Rip Tide Page 3

  When she had first joined MI5, over a decade before, most of her work had been done in Britain. She’d started in the counter-terrorist branch where she’d had her first real success, helping to prevent an attack in East Anglia. She’d been lucky to escape serious injury in that operation and afterwards had been moved to counter-espionage where events moved rather more slowly. Of course it hadn’t turned out to be a soft posting – there were no soft postings in today’s MI5.

  For the intelligence world 9/11 had changed everything. There was much more public focus now on ‘security’ of all kinds; much more government involvement; more media attention and criticism – particularly after Britain went to war in Iraq. Some of those who had joined at the same time as Liz had, now spent all their time dealing with media enquiries, writing briefs for the Director General for meetings with Ministers, or poring over spreadsheets and arguing with the Treasury. That wasn’t what she wanted to do. The occasional international security conference was enough for her.

  But she knew that if she were going to win serious promotion she would have to move away from the front line sooner or later; for now, though, she wanted to stay at the sharp end of things. It was the excitement of operational work that she loved; that was what got her out of bed in the morning and kept her going during the day and often far into the night. It was also, if she was honest, what had messed up her private life.

  Was that in danger of happening again? she wondered, thinking of Martin and what he had said when she was staying with him at the weekend. Anyway, she thought, as she picked up her overnight bag and headed off to St Pancras International to catch a train back to Paris, there was no immediate prospect of her being put on to ‘admin’ work – nor of moving in with Martin permanently, she added to herself.

  Chapter 5

  The following morning Liz and Martin left his flat together. Much to her relief, he hadn’t referred again to the idea of her moving to Paris. He could see that she was focused on the conundrum of the young British man she had come to interview.

  She was due at the Santé at 10 and he was on his way to his office in the DGSE Headquarters in the Boulevard Mortier. They parted at the Metro station. ‘À bientôt,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek. They had arranged to meet again when he came to London for the late May Bank Holiday.

  The Metro was crowded and hot. The warm weather had begun early; outside the sky was blue and cloudless and the Parisian women were bare-legged, in summer skirts and sandals. Liz felt overdressed in the black trouser suit she had thought suitable for prison visiting. She was standing up, strap hanging and trying to read the back page of Libération over her neighbour’s shoulder when, much to her surprise, a schoolboy got up and offered her his seat. She smiled her thanks and sat down, thinking this would never happen in London. Now with nothing to read, she found her view of the carriage blocked by a young man standing facing away from her. Shoved into the back pocket of his jeans was a paperback book with the title just visible: L’Étranger by Albert Camus. She smiled to herself, remembering how, years ago, she’d waded through the book’s relentlessly gloomy pages for GCSE. It seemed incongruous for this young man to be reading it on such a beautiful day.

  Her thoughts turned to the forthcoming interview. She wished she knew a bit more about this Khan. When she was interviewing someone for the first time, she liked to be one step ahead of them, to have something up her sleeve. Maybe she should have waited until Peggy had been able to do more background research, but the French had been keen for her to come straight away. They hadn’t got anything at all out of the other members of the pirate gang, so they were hoping that her interview with Khan would give them something to use to get the others to talk. From the little the French authorities had said about Khan, however, Liz wasn’t very optimistic.

  Emerging from the Metro at Saint-Jacques, Liz saw a missed call message on the screen of her mobile phone. It was from Peggy in London, and she hit the button to call her back.

  ‘Hi, Liz, or should I say bonjour?’

  ‘What’s up? I’m just on my way to the prison.’

  ‘Border Agency have come back – their system’s up and running again. They say our Mr Khan left the UK eight months ago for Pakistan. He hasn’t returned to Britain, at least not through official channels.’

