“I will.”
Gwyn peeled herself away. Gary turned to his brother and stuck out his hand.
“Thanks for including me. I’d love to go with you, but this is where I belong.”
Gilbert looked at the outstretched hand of the brother he felt he hardly knew. He shook his head, pushed the hand out of the way and wrapped his arms around his kid brother’s neck.
“Why are you doing this? They’re going to kill you if they find you.”
“Don’t worry about me. I have friends.”
Gilbert drew back, put his arms on Gary’s shoulders and said, “This is crazy. You’re crazy. Why are you doing this?”
“I have responsibilities here.”
“Gary, your students will find a new teacher! These people are not playing games.”
“You think that’s what I do here? Teach English?”
“That’s what you told me.”
“That’s not the whole story.”
“Then what is?”
“There’s no time now.”
“It’s the same ol’ thing, isn’t it? Your hatred for the West, your utopian bullshit, your fascination with other cultures. Fine. Have it your way.”
Gilbert turned to go. Gary grabbed his arm.
“I run an operation that protects Iranian dissidents. Turkey is used for transit. My job is to work with different non-profit organizations that give them asylum in the West. Most of these Iranians are followers of Messiah, escaping persecution.”
Gary saw his brother’s face soften, but he knew he was going to need some time to process this. Time they didn’t have. Gary waited for his brother to respond. When he did, his voice was gruff.
“I guess we have a bit of catching up to do. Promise me you’ll make time for that.”
“Promise.”
“Very well, then. We need to get going.”
“Right.”
Gary crossed the short gangplank. Gwyn shouted after him.
“Tell Matt to have Brittany read the second Psalm at Dad’s funeral.”
“Will do.”
CHAPTER
79
F
RIDAY,
L
ONDON
Rush-hour traffic on the A5 had begun to subside, leaving the intersection of Forset Street and Nutford Place with an air akin more to aimlessness than tranquility. The primary school across the street
wouldn’t
open for another week, so the lethargy of summer still hung in the air. The only threat it faced was from the Municipal Water Works maintenance crew that had been surveying on the street for the last two days.
Salih looked down on the scene with a peculiar sense of detachment.
Typical government planning. Waste the whole summer and then start a major project right before school starts. It will be a disaster when buses start delivering their cargo of kids.
The irony of wasting even a second on such a trivial line of thinking had not escaped him. Yet, over the last two days, he had found himself reflecting anxiously on the most insignificant things, things he would never have considered before. Things like whether he should forgo the elevator and take the stairs for exercise, or whether he should pass on the third cup of coffee. Subconsciously, he knew why it was happening, but a truth suppressed is a reality ignored.
For two days now, Ahmet had refused to take his calls. For over twelve years, they had served the organization together. They had put together a string of successes that circled the globe. Islam had a stronger foothold in western society than ever before, no small accomplishment in the face of such strident opposition, and his team had played an important part in achieving this victory. But, this morning he had received the call that confirmed his suspicions. Cairo had resumed operations. The London office was to be taken offline for cyber-disinfection. He had also been told to expect a visitor. Jabbar would be arriving that afternoon. Salih had known he was going to be replaced, but didn’t intend to go down without making his case to Ahmet in person.
Outside, he could see two members of the maintenance crew cordoning off the south side of the building. It looked like the entire street would be closed to traffic. A backhoe which must have been brought in during the night was sitting idle on one corner of the intersection, waiting stoically for its work of destruction to begin. Salih turned away from this mundane scene and sat back down in his chair. His team had isolated the key-logger on three computers in their office. For days, they had been engaged in the tedious task of sifting through every bit of information entered on the infected machines from the moment the key-logger had been installed. They had to review every email sent, every document opened, every website visited, every password entered and every article posted. It was the only way to complete the damage assessment Cairo was demanding by the end of the day.
><><><
Zeki walked briskly along Surrey Strand. The reflection of the sun on the river to his left was so bright he was squinting. His mind was fixated on a single dark thought—death. He pondered the death of George Sale almost three hundred years ago on this very street.
Was it poison that caused him to suddenly fall ill and die at the age of thirty-nine? No one would ever know...
His thoughts turned to Ian. He tried to imagine the final minutes of fear and panic his friend must have experienced, gagged and tied up by strangers in his own home in the middle of the night and then drowning in the fluid that gradually filled his lungs. There were few instincts that inspired terror like the feeling of asphyxiation, which was why waterboarding worked so well. He turned right on Bedford Street, and his thoughts turned from death to life, particularly the one he planned to take that afternoon.
