The Kill List

Chapter 11

On the morning of his martyrdom, Tariq “Terry” Hussein rose long before dawn. Behind closed curtains, he purified his body according to the ancient rituals, seated himself in front of the bedsheet draped on the bedroom wall with the appropriate Koranic passages, switched on his camcorder and recorded his final words to the world. Then he logged on to the Jihadi channel and sent his message worldwide. Before the authorities noticed it, it would be far too late.

He drove through a lovely summer dawn to join the first of the morning’s commuters, some coming from Maryland into Virginia, some going the opposite way, and many heading into the District of Columbia. He was in no hurry, but he wanted to time himself right.

To park in the nearside lane of a major commuter traffic artery could not be sustained for long. To be too early would mean that blocked commuters behind the stalled car would hammer their horns and attract attention. A state police car could well be summoned by one of the circling helicopters. It would have trouble penetrating the logjam but would duly arrive with two armed officers onboard. That was what Hussein intended, but not prematurely.

To be too late could mean the targets he had in mind might have passed by and he could not wait long for the next one. Just after ten past seven, he arrived at Key Bridge.

There are eight arches to this Washington landmark: five span the Potomac River, separating Virginia from Georgetown in D.C., two more on the Washington side cross the C&O Canal and K Street, and the eighth, on the Virginia side, spans the George Washington Memorial Parkway, another constantly in use commuter route.

Hussein, on U.S. Route 29, approached the bridge, hugging the nearside lane of the six-lane highway. At the center point above the GW Memorial, he broke down. His compact slowed to a halt. At once, angry cars behind began to swerve past him. He got out, went to the rear and opened the trunk. From it, he took two red “broken down” triangles and placed them on the road.

He opened both doors on the passenger side to create a small box between the car and the parapet. Reaching in, he withdrew the rifle, fully loaded with forty rounds in two switchover magazines, leaned over the parapet and squinted through the scope sight at the columns of steel passing beneath. If anyone coming up behind him could see what a man between the two open doors was doing, either they did not believe what they were seeing or they were too busy wrestling with their steering wheels and craning over their shoulders to avoid being rammed as they pulled out.

At that hour, a quarter after seven, almost every tenth vehicle below the bridge is a commuter bus. The D.C. Metro service runs several of them, some colored blue, some orange. The orange ones are on the 23C route, which runs from the Rosslyn Metro station right through to Langley, Virginia, where it terminates at the gates of the huge complex known simply as the CIA, or the Agency.

The traffic below the bridge was not logjammed, but it was moving sedately, nose to tail. Tariq Hussein’s Internet research had told him which bus to look for and he had almost given up hope when he saw an orange roof in the distance. A helicopter wheeled and turned far out over the river. It would see the stalled vehicle in the middle of the bridge at any moment. He willed the orange bus to come closer.

The first four bullets, straight through the windshield, killed the driver. The coach swerved, hit a car alongside, stalled and stopped. There was a figure in a Metro service uniform slumped over the wheel quite dead. Reactions began.

Down below, the sideswiped car also stopped. The driver climbed out and began to harangue the bus that had hit him. Then he noticed the slumped driver, presumed a heart attack and produced his cell phone.

Horns behind the two stalled vehicles began to hoot. Some drivers also climbed out. One glanced upward, saw the figure on the parapet and yelled in alarm. The helicopter wheeled over Arlington and turned toward the Key Bridge. Hussein fired over and over again through the roof of the stationary bus. After twenty rounds, the firing pin met an empty chamber. He detached the magazine, reversed it and inserted the spare. Then he resumed firing.

Below him there was chaos. Word had spread. Drivers were leaping out of their cars to crouch behind them. Two at least were shouting into their cell phones.

On the bridge, two women back down the line were screaming. The roof of the 23C service bus was being torn apart. The interior was becoming a charnel house of blood, bodies and hysterical humanity. Then the second magazine ran out.

It was not the rifleman in the helicopter who brought closure but an off-duty patrolman ten cars down the line on Route 29 behind the stalled car. He had his window open to let the cigarette smoke out lest his wife later detected the odor. He heard the shots and recognized the crack of a high-powered rifle. He got out, unholstered his service automatic and started running, not away from the shots but toward them.

