The Face of Tomorrow
David Bickford
C/o Pretzel Publishing Ltd
Copyright © 2010 David Bickford
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms issued by the
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First published as an Ebook by Pretzel Films in 2010
Catalogue in Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-9546990-0-9
This Ebook produced by Pretzel Publishing
Pretzel Publishing
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CHAPTER ONE
Abu Hamid scratched his left ear. He always did when he was puzzled. His training officer had told him it was a giveaway, but, however hard he tried, he couldn’t stop his hand automatically straying to his ear when something didn’t seem right.
His eyes switched to the harbour below him, indistinct in the starless night. The boat was still nosing its way in, leaving no wake, just a darker oblong in a dark sea.
He didn’t know why he was puzzled by the boat. There was something about it. It wasn’t the shape, although it was quite large. It could have been the speed or, rather, the lack of it. Then it struck him. There were no lights. Even though he was looking down at the port of Ireon from a steep angle, he would have seen the navigation lights if they had been lit.
Traffickers, he thought, nothing to do with him, anyway he was on holiday. Interesting to see how they operated, though. The scrubby hillside was littered with rocks, grey against the black bushed. He settled on one, shivering a little as the sweat from his climb dried in the cold air.
He wasn’t even operational at the moment. He had come to the Greek island of Samos for some recreation after eight months in south east Turkey infiltrating the PKK, the terrorists fighting for the freedom of the Kurds and a homeland to be carved out of southern Turkey. He wiped his brow. He needed a rest from Kurdish terrorists and their constant bickering. He sometimes thought there was more danger of being caught out in the wrong PKK political camp than being caught as a spy, or, as his masters the G8 International Security Agency preferred to call him, a G8 agent. Certainly G8 looked after him a lot better than most of the PKK cell leaders he’d come across.
Without warning, the nose of the boat lifted. Abu Hamid watched intently as a huge wash surged from the stern, shoving the dark shape in a tight turn towards a bulky caique fishing smack lolling at anchor a hundred meters away.
A ripple of light outstripped the staccato noise of an Uzi sub machine gun. Others joined in, ripping up the silence, spraying the water around the caique, before being drowned out by the smashing, splintering noise of the boat mounting and splitting the caique in two as it raced through it.
Abu Hamid was on his feet, his hands clamped around his eyes, straining to focus on the boat as it streamed away, the prow high, the wake phosphorescent in its speed. Briefly, a searchlight stabbed out from its stern, roving over the wreckage of the caique. Just the tips of the high bow and cabin left now, before they too plunged to the seabed.
Then, as if in a final insult, the beam rested on the Turkish flag unfurling from the sternpost of the boat as it sheered away into the night.
CHAPTER TWO
John Hammond, Director General of the G8 International Security Agency, and Abu Hamid’s ultimate boss, studied Hamid’s message on the giant plasma screen in the G8 operations centre in Basingstoke, England.
Although he was the Director General, at thirtyfive Hammond was restlessly energetic and liked to be seen in the operations centre. His pale blue eyes flicking onto the huge screens ranged along the walls of the vast warehouse, which served as G8 Headquarters, and his sandy hair warning the operatives at their work desks of his approach with a question or word of encouragement.
He turned to the work desk behind him.
‘Julia, this report from Abu Hamid about the Turkish attack on this Greek caique, he’s not operational, is he?’
Julia Simmonds pushed a strand of chestnut hair away from her brown eyes and stood up. Hammond caught a faint drift of Picasso, the perfume she always wore.
‘Hamid is holidaying on Samos at the moment. But he’s the best agent we’ve got in the PKK so his report will be accurate.’
Hammond thought for a moment. Julia was his deputy, twentyeight and promoted personally by him so he had no concerns about her judgment. But if the message was genuine and accurate, it spelled trouble.
Turkey had given up trying to control the ten million Kurds who were pushing for an independent homeland in the south of the country. Instead the Turkish Government were pushing as many Kurds as they could out of Turkey into Greece. Along with the Kurds went other refugees from the Middle East and North Africa who had infiltrated through the porous borders into southern Turkey.
Relations between Greece and Turkey were a tinderbox as the Greeks rocked under the strain of trying in vain to stop the migration, with sealed borders, police, troops and the blunted, mind numbingly slow process of diplomacy.
Hamid’s message was one of thousands of pieces of information that the G8 Agency’s computer received, analysed and distributed every day. Information about every aspect of international terrorism and organised crime that the G8 Agency had been set up to fight and, like every other piece of information, this message now appeared on similar plasma screens in other G8 Agency Centres in Moscow, Washington and Tokyo.
‘Better get Lev and Walt on line.’
Julia was used to Hammond’s casual references to the Directors of the Moscow and Washington G8 Centres. ‘Right. But here’s Keithley for his meeting.’
Hammond followed her glance. A short, upright man walked briskly towards him behind a security guard, winding his way past the groups of operatives talking or bent over their computers at the workstations in the huge floor area of the warehouse. He was dressed in the full uniform of the Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police.
‘Hello, Lionel,’ Hammond called. ‘Come at the wrong time, as usual.’
Lionel Keithley smiled, his lean face crinkling at the edges. He’d known Hammond since the days they had been at Manchester University. Keithley had gone into the police and Hammond had specialised in information tracking, linking up with Michael Harris, the then Director of a tyre distribution firm who had later skated his way across the political ice rink to become Prime Minister. It was he who had appointed Hammond to his present job.
Keithley’s smile turned into a laugh.
‘Computers down, are they?’
Hammond laughed with him.
‘For that you’ll get the full tour, and like it,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’
Keithley wasn’t prepared for what he saw. Although it had been set up a year ago in 2006, only a handful of people knew the extent of G8 work let alone about the targets G8 attacked. Even fewer were involved as G8 mounted their operations through Europe, America, Russia and the Far East, using massive computers to direct the activities of the G8 teams of operatives against the world’s most threatening international terrorists and organised crime enterprises. Fighting against the destruction of terrorism and the degradation of narcotics trafficking, fraud, extortion, prostitution, alien smuggling, moneylaundering.
