Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies Page 8

  He slumped in the chair and tried to slow his breathing. He tried to think calming thoughts but he wasn’t able to do that for more than a few minutes before the panic would set in again and he would start panting and crying out.

  Eventually he heard footsteps behind him. Something touched the sack behind his head and he flinched, expecting a blow, but then the sack was ripped off and he blinked as the sun shone into his face. He was facing a window, the glass streaked with dirt. There was a man standing to the left of the window. Rafiq blinked again and narrowed his eyes as he struggled to focus.

  ‘What is your name?’ asked the man, and Rafiq realised it was Hammad, the instructor.

  He felt relief wash over him. It was a test. Hammad was testing him. And if it was a test, all he had to do was hold firm and eventually it would end.

  ‘What is your name?’ asked Hammad.

  ‘Rafiq. You know my name. Rafiq Mahar.’

  ‘Your real name.’

  Rafiq frowned. ‘My real name? Rafiq Mahar is my real name. I gave your people my passport when I arrived in Pakistan.’

  ‘Your British passport?’

  Rafiq nodded. ‘I was born in Britain.’

  ‘In Leeds, that’s what your passport says.’

  ‘Yes, in Leeds.’ Sweat was running down his face but his hands were still tied behind his back so he shook his head but that didn’t help. ‘There has been some mistake. Whatever you think has happened, there is a mistake.’

  ‘Your parents were from Pakistan?’

  ‘Yes. From Lahore. They moved to Bradford in the sixties and I was born there. What is this, why are you doing this to me?’

  Hammad ignored his questions. ‘You have siblings?’

  Rafiq shook his head. ‘I’m an only child. My mother was almost forty when I was born and she couldn’t have any more children.’

  ‘That is a shame,’ said Hammad. ‘It is the duty of every Muslim sister to have as many children as possible.’

  ‘She married late,’ said Rafiq. ‘And I was a difficult birth. So I was their only child. Please can I have some water. My mouth, it’s so dry. It hurts to swallow.’

  ‘They are still in Bradford, your mother and father?’

  Rafiq shook his head. ‘They died, seven years ago.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that, brother. To lose a parent is an awful thing. To lose both, to be an orphan, that is terrible.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’ Rafiq heard a noise behind him, the sound of a sandal scraping across the floor and he turned to see who it was.

  ‘Do not look at them, look at me,’ said Hammad.

  Rafiq turned back to look at Hammad. ‘Please, this is crazy,’ he said. ‘You know who I am and you know why I’m here.’

  ‘Do you think I’m stupid, Rafiq?’

  Rafiq stared at him, confused. ‘What?’

  ‘It is a simple question. Do you think I am stupid.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ said Rafiq. ‘But I don’t think you’re stupid. Why would you think that? Have I been disrespectful?’

  Hammad nodded slowly. ‘You have, brother. Yes, you have been extremely disrespectful.’

  ‘Then I apologise, brother. It was never my intention to be disrespectful.’

  Hammad stared at Rafiq with cold, black eyes.

  ‘There has been a mistake,’ said Rafiq. ‘Tell me what you think I have done so that I can put this right.’

  Hammad smiled. ‘You want to put this right?’

  Rafiq nodded enthusiastically. ‘Of course.’

  ‘All you need to do to put this right is to tell me the truth.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth. As Allah is my judge.’

  Hammad took a long, deep breath as he stared at Rafiq, and then exhaled slowly. ‘You must be very careful in your choice of words, brother,’ he said. ‘Lying to me is one thing, it is quite another to lie to God.’

  ‘Brother, I swear to you, I am telling the truth. Ask me anything and I will answer you honestly.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Anything,’ repeated Rafiq.

  Hammad nodded slowly. ‘Then tell me your name,’ he said. ‘Tell me who you really are.’

  ‘Why are you doing this to me, brother?’

  Hammad stepped forward and slapped Rafiq across the face, so hard that the breath exploded from his mouth and saliva sprayed across the room. Before he had time to cry out Hammad backhanded him on the other side of the face, the slap echoing around the room like a pistol shot.

  ‘Brother, what is it you want from me?’

  Hammad slapped him again, then he screamed, drew back his fist and punched him in the face so hard that the chair fell back and Rafiq’s head slammed into the ground.

  ‘Be careful, brother,’ said one of the men who had been standing behind Rafiq. ‘We don’t want him to die. Not yet, anyway.’

  Shepherd phoned Button when he was an hour away from central London. ‘Best you drive direct to Vauxhall Bridge, the SIS building,’ she said. Shepherd frowned. The SIS building was the headquarters of MI6, jokingly referred to by the intelligence community as Babylon-on-Thames, and sometimes as Legoland because of its distinctive modular shape.