The first Tariq Hussein knew of him was when the window of the open door beside him shattered. He turned, saw the running man and raised his rifle. It was empty. The running officer could not know that. At twenty feet, he stopped, crouched, took the double-handed position and emptied his magazine into the door and the man behind it.

It was later established that three rounds hit the gunman and they were enough. When the officer reached the car, the gunman was on the verge of the road, gasping feebly. He died thirty seconds later.

For most of that day, there was chaos on Route 29, closed as forensic teams took away the body, the gun and finally the car. But it was nothing as to what was happening on the GW Memorial Parkway beneath.

The interior of the Rosslyn-to-Langley commuter coach was a butcher’s shop. Later, figures released to the public told of seven dead, nine critically injured, with five major amputations and twenty flesh wounds, all inside the bus, there had simply been no cover from above.

At Langley, the shock among the thousands of staffers when the news came through was like a declaration of war — but from an enemy already dead.

The Virginia state police and the FBI wasted no time. The killer’s car was easily traced through the vehicle-licensing bureau. SWAT teams raided the house outside Fairfax. It was empty, but forensic teams, muffled in their overalls, stripped it to the plasterwork — and then to the foundations.

Within twenty-four hours, the net of interrogators had spread far and wide. Counterterrorism experts pored over the laptop and the diary. The death declaration was played to rooms of silent men and women in the FBI’s Hoover Building, with copies to the CIA.

Not everyone on the stricken bus worked for the Agency, since the bus served other stops. But most went to the end of the line — Langley/McLean.

Before sundown, the Director of the CIA exercised his prerogative and secured a private interview with the President in the Oval Office. Staffers in the corridors said he was still pale with anger.

It is very rare for spymasters in one country to have any regard for their opponents among the enemy, but it happens. During the Cold War, many in the West had a grudging regard for the man who ran East Germany’s spy service.

Markus “Misha” Wolf had a small budget and a big enemy — Germany and NATO. He did not even bother trying to traduce the cabinet ministers in the service of Bonn. He targeted those dowdy, scuttling, invisible mice in the offices of the high and mighty without whom no office can run: the confidential private secretaries to the ministers.

He studied their drab, spinsterly and often lonely private lives and targeted them with young, handsome lovers. These Romeos would start slow and patient, moving to warm embraces in chilly lives, promises of companionship for life in sunny places after retirement, and all just for a glance at those silly papers forever passing across the minister’s desk.

And they did, those Ingrids and Waltrauds. They passed over the copies of everything confidential and classified that were left unattended when the minister stalked out to his four-course lunch. It reached a point where the Bonn government was so penetrated that the NATO allies did not dare tell Bonn what day of the week it was because within a day the information would go to East Berlin and then Moscow.

Eventually, the police would come, the Romeo would vanish and the office mouse, shrunken and in tears, would appear fleetingly between two hulking cops. Then she would exchange a lonely little flat for a lonely little cell in prison.

He was a ruthless bastard, was Misha Wolf, but after the collapse of East Germany, he retired in obscurity, never charged with anything, and died in his bed of natural causes.

Forty years later, the British SIS would have loved to eavesdrop on what was said and done in the offices of Chauncey Reynolds, but Julian Reynolds regularly had his entire suite swept by a high-grade team of electronic wizards, some of them actually retired from government service.

So the Firm did not have state-of-the-art technology secreted in the private office of Gareth Evans that summer, but they did have Emily Bulstrode. She saw everything, read everything and heard everything, and no one noticed her with her tray of cups.

The day Harry Andersson screamed into the face of Gareth Evans, Mrs. Bulstrode bought her usual sandwich at the deli on the corner and went to her favorite telephone booth. She did not like those modern things that people kept in their pockets, always going off in conferences. She preferred to visit one of the few remaining red-painted, cast-iron kiosks where you put coins in a meter. She asked for a connection, spoke a few words and went back to her desk.

After work, she went on foot to St. James’s Park, sat on the assigned bench and fed the ducks some crusts she had saved from her sandwich as she waited for her contact. Back in the day, she mused, her beloved Charlie had been the man in Moscow who every day went to Gorki Park and picked up top secret microfilm from the Soviet traitor Oleg Penkovsky. These state secrets, relayed to the desk of President Kennedy, enabled him to outwit Nikita Khrushchev and get those damn rockets removed from Cuba in the autumn of 1962.