Keithley saw the huge plasma screens where the G8 Agency computers recorded the activities of the G8 targets as they crossed boundaries, as they moved their arms or drugs, or prostitutes, or money telegraphed from finance centre to finance centre across the world. He saw the computers coldly analysing the activities of both the innocent and the guilty, and the iciness of Hammond’s Team Leaders as they planned their counter moves.
Shaken, he emerged into Hammond’s office. ‘We could never get away with half of that in the Met.’ He gratefully accepted a glass of scotch.
Hammond sat down, leaving Keithley standing. ‘Which is why the G8 Agency was set up. Fighting international crime and terrorism is a war. Policemen are trained for peace.’
Keithley slowly sipped his scotch, waved his hand in the direction of the operations room.
‘No rules, then?’
It was always the same with policemen, Hammond thought. They always saw extremes; found it difficult to operate in the middle. It was their training. He had always admired the police. His father had been a policeman, until he had been killed one night by an armed robber. But his father had been the same. Things were either right or wrong, blurring at the edges was forbidden, no grey areas. An attitude that was perfect for dealing with street crime, theft and thuggery. But out there, in the wilderness of organised crime, among the deviousness and cunning of the scum of every race imaginable, it was different.
The scum were often lawyers, accountants, businessmen, bankers. Sophisticated, thinkers, planners with access to more money in their organisations than many member states of the United Nations. These people hid wrong under layers of right. And to get at wrong, G8 had to strip away the layers of right at a cost to right that was only bearable when the extent of the wrong was finally exposed. Hammond looked at Keithley. He wouldn’t understand.
‘Yes, there are rules. But…’
Julia’s voice came through the desk computer.
‘Lev and Walt are on line.’
Hammond stood up.
‘Come and meet Lev and Walt. Perhaps they’ll answer your question.’
‘Are they here?’
‘See for yourself.’ Hammond turned and took Keithley down to the warehouse floor to the screen opposite Julia’s workstation. Facing them on the screen were two men. A wiry African American and, almost hidden in a haze of smoke, a heavy set, greying man in the act of lighting one cigarette from another.
‘Walt Sable, Lev Leviatski, meet Lionel Keithley, Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
Leviatski blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘Good Morning, Commissioner.’
Walt laughed. ‘Don’t take no notice of him, Lionel. He’s meaner than a bear in a hornets’ nest today.’
Keithley smiled. ‘He’d smoke them out quickly enough, I think.’
They all laughed.
‘I see you have a friend, John,’ Leviatski poked a finger towards Hammond, ‘keep him.’
Hammond leaned forward. ‘Have you seen Abu Hamid’s news of this Turkish attack on Samos?’
‘Not until just now.’ Walt narrowed his eyes. ‘How can we be sure it was the Turks? It was just a Greek caique sunk, wasn’t it?’
‘Hamid saw it all. Deliberate shooting and ramming by a boat flying the Turkish flag. The Turks showed it deliberately.’ Lev tapped his desk to emphasise the point.
Walt looked thoughtful. ‘Just some Turkish provocation, they’ve always claimed Samos. Why’s it so important this time, Lev?’
‘Because the caique was a Greek electronic surveillance vessel. It belonged to Greek Intelligence.’
‘Targeted deliberately, then.’ Hammond looked at Lev.
‘Yes.’ Lev brushed some ash off his desktop.
Walt jerked up his head. ‘Could it have been a PKK attack?’
Lev shook his head. ‘Abu was precise. It was a Turkish boat. Must have been Turkish Navy.’
‘But it was at night. He was on holiday. He couldn’t have seen much, might have been mistaken.’
Julia shook her head. ‘The Turks shone a searchlight on the flag. Anyway Hamid is our best agent in the PKK. And if it was PKK he’d have heard something, the PKK are only carrying out sporadic bombings at the moment. An attack like this doesn’t fit the pattern.’
Hammond broke the silence. ‘I agree. It was the Turks and that spells trouble. The Greeks are wild that Turkey does nothing to stop the Kurdish migrants pouring across their border into Greece. The Turks claim that they could control their border if the Greeks gave them the islands near their coastline. We all know that’s nonsense, it’s just the Turks continuing their political fight to get more territory. What’s more worrying is the Turks simply pushing the Kurds over the border to get rid of them. The Greek electronic surveillance was there to try and stop that.’
Walt shifted slightly in his chair. ‘You think the Greeks will retaliate?’
Hammond and Lev nodded simultaneously. Walt grimaced.
‘Damn Europeans. You’re so… so… damn tribal.’
Hammond smiled.
‘It’s why we have our American and Russian friends to keep us in order. Can you,’ he turned to Lev, ‘and you Lev, speak to your Presidents. Get some pressure on the Greeks not to use force. Promise them another Draft Resolution in the UN. I’ll speak to the Prime Minister, try and get something more going in Europe. We’ve got to break this deadlock, there’s a powder keg out there.’
Lev drew in a breath, coughing as he caught the smoke from his cigarette end.
‘Can you get Abu Hamid back on the case?’
Hammond nodded. ‘Julia will fix that. And we’ll get G8SUR to move off the PKK and concentrate on the Greek Turkey border.’
‘Is that wise?’ coughed Lev.
Hammond rubbed his forehead.
‘We haven’t the resources to have satellite surveillance on both the PKK and the border. The border’s more important.’
‘I agree,’ said Walt. ‘The PKK’s been very quiet, the leadership’s old, pretty ineffective.’
‘Right,’ said Hammond. ‘Julia, will you re-correlate G8SUR as soon as possible.’
Julia nodded, switched off the plasma screen and started typing more commands into her computer.
Keithley watched her.
‘Walt’s right, you know. We are bloody tribal. Turf is all we care about.’
Hammond looked at Keithley. If he was talking about turf it meant G8 had something or someone Keithley wanted. Hammond studied him for a moment.
‘Whatever it is you want, it had better be something you can actually use.’
Hammond’s directness took Keithley by surprise. He answered without thinking.
‘What I want is access to G8SUR.’
‘What for?’
It wasn’t the flat rejection Keithley had expected, but the answer wasn’t promising. G8SUR was the G8 Satellite Surveillance, targeted on all G8 targets. The satellite tracked all their movements. The unique electrical impulses of their bodies were identified by the satellite and followed, wherever they were. The impulses could be detected in the dark, through cloud cover, in buildings, up to forty feet underground.
