Herrick presented the ID tag that Cecil and Leppard had failed to take from her and passed through the security gate of the Cabinet Office. She was met by a brisk young civil servant who introduced himself as Entwistle and asked whether it was her first time in COBRA. Only then did she understand she was to attend the same meeting as Spelling and Vigo.
‘The Prime Minister is running a little late,’ said Entwistle, ‘so Sir Robin suggested we put you on ice for fifteen minutes or so in a room next door. Is that all right?’
‘What’s this about?’ she asked.
‘I think you’re in a better position to say than I am,’ he replied, pushing at a door and gesturing towards a stairway. He dropped her off in a small, windowless basement cell where there were old magazines and brochures issued by departments of state. He returned with some coffee brimming in a utility china cup. Herrick settled down to idle her way through the property ads in Country Life and briefly entertained a life in some distant shire with a couple of dogs and an undemanding man who cooked.
Forty minutes later Entwistle breezed in. ‘Rightyho, you’re on. When we go in, I will point out the seat you should take. The Prime Minister is opening the meeting with a brief preamble. If you’re not sure what to do or say, just follow Sir Robin’s lead. Okay?’
She shrugged hopelessly, unable to hazard what events had brought her from being fired an hour before to a meeting presided over by the Prime Minister. They moved along a carpeted corridor and came across a huddle of men and women, all in their early thirties, who Entwistle said were the staff of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat who would be swinging into action once the COBRA meeting was over. He reached a pair of doors, looked round and said, ‘Okay?’ again. She nodded.
He opened one of the two doors and she found herself propelled into a large white room with a low ceiling and somewhat harsh lighting. There were no pictures or other adornments. Seated at the centre of a long table was the Prime Minister with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, displaying a weekend tan. On his right was the Foreign Secretary, hunched over a pile of papers; on his left was the Home Secretary, who was the only one of the three to notice her entrance. Enwistle pointed to a seat two away from Sir Robin Teckman, four places from Richard Spelling and Walter Vigo, neither of whom acknowledged her. The remaining chairs were taken by the Director of the Security Services, Barbara Markham, members of the Joint Intelligence Committee and Ian Frayne, Intelligence Coordinator in the Cabinet Office, who had originally been head of Security and Public Affairs at Vauxhall Cross when Herrick was a trainee. He flashed her a welcoming nod.
‘So I stress,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘I have not convened the Civil Emergencies Committee lightly. Overnight I have been given information which cast Operation RAPTOR in a very different light, and makes me doubt the value of the way it was set out in the wake of the assassination of Vice-Admiral Norquist. Clearly these faults must be rectified before I speak to the President this afternoon. I hesitate to call it a misjudgement until the internal inquiry has reported, but I do emphasise at the outset this morning that I am concerned that RAPTOR is being run without full recognition of the risks and dangers that we face at every hour of the day. We may have to consider that it is flawed in its very concept.’
There was a slight murmur around the room, a shuffling of papers, the almost perceptible adjustment of each person’s position.
‘Now, this committee’s brief is not to take over the business of our Secret Intelligence Service, but I do intend to get to the bottom of what is happening and make my dispositions accordingly. I wonder if I could begin with you, Richard, as the Chief of SIS designate?’
Everyone noticed the stress on the last word. ‘Well, Prime Minister.’ Spelling’s eyes swept confidently around the room, rallying support which, in the downward glances and blank expressions, was evidently less forthcoming than he had expected. ‘I first of all want to draw the attention of the committee to the immensely detailed understanding we now have of the men who passed through Heathrow on May fourteen. There has never been an operation like this. This is the cutting edge of surveillance and both the United States and UK governments have benefited hugely from our ability to watch these men and monitor every move they make, at the same time as studying their backgrounds, psychological profiles, associates, support systems and financial backing. It is a triumph of modern intelligence gathering and it has greatly increased our knowledge of Islamist groups. Besides this, the risks of this in vitro experiment are minimal, because each man is covered by a squad of no less than six highly trained and armed personnel. The suspects are already virtually handcuffed.’
‘That’s very reassuring, Richard,’ said the Prime Minister, with a slightly pained expression, ‘but I’ve heard all this before. It seems to me and my two Cabinet colleagues that Sir Robin’s new information does call RAPTOR into question, particularly the value of what one paper I have received from the Joint Intelligence Committee notes as its “unyielding and exclusive focus”.’