A young man approached and sat down beside her. The usual exchange of harmless chitchat assured true identity. She glanced at him and smiled. A youngster, she thought, probably a probationer, not even born when she used to slip through the Iron Curtain into East Germany for the Firm.

The young man pretended to read the Evening Standard. He took no notes because he had a recorder active but silent in his jacket pocket. Emily Bulstrode also had no notes; she had her two assets, a totally harmless air and a steel-trap memory.

So she told the probationer everything that had happened that morning in the law offices, detail by detail and word for word. Verbatim. Then she rose and walked to the station to catch her commuter train for her little house in Coulsdon. She sat alone, watching the southern suburbs drift by. Once she had dodged the dreadful Stasis; now she was seventy-five and made coffee for lawyers.

The young man from Vauxhall Cross went back in the dusk and filed his report. He noticed there was a flag attached, to the effect that the Chief had agreed that news concerning Somalia should be shared with the Cousins up at the U.S. embassy. He could not see what a brutal warlord in Garacad could have to do with a hunt for the Preacher, but a standing order is still a standing order, so he filed a copy for the CIA.

In his safe house half a mile from the embassy, the Tracker was almost finished packing when his BlackBerry throbbed discreetly. He looked at the message, scrolled down until the end, switched off and thought for a while. Then he unpacked. A benign deity had just given him his bait.

Gareth Evans called a conference with Mr. Ali Abdi the next morning. The Somali, when he came on, was subdued.

“Mr. Abdi, my friend, I have always taken you for a civilized man,” he began.

“I am, Mr. Evans, I am,” said the negotiator in Garacad. Evans could tell his voice was tight with distress. He believed it was probably genuine. Of course, one could never tell one hundred percent. After all, Abdi and al-Afrit were of the same tribe, the Habar Gidir, or Abdi, would not have been trusted as a negotiator.

Evans recalled the advice he had been given years before when he was in Customs and Excise and had been posted in the Horn of Africa. His tutor was an old, parchment-skinned colonial wallah with eyes yellowed by malaria. The Somali, he was told, had six priorities, which never varied.

At the top was Self. Then came Family, then Clan, then Tribe. At the bottom were Nation, then Religion. The last two were only invoked to fight the foreigner. Left to themselves, they would simply fight each other, constantly shifting alliances and loyalties according to perceived advantage and waging vendetta according to perceived grievance.

The last thing he told the young Gareth Evans before he blew his brains out when the Colonial Service threatened to retire him back to rainy England was: “You cannot purchase the loyalty of a Somali, but you can usually rent it.”

The idea at the back of Gareth Evans’s mind that late-summer morning in Mayfair was to see whether Ali Abdi’s loyalty to his fellow tribesman exceeded that of loyalty to himself.

“What has happened to one of the prisoners of your principal was disgraceful, unacceptable. It could derail our entire negotiation. And I must tell you I was so pleased before that that the matter was between you and me, because I believe we are both honorable men.”

“I believe so, too, Mr. Gareth.”

Evans could not know how secure the line was. He was not thinking of Fort Meade and Cheltenham — he knew that was a foregone conclusion — but whether any of the warlord’s servants, listening in, was fluent in English. Nevertheless, he had to gamble on Abdi understanding even a single word.

“Because, you see, my friend, I think we may have reached the point of Thuraya.”

There was a long pause. Evans’s gamble was that if any other less educated Somali was listening in, he would not know what that was but that Abdi would.

Eventually, Abdi came back.

“I think I see what you mean, Mr. Gareth.”

The Thuraya phone is a satellite-employing communicator. Four cell phone companies control the use of mobiles in Somalia, the others being NationLink, Hormud, and France Télécom. They all have masts. The Thuraya needs only the U.S. satellites, turning slowly in space.

What Evans was saying to Abdi was that if he had, or could get, a Thuraya phone, he should take a ride into the desert alone and, from behind a rock, call Evans so they could talk extremely privately. The reply indicated Abdi had understood and would try.