  ‘Mmm.’ It was strange, but not unheard of. Each year thousands of British citizens made trips to Pakistan for all kinds of reasons – to see relatives, to visit friends, to get married, to show their children where their roots lay. But for the most part they came back. In recent years a few young men had travelled to Pakistan for less innocent reasons and, if they had come back, had seemed different from before they’d left. A few hadn’t returned at all, going off to fight in Afghanistan or to train in the tribal areas of Pakistan or to hang out in Peshawar. But Somalia? That was new to Liz. The interview with Khan promised to be interesting – if she could persuade him to talk.

  ‘Anything else?’ she asked Peggy.

  ‘Yes, but not from Borders. I spoke to Special Branch in Birmingham . . . Detective Inspector Fontana. He said the Khan family are well known – and well off: they own a small chain of grocery stores that serve the Asian community. Highly respectable people – he was surprised when I told him where their son’s driving licence had been found. He’s offered to go and talk to the parents. Shall I tell him to go ahead?’

  Liz pondered this briefly. ‘Not yet. Wait till I’ve seen the prisoner and then we can decide what to do next. If it really is their son, I’d like to talk to them myself. But I don’t want to alert them until we know a bit more.’

  ‘Okay. Anything else I should be doing on this?’

  ‘Don’t think so. I’ll be back tonight. I’ll ring if he says anything useful, but I’m not very hopeful that he’ll talk at all. He’s said nothing to the French.’

  All Liz knew about the Santé prison came from the novels of Georges Simenon. The Bar on the Seine began with his famous detective, Inspector Maigret, going to visit a young condemned prisoner in La Santé one sunny Paris day – a day a bit like this one, in fact. Maigret’s footsteps had echoed on the pavement just as hers did while she followed the high stone wall which screened the old prison buildings from the street. Strange that such a place was right in the middle of the city, just a few minutes from the Luxembourg Gardens. It was as if Wormwood Scrubs had been erected on the edge of Green Park, next-door to Buckingham Palace.

  Following the instructions she’d been given Liz walked on until she arrived at a small side street, Rue Messier, where, as promised, she found a low booth set into the massive wall. Peering through a long window of bullet-proof glass, she gave her name to the dimly visible guard on the other side. He nodded curtly, then buzzed her through an unmarked steel door into a small windowless reception room.

  This was all very different from Maigret’s sleepy guard gazing at a little white cat playing in the sunshine. But nowadays the Santé was a high-security prison which housed some of France’s most lethal prisoners, including Carlos the Jackal. And Mr Amir Khan, was he lethal? Liz wondered.

  A door on the other side of the room opened.

  ‘Bonjour. I am Henri Cassale of the DCRI, a colleague of Isabelle Florian.’ He was not much taller than Liz. Dark-haired, dark-skinned, wearing a light suit and a bright yellow paisley tie, he looked out of place in this grim reception room. ‘We have Monsieur Amir Khan ready to answer your questions. Or not . . .’ He smiled with a flash of white teeth.

  ‘Does he know I’m coming?’

  ‘Non. And I wish you better luck with him than we have had.’

  ‘He’s still not talking?’

  Isabelle’s colleague shook his head. ‘Have you and your colleagues discovered anything more about him?’

  ‘We’ve learned that the owner of the driving licence, Amir Khan, went to Pakistan eight months ago. He hasn’t returned to the UK since then.’

  ‘Pakistan?’ Cassale shook his head. ‘I can’t say I am s
urprised. We have sent a file of information – fingerprints, DNA, photographs – over to you this morning. That should enable you to establish the identity of the prisoner beyond doubt. Meanwhile, let’s see what he says to you. Come with me, s’il vous plaît.’

  Liz followed him through the door into a corridor, arched on one side like the cloisters of a cathedral. But unlike a cloister, these arches were secured with metal grilles, and the courtyard visible beyond was not a place for quiet contemplation – it was filled with men, standing singly or in groups, most of them smoking. At the far end a desultory game of basketball was being played.

