Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (31 page)

“
Bienvenido
al hermano de basilica”.

“
I do not
speak the language, Sister,” the handsome stranger stammered,
seemingly a little embarrassed.

“
In that
case, welcome to the Basilica, brother,” she intoned in a more
familiar English.

The man seemed
more comfortable as Sister Margaret ushered him inside and began to
explain the history of the shrine. She repeated the story of the
three Juans who were in peril on the sea when the statue of the
Virgin Mary had appeared in the water and saved them
miraculously.

“
It is a
great story of faith,” the man responded in an accent that bore
traces of North Africa, perhaps Tunisia. “I myself am a fallen
Muslim, but Allah remains my God.”

“
I am sure
that we can all learn much from one another. We all have a share of
the truth. Perhaps you would like time alone to consider your
status before God. I am sure Allah will hear your heartfelt cries
from a Catholic Basilica as easily as he can hear them from a
Mosque.”

“
Indeed, God
is Great, Allahu Akbar.” The casually dressed man nodded to Sister
Margaret Rose and as she parted she offered:

“
If there is
anything I can help you with, please let me know.”

Once she was
out of hearing distance, Sister Margaret Rose raised her hand to
her face and adjusted her glasses.

“
Sister
Angelica, he is here! He is currently in the Nave and I suspect he
will be working his way to the Apse. I will position myself in the
North Transept and deal with any visitors in that area.”

***

Jamal Saeed Al
Munawar was on the list of the FBI’s top twenty terrorists. Born in
Algeria, Jamal’s family fled to Tunisia when the French sought his
father on terrorism charges. There they lived in near poverty in a
camp where radical elements from Europe and the Middle East came
for weapons training, and for a better understanding of their
religion and the Jihad.

Jamal himself
was not interested in either Islam or the Jihad, to his father’s
evident distress. He spoke English with an American twang and wore
Arsenal football shirts whenever he was given the chance. Jamal
wanted to live the American Dream and eventually his father allowed
a rich, but radical, sponsor to pay for his son’s higher education
in the USA.

Jamal was a
good scholar. He was personable and well liked by all of his peers.
His friends were drawn from all races and religions, and he was
happy. In his sophomore year he was called back home, because his
father was dying. Reluctantly he left his new life, temporarily,
and flew back to see his father, who was now living in Afghanistan.
After a long and circuitous route home he was taken to a desert
compound, where his family were caring for his ailing
father.

The compound
was filled with earnest young men carrying automatic weapons and
guarding heavy armaments in a stone built store. The men were
suspicious of Jamal, who spoke with an American accent and wore
western clothes. Then, early one morning, Jamal was awoken from his
uncomfortable stone bed by a huge explosion. As he exited the
primitive dwelling the family called home, he saw the storage shed
ablaze, the occasional shell igniting and firing into the sky.
Joining the other men in dousing the flames, he did not notice the
stealthy approach of foot soldiers.

In an instant,
numerous black clad figures appeared form all directions,
silhouetted against the burning sky, fire spitting from their gun
barrels. Boys who had been fighting the fire raced for their guns
but were cut down before they could raise them in anger. Realising
all was lost, the Taliban recruits dropped to their knees and
either cried for their mothers or prayed to Allah, dependent upon
their faithfulness. One by one the rebels fell and the troops
started to clear the buildings. Under the cover of darkness, Jamal
managed to get back to his family, who were huddled around their
father.

Jamal heard
the soldiers approaching and wisely knelt down with his hands
behind his head. Still wearing chinos and a Ralph Lauren Polo
shirt, he looked the archetypal preppie that he was.

“
Don’t shoot,
I am an American!” he yelled as three young marines came in through
the door. The first held up his hand to stop his men firing whilst
he considered the situation. Jamal was sure he could save his
mother, his teenage sister Dalal and his eight year old sister
Adara.

Disgusted at
his son’s obsequious behaviour in the face of infidels, Jamal’s
father sat up from his death bed and, wielding an ornamental curved
sword, a saif, flailed at the lead soldier screaming “Alahu
Akbar”.

Gunfire
erupted in the small enclosure and in seconds the old man, his wife
and all three children were riddled with bullets. When the Taliban
returned to the compound, only Jamal and two others were alive, and
then only barely.

Jamal’s rich
sponsor sent the boy to Saudi for treatment, and when he returned
ready to take up arms he was trained and sent back to the USA to
study.

For the summer
of 2001 Jamal was appointed as an unpaid intern for
Galliard-Delaney, the contractors responsible for maintaining the
fire protection services in the World Trade Centre, where he made
it his business to copy and distribute every drawing, sketch and
specification he could find on the twin structures to his sponsor
back in the Middle East.

Since 2001
Jamal had been constantly on the move, but he was often caught on
camera in locations where individuals had been assassinated to
order.

***

Sister
Margaret Rose was entertaining the visitors with the story of
Pueblo the Catholic donkey when she noticed Jamal crossing the Apse
and heading to the door leading to the nuns’ accommodations. She
knew that she had to act. She quickly delivered the humorous punch
line to the story and excused herself, her right hand slipping deep
into her left sleeve as she moved to the door just feet behind
Jamal.

***

Jamal had a
pretty good idea where the traitor Hasan Yasin would be hiding. The
Fatwah for the blasphemous author had been issued in Iran almost a
year ago, and Jamal knew that the successful assassin would reap
rich spiritual and monetary rewards. His leaders knew where Jamal
was and what he was doing, and he carried their blessings with
him.

From Muslim
to Catholic: One Easy Step
had been a New
York Times and worldwide bestseller. Tracing one man’s conversion,
the book belittled Islam and its Prophet, alleging that Islam was
not a religion of love. Worse still was the author’s use of humour
when referring to some of Islam’s most sacred texts. Hasan Yasin
could not be allowed to profit from his blasphemy, and Jamal would
ensure that he did not.