The two negotiators spun out another thirty minutes, bringing the ransom down to eighteen million dollars and each promising to be back in touch when they had consulted with their respective principals.

The lunch was on the American government; the Tracker had insisted on it. But his SIS contact, Adrian Herbert, had made the booking. He had chosen Shepherd’s in Marsham Street and insisted on a booth for privacy.

It was affable, friendly, but both men realized the point of it all would come over coffee and mints. When the American made his pitch, Herbert put the coffee down in surprise.

“What do you mean lift? ”

“Lift, as in abstract, pluck, sequester.”

“You mean kidnap. From the streets of London? Without warrant or charge?”

“He is assisting a known terrorist who has motivated four murders in your country, Adrian.”

“Yes, but a forcible snatch would create absolute havoc if it ever got out. We would need an authority to do it, and that would need the signature of the Home Secretary. She’d consult lawyers. They would demand a formal charge.”

“You have helped us with extraordinary renditions before, Adrian.”

“Yes, but they were snatched on the streets of places that were already completely lawless. Knightsbridge is not Karachi, you know. Dardari is, on the surface, a respectable businessman.”

“You and I know different.”

“Indeed we do. But only because we invaded his house, bugged his home and raped his computer. That would look wonderful coming out in open court. I’m sorry, Tracker, we try to be helpful, but that is as far as we can go.”

He thought for a while, staring at the ceiling.

“No, it’s just not on, old boy. We would have to work like Trojans to get permission for that sort of thing.”

They settled up, and went different ways on the pavement. Adrian Herbert would walk back to the Office at Vauxhall. The Tracker hailed a cab. Sitting in the back, he mulled over that last sentence.

What on earth had classical allusions got to do with it? Back at his house, he consulted the Internet. It took a while but it was there. Trojan Horse Outcomes, a small, niche security company based outside Hamworthy in Dorset.

That, he knew, was Royal Marine territory. Their big base was at nearby Poole, and many men who had spent a working life in Special Forces retired and settled down near their old bases. Often they got a few mates together and formed a private security company — the usual rigmarole: bodyguards, asset protection, close escort work. If backer money was tight, they would work from home. Further research showed Trojan Outcomes was based in a residential district.

The Tracker called the given number and made an appointment for the next morning. Then he rang a Mayfair car-hire company and booked a compact for three hours earlier. He explained he was an American tourist called Jackson, with a valid U.S. driver’s license, and would need the car for a day to visit with a friend on the South Coast.

As he hung up, his BlackBerry pulsed. It was a text from TOSA, secure from interception. Its identifier proclaimed it came from Gray Fox. What it could not reveal was that the four-star general commanding J-SOC had just left the Oval Office with fresh orders.

Gray Fox did not waste time. His message needed only four words. It said “The Preacher. No prisoners.”

Gareth Evans had virtually taken up residence in the law offices. A truckle bed had been moved into the operations room. His bathroom had a shower, lavatory and basin. Cooked takeaways and salads from the corner deli provided sustenance. He had abandoned the usual procedure of conferences at fixed times with his opposite number in Somalia. He wanted to be in the ops room if Abdi followed his advice and rang from the desert. He might not have long unobserved. And just before midday the phone rang. It was Abdi.

“Mr. Evans? It is me. I have found a sat phone. But I do not have long.”

“Then let us keep it short, my friend. What your principal did to the boy indicates to us one thing: He wants to pressure us to settle quickly. That is not usual. Normally, it is the Somalis who have all the time in the world. This time both parties are interested in a speedy conclusion. Not so?”

“Yes, I think so,” said the voice from the desert.

“My principal takes the same view. But not because of the cadet. That was blackmail, but too crude to work. My principal wants his ship back at work. The key is the final release price and in this your advice to your principal will be crucial.”

Evans knew it would be suicidal if he let slip that the boy was worth ten times the ship and cargo.

“What do you propose, Mr. Evans?”

“A final settlement at five million dollars. We both know that is very fair. We would probably have settled on that figure three months from now anyway. I think you know that.”

Mr. Abdi, his phone to his ear, crouching in the desert a mile from the fortress behind Garacad, agreed, but said nothing. He sensed there was something coming for himself.