  Cassale turned a corner and they came face to face with a guard, standing in front of a heavy wooden door. He nodded to Cassale and opened the door with a jangling of keys. The smell of new paint was strong as they went through – the walls had been freshly decorated, in a drab grey which seemed designed to depress. A line of closed steel doors, equally spaced, stretched along both sides of a long corridor. Liz had been in prisons before and noted the familiar small grilled window slits of the cells.

  ‘We are in the high-security wing now. This part is where violent criminals are interned. The terror suspects are kept downstairs.’ At the end of the corridor Cassale rang a bell on the wall beside a metal door. It was opened from the inside by another guard and Cassale preceded Liz down a flight of metal stairs, their shoes clanging on the steel treads.

  At the bottom, he paused. They were in another wide corridor, but this one had older peeling paint on the walls. A line of fluorescent tube lights, suspended from the ceiling, gave off a dazzling, blue-ish glare that made Liz screw up her eyes.

  ‘This is our special unit. Monsieur Khan is resident here. Your interview will take place in one of the interrogation rooms. I warn you, it is not exactly modern.’

  A picture of a mediaeval dungeon flashed into Liz’s mind: rings on the wall, chains, bones in the corner and rats. She was relieved when Cassale opened a door and she found herself in a high-ceilinged, white-painted room. It seemed very airy after the corridor outside. A long barred window was set high in one wall; through it a shaft of sunlight glanced, striking the polished floor. Just inside the door a policeman waited on the alert, holding an unholstered Glock sidearm. As he stood aside, Liz saw the prisoner, sitting behind a metal-topped table, his hands manacled to a length of chain which was itself secured to a cast-iron stanchion on the floor.

  According to his driving licence, Khan was twenty-two, but this man looked to be younger, just a boy. His face and arms and wrists were thin. A scraggly black beard barely covered his chin and the hair on his upper lip was sparse. His eyes, as he watched them come into the room, looked wary. Liz had been assured that he was being well treated, but she wondered what had happened to him before he got here.

  Cassale stepped up to the table and, speaking rapidly in French, explained to the prisoner that he had a visitor who would be asking him some questions. It was obvious from the blank expression on the young man’s face that he understood nothing of what was said.

  Cassale turned to Liz and said in French, ‘I will be next-door if you need me. Just tell the guard.’ She nodded. As Cassale left, she pulled out a chair from under the table and sat down opposite the prisoner. The armed policeman remained standing by the door.

  Liz looked calmly at Khan and said, ‘I don’t know about you, but my French stopped at GCSE.’

  His eyes widened at the sound of her English voice, then he sat stiffly upright and gave her a defiant look.

  Liz shrugged. ‘Amir, I haven’t come all this way to give you a hard time. But let’s not pretend: you speak English just as well as I do. Probably with a Birmingham accent.’

  Khan stared at her for a moment, as if making up his mind. The key now was to get him to say something – anything would do for a start. Liz had been taught this during initial training at MI5: a complete refusal to speak – even to say yes or no – was disastrous; there was no way forward from there. It reminded her of being taught to fish by her father. When she took too long setting up her rod, he would always say, ‘If your fly’s not on the water, you can’t catch a fish.’

  Fortunately Khan decided to speak, saying slowly, ‘Are you from the Embassy?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I am here to help.’

  ‘Then get me a lawyer.’

  ‘Well, perhaps we should first establish who you are. I take it that you are indeed the Amir Khan, of 57 Farndon Street, Birmingham, whose driving licence you were carrying when you were arrested by the French Navy?’

  ‘I said, I want a lawyer.’

  ‘Ah, if only it were that easy. We’re in France, Amir, not England. They do things differently here. You’ve heard the phrase “Habeas corpus”?’ She didn’t wait for him to nod. ‘Well, over here, they haven’t. You can be held on a magistrate’s word for as long as he likes. It could be months. Or longer, if you won’t co-operate.’

  Khan was gnawing his thumbnail. A good sign, thought Liz, who wanted him on edge. He said sharply, ‘So why should I talk to you?’

  ‘Because I may be able to help.’

