They drove to an area of terraced houses, the streets lined with old cars and vans, litter blowing across the pavements. Groups of young men stood on street corners smoking cigarettes, and most of the women were accompanied by young children or were pushing prams.
The car turned down a narrow alley and slowed to walking pace as it bucked and bounced over the rough surface. Stained brick walls were dotted with rotting wooden doors leading to backyards. A stray dog left it until the last moment to scamper out of their way and glared at them resentfully as they went by.
They stopped midway down the alley. The passenger got out and used a key to unlock a door, pushed it open and disappeared inside.
The driver turned. ‘Are you okay, brother?’
Al-Hussain nodded.
‘Salman is just checking that the house is secure,’ he said.
Al-Hussain nodded again.
‘You speak English?’ asked the man.
Al-Hussain smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘Salman will stay with you. I will leave you here.’
The door opened and Salman motioned for al-Hussain to join him. He grabbed his backpack and opened the door.
‘Good luck, brother,’ said the driver. ‘
Baraka Allahu fika
.’ May Allah bestow his blessings on you.
Al-Hussain thanked him and got out of the car with his bag. Salman kept the door open for him, then locked it behind them. The yard was cluttered with two wheelie bins, several rusting bicycles stacked together, an old fridge and sheets of stained plasterboard. Salman hurried past al-Hussain and opened a glass-panelled door that led into a kitchen. It was filthy, with a grease-stained cooker, grimy work surfaces and a stainless-steel sink piled high with dirty dishes. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said. ‘We were planning to clean today but then we got the call to come and get you.’
Al-Hussain said nothing. The place was disgusting, which meant the man had no military training. Soldiers did not live like pigs, wallowing in their own filth.
The kitchen led into a hall. There were stairs to the left, and to the right a sitting room from which came the sound of shooting. ‘That’s Addy,’ said Salman.
Addy was a bearded Asian in his late twenties, wearing a grubby
shalwar kameez
. He was bare-footed and his toenails were yellowing and engrained with dirt. He was staring at a large TV and playing a shoot-’em-up video game, blowing away soldiers with a carbine. As Salman stepped into the room, Addy was throwing a digital hand grenade that exploded, killing three men in a fiery blast.
‘Addy,’ said Salman.
Addy flinched, then smiled when he saw Salman. His smile broadened when he spotted al-Hussain in the hallway. ‘Hello, brother,’ he said, putting his video controller on the table and standing up. He embraced al-Hussain and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘I didn’t hear you arrive.’
Al-Hussain said nothing, but he didn’t like the way Salman and Addy were behaving. They were living like animals, and Addy hadn’t even noticed people coming in through the kitchen. There appeared to be no security procedures in place, which was worrying, but there was no point in confronting the two men with their stupidity. ‘Where is my room?’ he asked.
‘Upstairs,’ said Salman. ‘I’ll take you.’
He led al-Hussain up the stairs to the front bedroom. Al-Hussain sighed. ‘I should be at the back,’ he said.
‘The back?’
‘The front bedroom is overlooked. People will see me move around. I need to be at the back.’
‘That’s where we sleep,’ said Salman.
‘Then we need to change rooms,’ said al-Hussain. ‘I cannot sleep here.’
‘Okay, okay. Sorry. I’ll move our things.’
‘I shall wash while I wait,’ said al-Hussain.
Salman showed him where the bathroom was. Al-Hussain’s heart sank when he saw the state it was in. If anything, it was even more disgusting than the kitchen. The bath was stained, there were smears of toothpaste across the shelf above the sink and the shower curtain was spotted with black mould. ‘Is everything all right, brother?’ asked Salman.
Al-Hussain forced a smile. ‘Everything is fine, brother. Please prepare my room. And perhaps you wouldn’t mind cleaning it and changing the sheets.’
‘I don’t think we have any clean sheets,’ said Salman. ‘We haven’t done any laundry for a while.’ He smiled. ‘We don’t have any women in the house.’
Al-Hussain’s voice hardened a fraction. ‘Then go out and buy some, brother,’ he said. ‘Now.’
Shepherd called Willoughby-Brown’s mobile. It rang half a dozen times, then went through to voicemail. He ended the call and dialled again. Voicemail. He sent a text message.