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but Prime Minister, these were the terms that our American partners insisted upon.’
The Prime Minister’s gaze traversed the table and alighted on Teckman. ‘Sir Robin, perhaps you would like to go over the material you brought to me on Friday evening?’
Teckman began to speak quietly, so that the people at the furthest extremes of the room had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. Herrick smiled to herself. This was always his method of drawing people towards his argument.
‘While I don’t want in any way to undervalue the efforts made by the men and women of RAPTOR, over the last forty-eight hours we have made certain discoveries about the nature of the terrorist threat to the West, the possibility of which has largely been neglected.’ He stopped and glanced in Herrick’s direction. ‘Few of you will be aware that a key figure in this has been my colleague, Isis Herrick. She was first responsible for establishing what happened at Heathrow on May fourteen and subsequently worked with RAPTOR. Now she has brought crucial intelligence from Egypt. Even she is unaware of what she conveyed to us by satellite phone late last week.’
The faces around the table, including the Prime Minister’s, began to examine her with interest. She acknowledged his compliment with a nod, inwardly wondering what on earth was in the recording that she had overlooked, then remembered that she had only managed to listen to a small portion of it. After that she had been fighting off Loz in the bath-house.
‘The part I am going to play you was of exceptionally poor quality and has been rescued by extensive work by GCHQ technicians.’ He placed a briefcase on the table and unzipped it. Inside was a large tape player. ‘Here we go,’ he said, pressing the play button with the uncertainty of someone unused to electrical equipment.
There was a rustling noise, which Herrick recognised as coming from the dead leaves on a vine outside the window in Khan’s room, followed by silence. You could hear a pin drop in the bomb-proof underground chamber, as the eyes of each person came to rest on the spools of the tape recorder.
Then came a voice – a whisper floating on the breeze that had now audibly taken hold of a cloth hung in front of the window, though only Herrick could possibly have seen this in her mind.
‘She is a devil that girl – no?’
‘That is Dr Sammi Loz,’ said the Chief. ‘The important part is coming up now.’ He turned up the volume control.
‘She thinks she is clever. And she is. She is catching us out all the time. You Karim, she plays with you. But we play with her also. We wait. And we let her think she is so fucking smart. Eleven days. That’s all we have to wait for. Inshallah.’
There was silence, then a sigh from the bed. ‘What are you doing, Sammi? What do you plan?’
‘This is not for your ears, old friend. But it’s good, very good. Months of planning and we have fooled them like children. Al kufr milatun wahidun – right, Karim?’
Teckman stopped the tape. ‘That is an Arabic phrase which translates as “unbelief is one nation”. It’s a well-known Hadith among Islamist groups, and expresses the view that all non-Muslims are the enemy of Islam. They both knew this phrase. I understand from the Director of the CIA whom I spoke to last night, that one of the postcards sent by Khan to Sammi Loz at the Empire State building contains a crude rendering of the same phrase in code. However, I should stress that we do not believe Karim Khan knew of Loz’s intentions and that the presence of this code is not significant. However, he did represent a considerable danger to Loz, which is why we believe Loz eventually had to kill him – hours before the strike. The clue to the nature of the threat comes now. Khan is speaking.’
He pressed the play button again and turned up the volume. The room was filled with a buzz of static and then the single word ‘Yahya’ was spoken by Khan.
It came again. ‘Yah-ya.’ Slow and deliberate.
Loz told Khan to be quiet. ‘Not here,’ he said sharply.
But Khan persisted. ‘You follow Yahya too much, Sammi. Yahya is a bad person.’
‘Please, old friend, I do not want to hear that name. Forget you ever knew it. If you don’t, it will fall from your lips when you are with that woman and then we will be both be in trouble. She is communicating everything we say to her colleagues in London. Things move at lightning speed these days. You have forgotten because you have been away from the world for so long.’
Khan seemed to misunderstand him and asked groggily, ‘Yahya in London? Is The Poet in London?’
‘Forget The Poet,’ said Loz. ‘Forget Yahya. Forget these names. Okay?’
Teckman switched off the machine and put it away. Then the Prime Minister asked if there were any questions.