Jamal stood
outside the library and took out his Sig Sauer P250 handgun. The
polymer handgrip felt comfortable in his hand. He fired one shot
into the door lock and then reached forward to push open the door.
In the library he saw Yasin cowering behind a nun. Sister Angelica
looked calm and serene and ready to die for her sanctuary
seeker.

***

Sister
Margaret Rose hated handguns. She was an expert in their use but
they were notoriously inaccurate, prone to jamming and were just
tools. Rifles, however, were a different matter entirely. They
weren’t tools, they were works of art. When asked whether she could
place a round in a victim’s heart from five hundred yards she
didn’t say yes, she asked which ventricle. That was a real gun.
Nonetheless, she could not use a rifle this time. It had to be a
handgun, and so she slipped the safety off her Austrian made Glock
19. Over the last five days, since its arrival in the diplomatic
pouch, she had assembled, disasssembled and cleaned the gun no
fewer than seven times. She couldn’t afford any failures on this
assignment, hence the choice of the old school but reliable
Glock.

She had
already kicked off her flat shoes and was now following Jamal in
bare feet and in silence. Despite the warmth in the air, the stone
flags beneath her feet were cold to the touch. She liked the
feeling. As she rounded the curve in the dormitory block she heard
a shot and then a shout. As he came into her view, Sister Margaret
Rose saw Jamal pointing his handgun into the library and ordering a
nun to step aside or die.

Sister
Margaret Rose did some shouting of her own.

“
Drop the
gun, Jamal, or I WILL fire.”

They were less
than twenty feet apart when Jamal turned his head to see what was
happening in the corridor. He almost smiled at the comical nature
of the scene before him. He saw a barefoot nun holding out what
appeared to be an old Glock pistol in target shooting stance. The
nun was standing in profile to him with her right hand, her gun
hand, extended and her left hand on her hip for stability. Her head
was turned at ninety degrees and she was looking down the barrel of
her gun.

She looked to
all intents and purposes like a dedicated amateur, but he could not
be sure. Why was she not adopting the double handed grip, so
beloved of police movies? Why wasn’t she crouching to make herself
a smaller target? These thoughts took barely a fraction of a second
to process as he instinctively spun in the nun’s direction, the Sig
Sauer P250 gripped tightly in his right hand and cupped in his left
hand. As he completed the turn his finger found the
trigger.

***

Sister
Margaret Rose’s view on life was quite different from those of her
counterparts in the service. True, there was a time for a two
handed grip and for a crouch, but anyone issuing a warning in such
circumstances would require the protection of body armour because,
no matter how low a person could crouch, the chest makes a big
target.

Despite the
‘blow back’ or recoil from her own weapon, she was quite happy
standing upright, offering a slimmer target, knowing that any
opponent would have to go for her head if he wanted a kill shot and
that was a near impossibility whilst turning ninety degrees, aiming
and firing in one smooth movement.

The Sister was
not surprised that, despite being faced by a nun with a gun, Jamal
reacted instantly, and so she waited for him to turn. In a second
he was facing her and squeezing the trigger, but he was too late.
She had anticipated her shot and had aimed at the point where his
chest would be when he had fully positioned himself. Another
advantage of the target shooting stance, she thought.

Jamal fell
back under the impact of the shot to his chest, his trigger finger
tensing and sending a round high and wide into the stonework a
metre in front of the nun and way above her head.

As he fell
backwards a second carefully placed round found exactly the same
spot, but now that spot was occupied by Jamal’s lower jaw, and the
nine millimetre round entered just between the jawbone and the
chin, passing through his tongue and the roof of his mouth before
destroying his ear canal and exiting through his skull just above
his ear. By sheer good fortune, the 9mm parabellum grazed his brain
without inflicting a fatal blow.

Jamal fell to
the floor, his gun skittering loudly across the well scrubbed stone
floor. Sister Margaret Rose walked slowly towards him, keeping her
gun trained on him the whole time. The would be assassin was lying
on his back, eyes open, fear of dying written on his face. His body
went into a series of massive spasms which lifted his body from the
ground. Brain damage, the Sister thought to herself.

“
Sister
Margaret Rose, that is enough. There will be no cold blooded
killing in God’s house.”

If she was
being honest, the nun with the gun would probably have put one more
slug into his head if she had not been interrupted, more out of
mercy than out of any need to protect herself. Instead she stepped
over the dying man and retrieved his gun. Sister Angelica was
already kneeling over the failing terrorist, holding his hand and
speaking calmly as she promised him that he would soon see his God
and he would be released from his mortal anguish.

Sister
Margaret Rose watched in stunned amazement as Sister Angelica
placed he hand gently on Jamal’s forehead and whispered;

“
Your mother
and sisters are waiting for you.” On hearing the words, Jamal
stopped shaking, his body relaxed and the fear that had shown in
his eyes disappeared. His brown eyes widened, softened and teared
up. Five minutes later he was pronounced dead by the
paramedics.

***

Jamal’s body
was taken to the USA on a covert flight, along with the hysterical
author Hasan Yasin. In Washington DC a grateful FBI Director rang
Thames House to thank his MI5 counterpart for seconding a British
operative to the Cuban arena and for running an operation that
would have been logistically impossible for an American agency to
carry out alone.

For her part,
Sister Angelica would not say how she knew that Jamal had sisters
who had passed on before him. All she would say was that, when God
wanted you to know something that would bring comfort to a
suffering soul, he would allow his servants to be his
mouthpiece.

Later that day
Sister Margaret Rose passed through the airport in full regalia,
purportedly heading to Rome via Panama, but actually diverting to
Heathrow to land in the UK as Gillian Davis.