‘I will make sure of it,’ said Salih.
Hakeem glanced around the room, but no one was paying them any attention. ‘Their names are Mazur and Tariq. British-born, they were brought up as Muslims but became fundamentalist three years ago. They have spent time in Pakistan and were selected for special training.’
‘Special training?’
‘They were considered
shahids
,’ said Hakeem. ‘And I think it would have not taken much to persuade them to take the final step. They are both committed. The fire burns inside them already. It just needs to be fanned.’
Salih nodded. The
shahids
were happy to die for Islam as martyrs, the front-line warriors of the
jihad
. They believed that if they died serving Allah, they would be rewarded with a place in Heaven, alongside seventy of their relatives. And Heaven for the
shahids
meant an eternity of sex with seventy-two black-eyed virgins and eighty thousand servants to take care of them. Salih didn’t believe in the seventy-two virgins– in fact, he was dubious about Heaven as a concept – but the
shahids
believed, which was what made them so dangerous. A man who truly believed in a glorious afterlife would have no hesitation in crashing an airliner or blowing up a Tube train, providing that the last words on his lips were
Allahu Akbar
. God is great.
‘Do they worship here?’ asked Salih.
‘They used to go to the Finsbury Park mosque,’ he said. ‘They were selected and groomed by Abu Hamza himself.’
Salih knew of the hook-handed preacher who had taken control of the inner-city place of worship and turned it into an al-Qaeda training camp. ‘They must not look like fundamentalists,’ he said.
‘They shaved off their beards when they came back from Pakistan, and they wear Western clothing,’ said Hakeem. ‘We moved them away from Finsbury Park when Abu Hamza became a publicity junkie.’
The British authorities had tolerated Abu Hamza’s brand of racial hatred for years, but eventually their patience had worn thin. He had been sent to prison, convicted of inciting murder and racial hatred, but not before he had despatched hundreds of British Muslims to training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. ‘They are below the official radar?’ asked Salih.
‘They are what the authorities here call “invisibles”. They can travel freely in and out of Britain, yet they have dual citizenship so they arrive in Pakistan as nationals and can stay there as long as they like. I heard of them and suggested that they return to London. They can make a bigger impact here.’ He lowered his voice again. ‘We are trying to get them into Heathrow,’ he said. ‘We already have two of our people working on the security staff at Terminal Three. Now we are trying to get Mazur and Tariq on the baggage-handling staff. The British are so politically correct that they aren’t even allowed to question why so many Muslims are applying to work at the airports. But the day will come when we have everything in place and you will see an event to rival Nine Eleven in the United States.’ He raised his glass in salute. ‘And while I give my life to Allah, what are you doing? Creating havoc for money?’
‘If I create havoc, I’m not doing my job properly,’ said Salih.
‘But you do what you do for your own ends,’ said Hakeem. ‘Where is the glory in that?’
‘There is no glory,’ agreed Salih.
‘But there is money?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Salih. ‘There is money.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and handed over a bulky envelope. ‘This is for your expenses.’
Hakeem weighed it in his hand.
‘Ten thousand pounds,’ said Salih. ‘That is for the introduction. There will be another forty thousand if the two men are suitable.’
‘I shall use it wisely,’ said Hakeem.
‘I am sure you will,’ said Salih.
As soon as Charlotte Button had had breakfast, over the
Irish Times
and the
Independent
, she phoned Culford School and asked to speak to her daughter. She had to wait almost ten minutes before Zoë came to the phone. ‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Zoë, I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday but I didn’t get back until late. Daddy says you lost your phone.’
‘It wasn’t lost, it was stolen,’ said Zoë.
‘Have you told the school?’
Zoë’s sigh was loaded with sarcasm. ‘Of course,’ she said.
‘And will they tell the police?’
‘Mum, it’s a phone. The police don’t care about phones.’
‘I’ll need a police report to make a claim on our insurance,’ said Button.
‘I don’t think the school likes to call in the police. They handle things themselves.’
‘Oh, so they’ll find it for you, will they?’
‘Mum, please. Just send me a new phone, okay? Dad said you would.’
‘And did Dad say why he couldn’t do it?’
‘He said he was busy.’