  ‘How is Six involved?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘Raj was working for them,’ said Button.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve only just found out,’ said Button.

  ‘He went out to Pakistan for Six? In what universe was that a good idea?’

  ‘I’m as stunned as you are. When you get there, ask for Jeremy Willoughby-Brown. He was handling Raj.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Was, is.’

  ‘Is Raj OK?’

  ‘No, he’s not OK, but I don’t have the full details. Willoughby-Brown will brief you.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘I’m afraid not. Even if I had any intel it’s not the sort of information I’d want shared over an open line. Call me after you’ve seen Willoughby-Brown.’ She ended the call.

  Shepherd cursed under his breath. Raj Chaudhry was a medical student who had penetrated an al-Qaeda cell in London two years earlier. Shepherd had been his handler, as well as overseeing another student, Harvey Malik. Both lads had been virgins at the intelligence game and Shepherd had held their hands from start to finish. Their operation had been a success, though Harvey almost lost his life to an al-Qaeda assassin. The last time they’d met, Raj had said he was going back to his studies and he’d barely given him any thought over the past two years.

  He realised that he’d been pressing down harder on the accelerator and just as he braked there was a flash of light from what was almost certainly a speed camera and he cursed under his breath. He slowed to the speed limit.

  Shepherd wasn’t sure whether Button had arranged car parking for him at MI6 so he left this SUV parked on a meter. He walked in through the main entrance, showed his MI5 credentials at reception and was asked to wait on a low grey sofa. After ten minutes a young woman in a dark green suit came over and asked whether he was Dan Shepherd, even though he was the only person in reception. He stood up and said yes, and she asked him to go with her. She took him through a metal detector arch and into a lift up to the fifth floor.

  They stepped out of the lift into a corridor lined with identical doors, identified only by a number. She took him along to a door at the far end, knocked twice and opened it. The man inside was standing with his back to the door, looking out of the window. ‘Mr Shepherd is here for you, sir,’ said the woman. The man turned as Shepherd stepped into the office. The woman left, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Shepherd’s jaw dropped as he recognised the man. It had been almost twenty years since he’d last set eyes on him in the Middle East, not long after Shepherd had joined the SAS. They’d also worked together in Sierra Leone, and it hadn’t been an experience that Shepherd had enjoyed. Back then Jonathan Parker had favoured a linen suit, an MCC tie and a panama
hat. He’d put on quite a bit of weight and lost a fair amount of hair, but there was the same supercilious smile on his thin lips and a cold calculating look in his hazel eyes that reminded Shepherd of a vulture eyeing up its next meal. The linen suit had gone, replaced by a dark blue pinstripe that looked as if it had come from Savile Row, and the tie was yellow with blue anchors on it.

  ‘Small world, Shepherd,’ said the man, holding out his hand.

  Shepherd had half a mind to refuse to shake hands as they hadn’t parted on the best of terms, but realised that would be churlish. The two men shook. Shepherd had to resist the urge to wipe his hand on his trousers and he forced a smile. ‘Willoughby-Brown? What happened to Jonathan Parker?’

  The man smiled. ‘We never use our real names in the field, Shepherd. You know that.’

  ‘So is Willoughby-Brown your real name?’

  He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Need to know, old lad.’ He waved a languid hand at a chair on the far side of his desk. ‘Please, sit.’

  ‘You don’t look like a Jeremy,’ said Shepherd as he sat down.

  Willoughby-Brown smiled without warmth. ‘Did I look like a Jonathan?’

  Shepherd wrinkled his nose as he considered the question. ‘Yeah, actually you did.’

  ‘You can call me Jonathan, then, if that makes you feel better.’ He dropped down into a high-backed executive chair that squeaked as if it were made of real leather.

  ‘It won’t,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’d just like to know who I’m dealing with, that’s all.’

  ‘We never use our real names, you know that.’

  ‘I’m Dan Shepherd.’

  Willoughby-Brown nodded. ‘True. But when you’re undercover, you use legends. And even when you’re running agents at Five, you use assumed names.’

  Shepherd waited. If the MI6 man was ever going to tell him his real name, now would be the time to do it. But Willoughby-Brown, or whatever his name was, just smiled. ‘I see you’ve dropped the MCC tie,’ said Shepherd eventually.

  ‘That was always an affectation,’ said Willoughby-Brown.

  ‘Were you ever a member?’

  Willoughby-Brown smiled. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think not.’

  Willoughby-Brown’s face broke into a broad grin. ‘Damn, you were always a good judge of character, Shepherd.’ He patted Shepherd on the back. ‘Sierra Leone was interesting, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was a hellhole,’ said Shepherd. ‘I don’t have too many fond memories.’ He wanted to talk about Raj but the MI6 man seemed to be taking pleasure in talking around the houses.