  He scoffed, ‘How, if the French can hold me as long as they want?’

  ‘If we can get a few things sorted out, we might be able to arrange your transfer to the UK.’ She looked around at the room. ‘I think you’d agree things would be better for you there. But that would depend on your co-operating, of course.’

  ‘With what?’

  She put the battered driving licence on the table. ‘Is this yours? Are you Amir Khan?’

  He nodded. ‘You know I am.’

  ‘You were arrested with a group of pirates from Somalia, trying to hijack a ship in the Indian Ocean. Let’s talk about how you got there from Birmingham. And why you were helping to hijack a Greek cargo ship.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ he said flatly. Seeing surprise in Liz’s eyes, he said, ‘They forced me to go along.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The pirates. I don’t know their names . . . I couldn’t understand a word they said. It was some African dialect.’

  ‘They weren’t African.’

  He ignored her. ‘They told me to get in their boat, and I didn’t argue. I was sure they were going to kill me.’

  ‘Why did they take you along?’

  ‘You’d have to ask them.’ His tone was surly.

  ‘Why don’t we take a step back? Tell me how you ended up in Somalia in the first place.’

  ‘I thought we were heading for Kenya.’

  ‘Who’s “we”?’ She knew it was important to cut off these tangents right away, or they’d sprout like suckers at the base of a tree. Soon there’d be so many of them she wouldn’t be able to see the tree, much less the forest.

  ‘A friend. I met him in London.’

  ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

  ‘We called him Sammy, but I think his name was Samir.’

  ‘Samir what?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘When did you meet him in London?’ Seeing as you’re from Birmingham, she thought.

  ‘Last year, or maybe two years ago. I have a cousin who moved down there and I used to visit him. He has a newsagent’s in Clerkenwell and—’

  Liz interjected quietly, ‘We know you went to Pakistan.’

  For a moment Khan looked uneasy. But then he simply shifted gear, moving back into the narrative that Liz could tell he had pre-prepared. ‘Of course I did. I’ve got relatives there. Another cousin, in fact – you can check it out. He has a shop in Islamabad – not a newsagent’s, but a butcher’s shop. He’s done well. In fact, he’s thinking of opening another shop–’

  This time Liz cut in less gently. ‘How did you get from Pakistan to Somalia?’

  Khan looked at her as if outraged that she should interrupt him. Liz pressed, ‘I said, how did you get there?’

  He sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘Let’s hear it. We’ve got all day if necessary.’
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  And for the next hour or so it looked as if all day was what Liz would need. For Khan launched into a lengthy, voluminously detailed, yet utterly preposterous account of his whereabouts since leaving Pakistan – involving a flight to Turkey, a boat trip to the Greek islands, another to Tunisia (where he claimed to have picked grapes for a month), three weeks of hitchhiking that included a harrowing jeep ride in the middle of the night . . . on and on he went with his story, an account so obviously fabricated that Liz could only smile.

  Each time she tried to pin him down – what airline had he taken to Turkey? What Greek island had he visited? – Khan’s memory would suddenly falter. ‘I can’t be sure,’ he’d say. Or, ‘Maybe I’ve got that wrong.’ And for every reluctant step towards Somalia his story took, he did his best to take two backwards.

  As Khan went on – by now he was trying to reach Egypt overland from Lebanon – she interrupted less, and gradually stopped asking any questions at all. He continued talking, apparently thinking that his avalanche of words somehow made his story credible. Finally he seemed to realise that he was not convincing her, and came to a sudden halt. There was silence in the room.

  ‘So,’ said Liz eventually, ‘where is your passport?’

  ‘I lost it.’

  ‘Then how did you get across all these borders?’

  He said nothing, obviously trying to think of an answer that would not incriminate him.

  It was time to up the pace. ‘Come on, Amir. Why were you in Somalia?’

  ‘I just wanted to see it.’

  ‘Who were you with?’

  ‘A couple of guys I met.’

  ‘Where did you meet them?’