‘And I’m not?’ Zoë sighed again. Button pictured the contempt in her daughter’s eyes, and the way her lips had pressed into a tight line. ‘I’m sorry, honey. I’ll get you a phone and send it to you.’
‘A Sony-Ericsson, okay?’
‘What’s a Sony-Ericsson?’
‘It’s a phone. Everyone here has one.’
‘I thought Nokias were the phones to have.’
‘Oh, Mum, Nokias are so yesterday. The new Sony-Ericsson is savage.’
‘Savage? That’s good, right?’
‘Yes, Mum, that’s good.’
‘Okay. Is everything else all right?’
‘Fine,’ said Zoë. ‘Look, I have to go. Love you.’
‘Love you,’ said Button, but the line was already dead.
She sat on the bed tapping the phone against the side of her head. Zoë was thirteen and had boarded at the school since she was eleven. It had been Graham’s idea, but Button hadn’t needed much persuading. They both had careers, and the only other options would have been a live-in au pair or turning Zoë into a latch-key kid. They had agreed that boarding-school was a better solution, and Zoë had been surprisingly agreeable. It had made her more independent, and she was thriving in the hothouse academic environment, but with that had come a coldness that often brought tears to Button’s eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was normal teenage rebellion or because Zoë had been sent away from home, but either way it was painful.
She tossed the phone on to the bed. Zoë was their only child and there had been complications that made it unlikely they’d have more. Not that she and Graham had planned a big family. Zoë had been an accident, a happy one but an accident nevertheless, and neither Button nor her husband had ever put her in front of their careers. They loved Zoë, of course, but Graham wanted to build his business and Button had always been determined to get to the top of her profession. And to do that she had had to make sacrifices. Button didn’t regret the decision they’d made, but that didn’t make Zoë’s coldness any easier to bear.
She picked up the phone and pressed redial, then cancelled the call. Zoë had lessons to go to, and she wouldn’t appreciate being dragged back to the phone. In any case, what could she say to her? That she loved her? That she missed her? That she wished she was there to give her a hug? She caught sight of herself in the mirror above the dressing-table and flinched. She looked scared.
She stood up and stared out of the window over the city. It was impossible to have everything, no matter what the glossy women’s magazines said. You couldn’t have a successful career, a fulfilling sex life and an adoring family. You had to make choices, and more often than not those choices led to sacrifices. No one had forced her to send Zoë to boarding-school, just as no one had forced her to join MI5 or SOCA. Suddenly she craved a cigarette, and laughed. Once a smoker, always a smoker.
Salih watched the two men from across the restaurant. They were young Pakistanis, with glossy gelled hair, dark brown skin and black eyes. They looked like a couple of male models, tall with broad shoulders and tight stomachs. He toyed with his coffee cup and wondered why two such good-looking young men would consider blowing themselves into a thousand pieces. They were British-born, which meant they had access to the country’s health and education systems, they lived in a country where the police didn’t shoot rubber bullets or worse into crowds, where civilians weren’t dragged off the streets and searched or roughed up, where soldiers couldn’t kill children and receive nothing worse than a reprimand.
Salih had been born in Israeli-occupied Gaza, where children died because hospitals lacked equipment and medicine, where schools had no textbooks, where two-thirds of the population had no jobs and where most families lived on less than ten dollars a month. Salih understood why so many Palestinians wanted to take up arms against the Israelis, and why so many were prepared to give up their own lives. But Mazur and Tariq weren’t Palestinians. They hadn’t grown up under the heel of an occupying power. They were free men in a free country, which was what made their decision to give up everything for Allah so mystifying.
The slightly taller of the two, who was sporting a small gold earring in his left ear, laughed at something the other had said, showing perfect white teeth. A waiter brought them cups of coffee and a hookah pipe, which he lit for them. The guy with the earring took the first smoke, then handed the mouthpiece to his friend. They were early. Salih had told them to be in the café at midday, but it was only half past eleven.
Salih toyed with the almond croissant on his plate. He preferred to work alone but there were times when he needed assistance and this was such an occasion. One person alone could not do what he had planned. There had to be three, which meant he needed Mazur and Tariq. He took out his mobile phone and called the number Hakeem had given him. A few seconds later an Asian pop tune sounded from the taller man’s pocket. He fished in his jacket and pressed his phone to his ear. ‘I am here,’ said Salih.