“What I propose is this. On five million, your share would be about one million. My offer is to pay that million into your private numbered account right now. A second million when the ship sails. No one need know anything about this but you and me. The key is a rapid conclusion. That is what I hope I am buying.”

Abdi thought. The third million would still come from al-Afrit. Three times his usual fee. And he had other thoughts. This was a situation he wanted to get out of, regardless of any other factor.

The days of easy pickings and easy ransoms were over. It had taken a long time for the Western and maritime powers to get their act together, but they were turning much more aggressive.

There had already been two off-the-sea beach assaults by Western commandos. One anchored ship had been liberated by Marines descending on ropes from a hovering helicopter. The Somali guards had fought. Two seamen had died, but so had the Somalis — all but two, and these were now in prison in the Seychelles.

Ali Abdi was not a hero and had not the slightest intention of becoming one. He blanched with horror at the thought of these black-clad monsters with night vision goggles and blazing submachine guns storming the mud-brick fortress where he was presently in residence.

And, finally, he wanted to retire; with a large fortune and a long way from Somalia. Somewhere civilized and above all safe. He spoke into the sat phone.

“You have a deal, Mr. Gareth.” And he dictated an account number. “Now I work for you, Mr. Gareth. But understand, I will press for a speedy settlement of five million dollars, but even then we have to look to four weeks.”

It had been a fortnight already, thought Evans, but six weeks would be among the shortest on record between capture and release.

“Thank you, my friend. Let us get this dreadful business over with and go back to a civilized life. .”

He hung up. Far away, Abdi did the same and went back to the fortress. The two men might not have been using the Somali phone network but that mattered not a jot to Fort Meade or Cheltenham who had captured every word.

According to orders, Fort Meade passed the text across the state line to TOSA, who fed a copy to the Tracker in London. A month, he thought. The clock is ticking. He pocketed his BlackBerry as the northern outskirts of Poole hove into view and kept his eyes peeled for a sign for Hamworthy.

That’s a lot of money, boss.”

Trojan Horse Outcomes was clearly a very small operation. The Tracker presumed it had been named after one of the biggest deceptions in history, but what the man facing him could muster was a lot less than the Greek army.

It was run out of a modest suburban terrace house, and Tracker put the manpower at about two or three. The one facing him across the dining room table was clearly the mainspring, and Tracker put him down as a former Royal Marine and a senior NCO. It turned out he was right on both counts. His name was Brian Weller.

What Weller was referring to was a block of fifty-dollar bills the thickness of a firebrick.

“So what exactly do you want done?”

“I want a man lifted without fuss from the streets of London, taken to a quiet and isolated place, detained there for up to a month and then released back where he came from. No rough stuff — just a nice vacation far from London or any kind of telephone.”

Weller thought it over. He had not the slightest doubt the snatch would be illegal, but his philosophy was simple and soldierly. There were good guys and bad guys, and the latter group got away with far too much.

Capital punishment was illegal, but he had two little girls at school, and if any swinish “nonce” interfered with them, he would unhesitatingly send him to another and maybe better world.

“How bad is this customer?”

“He helps terrorists. Quietly, with finances. The one he is helping right now has killed four Brits and seven Americans. A terrorist.”

Weller grunted. He had done three tours in Helmand, Afghanistan, and seen some good mates die in front of him.

“Bodyguards?”

“No. Occasionally a rented limousine with a driver. More usually, black cabs right off the street.”

“You have a place to take him?”

“Not yet. I will have.”

“I would want to make a thorough recce before a decision.”

“I’d walk right out of here if you didn’t,” said the Tracker.

Weller took his eyes off the block of dollars and assessed the American on the other side of the table. Nothing was said. Nothing needed to be. He was convinced the Yank had also seen combat, heard the incoming lead, seen mates go down. He nodded.

“I’ll drive up to London. Tomorrow suit, boss?”

Tracker suppressed a smile. He recognized the address, what British Special Forces soldiers called an officer to his face. Behind his back was another matter. Usually Rupert, sometimes worse.

“Tomorrow will suit fine. A thousand dollars for your trouble. Keep the balance if you say yes. Give it back if you walk away.”