After a pause, Vigo coughed and said, ‘I wonder if I might ask Sir Robin what relevance this has to RAPTOR. The recording is very impressive in its own way, but it does nothing to dissuade me of the value of our current operations. ’
Teckman looked down the table and dispatched a parched smile in Vigo’s direction. ‘That’s a very good question, Walter. Intelligence from Beirut over the weekend, provided by friends of ours, confirms that Sammi Loz, instead of being a peripheral interest, is right at the centre of this affair. There is a link between Loz and the suspects that you have under surveillance. Loz was connected to Vice-Admiral Norquist as a patient and a business partner. I am afraid to say that the latter association allowed the Admiral to be exploited by Loz and then subsequently by Mossad, who were aware of his dealings. I won’t go into the whole story now. Suffice to say that Loz was in a position to know about the timing of Norquist’s trip here and put into place a scheme to kill him. We have long been puzzled by the poor calibre of the men hired to kill Norquist. We know the bullet is likely to have come from one of our own people and not from the two tearaways who were killed on the motorway, but the fact remains that these men were tasked to kill him, or at least cause a substantial redeployment of security personnel in and around Heathrow.
‘I have no doubt that Sammi Loz wanted Norquist dead. He must have known by then that Norquist was working for Mossad, and that information about Hizbollah was going straight to Tel Aviv. But I maintain that the primary objective was to create a strategic diversion. Incidentally, I note with interest that in the minutes of a meeting held five weeks ago at Vauxhall Cross, this was the exact phrase offered by Mr Vigo.’
He glanced at Vigo, who nodded vigorously.
‘So what we have,’ he continued, ‘is a line which traces between Khan, Loz, Norquist and therefore the RAPTOR suspects. This clearly establishes the value of Isis Herrick’s outstanding work in Albania and Cairo, and underscores the necessity of removing Karim Khan from the custody of the Egyptian Intelligence Service. Without taking Khan, we would not have been able to make these connections.’
Spelling leaned forward and caught the eye of the Prime Minister. ‘But look these men are all dead. Norquist, Khan and Loz are all dead. What we are left with are the RAPTOR suspects.’
‘I agree that Khan is probably dead,’ said the Chief. ‘One of our men saw him, or a body on his bed. As to Loz, we cannot say. The ruins of the villa have now been searched thoroughly. We had very precise information from Isis about the location of Loz at the moment of impact and no body has been found there. So I am bound to conclude that one very cunning, wealthy and determined terrorist is on the loose. Maybe two, if we include the individual referred to as Yahya whom Loz is so obviously desperate to protect. For the record, I happen to think we have a problem, and that we have five days to find them.’
‘But the evidence is so slight,’ said Vigo.
‘I am unpersuaded of that,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘How much of this do the Americans know?’
‘A certain amount,’ said Teckman, ‘though I felt it wise to be circumspect about Norquist. There is no reason to trouble his family or his good memory.’
‘Quite right,’ said the Prime Minister. He looked around the table. ‘Clearly radical adjustments are needed in the scope and direction of RAPTOR. What do your soundings in Washington recommend, Sir Robin?’
‘Exactly what you suggest. I think it’s fair to say that we have taken the Anglo-American experiment as far as we can. I don’t doubt its usefulness in academic terms, but we now face a distinctly practical problem which I think must necessarily involve the BND in Germany, Mossad, and the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, and the DST in France. Clearly the Italians, Spanish and Nordic services should also be involved.’
‘But this means they will have the benefit of our knowledge, ’ said Spelling. The room noted the plangent tone in his voice and to a man and woman decided that he was not up to the job at this or any other time. ‘We have to consider the history of security lapses in Europe,’ he said.
‘We are in Europe,’ said the Prime Minister, and turned back to Teckman. ‘Sir Robin, I should make it clear now that I want you to stay on at SIS at least until this operation is satisfactorily completed. I am very grateful for the efforts you and Miss Herrick have put into making sense of this over the last few weeks. Will you also convey my personal thanks to anyone else who was involved.’ Teckman gave an oblique, patrician nod.
At this point, several things began to fall into place in Herrick’s mind and without knowing what she was going to say, she began to speak. ‘I’m sorry… but it just occurred to me who Yahya might be, sir. I mean, it’s a long shot but, well, I think it’s worth considering.’
The Prime Minister nodded. ‘Yes…?’
