The Angel (4 page)

Chapter Seven

P
ope rehashed the events of that day with as much detail as he thought prudent. He was honest and forthcoming, and when he was finished, he answered their questions candidly. The tone in the room was aggressive and did nothing to
dissuade
Pope from his initial assessment that blame had already been assigned.

‘Sergeant Snow,’ the home secretary said, ‘what can you tell us?’

‘Captain Pope has set it all out, ma’am. I agree with everything he has said.’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ Stone said. ‘Of course, you would say that.’

Pope looked at the chief. He answered to the spook and did not hold him in high regard. His experience suggested that he was a self-serving career civil servant who would not hesitate to throw him under the bus if he thought it was to his advantage to do so. He was, Pope knew, an especially cunning man, and he did not like the way that Chief Stone was regarding Snow.

Stone gestured to include all of them in his next comment. ‘The police tell the story very differently. They say that they aborted
the opera
tion between the time that you entered the station at ground level and the time you reached the platform. The commander has testified to us that she told you that the target was not a suspect and that you should stand down.’

‘That’s not true,’ Snow said with sudden heat.

‘How can you say that, Sergeant?’

‘I—’

‘When was this communicated?’ Pope asked, intervening before Snow could lose his temper.

‘The radio log records it at 7.48 p.m. The message transmitted was as follows: “Target is not a suspect. Incorrect ID. Stand down. Repeat, stand down.”’

‘I didn’t receive that message,’ Snow protested.

McNair shook his head.

‘Neither did I,’ Pope said. ‘Could I hear the recording, please?’

‘I don’t know what purpose that would serve. The message is the message.’

‘Your radio, perhaps?’ Bloom suggested. ‘You were underground. Perhaps you didn’t receive it.’

‘No,’ Snow said. ‘They work underground.’

‘I didn’t hear a thing,’ McNair reiterated.

Morley took over. ‘You understand our problem, Captain Pope?’

‘Permission to speak frankly, ma’am?’

‘Always.’

‘I do
not
understand the problem. What happened is regrettable, but it has nothing to do with Sergeant Snow, Sergeant McNair or Group Fifteen.’

She smiled indulgently, but Pope could see that she was irritated by his candour. ‘Who do you think is responsible, Captain?’

‘The police. There should have been a firearms team outside the flat to stop and question everyone who left. Instead, they used surveillance officers with no experience in stopping and questioning suspects. They mistook Rubió for Omar, and then they let Rubió board the bus
and
go into Liverpool Street station. All of those
mistakes
were made before we were involved.’

‘That may be true, Control. But the police say they called your agents off.’

‘I don’t believe them, ma’am.’

‘They say that Sergeant Snow determined to kill the suspect the moment he entered the platform.’

‘That’s not true!’ Snow objected loudly.

The room was abruptly quiet, and the tension rose. Pope looked up at them, holding their gazes. He wanted them to see that he was confident.

It was the home secretary who spoke first. ‘What happened to Mr Rubió is bitterly unfortunate, and it has brought some misgivings that I have had for some time to the surface.’

Pope realised that the focus of the meeting had now shifted very squarely away from Snow and onto him.

‘Go on, Home Secretary.’

‘I am uncomfortable that we have had, for many years, a group of soldiers operating sub judice around the world. Those agents are granted wide leeway to act autonomously and have often gone beyond the terms of the operation as presented and approved by Oversight. Frankly, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of a state-
sanctioned
death squad in the first place. This isn’t Chile, Captain. I’m not Pinochet, making people disappear.’

Pope let her words settle and then spoke calmly. ‘The world is a more complicated place than it was ten years ago. We face a multitude of threats. Asymmetrical warfare can’t be defended with conventional methods. An army can’t stop one man with a suicide vest. I know I don’t need to go through the list of jihadists who have been removed as threats to the public in the last twelve months.’

‘Removed,’
Morley said. ‘A splendidly neutral euphemism,
Captain
.’

‘Use whatever word you prefer, Home Secretary. I try to be thoughtful. I find civilians often have weak stomachs.’