I need to talk to you. Urgent.
He left it two minutes and called again. This time Willoughby-Brown answered. ‘I’m in a meeting, Daniel,’ he said tersely.
‘I need to see you. Where are you?’
‘I’m at Vauxhall Cross all afternoon.’
The MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross was the headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service. It was at 85 Albert Embankment, south-west London, overlooking the River Thames.
‘I’ll see you at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in one hour,’ said Shepherd.
‘Daniel, I’m in meetings all afternoon.’
‘If you’re not there I’ll come into the building and drag you out,’ said Shepherd. He ended the call. Talking to his boss like that probably wasn’t a great career move, but just then he didn’t care whether or not he continued to work for Willoughby-Brown.
Fifty minutes after he’d made the call, Shepherd took the tube to Vauxhall, carrying out only basic counter-surveillance measures. He paced around the perimeter of the park, partly to confirm that he wasn’t being followed but mainly because he had energy to burn. His heart was pounding and he could feel the adrenalin surge kicking in.
He walked into the park and across to where a group of teenagers were kicking a ball on a tarmac football pitch. Another group wearing near-identical Puffa jackets were watching and handing around a hand-rolled cigarette. Shepherd was too far away to tell if it was marijuana or not, but from the reverence with which they treated it, he figured it probably was.
There was an empty bench but he didn’t feel like sitting. He looked at his watch. Willoughby-Brown was five minutes late. Shepherd wasn’t sure if he should try to carry out his threat because he was fairly certain he’d be stopped at Reception if he turned up without an appointment, even with his Home Office ID.
He took out his phone and checked the screen to see if Willoughby-Brown had tried to contact him but there had been no calls or messages. As he slipped the phone back into his jacket pocket, he saw the man striding across the grass, coat flapping around his knees. Shepherd walked towards him, trying to get his thoughts in order. His heart was racing with the same intensity he felt prior to a firefight. He was angry but controlled, and while verbally attacking his boss wasn’t the best career move, there was no way he could let Willoughby-Brown get away with what he’d allowed to happen to Yusuf.
Willoughby-Brown stopped by a bench but didn’t sit down. He waited for Shepherd to walk up to him, his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat.
Shepherd opened his mouth to speak but Willoughby-Brown beat him to it. ‘I don’t take kindly to being spoken to like that, Daniel,’ he said. ‘You work for me, remember. Not the other way around.’
‘I work for MI5,’ said Shepherd. ‘I just happen to report to you. That can change.’
‘Indeed it can,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘But insubordination isn’t going to help you career-wise, no matter who you report to.’
‘Yusuf Yilmaz is dead. Did you know?’
‘He mixed with some very dangerous people.’
‘Yeah? Well, his wife and kids were in a safe house and they died too.’
‘He was a people-trafficker, Daniel. He worked for Islamic State. With the best will in the world it was never going to end well.’
‘So you knew?’
‘Of course I knew.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’
‘Your part in that operation is over. You went over, you debriefed him, you passed the information on, end of story.’
‘How is that the end of the story? I went over to negotiate his package. We were offering him passports and money in exchange for his intel.’
Willoughby-Brown shook his head. ‘No. That was what he was demanding. We never agreed to anything.’
‘We gave him the impression we were agreeing terms.’
‘Again, that’s not the case. You might have given him that impression but all you were supposed to do was have sight of his intel.’
‘Which I did, and I gave the intel to you.’
‘Exactly. And then there was no point in doing a deal with him.’
‘Because you had what you wanted. That’s theft.’
Willoughby-Brown chuckled. ‘Oh, come on, now you’re being ridiculous.’ He took a packet of small cigars from his pocket and lit one. He began to walk, giving Shepherd no choice other than to follow him. ‘I understand that you’re upset, but your empathy is misplaced. Yusuf Yilmaz was no hero. We owed him nothing.’
‘He came to us for help.’
Willoughby-Brown blew a tight plume of smoke at the ground. ‘No. He came to us to make a profit from his dealings with Islamic State. If he’d asked us to get his family out, that would have been a request for help. But have you forgotten he wanted a million dollars? He wanted paying.’
‘We could have negotiated.’