He looked down at his watch. It was 10:29. He quickened his pace. He didn’t want to keep Burhan waiting. As he picked his way through a group of tourists, he noted the security cameras on the modest four-storey Zimbabwean Embassy on the west side of the street. Zeki moved to the curb as he approached the restaurant, scanning the crowd in vain for a red shirt. Burhan was not there. He walked another ten meters and leaned against a No Parking sign. The man was never late. It was 10:32.
Without being obvious, he continued to comb the street, looking for any sign of his friend. Less than a minute had elapsed when he heard a car squeal its brakes behind him and turned to see a black Peugeot 308 driven by a man in a red shirt. It was Burhan. The look on his face told him to hurry. Zeki quickly crossed the street and got into the car.
“Good to see you in one piece,” said Burhan, whipping out into traffic.
“Good to be in one piece. What’s the hurry?”
“Are you aware that updated notices have been issued for you by Interpol, the FBI and the Metropolitan Police?”
“Everyone wants to be loved.”
“Ankara is a hornet’s nest of activity. They’ve declared you a rogue agent. The Interpol notice claims they have evidence proving that you helped organize the bombing in Istanbul on Monday and the theft of the Banner of the Prophet from Vienna.”
“A sign of desperation . . . You still haven’t told me what the rush is.”
“I’ve had a tail on him since we received your message. This morning he bought a ticket for Cairo and paid with cash. I figured you might want to move up the timetable.”
“Anyone likely to be there?”
“He lives with a pretty blonde. Wife or girlfriend, I don’t know which. For the last several days, she’s left around 10:30 every morning for an aerobics class and then gone to a Qur’an course in the afternoon over in Newham.”
“Entry?”
“The old fashioned way.”
“Alarm?”
“Yes, the code is 2318212.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I didn’t. Kiko did. And, I don’t know how. She probably hacked into the security company. You know she doesn’t share her secrets or her sources. Your bag is there in the back seat. It should have everything you need.”
Zeki reached behind him, grabbed a black bag and opened it in his lap. He pulled out two passports, one Serbian and one Latvian.
“What are these?”
“Kiko thought it would be a good idea to supply you with some fresh ID. They’ll be reviewing passport control surveillance tapes in four countries looking for you. It will take some time, but they’ll eventually find some or all of your IDs and put them on a watch list.”
Zeki reached for the money clip he kept inside his jacket. Burhan held up his hand.
“She said it’s on the house.”
“I suppose I’ll have to thank her in person.”
“I think she was hoping you’d feel obligated to do just that.”
Burhan put on his signal to take the next right.
“I’ll drop you off one block past the corner. You’ll walk straight east for two blocks.”
“Thanks for the help.”
“I’ll read about it in the papers.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do than read obituaries? You’ve been in the business too long.”
“It’s addicting, this job. The adrenaline, the intrigue, the chase, the danger . . . It’s how men were meant to live. On a knife’s edge, ever vigilant, constantly switching from hunter to prey and back again.”
“Well, there’s no problem as long as you get to switch back. I’m too old for this kind of stuff, and you will be soon.”
“Nonsense. If you were too old, you’d be dead. What happened to your sense of destiny, of fate? When we’re too old, they’ll issue our final ticket. Until then, enjoy the ride.”
Burhan pulled the car over to the curb.
“Be safe, old friend.”
><><><
“It’s open,” said McIntosh, without looking up from the operational reports he had been poring over for the last half hour.
“Sir, the CO19 team is holding three minutes from the target, awaiting your final orders.”
McIntosh took off his reading glasses and set them on his desk.
“Good work, Bob. Have there been any updates in the last thirty minutes?”
“No, sir. At the moment, we think there are around twenty people in the offices. We have no reason to suspect they’re armed. The microphone and cameras we placed on the windows have not given us any new information other than confirming a frenzy of activity and the company’s close connections with Cairo, DC, Brussels and Istanbul.”
“I see here that communications from the office all but ceased this morning. No email, no internet, no cell phone or landline communications.”
“That’s right, sir. It happened at 7:27 this morning after the office manager received a call on his encrypted sat-phone. It’s there in the report.”
“I must have missed that,” said McIntosh flipping back through the pages trying to find the relevant section. “Were we able to decipher it?”
“Yes, sir. Parker cracked it. The caller said, ‘Cairo is back online. Halt operations. Finalize system recovery and send damage assessment by 18:00 hours.’ It also said someone would be visiting the office, but I don’t remember the name.”
McIntosh cocked his head. This was huge.