He regretted the slight almost as soon as it had left his lips.

‘Thank you, Captain, but I think we can call a spade a spade, don’t you?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And no, you do not need to remind us. We are aware of the work that your agents have undertaken. And we do not underestimate the need for similar action in the future.’

‘Then I don’t understand what this is all about.’

‘The fact is this, Captain. The Group, as it is presently constructed, is an anachronism. A dinosaur from another time. It’s something that Fleming would write about, or le Carré. The unfortunate death of Mr Rubió might be the reminder we need to bring it to an end.’

Chapter Eight

M
onarch Catering was a large and well-respected
company
responsible for a series of contracts throughout
London
and the South East. Established ten years earlier, it had since that time enjoyed fast growth and numbered
several
blue chips among its impressive roster of clients. It had secured the main hospitality contract for the Palace of
Westminster
two years previously and had, by all accounts, performed well enough to suggest that the relationship would be long-lasting.

The warehouse that served the contract was at 19 Crown Road in Edmonton. Ibrahim Yusof parked his car on the street, as was
his habi
t, and walked the short distance to the premises. Ibrahim was wearing a simple pair of jeans and a denim shirt. He wore glasses with wire rims, and his hair was clipped tight to his scalp. He had shaved off his beard months ago, but he still found his fingers
darting
up to his chin every now and again, as if surprised that his whiskers had been removed. He was of average height and average build. Nothing about him was out of the ordinary. He was the kind of anonymous man who could slip into a crowd and just disappear.

He opened the door and looked at the machine they used to clock in and out. It seemed pointless to go through with that particular rigmarole this morning, but Ibrahim knew that it was important to maintain the appearance of normality, so he took his card from the rack, slid it into the slot so that the time was stamped onto it, and then replaced it. He checked through the other cards. The only other employees present were the two men who stocked the firm’s lorries before they went out each morning.

It was as he expected.

The company rented both floors of the warehouse. The first floor was taken up by four small, dingy offices that were only rarely used. Ibrahim jogged up the stairs and moved quickly down the short corridor to make sure they were empty. It wasn’t impossible that one of the managers had popped in, and since the manager might not have clocked in, Ibrahim didn’t want to be negligent and allow himself to be surprised. The offices were empty. That was good. He went back down and locked the front door.

The open space where they parked the company vehicles dominated the ground floor. The company drove Mercedes Sprinter panel vans, and there was space for three of them in the warehouse. The drivers had backed them inside last night, and the doors stood open as the two warehousemen replenished the supplies carried within.

‘Morning,’ Ibrahim called out.

The warehousemen were Bill and Dave. They seemed like decent enough types. Ibrahim had worked for Monarch for two months, and the two had never been anything other than pleasant towards him. Bill was in his fifties and celebrated his
support
of Tottenham Hotspur with a tattoo of the club’s crest on his beefy forearm. Dave was younger. He had just become a father, and he regularly complained that he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since his son had been born.

‘Glad you’re here,’ Bill said. ‘Simon hasn’t turned up yet.’

‘Really?’ Ibrahim said, playing dumb.

‘Ten minutes late, he hasn’t called – nothing.’

Dave was in the back of one of the trucks. ‘Out on the piss again,’ he called. ‘Not the first time he’s bailed after a night out. He’ll call in sick when he wakes up – you’ll see.’

‘Gonna get himself fired if he keeps that up.’ Bill indicated one of the Mercedes. ‘Your truck’s done.’

‘Thanks,’ Ibrahim said.

‘I’m going for a dump,’ Bill said.

The bathroom was at the rear of the building. Bill took his copy of the
Sun
from his bag and headed to the back.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ Dave complained. ‘I was going to have a piss. No way I’m going in there after you.’

‘Up yours!’ Bill said as he disappeared from view.

Ibrahim walked around to the back of the van. ‘Have you called the office?’

‘What for?’

‘Simon?’

‘Not yet. Was just going to finish loading up, then I was gonna give him a ring. I’d rather give him the chance to get in.’