‘Policemen are spending over sixty percent of their working days dealing with paperwork. Seventy percent of cases prosecuted with police evidence are lost, usually through that paperwork being faulty. I want to stop that.’ Keithley paused.
Hammond said nothing.
Keithley frowned. ‘I believe G8SUR could be modified to follow each policeman on the beat, interrogating suspects, in charge of police cells, at all times.’ He drove on, knowing if he stopped he’d lost the initiative. ‘The digital imaging would substitute for paperwork, it would be cast iron evidence. We can use G8SUR evidence in Court, no smart arsed defence could get round it. We could turn the percentages around overnight.’
Hammond leaned on the back of Julia’s chair. ‘I agree.’
Keithley was suspicious. G8SUR belonged to G8 and Hammond should be fighting to keep it. After all, turf was turf. Keithley decided to test the water: he didn’t want to expose all his cards if, in the end, Hammond was going to say no.
‘You haven’t mentioned ownership, confidentiality,’ he said cautiously.
Hammond stretched his back. ‘There isn’t any confidentiality. G8SUR has been exposed publicly by us in dozens of trials. The Courts have agreed to protect the technology from exposure, which is all we want.’ He paused. ‘As to ownership, we own it.’
It was as Keithley expected, Hammond was going to keep the damn thing. He leaned forward.
‘The police will pay their way.’
‘Plus twenty five percent for research and development?’
Keithley half closed his eyes. Hammond’s name wasn’t spoken in the government corridors of Whitehall, it was whispered. Whispers Keithley had heard. Hammond the strategist, who used his G8 super computers to sift and analyse information, who was brilliant, but, above all, who was ruthless. Hammond the friend and adviser of the Prime Minister. Twenty five percent of research and development was way over Keithley’s budget and Hammond knew it. Keithley was sure now that Hammond would fight not to give him G8SUR.
‘Fifteen percent,’ he said desperately.
‘Done.’
Keithley could hardly believe it. ‘You mean you’ll let me have it for that?’
Hammond touched Julia’s shoulder. ‘You hear that, Julia?’
Julia turned in her seat to look at Keithley, her brown eyes amused.
‘You could have had it for free.’
Keithley swung around to Hammond.
‘Free? What d’you mean free?’
Hammond nodded to Julia.
Her firm mouth broadened to a smile. ‘You insisted we’re tribal, should protect our turf.’ She looked at Hammond. ‘John never said so.’
‘Bastard,’ Keithley said, feelingly.
CHAPTER THREE
Melik Oren was excited. He had worked six months in the Camberwell bus depot and today was his last day. It was demeaning work cleaning the inside of Number 11 double decker buses. Dirty, low paid, long hours, cold and not only in the winter months. He shivered now in the cold June night air as he removed the seat from the front near side bench on the lower deck of the bus. He’d chosen to work the night shift. Less people around, easier to shift the bulky packages onto the bus.
He carefully unwrapped one. It resembled a cone, with a small cylinder at the base. He inched it under the seat. Took out a manual drill and painstakingly drilled the metal seat frame. Slowly, so slowly. The noise confined to the area he worked in. He was sweating now. Even though he had practised this a hundred times back in Diyarbakir in southern Turkey.
His mind drifted back. Diyarbakir had been idyllic. He had been working for the PKK as a mechanic with other PKK members, minding the cars and trucks, the bombers and close quarter killers used in their work. Celik, the PKK Leader, had been trying to reach a political settlement with the Turks, hoping to end the forced migration of the Kurds, through an endless series of meetings with the Turkish Government in Ankara. Work had been slack, only a couple of bombings or assassinations a month. Just enough, as Celik said, to keep the Turks at the negotiating table. So leave was easy to come by. Melik’s short cropped black hair and high boned cheeks under lazy blue eyes had found plenty of girls. Particularly Tansu.
What had attracted him was her disinterest. She wasn’t pretty, far from it, but she was often to be found in the cafes and bars around the harbour front. Sitting alone at the tables in front of the bright, wash painted buildings. He would sidle up to her. Would she like a drink? Some other time. Would she like to go fishing? Not today. Would she like a drive in the hills to Kazani? She didn’t have all day. She became an obsession and he pursued her, nursing his ego through every rejection until, three weeks later, she’d asked him to go to church with her. He hadn’t been in a church since his christening, but he went with all the ardour of a convert. She was dressed in white, her veil splashing snow on her long blue hair and he’d caught his breath as he sat down next to her. But she’d moved away, so he couldn’t touch her. After the service, she’d asked him to tea at her home and smiled when he’d agreed.
When he’d arrived, he hadn’t expected her mother to open the door or the gruff request to come in, or the four men who waited for him in the hall. Sweat had burst out of him.
‘I didn’t touch her. I swear. Please. I didn’t.’
‘Not much guts, have you,’ the woman said. The men just watched him. He was shaking now, unable to talk.
They had taken him into another room and told him that they were a special PKK unit. They’d said the Kurds had to defend themselves and act before the Turks could mobilise and annihilate them. He had skills which were going to be needed and he had been chosen to help them. But it was to be done in secret, no one else was to know.
It was all so fast. The next day he was put to work in a hut in another part of Diyarbakir, constructing the cone shaped devices and practising placing them under the seats of a British double decker bus.
Two months later, Tansu came to see him. She gave him documents which identified him as a Turk who came from the Kurdish area of Diyarbakir, and told him to enter England as a refugee and take a job as a bus cleaner on the Number 11 buses in Camberwell, London. As he moved to kiss her she laughed and pushed him away. ‘Wait until you come back,’ she said.
That had been six months ago. Six months of boredom, filthy apartments and dull girls in Camberwell, England. He’d never seen Tansu again. But what kept him going was the thought that when he returned to Turkey she would be there.
He turned to the third seat. Two more charges to go and he’d be finished. He’d already drilled the holes in the floor for the electric leads.
‘Bloody ’ell, you don’t need to take the bleedin’ seat covers off.’ A shadow moved along the aisle. ‘You always do that?’
