‘Then I’m going to need a story. That requires a little preparation. I don’t know if I’ve got enough time. ’
‘You got all day. But make it better than the keyboard story. That was bush-league stuff, Isis - just terrible.’
She stayed for a further two hours to read the file on the Tirana detainee and draw some money - $7,000 in hundred-dollar bills - from a character who came from the US Embassy and stressed that every last cent was to be accounted for.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Around five-thirty in the afternoon, the public areas of the Hotel Byron in Tirana began to fill, mostly with Albanian gangsters who left their bodyguards out in the car park. They moved through the bar to a crescent-shaped area bordering the gardens, trailing an air of listless menace, and sank into the Lloyd loom chairs to drink, smoke without pause and fiddle with their cell phones. There were some foreigners too; insanely risk-averse businessmen, low-level diplomats and a few edgy American evangelists sipping soft drinks and wearing hiking gear, as if the mere fact of being in this godless, chaotic country required rugged clothing.
The tableau was not difficult to decode, and as Herrick waited on her second evening for Lance Gibbons, her contact from the local CIA station, she realised that more or less the same groups appeared and seemed to settle at regular tables. Bashkin, the driver who had attached himself to her at Mother Teresa International airport, told her the Albanian men were mostly engaged in drug trafficking, prostitution rackets and smuggling people, cigarettes and fuel.
Gibbons arrived late, a large, shambling man who quickly announced that he was a veteran of the war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, or the ‘Big A’ as he called it. After a couple of drinks, Isis brought up the purpose of her trip and asked when she could see the suspect.
‘Look, that’s going to be kinda difficult right now,’ he said, toying with the scarf loosely hung round his neck. ‘We have to tread carefully with the Albanians. He’s their prisoner. We’re just observing.’
Herrick gave him a sceptical look, pulled out her phone and dialled Nathan Lyne. ‘I’m having some unexpected difficulty inspecting the goods,’ she said to Lyne. ‘I wonder if you could intervene with the local representative and tell him there’ll be hell to pay if he doesn’t cooperate. I’ll put you onto him now.’
She handed the phone to Gibbons, who listened silently then said, ‘You got to understand, Nathan, that these goods are not in our possession yet. They’re still being held by the customs service.’
He hung up and handed the phone back. ‘You know, that was real unfriendly of you.’
‘I have to see this man quickly and report back to London. That’s all there is to it.’
‘You and your man Lyne don’t cut any ice here. Here is dif-fer-ent. Period.’ He sipped his drink then lit a cheroot. ‘So, Isis Herrick, tell me about RAPTOR. What the fuck is going down? We hear something big’s happening. All our guys pulled in from the field. Operations suspended without warning. What’s the deal?’
She shrugged. ‘That name doesn’t mean anything to me, but if there is something going down, as you put it, you better be sure that I see this suspect. It comes from the top.’
He laughed. ‘The top of what - my organisation? No way. The British Secret Intelligence Service? Hey, that would be something, wouldn’t it? I’ll stand to attention and drink to Her Majesty.’
‘Where’s he being held?’ she asked.
‘That’s classified information.’
‘The intelligence headquarters, the prison - where?’
He shook his head and stroked the three-day-old stubble on his chin.
‘What’s the problem with giving me access? If this man is talking, you must have transcripts.’
‘Oh yeah, he’s talking.’
‘Then you’ll get the transcripts to me?’
‘I can’t be certain of that.’
‘I’m not fooling around,’ she said icily. ‘If I don’t get your agreement this evening, I’ll have Nathan Lyne call his friends in the State Department and Langley. By morning your communications centre will be jammed with cables. Give me what I want and I’ll get out of your hair.’
‘Don’t misunderstand me, Isis. I’d like you
in
my hair. This town gets pretty tedious and you’re definitely the best thing to happen to me all week, but this is real difficult. I don’t see the Albanians letting you visit the suspect. Hell, you’re a woman. You know what that means to these people, right?’
‘Mr Gibbons…’
‘Lance.’
‘If you’ve heard that something unusual is going on,’ she stopped while the waiter placed another drink in front of Gibbons, ‘you should know that the authority behind it doesn’t get any higher.’