Her hand reached for a biscuit from the tray in the centre of the table, and she began to nibble unselfconsciously. ‘I had some tests done… kind of out of hours, if you see what I mean. I took some material from the keyboard of a computer used by a man named Youssef Rahe. Rahe was involved in the switch, though he was our man – a contact made by Walter Vigo. Then Rahe disappeared in Lebanon and a body was found in a car – unrecognisable and badly burnt. I got a friend to obtain a sample from the corpse to see if the DNA matched the material that had fallen into the keyboard habitually used by Rahe – keyboards collect a lot of hair and skin, as you perhaps all know.’ She paused, aware that most of her audience didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or intrigued.‘I got the results this morning. There is no match between the two samples, which means that Rahe was not killed. Instead, I believe his place was taken by another man who we spotted passing through Terminal Three. He was tortured, executed and disguised as Rahe so that we would think our man had been discovered.’ She stopped and nibbled some more. ‘Sorry, am I making any sense?’
‘Not to me,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘but please go on. I’m sure everyone else understands the significance of what you’re saying.’
‘Well, it just struck me that there was a connection between the eleven suspects and Rahe after his supposed death. When one of the men died – the Stuttgart suspect – all the telephone calls from the local group of helpers were monitored. There was one significant call and that went to Beirut, informing an unknown party that the man was dead. You see, a very strong argument can be made that Rahe was in on this from the beginning and was manipulating us. Would you mind if I asked Mr Vigo a question?’
Vigo’s head turned to her and he blinked. ‘I should remind you,’ he said, ‘that it was I who ordered those calls monitored from Stuttgart.’
‘I know, but we all should have been thinking about Beirut. It should have set off some kind of alarm that Rahe had been taken from a hotel there. My question is this: where did we first learn about the website carrying the messages about future attacks? Was it through Youssef Rahe?’
‘Yes, it was,’ cut in Spelling, clearly having decided to jettison the co-architect of RAPTOR.
‘So we have basically been sold a dummy by Rahe and Loz. I believe that we know who Yahya is. Yahya is Youssef Yamin Rahe. I have to ask you how you came in touch with him, because I believe he has been using his connection with us all the way along.’
Vigo shook his head. ‘This is all guesswork. I am not going to answer these questions until there is some kind of evidence. ’
‘I think we shall have all the evidence you require,’ she said. ‘I just need that answer.’
‘For God’s sake answer her, Mr Vigo,’ barked the Prime Minister.
‘I met him through my book-dealing business.’ He spoke as though drugged. ‘Then I went to his shop in Bayswater. We talked and it was clear he might be able to help us.’
The room went silent again as Vigo slumped back in his chair, then in a lifeless voice asked the Prime Minister’s permission to leave. The Prime Minister nodded. Vigo rose stiffly and limped from the room.
‘Have you any more surprises for us, Miss Herrick?’ the Prime Minister asked.
She shook her head.
‘Sir Robin, does all this seem likely to you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Then it is clear that you must trace Youssef Rahe and Sammi Loz wherever they are, as a matter of urgency. You will, of course, have the complete backing of the Security Services, the police and the diplomatic service. What else do you propose?’
‘The first thing is to get the eleven remaining suspects off the streets as fast as possible. I believe the BND and the French service may have already been alerted to some kind of operation. It was hopeless to expect us to be able to carry out this type of surveillance on their territory without them getting wind of it. We should make them party to everything we have learned, apologise and urge that these men be arrested.’
The Foreign Secretary stirred. ‘On what charges?’
‘Initially, on violation of immigration controls. We have the evidence on film that each man was carrying false passports. More serious charges may follow, but at least we’ll know the Heathrow team is under lock and key.’
The Prime Minister whispered to the Foreign Secretary. Herrick could not help lip-reading what he said. ‘Get that tosser of an ambassador in. Tell him the game’s up and that I’ll be speaking to the President this afternoon. Keep Norquist out of your talk. I’m going to need that as ammunition with the President. I’ll want a note about that from Teckman.’
The Foreign Secretary got up and left. ‘Right,’ said the Prime Minister, also rising. ‘The Civil Contingencies Committee will meet three times a day and liaise with the JIC staff. I expect constant progress updates for the next five days. Needless to say, there will be a media blackout on this. And that will last until I say otherwise. That’s it. Let’s get on with it.’
Only Herrick did not get up as he left. Instead, her hand darted forward to retrieve another biscuit.