‘We didn’t need to. He was trying to sell us something we already had.’
‘You’re going around in circles,’ snapped Shepherd. ‘He’s dead. His family are dead, and you’re playing with words.’
‘I’m sorry about his family,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘But you can’t blame Five for that. He should have protected them better. He knew they were targets.’
‘You’re blaming him? You’re unbelievable.’
‘Daniel, everything that has happened is a result of the choices he made. No one forced him to become a people-trafficker, and no one forced him to deal with Islamic State. At the end of the day all his choices were about making money. And as I said, when he came to us, it was money he wanted. He was betraying the people he’d been working for. Your sympathy is misplaced.’
‘We promised to help him.’
‘No, we didn’t. We were negotiating. But he was a fool and gave away his bargaining power.’
Shepherd shook his head angrily. ‘You were setting him up to betray him. That’s why you sent me. You knew that once I’d seen his intel it no longer had any value.’
‘I knew he wouldn’t let us make copies. So it made sense to send someone who could at least remember what he’d seen. And it was his call. He could have refused. He could have shown you just one.’
‘If he’d shown me one and held back the rest, you’d have flown him and his family to London?’
‘Possibly. It wouldn’t have been my call.’
‘So now you’re blaming me? You’re saying the fact that I told him to show me all the passports resulted in his death? And the death of his family?’
Willoughby-Brown stopped walking, stuck his cigar between his lips and reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a sheaf of photocopied sheets and handed one to Shepherd. ‘You remember this guy?’
It was a police photograph of an Asian man in his twenties, two side views against a scale, showing that he was five feet nine inches tall, and a front view. Bearded, hooked nose, dead eyes. Shepherd frowned. He’d seen that face in one of the passports Yusuf had supplied to Islamic State.
‘I can see from your face that you do,’ said Willoughby-Brown. He gave Shepherd a second sheet. Another police mugshot. Another bearded man. Another face on a Syrian passport that Yusuf had provided. ‘And this guy. They both made it to Germany. They were in Cologne when they dragged a nine-year-old girl into an alley and beat her almost to death. They were caught before they could kill her and they were carrying the Syrian passports Yilmaz had arranged. The local police examined their phones and found all sorts of IS material. Videos of beheadings, tutorials on IEDs, all sorts of nasty stuff.’
Shepherd recognised the second man, too. ‘What’s happening to them?’ he asked.
‘They’ll be charged. Hopefully convicted. The little girl they attacked is still in hospital. The doctors doubt she’ll ever be able to have children of her own. All sorts of internal damage.’ He blew smoke. ‘Do you feel like telling her parents you wanted to give a million dollars to the man who sent those two animals to rape their daughter?’
‘That’s a bit simplistic and you know it.’
‘I know that if Yilmaz had come to us when he’d first been approached by Islamic State we could have tracked them and picked them up once they arrived in Europe. Or kept them under surveillance. They got to Cologne six months ago. Who knows what else they’ve done? Rapes have gone through the roof in Germany since the migrants poured in.’
‘Yusuf couldn’t have known what they’d do. You can’t blame him for that.’
‘Actually, yes, I can. And I do. He knew he was supplying passports for Islamic State fighters, not refugees. That’s why he kept those copies, the ones he showed you. He knew what he was doing and don’t try to tell me he didn’t.’
He handed over several more photocopied sheets. It was a Europol report, written in French with an English translation. Shepherd quickly read through the English version as Willoughby-Brown smoked his cigar.
It was dated 19 November and detailed the police raid in Saint-Denis the previous day when armed police had killed Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Islamic fundamentalist who had organised the attacks in Paris that had killed 130 people. The attacks had been well-planned and coordinated with three suicide bombers near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, followed by more suicide bombings, mass shootings at restaurants and cafés, and culminating in an attack on the Bataclan theatre in Boulevard Voltaire, where gunmen wearing suicide vests mowed down eighty-nine people with AK-47s.
Shepherd read through the details of the police raid and its aftermath, and felt a chill run down his spine as he studied the list of terrorists who had died along with Abdelhamid Abaaoud. He recognised one of the names. He looked up at Willoughby-Brown, confusion etched on his face. Willoughby-Brown nodded. ‘You see it now?’