Gibbons exhaled a low, sarcastic whistle. ‘Hey, you already said that. Look, I’ll see what I can do, okay? But you have to understand that this is not a Western jail and right here they don’t have Western standards of prisoner care - you follow me?’
She nodded. ‘I want the transcripts this evening.’
Gibbons shifted the small, black pack from his lap - the standard cover for an automatic weapon - shouldered it and rose from the chair. ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he said, looking down at her.
‘This evening,’ she said.
‘We’re on Albanian time, Missie. Tomorrow.’ He gave her a two-fingered salute and loped out of the hotel, beckoning to his driver on the way.
She had dinner and then went to her room to smoke a rare cigarette on the balcony overlooking the gardens. At ten-thirty her cell phone rang and she dived for her bag.
‘Hello, darling. It’s your father.’
‘Dad, what are you doing?’
‘Merely phoning my daughter to find out how she is and what she’s up to. Can you speak?’
‘Yes. Did you go on your trip to the West Highlands?’
‘Yes, yes. Saw a lot and did a good bit of sea trout fishing.’
She was smiling to herself, swamped by a rush of affection for the old man. ‘That’s exactly what I’d like to be doing now,’ she said, glancing around the bleak hotel room.
‘Then we should take a trip together when you have some time off. I know how much you love being driven in the Armstrong. ’ He laughed. ‘Look, I gather from friends that you’re in Albania. The first thing to say about that is, be careful. They’re a treacherous bunch. I was there at the end of the war when I was no longer needed in France and witnessed a very ugly side of them. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is that I have a message for you. It’s from my old student.’ She understood he meant Sir Robin Teckman. ‘He wants to talk to you on a secure line. So you’re booked to go and see our ambassador tomorrow.’
‘Dad, why’s he using you to talk to me?’
‘No doubt you’ll find out. He wants you there at eight-thirty sharp. You should go to Skenderbeg Street. Our Embassy is next door to the Egyptians’. Be discreet, Isis. If you have a driver, don’t use him. Take a taxi. The student says the driver may be unreliable.’
Herrick found herself reluctant to let her father go and asked him a succession of questions about Hopelaw and its inhabitants, the tap-room gossip that she missed, about barns burning down, sheepdogs going wild, poachers being caught and people running off with each other. Her father, though elliptical about himself, was an acute observer of village life and she liked hearing him speak about it. At length, she said goodbye, re-lit her cigarette and began to read a book about Albania she’d picked up in the hotel shop.
Just as she thought of turning in, the room doorbell rang. She looked through the spy hole and saw Gibbons standing with his thumb hooked in his shirt pocket and another cheroot hanging from his lower lip.
‘Hey there, Isis. Brought what you wanted,’ he said when she opened the door. His eyes scanned the room. ‘Any chance of a little of that Johnny Walker Black Label?’
She had bought the bottles as useful bribes. ‘Help yourself, Mr Gibbons.’
‘Lance,’ he said. ‘That stuff you have is from the first ten days. Most of what he’s said is in there. You’ll see that this character is quite fly. He’s educated in Britain and speaks good English. He’s not the usual Mujahadin type. He’s sharp and kind of civilised. Tough too. He got over the border and managed to survive long enough to be taken by the police. We think there is something more to him. For one thing, he was carrying the documentation belonging to a man thought to be dead, name of Jasur Faisal, otherwise known as The Electrician or The Watchmaker - a wanted Hamas terrorist. Maybe you’ve heard of him? So you see he’s a deal more interesting than the average holy warrior. We don’t know what he’s doing in Europe and why he’s flat broke, but he’s the kind of guy who could form the nucleus of a very big terrorist attack. We think one tough sonofabitch lies beneath the polite exterior.’
‘And what happens now? They’ve had him for ten days. Can’t be much more to get out of him.’
‘You’re wrong. There’s a truckload of stuff he can tell us about. He’s been ID’d by people in Camp X-Ray and elsewhere. Beyond that, we’re not sure. He may have served in Chechnya.’