Oren jumped, cursing himself, his mind on Tansu and not the bloody foreman. He might have guessed that bastard would be snooping around. He was a Union man, constantly on the lookout for breaches of the regulations and a backhander for not reporting them. Oren knew he must agree, always agree, whatever he said.
‘You no like this? I change it. Sorry.’ He emphasised his accent.
‘Well, it shows up the others, don’t it? All the same, you bleedin’ foreigners. Never stick to Union rules.’ The Union man moved forward towards the seat, lifting his bald head to get a better view.
Oren started to sweat.
‘Rules?’ he mumbled.
‘Yeah, you Turkish ape. Something you wouldn’t know anything about.’ The Union man started to push his way past him then stopped. ‘What’s this, then?’ He patted Oren’s pocket. Oren felt his mouth go dry.
‘No answers, eh? I’ll bloody see for myself then.’
He thrust his hand into Oren’s pocket, took something out and peered at it. ‘Fuck me, fuckin’ brandy.’
He grasped Oren’s chin and turned it towards him. ‘So do I charge you or do I drink it?’
‘Drink it,’ Oren choked out.
‘Fuckin right, you little Turkish shit.’ He turned and lurched out of the bus, throwing a finger in the air as he went.
Oren tried to control his shaking hands. It took another half hour to finish his work. Finally he wrapped up the plastic covering, shoved it in his pocket and stepped off the bus.
‘Finished?’
Oren whirled around. Esen came out of the shadows. Oren gulped. ‘Fuck, Esen, where the hell did you come from?’
Esen ignored him. ‘Electric leads into the cab? Detonator set?’
‘Yes.’ Oren kept his answer clipped. He didn’t like Esen. He was a peasant from Artvin on the border with Georgia. They were untrustworthy bastards, never knew where their loyalties lay. Still, he was his partner, the bus driver, the guy who’d detonate the explosives. He had to get on with him.
Esen turned his mouth down. ‘Are the leads hidden? I don’t like the electric leads.’
‘Well, you’ll have to. I told you before, we can’t use impulse detonation. Too much risk of interference down Whitehall.’
Esen put his finger to his lips. Oren found he was shouting. They were next to the automatic washing machine, the brushes flailing against the sides of one of the red buses. He nodded his head.
It was his last meaningful gesture. He felt himself swept off his feet. Hit by an ice cold wave of water. Blinded by spray. Coughing. Choking. Unable to cry out. Thrashing with his feet and hands. He couldn’t wrench out of the giant hold gripping him. He felt the whip of plastic line. Gagged on another spume of water. Tried to scream as his arms became trapped in the gearing. Then mercifully crashed into unconsciousness as inexorably his body mashed through the mechanism.
Esen turned away, the first part of his job finished. He wasn’t sorry: Oren was a moaner, always on about the cold and some bloody girl back home. He looked at his watch, three hours to go. Time for a shower and shave, bacon and eggs for breakfast. He’d grown quite fond of that in England over the last three months. He slipped out of the side door, as he heard the first shouts from the washing machine operator.
CHAPTER FOUR
She danced down the stairs.
‘Mama, where are my shoes? My yellow shoes?’
She was seven years old and proud of her English. Her huge brown eyes and pageboy black hair were typically Turkish. And she was proud of that, too.
Ilke turned from the hallway mirror to glance up the stairs. Her diminutive daughter stood there. In her yellow dress. One hand hitching up her tights, which were a little too long.
‘Don’t do that, Leila. What would Mr Harris say if he saw you do that?’
The casual reference to the British Prime Minister struck no chord with Leila.
‘He would be more shocked if they fell down,’ she giggled.
‘Leila.’ Ilke tried to sound severe, but the effort dissolved into a gurgle of laughter, a mirror image of her daughter. She tried to look serious.
‘We’ll be late and Daddy will be furious. He specially arranged for you to meet the Prime Minister’s daughter.’ She used the word formally to impress the importance of the occasion. ‘Now where are those shoes?’ She climbed the wide, curling staircase. Took Leila’s hand when they reached the broad landing.
‘What will Daddy do when I’m with Susan?’
‘He and the Prime Minister will talk business. Ambassadors do that, you know. It’s not all parties and fun.’ She added the last sentence for effect. They had been in London three years now, with all the trappings, favours and sycophancy that went with an Ambassadorship in a major city. That and the pleasure of a tight knit happy Turkish community had created a curious fantasy world. Ilke had her husband to pour the cold water of reality on her existence when it became too comfortable. But it was difficult to do that to Leila. Partly because she was very young, partly because she skipped her way through life. And to take away that happiness would be cruel. The brown eyes looked up at her.
‘What does Turkish agg… aggression on the Samos border mean?’
Ilke was startled. ‘Where did you hear that?’ she replied in Turkish.
‘English, Mama. You said we must always speak English during the day. I heard it on the radio just now. What does it mean?’
Ilke knew very well what it meant. Ever since Greece had joined the EU they had grown economically stronger. Turkey had stayed out. Squabbling among the Turkish political parties making conditions for entry into the EU impossible. The continual fight with the Kurdish separatists and the terrorist PKK had drained the country financially. Turkey was in a mess. And the only answer was to remove as many Kurds as possible. The Greeks had done nothing but complain and make trouble. Ilke’s husband had told her that yesterday’s skirmish around the Greek island of Samos had been Greek inspired. The Turks had gone nowhere near the island. But no one had believed the Turks when they said so, preferring to rely on history to point to the Turkish invaders of the previous centuries.
Her husband had always said that relying on history was like relying on astrology. It was a philosophy that had won him honours at his university, the Turkish Ambassadorship to London at the age of thirty four and the offer of the leadership of the Democratic Left Party when he returned to Ankara in four months’ time.
Today he would see Michael Harris, the British Prime Minister, to try and persuade him that the Turks had no designs on Greek territory, that all the intelligence pointed to the Greeks creating the incident on Samos themselves. He had told her last night, in their bed, that he had little hope of persuading Harris. All Harris was interested in was supporting the Greeks and he’d asked that the meeting be held in secret to downplay its importance. And the press would be there to report a merely social occasion. The Ambassador’s wife and her daughter meeting the Prime Minister and his family for the first time.
Ilke looked at her daughter. Remembered her husband’s dejection as he left for work that morning. Remembered the caress he’d given Leila as he walked out of the door.
