The Angel (15 page)

Hussain’s wife might have been frightened, but he was angry. He stared unblinkingly up at Pope.

‘Last chance.’

He pressed down hard with the Sig.

Hussain blinked. His good eye was full of fury.

He drew back with the gun, the end of the silencer leaving a circular red tracing on the cleric’s forehead.

Pope pulled his left hand away, putting his finger to his lips again to remind the man to lie still and quiet. He reached into his bag and took out a roll of gaffer tape.

‘Lift your head.’

Hussain did as he was ordered, and Pope unrolled the tape, wrapping it all the way around his head two times. When he was done, the bottom half of the cleric’s head was covered with it. There was just enough space for him to breathe through his nose.

‘Now you do your wife.’

His eye shone hatred at him, but again he did as he was told. He did a thorough job, winding it twice around her head, tearing it off and handing the roll back to Pope.

Pope switched the pistol to his left hand, and using his right, he dragged him out of bed. He told him to put his arms behind his back, and he wrapped another length of tape around his wrists, fastening them together. Finally, he took the tape and wound another length around his eyes, fashioning a makeshift blindfold.

He tossed the roll of tape to Kelleher and spoke as she bound the woman’s wrists together. ‘We need to speak to your husband. We’re just going to take him downstairs. If you make a sound or try to come after us, we’ll shoot you both. Nod if you understand.’

She nodded vigorously.

‘Very good. If you do as we say, you won’t be hurt. Stay here. Don’t come out, and definitely do not come downstairs.
Understand
?’

She nodded again.

Pope stood, hooked his right hand between Hussain’s pinioned arms and dragged him to his feet. Kelleher backed away, her Sig held in a steady aim at the woman’s head.

‘Get the hard drive,’ he said to Kelleher, and then, when she had hurried into the other room, he spoke quietly into the mic on his lapel. ‘Twelve, Control. Move.’

‘Copy that.’

He moved the cleric to the head of the stairs and jabbed the pistol between his shoulder blades. The man took the stairs carefully, each foot probing for the next tread, Pope up close behind him. He reached the bottom, and Pope grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him into the corridor, bumping him off the walls as he shoved him into the kitchen. He heard Kelleher following them down the stairs.

Snow reported.
‘I’m here.’

Pope opened the back door and pushed Hussain into the back garden. After his earlier restraint, the pit bull next door started to bark. It didn’t matter so much now. They were nearly done. Pope pushed the cleric against the gate, opened it for him, then shoved him into the alleyway. The Passat was waiting at the mouth of the
alley, t
he passenger-side front and rear doors open. Hussain stumbled over
the overt
urned bin and fell flat on his face. Pope hauled him to his feet, put a hand on his head, pushed down and then propelled him into the back, immediately getting in next to him. Number Nine leapt into the front, the doors were slammed shut and Snow drove.

Pope and Kelleher took off their balaclavas, latex gloves and overshoes.

‘All okay?’ Number Twelve asked.

Pope looked at the cleric beside him, his head mummified in gaffer tape. ‘No problems.’

Chapter Thirty-One

I
t would take them nine hours to drive from Manchester to Wick. They had stopped as soon as it was safe, just outside Manchester, to transfer Hussain to the boot. Now, several hours later, they had left the motorway to stop a second time,
giving
their prisoner a chance to relieve himself.

As Pope raised the lid of the boot, the courtesy light casting a subtle amber glow over Hussain, he could see that the cleric had brought his knees up to his chest so that he fitted snugly.

‘We’re going to drive for another hour,’ Pope said to him. ‘If you’re a good boy, and there’s no noise or trouble, you can stretch your legs for five minutes. Understand?’

The cleric nodded. Pope hauled him up, dragged him out of the boot and stood him on the side of the road. Pope saw that the man wanted to speak. He tore the tape away from his mouth.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he said plaintively.

‘You know why, Mr Hussain.’

‘Those boys. Hakeem and Bashir and Aamir?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I do not approve of what they did.’

‘Save it for later. I’m just in charge of delivery.’