“And how do you know I will? Give it back?”

The Tracker rose to leave.

“Mr. Weller, I think we both know the rules. We have been round the block a few times.”

When he was gone, leaving a rendezvous and time well away from the embassy, Brian Weller went through the firebrick. Twenty-five thousand dollars. Five for outgoings; the Yank would provide the hideaway. He had two girls to educate, a wife to keep, food to put on the table and skills not really marketable at the vicarage tea party.

He made the rendezvous, brought a mate from the same commando unit and spent a week vetting the job. Then he said yes.

Ali Abdi screwed up his courage and went to see al-Afrit.

“Things are going well,” he reported. “We will secure a fine big ransom for the Malmö.”

Then he broached another subject.

“The blond boy. If he dies, it will complicate matters, create delays, reduce the ransom.”

He did not mention the prospect of European commandos storming ashore on a rescue mission, his personal nightmare. It might just provoke the man he faced.

“Why should he die?” growled the warlord.

Abdi shrugged.

“Who knows? Infection, blood poisoning.”

He got his way. There was a doctor in Garacad with at least the knowledge of basic first aid. The cadet’s welts were disinfected and bandaged. He was still being kept in the cellars, and there was nothing Abdi could or dared do about that.

That is deer-stalking country,” said the man at the sporting agency. “But the stags are coming into rut, so the close of season is not far off.”

The Tracker smiled. He was playing the harmless American tourist again.

“Aw, the stags are safe from me. No, I just want to write my book, and for that I need absolute peace and quiet. No phones, no roads, no callers, no interruptions. A nice cabin off the beaten track where I can write the Great American Novel.”

The land agent knew a bit about authors. Weird people. He tapped his keyboard again and stared at the screen.

“There is a small stalking lodge on our books,” he conceded. “Free until the shooting season starts again.”

He rose and went to a wall map. He checked the grid reference and then tapped a pristine section of the map that was unmarked by towns, villages or even roads. A few spidery tracks ran across it, in northern Caithness, the last county of Scotland before the wild Pentland Firth.

“I have some pictures.”

He led back to the computer screen and scrolled up a portfolio of pictures. It was a log cabin, all right, set in an endless sea of rolling heather, a huge glen framed by high hills; the sort of place where a city slicker, making a run for it with two Marines after him, might get five hundred yards before collapsing.

It had two bedrooms, a large main room, kitchen and shower room, a huge fireplace and a pile of logs.

“I surely think I have found my Shangri-la,” said the tourist/writer. “I have not had time to set up a checking account. Will cash dollars do?”

Cash dollars did very well. Exact directions and keys would be sent within days, but to Hamworthy.

Mustafa Dardari chose not to have a car or drive himself in London. The parking was an abiding nightmare he could well do without. In his part of Knightsbridge, cruising cabs were constant and convenient, if expensive. Not a problem. But for the smart evening out, a black-tie dinner, he used a limousine company; always the same firm and usually the same driver.

He had been dining with friends a mile from his home, and as he made his farewells, he used his mobile to call the driver to come to the portico, where double yellow lines forbade all parking day or night. Around the corner, the driver responded, switched on the engine and touched the accelerator. The car moved a yard before one of the rear tires settled on its rim.

An examination revealed some rogue had slipped a small square of plywood pierced by a needle-sharp steel nail under the tread while the driver dozed at the wheel. The driver rang his client and explained. He would change the tire, but it was a big, heavy limo and would take a while.

As Mr. Dardari stood under the portico with the other guests departing around him, a cab came around the corner, light on. He raised his hand. It swerved toward him. Luck. He climbed aboard and gave his address. And the cab did indeed set off in that direction.

Cabbies in London are required to activate the rear door locks as soon as the client is seated. It prevents passengers from “doing a runner” without paying, but it also stops them being molested by troublemakers trying to climb in beside them. But this fool seemed to have forgotten.

They were barely out of sight of the limousine driver, crouched over his jack, than the cab swerved to the curb, and a burly figure pulled open the door and climbed in. Dardari protested that this cab was taken. But the burly figure slammed the door behind him and said:

“That’s right, squire. By me.”