‘Look, darling. There are the shoes, under your bed. Aren’t they pretty.’
CHAPTER FIVE
The Prime Minister glanced at his watch.
‘The Turkish Ambassador’ll be here in fifteen minutes.’ He glared at the woman in front of him. ‘And I’ve got nothing to tell him.’
Mary Lifton, Head of South East Europe Department, British Foreign Office, shifted in her chair. Turkey had flagrantly sent a gunboat to the Greek island of Samos to sink a Greek surveillance vessel killing most of its crew. The Prime Minister knew damn well what to tell the Turkish Ambassador. Get off Greece’s bloody patch.
She sighed inwardly. ‘You might tell him that our sources confirm an attack by Turkey on Greek soil. And that hostilities by Turkey should cease.’
The PM smoothed a hand across his desk, his eyes following it.
‘And the PKK?’
‘PKK?’
His hand slapped the desk.
‘Yes. The damn PKK. The Kurdish terrorists.’
‘I know who they are, Prime Minister,’ she said, coldly.
‘Well, if you know who they are, why aren’t you thinking of them and the fact that it might have been them.’ He snapped.
She was used to nervous ministers, used to the job of watching their backs, dragging them away from pet issues, pet theories. Even the Prime Minister.
‘They’re not relevant, Prime Minister.’ She held up her hand as he started to speak. ‘I know they’re Muslims. But they’re not into the Muslim extremist thing. They’re only interested in having a Kurdish homeland for themselves. Fighting the Turkish Government to give them southern Turkey and the ten million Kurds in Turkey to live there. To create Kurdistan. They have no interest in attacking Greece.’
‘You can’t be sure of that. They’re Muslims. And they’re trying to get the Turkish Government by the balls.’ He looked at her with raised eyebrows. The comment was sexist and he knew she was an equality warrior. ‘Sorry. I mean they’re on the ropes.’ He started again. ‘Can’t contain them.’
She smiled patiently. ‘That’s the Turkish Government’s problem. We’ve given them support to deal with the PKK terrorist threat.’
‘Half an SAS squadron.’
‘It’s symbolic. We can’t police the world.’
The Prime Minister picked up his pen. ‘Have you ever thought of what would happen if the PKK did become the Muslim extremist thing, as you put it?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Ever since Al Quaida and Saddam Hussein in 2003, our foreign policy has been dominated by a fear of the extreme Muslims. It’s as if we’re back in the Crusades. Only a few Muslims are extremist. The Muslims are not going to swamp us. I can’t stress that enough. The Turks are kicking out some Kurds, for sure, but they’re going to Germany and France. They’re not our problem. And the PKK are under control. You don’t have to appease the Turkish Ambassador. It’s the Greeks we need to protect. If the Turks backlash into them, we’ll spend years picking up the pieces.’ She snapped her briefcase shut.
The PM dropped the pen. ‘I need some room for manoeuvre.’
She smiled. Room for manoeuvre meant she’d won. Room for manoeuvre was what her job was all about.
‘OK. Indicate, incursion, territorial waters and consider.’
The PM picked up his pen again.
‘I’m sorry. What?’
‘Amend what you’re going to say to him to “Sources indicate an incursion by Turkey into Greek territorial waters. Perhaps Turkey should consider their position”. The word “indicate” is loose, it allows for the possibility of mistake. An incursion could mean anything from a military aircraft straying to a drunk soldier losing his way. Letting them consider their position means they needn’t do anything. But, at least, you’ve made your point.’
‘Dictate that to me. Slowly.’
CHAPTER SIX
Esen drove the bus to his own timetable. The destination indicators on the Number 11 signalled that it was out of service. The conductor had been only too pleased to hop off when Esen had made the interior lights fail. Esen had told him to do some shopping or see a film before going back to the depot. He’d see to it the bus took a couple of hours to get back.
Traffic was heavy but Esen had plenty of time. It gave him a certain satisfaction to ignore the frantic waving of the bus queues, as he slowly drove past them until he spotted the Ambassador’s limousine in Victoria Street. Where his PKK Intelligence controller told him it would be.
Traffic was backed up past Scotland Yard as usual. A haze of blue exhaust fumes slightly obscuring the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben in the June sunshine. He took time to glance around the pavements and linger on the girl tourists, scantily clothed in the hot weather. Every now and again he smiled at one. He knew he shouldn’t as they might recognise him later but it was worth the risk when one or other of them smiled back.
The Ambassador’s limousine crawled into Parliament Square and waited for the turn into Whitehall, opposite the Underground station, where he would run afterwards.
It was there that he caught his first glimpse inside the limousine of the bastard Turkish Ambassador. He leaned forward for a better look. Glimpsed the yellow dress. Leant lower. Saw the black pageboy hair. The brown eyes. The smile as she waved a small hand to him.
He jerked back. Ice cold down his spine. They hadn’t told him about a girl. He couldn’t kill a little girl. He edged the bus forward. Caught sight of Ilke. The mother. His heart was thumping. Tearing into his throat. They hadn’t told him this. They hadn’t told him.
The lights went orange then green. The car inched forward. The girl was leaning over the back seat now. Waving. Laughing. The yellow dress moving this way and that. Esen took his foot off the accelerator. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t kill her.
Suddenly a man bent over her. Looked back at Esen. Then deliberately turned her away. The bastard Ambassador. The bastard Turk.
Esen slammed his foot on the accelerator. Took the bus alongside. Thrust his hand under the dashboard. Pressed the switch.
The limousine took the full force of four charges. Lifting. Blazing. Spraying metal. Smashing. Heaped against the Foreign Office wall.
The front of the bus joined it. Torn away from the chassis by the blast of a fifth charge from under the driver’s seat.
A yellow shoe on the pavement the only colour in the chaos of black.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The line of plumes swayed steadily down the aisle of Westminster Abbey. Beneath them, the breastplated Guard to the Members of the Honourable Order of the Bath, marched steadily towards the Chapel of King Henry the Seventh beyond the High Altar. Behind them, scarlet robed, walked the Members themselves, just as other Members had done, tall, proud, through centuries of strife, war and a few moments of peace.