‘You’re not listening to me, sir. I had nothing to do with what happened.’

Pope took him by the shoulder. ‘You need to relieve yourself?’

Hussain ignored him. ‘They listened to my sermons, perhaps they shared my view of things, but I would never have approved of what they did.’

‘You’re wasting your breath. Go now if you need to; we’re not stopping again.’

He ignored him again. ‘None of this is necessary, sir. Please – let me go, I have nothing to do with any of it.’

‘I’ll take that as a no.’

Pope took the gaffer tape.

‘Please!’ Hussain said.

He wrapped the tape around his head again, pushed him back into the boot and shut the lid.

‘You believe any of that?’ Kelleher asked him as he got into
the car.

‘Irrelevant what I think. Not up to us to decide, is it? Come on. Sooner we get back on the road, sooner we can drop him off and get back to civilisation.’

There was an unmarked Gulfstream V Turbo waiting on the edge of the taxiway. Pope guessed that the plane would be registered to a Delaware corporation that would front ownership for the CIA. They would pass it around different front companies every few months, change the tail number and otherwise make it more difficult to trace out the truth. An investigation by a liberal British newspaper had made things a little more difficult last year. They were able to chart the to-ing and fro-ing of a particular jet through the observations of plane spotters posted on the web. Its flight plans always began at an airstrip in Smithfield, North Carolina, and ended in some of the world’s hot spots. It was owned by Premier Executive Transport
Services
, incorporated in Delaware, a brass plaque company with nonexistent directors, and had been hired by American agents to revive an old CIA tactic from the 1970s. Agency men kidnapped South American criminals and flew them back to their own
countries
to face trial so that justice could be rendered. Pope had delivered a suspect for rendition before, to an aeroplane very much like this one. Paddy McNair had called it the Guantánamo Bay Express.

Pope was able to park right alongside the aircraft, which was being refuelled by a mobile bowser. A man and a woman in bland business dress were sheltering under the cover of a wide golfing umbrella next to the open door. Pope checked left and right before he got out of the car. They were in an isolated part of the airport, and there was no suggestion that they were overlooked. He opened the door, went around to the back and opened the trunk. Hussain was inside, curled into a foetal ball. Kelleher and Snow got out, their weapons drawn, and then, working together, they hauled the cleric out of the
boot and
dumped him on the tarmac.

Hussain was on his knees in the sheeting rain. His head hung down low between his shoulder blades and there was a low murmur of discomfort that was muffled by the tape around
his mout
h.

‘Alam Hussain,’ Pope said. ‘As requested.’

The woman nodded. She didn’t say anything. Pope would have been surprised if she knew who he was, and besides, there was very little to discuss. This was a simple transaction. A handover, an exchange that had been repeated many times previously. He knew that Hussain’s immediate future was bleak. It promised pain and discomfort. Then he would be buried deep in the CIA’s penal system, and Pope doubted if the cleric would see the light of day for years. He didn’t feel uncomfortable about it. Hussain might have information that could save the lives of hundreds of innocent
civilians
. He might not, of course, but that was a risk that Pope was happy to countenance. Simple calculus. The needs of the many
outweighed
the needs of the few.

The male agent reached down and helped Hussain to his feet. He guided him to the fuselage and helped him place his feet on the stairs that led inside.

‘Thank you,’ the woman said as she turned on her heel and
followed
her colleague into the jet. The pilot came out to retract the steps and close the door. The bowser detached its hose and drove back in the direction of the terminal building.

They were left alone. They got into the car. Kelleher offered to drive. Pope was tired and didn’t demur. As she turned the
Passat
around and accelerated away to the gate, Pope heard the
Gulfstream’s
engine fire up and watched as the plane slowly began to roll towards the runway.

‘Back to London?’ Number Nine asked.

‘Yes.’

They had another long drive ahead of them. As they started south, he looked through the wire-mesh fence and out onto the
runway
. The jet streaked towards them, launched itself into
the air a
nd roared overhead at two hundred feet. It banked steeply to
port an
d disappeared away to the south.