Very good.

Ibrahim reached into his bag and pulled out the Beretta 92 that he had fitted with a 9mm AAC Ti-Rant suppressor. The detachable box magazine had a fifteen-shot capacity. Ibrahim had
thirteen
rounds left in the mag after having shot Simon earlier that
morning
. He had broken in to the man’s disgusting flat and found him still sleeping in bed. He had held a pillow over the silencer for adde
d supp
ression and put two rounds into his head. Ibrahim knew that Simon lived alone. The body wouldn’t be discovered for hours. Not until it was much too late.

Dave was stepping down from the back of the van, and there was nowhere for him to go when Ibrahim aimed the gun and fired. The gun barked twice, the suppressor muffling the reports a little but certainly not eliminating them. The man was only five feet away and Ibrahim couldn’t miss. The first shot blew a hole in his coveralls to the right of his sternum, and the second punctured his throat. He slumped back into the van, a look of the most exquisite confusion on his face.

Ibrahim turned and walked to the bathroom. It was small, with a handbasin, two urinals and a cubicle. The door was shut, and Ibrahim could hear Bill inside.

‘Wait up! I told you, I’m going to be a while.’

Ibrahim fired three shots through the flimsy door. He gave it a kick, shattering the lock, the door jamming up against Bill’s
spasming
body as it slumped forward on the toilet. He fired again, to be sure.

Ibrahim went back into the warehouse.

He made sure that Dave’s body was safely inside the back of the first van. He went to the button that opened the main doors and pressed it. The engine whirred and the metal door rolled up, sliding back on well-oiled casters.

Abdul was waiting outside in the beat-up Vauxhall Astra he had bought from an eBay seller two weeks ago. The man had asked for cash, and Abdul had been happy to oblige him. Cash would be much harder to trace. At Ibrahim’s signal, he reversed the van into the warehouse, sliding it tight up against the right-hand wall
with th
e Mercedes to the left. Abdul switched off the engine and Ibrahim pressed the button to lower the door again. The door rolled down and gave out a metallic clang as it contacted the concrete floor.

Abdul stepped down. ‘Any problems?’

‘None,’ Ibrahim reported. ‘It was easy.’

‘Praise Allah.’

‘Praise Allah. We must move quickly.’

‘The others?’

Ibrahim nodded. ‘It is all in hand.’

‘You spoke to Mohammed?’

‘Yes. As I was walking here. He is confident.’

‘The three boys?’

‘He said that he met them and that they are on their way.’

‘And they will do what needs to be done?’

‘Allah willing. It is in his hands.’

The warehouse was brightly lit from the fluorescent lights overhead. Abdul opened the back of the Astra and brought down a
selection
of large plastic containers. They were branded with the logos of catering supply companies and advertised as holding various ingredients: carrots, broccoli, potatoes and other
vegetables
. The contents had been poured away and then sharp craft
knives had been used to slice from the sides around to the backs. Now the tops of the containers could be pulled forward enough to allow access to the interiors.

‘Is everything there?’ Ibrahim asked.

‘It is. But you should check.’

He did. He carefully split one container so that he could reach inside. His fingers fastened around a metal cylinder. He brought it out: it was the barrel of a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm. The other containers held a small arsenal of weapons: MP-5 submachine guns that had been broken down so that they could fit into the containers, semi-automatic pistols, magazines, fragmentation grenades.

He clambered into the back of the Sprinter. Racking had been fitted on both sides, and each shelf held two rows of similar containers. He had taken pictures of the cans, and Abdul had matched them at the cash and carry. He cleared the shelf nearest to the front of the compartment, stacked Abdul’s containers against the side of the truck and then obscured them behind containers that had not been tampered with. They worked quickly, and when they were done, the weapons were well hidden. Not satisfied with just that cursory check, he jumped down and looked at the interior of the truck from the bumper, the view that the security guards would have if today was one of the days they chose to examine the vehicles passing through their checkpoint.

‘Well?’ Abdul said.

‘Very good,’ Ibrahim replied. ‘Very good.’