John Hammond looked at the man he escorted. The startling success Lionel Keithley had achieved came rarely. Rarely enough to be made Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at the age of thirty seven and to be made a Knight.
The procession moved slowly forward, past the lines of families and friends, past the Guards, brilliant in their scarlet uniforms. The organ majestic with Bach. Tall candles lit the Chancel steps, the Altar above and the magnificent banners which honoured the Knights and drew the Members’ gaze as they moved towards the Chapel.
Keithley caught Hammond’s eye.
‘The lads at Scotland Yard’ll be splitting their sides now,’ he growled, hitching his scarlet cloak to climb the steps. ‘Miserable bastards,’ he added with a grin that ignored the sanctity of the place he was in.
Hammond caught the humour. Knew it was what pulled Keithley through fifteen years in the police and the political trench warfare of Whitehall. The choir started to sing Elgar’s Spirit of England. A lone tenor joining them. Almost as if to show the isolation of leadership.
‘You’ve only yourself to blame for that.’
Keithley caught his mood. ‘You know one of my ancestors was in the First Crusade in 1098.’ He waved a hand towards the tomb of a medieval knight, carved in marble, protected by the pillared walls and vaulted ceiling of the Abbey. ‘This place was being built then, and it saw my ancestors, Crusaders, walk down this aisle. Just as we are today.’
Ahead of them, Hammond glimpsed a plume wavering as a Guard trod unwarily in a crack in the aisle paving. He held his breath. But the Companion next to the Guard held his arm. And the plume settled into its steady sway.
‘It may be a whim,’ continued Keithley, ‘but we’re all Crusaders here, in a way. Fighting for right.’
‘That’s a bit deep for me,’ smiled Hammond, ‘I’ll stick to G8, it’s…’
The flat sharp report of the detonation cracked into the Abbey through the noise of the organ. Keithley gripped Hammond’s arm.
‘What the hell was that?’
‘Bomb,’ Hammond was short. ‘I’ll have to leave you to it. Sorry.’
Hammond strode down the steps and swiftly along the side aisle, past the tombs and over the paved tablets celebrating the pride of the nation. Past the lines of friends and family waiting in the nave, murmuring, tense, uncertain, unwilling to be the first to leave, to see what was happening, or to get away. The organist started to play a Bach Toccata.
Hammond stopped at the end of a line of chairs and leaned forward to a large, red faced man sitting next to a prettily dressed, pregnant girl in a short blue linen dress and hat.
‘Stay here, Jack. The procession will return in a minute.’
Jack put a hand on the girl’s knee. ‘What’s happened? I’m worried about Sue. The baby jumped all over the place with that noise.’
Hammond smiled at her. ‘It’s OK. You’re safe here.’
Sue looked up at him. In that moment he looked older than his thirty six years. She’d caught the inflection in his voice. Usually charming and full of humour, it was now tense with a sense of urgency. She was worried for him. She’d known him since meeting Jack at university in London. Had heard all the stories of their time together since school in Midhurst, the footballing, their gap year hitchhiking to the Caspian Sea.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she smiled, ‘just don’t forget you’re going to be a godfather.’
But he’d gone.
The smell hit him as soon as he walked out of the Abbey side door. The stinging, smarting stink of burnt metal and rubber. Parliament Square was littered with fire engines and ambulances, their lights floating through the haze of black smoke, drifting down Victoria Street. Blown by the wind off the Thames. Some police were there, trying to clear the crowd of jostling, gawping people. Tourists holding their cameras high, hopeful of a picture of carnage. Newsmen, struggling to get to the scene, their television cameras working in the bright, handheld lights.
Hammond stopped as his mobile buzzed urgently. It was from Julia. A curt text message to meet her at the Prime Minister’s office immediately.
Hammond turned his mind to the explosion. There hadn’t been a bomb in London since the last of the Al Quaida suicide attacks in 2005, which had promoted the formation of the G8 Agency. The PM would think G8 had dropped its guard, but there was no intelligence, not even a rumour, to predict this attack. And Julia would have known if there had been. She was brilliant, quick, decisive and bright enough to frighten an Oxford don, not that that was so difficult these days.
‘Sorry, Sir, no entry, Whitehall is closed.’ The policeman blocked his way.
Hammond pulled out his ID card. No need to let the curious onlookers see an official pass. ID cards had all the information this police officer would need and since everyone had ID cards there was nothing unusual in the gesture. When the officer let him through there would be no indication of the reason either. He could be anyone from a cook to a Permanent Secretary.
The policeman took out his pocket computer and inserted the card. Checked the picture on the screen with Hammond’s face. Took out a small plastic packet, removed a cotton wool pad and wiped the screen. The smell of alcohol seeped through the stench of the explosion.
‘Taken to drink, Officer?’ Hammond smiled, using the time honoured phrase which had appeared in an Evening Standard cartoon when the DNA procedure was first introduced.
‘Just lick your finger and press it here, Sir.’ The policeman stolidly offered him the screen. An old hand. As unperturbed by the jibe as he was by the debris and fumes surrounding him.
Hammond watched as the officer checked the DNA sample and background data on the screen. Not by a fraction did the officer’s face change as he realised who he was dealing with. He slowly wiped the screen again, closed the computer, put it in his pocket, handed Hammond his card and stood to one side.
‘Very well, Sir.’
Hammond skirted round the front of the Foreign Office. What remained of a double decker bus stood there. The lower front nearside half didn’t exist, nor did the cab and front upper deck over it. Something else, some twisted, scattered, blackened metal lay against the Foreign Office wall. Smoke still plumed from what had been tyres. Among the wreckage half a dozen personnel in white suits were already shifting slowly, bending, putting items into plastic bags, stretching, adjusting their face masks and goggles. Opposite them stood the stone mass of the Cenotaph. Another figure in white. Yet again a silent witness to death.
The policeman waved Hammond through the cordon in Downing Street, watching after him as the door opened up to Number 10. He was ushered into the silent front hall, with its staircase to the upper floors. The walls papered in pale yellow Osborne and Little wallpaper, and hung with oil paintings of Prime Ministers over four centuries. Silent also, reassuring in their solemn, untroubled gaze.