‘Poor bugger,’ Snow offered.

PART THREE

Chapter Thirty-Two

I
sabella killed the engine of her Kawasaki and rested it on its side stand. She unlocked the brand new door and pulled it up, then went into the dark space and disabled the alarm. The place felt secure now. She was pleased with the work that she had arranged and ran her fingers across the cold steel lockers.

Today was a big day.

The delivery was arranged for the afternoon. The ancient white Vauxhall
Astravan
turned off
the Route de Safi and bounced across the uneven approach road to the row of industrial units. The driver drew to a halt and got out with a clipboard in his hand.

‘Sabrina Atika?’

‘That’s right,’ Isabella said.

‘You need to sign here.’

She took the clipboard and signed where he indicated.

‘What?’ he said when she held on to the clipboard.

‘Can you move them inside, please?’

‘You have to. I don’t do that.’

‘I’ll give you an extra three hundred dirham if you do.’

The man grunted his assent and went to the back of the van. He opened the doors. The space was crammed to the roof with wooden packing crates of various sizes. The man took one of the larger ones and hauled it out. It slid off the back of the van and crashed onto the ground.

‘Careful!’ she said.

He cursed under his breath. ‘What do you have in there?’ he asked.

‘Equipment.’

‘
Heavy
equipment.’

‘Stop moaning,’ she said. ‘You want your money—or
don’t you
?’

They moved the crates from the van into the unit. Isabella paid the driver his extra money and watched him get into his van and driv
e away.

It was just past dusk, and she paused outside the unit for a
minute
, just letting a sense of the place sink in. The neighbouring properties were empty. Some of them were vacant, as
advertised
by the signs of the realtors that were fixed to the doors or the walls. Those that had been busy earlier were empty now, their occupants packed up and returned to the city. The occasional car hummed along the Route de Safi, headlights snapping on as the desert approached, but there was nothing else.

She pulled the drawstring to turn on the light, shut and locked the door, and set to work.

Isabella had packed the equipment from the garage into the crates, protecting it with balled-up newspaper and old blankets.
The crat
es came in several different sizes. There were those that were long and thin and others that were square. She had sealed them carefully, driving nails through the lids so that they could only be opened with deliberate effort and not accidentally.

She had a claw hammer on the floor, and using the end, she pried off the lid of the nearest box and stood it against the wall. The inside was stuffed to the top with newspaper; she cleared it out to reveal an M-15 ArmaLite flat-carbine. She pulled it out. It had the M4
collapsible
buttstock and forged lower receiver, the
mid-len
gth hand guard and gas system, a chrome-lined sixteen-inch heavy
barrel
, a rail front gas block and a flash hider. The
chamber ha
d
elongated
M4-style feed ramps for more reliable feeding with heavier bullet weights. It was an excellent weapon. Beatrix had shown her how to use it.

Her mother had left her an impressive armoury of weapons. She pried open the lids of the other crates and started to sort through the contents. There were semi-automatic pistols, rifles, submachine guns, shotguns. She took out a TAR-21 bullpup assault rifle and an MK249 with ten one-hundred-round soft-pack ammo bags. There was a Mossberg 500 shotgun and an M110 sniper rifle with bipod. Flashbangs. Knives, frag grenades, night-vision goggles, a radio set, and boxes upon boxes of ammunition of all different calibres.

She arranged them carefully in the lockers: the rifles went into one locker, the revolvers and semi-automatics in another, the
shotguns
in a third. She matched the various calibre ammo with the relevant firearms. She opened a box of 9mm rounds, and they glittered in the light.

She intended to break each firearm down so that it could be cleaned and maintained, but it was late by the time that she had unpacked, and she decided that she would start that task another day. She was pleased with what she had done. She felt good about the weapons. They were safer here. She didn’t know how she could make them much safer.

She opened the door, switched off the light and stepped
outside
. It was cold now. She put on her leather riding jacket, pulled down and locked the door, got onto her Kawasaki and rode back to
Marrakech
.