The man frowned. ‘What?’
‘Across the room.’
The man looked round and Salih held up his coffee cup, then cut the connection. The man said something to his friend and they both looked in Salih’s direction. Salih sipped his coffee, then put down his cup and beckoned them over.
‘You are Hassan?’ asked the taller of the two.
Salih held up the mobile phone and smiled.
‘Of course it is. He called you, didn’t he?’ said the other man. He held out his hand. ‘I am Mazur.’
Salih shook it. ‘Yes, I am Hassan. Please sit.’ Salih took the tall man’s hand. ‘You are Tariq?’
‘I am.’
He had a tight grip and his nails had been neatly trimmed. Salih could smell expensive cologne. Tariq sat down opposite Salih, and Mazur on Salih’s right.
The waiter brought over the hookah. Salih caught the fragrance of green apples from the smouldering tobacco. ‘May I?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ said Tariq.
Salih drew the fragrant smoke into his mouth, then blew it out and sighed. ‘That’s good,’ he said. He handed the pipe back to Tariq.
‘Hakeem said you needed help,’ said Tariq.
Salih kept his voice low. ‘There is something I need doing, and I need the services of men who are prepared to do whatever it takes to serve Allah.’
‘That’s us,’ said Mazur.
‘You were trained in Pakistan?’
Both men nodded.
‘Do you mind telling me why?’
‘We learnt what we could in London, through the Internet and books, but we needed real training,’ said Tariq. ‘We had to know how to use weapons and explosives.’
‘But why did you want such training?’ pressed Salih.
‘To fight for Islam,’ said Mazur.
‘But you’re British,’ said Salih.
‘We’re Muslims first,’said Tariq,‘Pakistanis second,British third. If we don’t stand and fight as Muslims, the infidels will crush us.’ His eyes were burning with the intensity of a zealot.
‘What started you on this journey?’he asked. ‘Nine Eleven?’
Mazur nodded, but Tariq shook his head. ‘I realised long ago that Muslims were in danger of being exterminated from the face of the earth,’ he said. ‘Look at what happened in Kosovo, in Palestine, in Chechnya. When I was a kid Abu Hamza came to our mosque to give a talk and collect funds. I had never heard a man who spoke like him. Afterwards he said he recognised something in me and that when I was ready I should seek him out at the Finsbury Park mosque. As soon as I was old enough I went to see him and that was when I learnt about
jihad
, that Muslims have to fight our oppressors until we have established a true Islamic state.’
‘It was Nine Eleven that changed me,’ said Mazur. ‘It was the way the Americans reacted. The Saudis flew the planes into the World Trade Center, but the Americans were too cowardly to attack them. Instead they attacked the Muslims in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. What did Afghanistan have to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center? Nothing. And the Iraqis? Saddam Hussein hated al-Qaeda. Hated bin Laden.’
‘It’s true,’ agreed Tariq. ‘And then what did the Americans do? They picked up Muslims around the world and took them to Cuba to interrogate and torture them. The Americans are on a crusade, a crusade to destroy all Muslims. We have to defend ourselves, we have to meet violence with violence.’ Tariq had a movie-star smile, but there was no doubting his sincerity.
Salih understood why the two men had become such hard-line fundamentalists. It had all been part of al-Qaeda’s grand plan. Until the moment that the four planes had been hijacked in the United States, most Western countries had given little thought to the Muslim populations in their midst. Muslims and Christians were getting on just fine, but Islamic fundamentalists knew that peaceful coexistence was a threat to their religion. Religions spread best when fired by fundamentalism, and fundamentalists need someone to struggle against. It was the backlash after Nine Eleven that had fired Muslims like Tariq and Mazur and thousands more like them. The man with the beard and the Kalashnikov had known exactly what he was doing when he attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He had no interest in the men, women and children who had died. Neither did he care about the damage to the buildings. What he wanted was for the West to lash out at Muslims, and he had succeeded. The West had gone to war with Afghanistan and Iraq, and Muslims round the world had united to rise up in protest.