Julia was waiting in the anteroom. Equally solemn and untroubled, her slim body moved easily out of the chair, her brown eyes seeking his. She started briefing him immediately.
‘So far, we understand that a Number 11 bus was the delivery vehicle. Probably three or four explosive charges under the front nearside lower seats. Directed outwards. The target was the Turkish Ambassador,’ she paused, ‘the meeting between him and the Prime Minister had been well publicised beforehand as a social event. Victims were the Ambassador, his wife and daughter, and their driver.’
‘Wife and daughter?’ Hammond cut in. ‘Bit unusual, visiting during the day.’
‘Yes. That was published too.’ Julia frowned. ‘So it could be that the targeting was deliberate. The wife and daughter, I mean. To maximise the effect.’
Hammond sat down. ‘Why was the front of the bus demolished?’
‘Excuse me, Mr Hammond, would you like some coffee?’ The PM’s Assistant Private Secretary spoke quietly. His accent was Manchester, the same as the PM. Here to find out what he could and report to the PM before the meeting, Hammond thought. No APS would offer to get coffee unless there was something to gain.
‘No, thanks.’ Hammond gestured to Julia. ‘Julia’s OK as well.’ He paused, looking meaningfully at the door.
The APS hesitated, looked at Julia. Deliberately, she crossed her arms, staring straight at him. Discomfort spread across his face as he almost ran for the door.
Hammond closed it and turned to Julia. ‘He’ll learn. Next time he won’t fall for that trick. You’ll have to think of something else.’
She smiled, smoothed her dress. ‘I will. About the front of the bus. It’s almost certain that a fourth or fifth detonation killed the driver.’
‘Own goal?’
‘Not necessarily. It doesn’t appear to be a blowback from the main charges. It appears to have been a charge placed under his seat.’
Hammond studied the picture of Gordon of Khartoum, hanging over the empty stone fireplace, dying in a desperate attempt to save Sudan from tyranny. He thought of the Whirling Dervishes, throwing themselves at the British troops, overwhelming them in a series of hysterical, maniacal charges, stopping only when dead or when the last English soldier had been flayed alive.
‘Suicide bombing?’
She moved towards the picture, thoughtfully holding the back of her short hair in one hand. ‘I know what you mean.’ She paused. ‘There was an accident early this morning at the Number 11 bus Clerkenwell Depot.’
Hammond waited. Julia wouldn’t have mentioned it if she hadn’t thought it relevant. The trainers always hammered home that point. Time spent on irrelevancies is time given to the enemy. Irrelevancies were meant for the G8 computers. They could analyse them and spit them out in milliseconds.
‘A man got caught in the bus automatic cleaning mechanism. Nothing left of him. His papers showed him to be a Turk. The bus driver was a Turk as well. That could mean they were Kurdish terrorists, PKK probably, a two man cell tasked to kill the Ambassador.’ She spoke slowly. It was too soon after the event to have had any computer analysis of the information. She was analysing the data herself.
Hammond let her go on. It was always dangerous to analyse a conclusion on early data. All too often other information turned up to wreck the analysis. But he knew her, knew her lateral thinking, her innate caution about the apparent, her courage in reaching through the opaque, driving her mind to create form out of the droplets of fog.
Julia walked restlessly to a vase on a Regency half moon table in the corner of the room, absentmindedly took out a white daisy, began picking off the petals, dropping them on the floor. Hammond didn’t move.
‘The man killed in the cleaning mechanism was a cleaner, he cleaned the buses. That means he had access to the buses at night. He could have been the explosives engineer. Loading the charges under cover of the cleaning job.’ She paused. ‘When the bus exploded, there were no passengers and the driver had asked the conductor to get off. The only person on the bus when it exploded was the driver.’ She picked another petal off the daisy. ‘If the cleaner was the engineer, then he put an explosive charge under the driver’s seat. He meant to kill him.’
Petals littered the carpet. Her fingers came away empty. She shook her head a little, raising a hand to smooth away a strand of hair falling across her mouth, stopped, looked at the daisy. No petals now, just the bright yellow centre. She motioned to Hammond to hold out his hand. Quietly he did so. She put the yellow centre of the daisy in it.
‘I think that’s the answer.’
He looked at it, hoping her analysis was wrong, because, if it was right, a deeper terror lay out there than he had imagined.
‘Keeping the core intact,’ he said.
She nodded, the look in her eyes confirming his worst fears.
He went on slowly. ‘The cleaner, the engineer, was instructed to make sure the driver was killed. To ensure his silence.’
‘Yes.’
‘And the driver was instructed to kill the engineer to ensure his silence. He pushed him into the cleaning mechanism to make it look like an accident.’
‘Yes.’
‘So the outer petals are silenced. Only the core knows what happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the core cannot be reached.’
‘No.’
He tossed the yellow centre on the floor.
‘The PKK don’t operate that way. They’re not Quaida. They’re not committed to death, to suicide. The PKK would never get volunteers if they thought they were going to be liquidated.’
She looked at him. He narrowed his eyes.
‘We’re looking somewhere else, aren’t we?’
‘I think so, yes.’ She put her wrist in her other hand, turning it this way and that, as if she’d just had a hard session programming the computer. ‘It’s the fact that it’s the Turkish Ambassador that worries me. That and the fact his family were targeted as well.’
‘Greece.’ He’d said it. He’d saved her from saying it, from telling the PM she’d said it, from the disbelief and anger of the PM.
She dropped her hands. ‘I’ve got to feed it to the computer. There’ll be extraneous information, of course.’
He looked at her, at her composure. He knew she was right. She’d check with the computer, of course, but it wouldn’t do any good. It was Greece all right.
‘It adds up,’ she said quietly. ‘The Turks attack Samos to take out Greek surveillance.’ She paused. Hammond put her thoughts together.
‘The Greeks are under international pressure not to retaliate. So they kill the Turkish Ambassador and make it look like the PKK did it to show the Turks can’t control them. Putting the pressure back on the Turks.’
She nodded.
Hammond slowly shook his head.
‘If it ever gets out that the Greeks did it, there’ll be war. The Turks would be uncontrollable.’
A light reached her eyes. She never had to explain to Hammond, he was there as fast as she was.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, don’t be so pleased with yourself. You’ve got to explain it to the PM now. And that APS you confused.’
