and a cover story, and enrol her into that school with the aim of ingratiating herself with Khalil al-Khawari.’

‘The son.’

‘Correct.’

‘What would that achieve?’

‘We’ve investigated his social media accounts. It’s his sixteenth birthday next month, sir. Look at this.’

Pope spread printouts from the boy’s Facebook page over the photographs of Isabella. Bloom looked at them. The printouts contained details of Khalil al-Khawari’s birthday party. It was to be held at his father’s property on the shore of Lake Geneva.

‘We would be there with her. Number Nine and Number Twelve would be her parents. I’d be there, too. There might be another way to get inside, but if there isn’t, we can run this in the background.’

Eventually, a small smile curled the crinkled edges of Bloom’s mouth.

‘You know this is madness?’

‘A little,’ Pope admitted.

‘And you know that there is no way I would be able to get it approved?’

‘That’s an issue for you, sir.’

Bloom steepled his fingers. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘With all respect, does anyone have a better idea?’

‘No,’ Bloom said. ‘They don’t.’

Chapter Thirty-Six

The house was in Leytonstone, in the East End of London. Queen’s Road was a short distance from the Underground station. A Victorian terrace ran along both sides, with gardens between the front of the houses and the road. Most of the gardens had been concreted over to provide parking spaces, and those cars that could not be parked off the road were crammed on both sides, leaving enough room for a single car to pass through. Wheelie bins were left on the pavements, bushes that had never been cut back towered out of overgrown gardens, and Union Jacks and the cross of Saint George were hung against the inside of windows.

Mohammed drove along the terrace, turned and then drove back. He saw nothing to suggest that the house was unsafe, but nevertheless, it paid to be careful. He found a space on the side of the road fifty feet farther along and reversed into it. He waited there for two hours, watching the comings and goings. Elderly women pushed shopping trolleys toward the parade of shops near to the station. Tattooed skinheads walked muscular attack dogs. Kids with nothing better to do smoked cigarettes and drank from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. It was a poor area, down at heel, with a diverse range of ethnicities and a transient population. The sort of place it was easy to disappear into.

He listened to the radio. There was a discussion about the terrorist atrocity and the steps that needed to be taken to combat it. The usual roll call of suspects was rehashed. Al-Qaeda seemed to be the favourite at this early stage, although there was the suggestion that the Islamic State was a possibility, too. The usual knee-jerk reaction, Mohammed thought. It must be the Islamic bogeyman. How convenient. How easy. They had much to learn. The discussion moved on to what would happen once the investigation had determined who was to blame. The presenter referred to a snap opinion poll, taken that day, which recorded that the percentage of people who would be prepared to back military action had climbed by 10 per cent. The reluctance to commit British troops to foreign wars seemed to be waning. The thirst for revenge was growing stronger.

Mohammed heard the distinctive thwup-thwup-thwup of a Chinook and looked up through the windshield as the big, two-rotored chopper rumbled overhead. There was an airfield at the Honourable Artillery Company in Central London. It must have been headed there. It was an apt underlining of the increasingly martial mood. It wasn’t unusual to see the military in or over London these days. That had been anticipated, and he was glad to see it.

Mohammed kept a careful watch on the property throughout the two hours. Nothing struck him as suspicious. Eventually, he concluded that it was safe enough for him to enter.

He approached the property. Mohammed had seen the place advertised on Gumtree and knew that it would be perfect for his purposes. He had paid for a six-month tenancy in cash, the landlord asking him no awkward questions and the paperwork kept to a minimum. The garden had been paved over, and the husk of an old and broken washing machine stood against the wall. The bins had been covered in graffiti and were filled with fetid black bin liners that had been dumped there by neighbours. The front door opened into a small porch with a screen door behind it.

Mohammed took out his key, unlocked the front door, went inside, unlocked the screen door and then stepped into the quiet house. He was in the small sitting room. He had drawn the floral curtains the first time he had visited, and he had kept them closed since. Grey, insipid light leached through the thin fabric, revealing the moth-eaten sofa, the gas fire and the paint that was peeling in leprous folds from the walls. He paused and listened. He could hear the sound of a muffled argument from the street outside, but there was no sound in here. He breathed in, smelling the faintest tang of cordite. Not too strong, but there, and easily identifiable if you knew what it smelled like.

Mohammed knew.

The front room led to a corridor with stairs going up to the first floor. Mohammed had been sleeping up there, but he had other business to attend to today. The kitchen was at the back of the house next to the downstairs toilet. There was a window to the side that was half covered with a dirty roller blind, with enough space beneath it to give a glimpse into an overgrown garden. There was a door beneath the stairs. He opened it and pulled the drawstring to switch on the light. The sixty-watt bulb glowed brightly, casting its light onto the flight of rough concrete steps that led down into the cellar. He had to duck his head as he descended, reaching the foot and then reaching out for the light switch for the strip light that he had fitted to give himself the illumination to do what he needed to do.

The basement was large, filling the footprint of the reception room and kitchen that were above it. He had bought a large decorator’s trestle table from B&Q and unfolded it so that he had a large enough surface to work on. The three old artillery shells were on the floor next to the table. They were about two feet in length, reaching up to just below his knee. They were cylindrical, with an ogive-shaped nose that made them look like oversized bullets. They were easy enough to find. Eastern Europe was awash with them, and a contact in Chechnya had sourced six for him. They had been smuggled into the country on the same trawler as the gunmen who had stormed the Palace of Westminster, collected in a rented panel van and driven to London. It had been very, very easy. Mohammed had known that it would be.

He took one of the shells and heaved it up, carefully lowering it onto the table so that he could get at the fat rounded end. The shell was equipped with a percussive fuse that detonated the explosive on impact with the ground. Provided he was careful, it was safe to handle. He used an electric saw to cut away the cartridge case that held the propellant charge, so that he could get to the projectile itself. He opened it up and started to scoop out the explosive inside. He made a pile of it on the table. Each shell contained eight kilograms of plastic bonded explosive. The three bombs that he had prepared for the first attack had been created from the explosive that he had accumulated from the first three shells.

He took a plastic Tupperware container and swept the explosive into it. There were already fifteen full containers on the table. He was planning on twenty-five. The rest of his equipment was on the floor. He had bought twenty bags of galvanised 30 mm nails. He had spread those purchases out across several builders’ merchants so as not to arouse suspicion. They would be packed in tight around the explosive to maximise the damage the blast would cause. He had two suitcases; cheap wheeled ones that he had found in a shopping centre near Dalston Kingsland station. And he had two pay-as-you-go mobile phones that he had picked up from the Carphone Warehouse in the same precinct. He’d soldered wires to the speaker output circuits of each phone so that when they rang, current would flow to the trigger of a thyristor that would then send current to the alligator clips that he had fastened to the detonators.

He only had to finish with the explosive, and he would be ready. It was another three or four hours.

He picked up a fresh shell, lowered it to the table and started to work.