The Pakistani tycoon was enveloped in a bear hug by one arm while the other arm jammed a large pad soaked in chloroform over his mouth and nose. In twenty seconds, he had stopped struggling.

The transfer to the minivan was made a mile later, where the third ex-commando was at the wheel. The cab, borrowed from a mate who had taken up cabs for a living, was parked as promised with the keys under the seat.

Two of the men sat behind the driver with their dozing guest propped between them, until they were well clear of north London. Then he was tucked in a single bed behind the seats. Twice he tried to wake up but each time was eased back into slumber.

It was a long drive, but they did it in fourteen hours, guided by a GPS locator and a SatNav guide. It took some pushing and shoving to get the minivan up the last section of track, but they arrived at sundown, and Brian Weller made a phone call. There were no masts up there, but he had brought a sat phone.

The Tracker called Ariel, but on his dedicated and secure line that not even Fort Meade or Cheltenham would be listening to. It was midafternoon in Centerville, Virginia.

“Ariel, you know that computer in London you gutted some time back? Could you now send e-mail messages that appear to be coming from it?”

“Of course, Colonel. I have its access right here.”

“And you don’t have to leave Virginia, right?”

Ariel was perplexed that anyone alive could be so naïve in the matters of cyberspace. With what he had at his fingertips, he could become Mustafa Dardari, transmitting from Pelham Crescent, London.

“And you recall the code based on fruit and vegetable prices that the user used to send in? Could you encrypt text in the same code?”

“Of course, sir. I broke it, I can re-create it.”

“Just the way it was? As if the old user was back at the computer keys?”

“Identical.”

“Great. I want you to send a message from the protocol in London to the receiver in Kismayo. Do you have pencil and paper?”

“Do I have what?”

“I know it’s old-fashioned, but I want to stick to secure phone, not e-mail, just in case.”

There was a pause while Ariel slithered down his ladder and returned with pieces of equipment he barely knew how to use. The Tracker dictated his message.

The message was encrypted in exactly the same code Dardari would have used, then it was sent. As everything from Dardari to Somalia was now taped, it was heard by Fort Meade and Cheltenham and decrypted again.

There were some raised eyebrows at both listening posts, but the orders were to eavesdrop but not interfere. According to standing orders, Fort Meade sent a copy to TOSA, which passed it on to the Tracker, who accepted it with a straight face.

In Kismayo it was not the Troll, now dead, who received it but his replacement, Jamma, the former secretary. He decoded it word by word, using the crib the Troll had left behind. But he was no expert, even if there had been a slip. But there was not. Even the required typos were in place.

Because it is cumbersome to send by e-mail in Urdu or Arabic, Dardari, the Troll and the Preacher had always used English. The new message was in English, which Jamma, a Somali, knew, but not with the same fluency. But he knew enough to know this was important and should be brought to the Preacher without delay.

He was one of the few who knew the Preacher’s apparent appearance on the Internet to recant all his teachings was phony because his master had made no broadcasts for over three weeks. But he knew that across the great Muslim diaspora in the West, most of the fan base was disgusted. He had seen the posted comments, hour after hour. But his own loyalty was undimmed. He would make the long and wearisome journey back to Marka with the message from London.

Just as Jamma was convinced he had been listening to Dardari, Fort Meade and Cheltenham were convinced the pickle tycoon was at his desk in London, assisting his friend in Somalia.

The real Dardari was staring miserably out at the driving, early-September rain, while behind him, in front of a roaring fire, three former Marine commandos were having a laughter-filled ramble down memory lane and all the fights they had been in. Curtains of gray cloud swept down across the glen and hurled water onto the roof.

In the blistering heat of Kismayo, the loyal Jamma filled the petrol tank of the pickup for that night’s long haul to Marka.

In London, Gareth Evans transferred the first million of Harry Andersson’s dollars to Abdi’s secret account in Grand Cayman and reckoned that in three more weeks he would have the Malmö, cargo and crew back on the high seas with a NATO destroyer escort.

In an embassy safe house in London, the Tracker wondered if his fish would bite. As dusk settled on Virginia, he called TOSA headquarters.

“Gray Fox, I think I may need the Grumman. Could you send it back to Northolt for me?” he said.