Always the same, she thought. She always exposed herself to him for praise. Wanted his approval, even now, a year after he’d made her his first appointment in G8. She automatically smoothed her hair.
‘That won’t impress him either,’ Hammond said dryly.
Ignoring him, she carefully outlined her strategy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The APS came to usher them in to the Prime Minister. He carefully kept his eyes away from Julia. But, in the doorway, she slowly brushed past him, catching his startled glance with a brilliant smile then moving on into the room, as he lingered in the subtle scent of her perfume.
‘Morning, John.’ The Prime Minister was brisk. Using Hammond’s Christian name to mark his long friendship with him and, Hammond thought with some relief, to show that this was to be a constructive meeting. Hammond had seen Julia’s play with the APS. Perhaps her theory that the Greeks had killed the Ambassador would not be so difficult to fly, after all.
‘I’ve asked the French and German Ambassadors to be here.’ The PM raised his voice a little, ‘Ronald, ask them to come in please.’
The APS started, reddening slightly. ‘Yes, of course, Prime Minister.’
Hammond wasn’t surprised that the French and German Ambassadors had been summoned. The huge Arab population of North Africa had been pouring illegally into France, out of control, for five years now and the French were using a harsh programme of repatriation and holding camps to stem the flow. The French had been pouring money into Greece to help stop the Kurdish illegals coming from Turkey.
Germany had also been funding the Greeks. Using them as a buffer to limit the Turkish population flooding Germany. The rightwing Neo Nazis were still under control, but shouts of “Auslander Raus” “Foreigners out” were heard more frequently now. Seven years after the millennium, illegal migration was top of the agenda for both Germany and France.
But the presence of the Ambassadors presented a problem. There could be no quick discussion with the PM to warn him how best to keep the Greek secret.
The PM rose from his desk. Walked away, past the fireplace, cold now in the summer months, skirted the richly upholstered chairs in front of his desk, brushed past a brilliant display of summer roses on a square table between the long, pale yellow, curtained windows, strode across the blue carpet and held out his hand.
‘Frau Dahlem. Monsieur Flambert. Please meet John Hammond, Director General of G8. And his Deputy, Julia Simmonds.’
The men studied the faces. Quickly scanning the eyes and mouths for the signs of mood. Friendly, hostile, eager, bored. The women glanced at faces but absorbed clothes and hands. Well cut. Sloppy. Neat. Flashy. Strong. Thin. Fat. Weak. Information streaming through personal analysis, whilst the formal language was spoken.
Hammond took in Flambert’s round face under the thin strands of smooth black hair. Middle aged, short and overweight, he’d started life as a banker, and was now a political appointee to London. Flesh puffed around the eyes, pushing them back. The lips were the same, so that his features were almost hidden, camouflaged. No truth to be found there, Hammond thought.
Julia found Dahlem’s taste in clothes matched her own. Expensive, designer, cut to cover the figure but also to show it off. The total absence of vulgarity making her Nord Deutsch, a Berliner, in her forties, she was known for her razor edged mind. A career diplomat. Her hands were painfully thin, large knuckles and joint bones, no rings. A carefully controlled woman, but nervy, anxious her control might fail under stress.
They sat down, while the APS fussed around with coffee and tea, Dahlem asking for lime juice in water.
The PM addressed the Ambassadors. ‘I’ve asked you to come this morning, urgently, because of two separate incidents in the last two days. The attack on Samos. And now, this morning, the assassination of the Turkish Ambassador and his family.’
‘I did not know her well,’ Dahlem murmured, ‘but I am devastated. Her little girl as well. Those PKK murderers, they must be stopped.’
Julia moved forward in her seat, opened her mouth.
‘Have you all the protection you need, Frau Dahlem?’ Hammond cut across her.
‘Thank you, Mr Hammond, yes.’ Her fingers twitched as she linked them together in her lap. ‘But whatever protection I have won’t stop them if they are really determined.’ She looked at Julia. ‘Was that what you were going to say?’
The look Hammond had given her and his interruption had warned Julia off. Hammond didn’t want her to talk until he let her know.
‘I was going to say that I have a Turkish friend who spoke of the wife’s hard work for their community here.’
Flambert raised his squat nose in her direction, sniffing out the lameness of Julia’s reply. The burrowed eyes flicked to Hammond, trying to sense any communication to Julia, sieve out a meaning.
‘You don’t ask me about my protection.’ He paused, the eyes fixed on Hammond. ‘You are right, of course. France does not have the problem Germany has.’ He paused again, sucked in a mouthful of coffee. ‘And London has not been hit by the PKK for years.’ He put down his coffee cup. Ignoring the spoon as it fell on the floor.
Hammond waited, staying silent, forcing Flambert to say more. It was an old diplomatic negotiating trick. Make the other side talk. Dahlem had missed the signals between himself and Julia, but Flambert had picked them up and was still trying to decipher them.
The PM kept quiet. Sensing that Hammond had good reason for his rude silence.
The room tensed, sensing an awkward, undiplomatic moment.
The APS bent to pick up Flambert’s spoon and favoured Julia with a glance. ‘G8 has done excellent work in keeping London safe, Ambassador Flambert. Ms Simmonds is responsible for that.’
Flambert snorted.
‘Is that why my colleague the Turkish Ambassador and his family are spread over the Foreign Office wall?’
‘I didn’t…’
The Prime Minister cut across him. ‘What Ronald means, Mr Flambert, is that you are safe. I think you should be grateful for that.’ The Manchester accent was harsh now. ‘I think that we’re grown up enough to think like Frau Dahlem. Terrorists will succeed if they are absolutely determined on a target.’
The PM hadn’t lost any of his northern impatience with arrogance, Hammond thought. Hammond had seen it often enough. From the time he’d joined the PM when he was just Michael Harris, car tyre distributor, through his time as Home Secretary and then PM. Popular for his no nonsense yet warm Manchester personality. Popular too for applying business techniques to government and making them work.
Flambert went on as if the PM hadn’t spoken. ‘So who is responsible, Miss Simmonds?’ He emphasised the Miss, as if painting her position in the infants’ schoolroom.