‘But it’s been established that he’s a Pakistani national?’
‘Who knows, Isis. The way he looks, he could be either Pakistani or Palestinian.’
‘So what happens to him?’
‘Anyone’s guess.’
Herrick looked at the first few pages while Gibbons sipped and swilled the whisky round his mouth, making pain-pleasure grimaces.
‘Well, thank you for bringing this round so quickly. I take it I can keep this?’
‘For sure, but don’t leave it lying around.’
‘Is there much more?’
‘Some,’ he said, rolling the tumbler in his hands. ‘But it’s pretty much the same as what you got there. They’re doing a slow job on the stuff they know he’ll talk about. This is not a Defense Intelligence Agency operation - it’s the Company. We’re doing it thoroughly. The Pentagon knows shit.’
She moved to the door and opened it. Gibbons got up with a sigh. ‘If you need anything or any company while you’re here, this is my mobile number.’
‘Thanks again,’ she said.
‘Hey, we’re all on the same side in this thing.’ He gave her another salute and went out.
‘Exactly.’ She closed the door behind him and returned to the chair on the balcony. For the first time that day, the air was fresh and cool. She looked across the gardens to the lights illuminating the Palace of Congress and noticed a swirl of bats feeding on the moths that had gathered beneath each lamp. Then she turned to the interview transcripts.
She rose early the next day and left the hotel by a side entrance, knowing that Bashkin would already be waiting for her at the front. She crossed the city’s main boulevard and cut through the old politburo compound, passing Enver Hoxha’s villa, built in a curiously open style and surrounded by gardens now partly taken over by a McDonald’s restaurant. A little later she came across the diplomatic quarter, a haven of police patrols, well-barbered hedges and almost no traffic.
At the Embassy she pushed past a dozen locals, showed her passport and was led to a communications room in the basement, stuffed with equipment and a couple of large computers. The ambassador was drinking a cup of coffee and chatting to one of his staff.
‘Ah, Miss Herrick, welcome, welcome. Take a pew. The line is all set up for you.’ He left her alone with a copy of the
Spectator
.
When the call came through, Teckman was at his most distilled. He explained that he wanted her to make contact at the Byron with a former SIS officer named Harland, who at his request was escorting an osteopath named Sammi Loz, ‘a rather unusual figure from New York high society’, who he felt was interesting. She had heard of Harland, and knew he’d had something to do with the demise of Walter Vigo, but stopped herself from mentioning it. Instead she asked if he thought Karim Khan was important, or merely an excuse to get her out of the Bunker.
‘Both, though they won’t suspect that he is important. I think the fact the osteopath is interested seems to indicate something. Harland says that Loz owes Karim Khan for saving his life in Bosnia and feels obligated to try to free him. This is probably true, but there may be something else, and you and Harland are going to have to get it out of him, even if you have to mislead him about the possibility of achieving Khan’s release. I should warn you that the Americans are already alert to Loz’s possible significance but, like us, they don’t know why he’s important. Also, it’s unlikely there has been much serious communication between the FBI, who have been watching him in New York, and the CIA in Albania. He’s not on any watch list, and you know relations between everyone in Washington are at an all-time low.’
‘What do I say to the Americans? They’re being a bit tricky about access.’
‘I’ll see to it that you get in this afternoon. Present yourself at the US Embassy at three unless you hear from me.’
‘And RAPTOR?’
‘Just see Khan, do your stuff and send back a report to the Bunker. Believe me, they’re very preoccupied with the other nine active suspects and it will only confuse things if you start kicking up in your usual way.’ He paused and laughed quietly. ‘So, no break-ins for the moment, Isis. Keep your powder dry and use those observant eyes of yours. I’m afraid I can’t brief you more clearly than this, because things are very fluid: I’m relying on you and Harland to respond in a way that I know you’re both capable of.’ He gave her a number, then hung up, leaving her sitting in the cool of the communications room, wondering what the hell was going on. Her father had observed that the Chief might be waiting to make his move, but with only three or four weeks left of his tenure, it seemed a little late. Besides, everything he was interested in seemed way off the point.