  ‘It had its moments. Have you been back?’

  ‘Been back? Why would I go back?’

  ‘There’s quite a tourist industry now.’

  ‘I think I’ll give it a miss,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Beautiful beaches,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘By the way, we never talked about the diamonds you took back from the mercenaries.’

  ‘Didn’t we?’

  Willoughby-Brown took out a small cigar and studied it as if it was the first time he’d seen it. ‘You remember Laurence Beltran, the lovely French lady at Medicaid International?’

  ‘Sure. She was an angel.’

  ‘She seemed to have come into quite a lot of additional funds, not long after you came back with the diamonds.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘And once, over a drink, she referred to you as her white knight. Said you’d ridden to her rescue just when she needed rescuing.’

  ‘That was nice of her.’

  ‘You’ve never kept in touch?’

  ‘We were shunted out at short notice, so I never really got the chance to say goodbye.’

  ‘Well, it was all very strange. Before you came on the scene she was forever complaining about being short of funds, but after that mercenary business, well …’ He shrugged and looked up from his cigar. ‘Let’s just say that funding didn’t seem to be a problem. And she became quite pally with that Lebanese diamond merchant. What was his name again?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘I forget.’

  Willoughby-Brown jabbed the unlit cigar at him. ‘Now we both know that’s not true,’ he said. ‘You’ve got one of those eidetic memories. You never forget anything.’

  Shepherd frowned. ‘It was a long time ago, Jeremy.’

  ‘Farid, his name was. Big Lebanese guy. Always sweating.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Of course you do. Well, he got very close to Laurence. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I mean, God forbid you might have put a few of those blood diamonds her way.’

  ‘What did happen to those diamonds?’ asked Shepherd.

  Willoughby-Brown tapped the side of his nose again. ‘Need to know,’ he said. His face broke into a grin. ‘Anyway, enough of this chit-chat. Do you mind if we go outside? I really do feel like a smoke and it’s going to take some time to explain what’s happened.’ Willoughby-Brown led Shepherd out of his office, along a corridor, into another room and through a set of French windows on to a small terrace overlooking the Thames. ‘Strictly speaking I can’t even smoke here.’

  ‘Place of work,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Willoughby-Brown, lighting his cigar. He blew smoke over the river. ‘Can’t smoke, can’t drink, can’t have fun with the ladies. Who would’ve thought the world would have ended up like this? PC madness, that’s what it is.’ He took another long drag on his cigar and then exhaled slowly. ‘You did one hell of a job with young Manraj,’ he said.

  ‘Not that great a job, obviously. What the hell has happened?’

  ‘In a nutshell, young Manraj has been captured by a group of Islamic extremists in Pakistan.’

  ‘What the fuck was he doing in Pakistan?’

  ‘Working for us, obviously. Infiltrating a group of British-born Muslims who were being trained over there.’

  ‘How did that become an MI6 operation?’

  ‘We had a number of al-Qaeda operatives under surveillance in Pakistan. There was communications traffic between them and several imams in the UK.’

  ‘So why didn’t you pass that intel on to Five?’

  Willoughby-Brown looked at him, frowning. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Raj should never have been sent to Pakistan. He was almost certainly exposed during the operation we ran.’

  ‘His friend was attacked. There’s no evidence that Raj had been compromised.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Shepherd. ‘Raj and Harvey were peas in a pod. They were recruited together and they were trained together and they were both taken to see Bin Laden. If Harvey was blown then so was Raj.’

  ‘We had no evidence that he had been compromised. We had him under constant surveillance the whole time he was in Bradford and we would have pulled him out if there had been the slightest hint that he was having problems. He was accepted by the mosque and eventually approached by the imam. They would have checked him out before approaching him, so we knew his legend was good.’

  ‘Bradford isn’t Pakistan,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I know some members of the English Defence League who might disagree,’ said Willoughby-Brown. He put up his hand. ‘OK, bad joke,’ he said. ‘But if his cover wasn’t watertight it would have shown up long before he went to Pakistan.’

  ‘Then you explain to me what went wrong,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘Maybe he slipped up.’

  ‘He wasn’t the sort to make a mistake,’ said Shepherd. ‘He was a quick learner.’

  ‘And he always spoke highly of you. Or rather John Whitehill.’ Willoughby-Brown flashed his cold smile. ‘In fact young Manraj thinks the sun shines out of your arse. He was a virgin before you took him under your wing, wasn’t he?’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘He was a medical student. He was infiltrating a radic
al group in London and he needed some guidance. Surveillance and counter-surveillance, undercover techniques and the rest.’

  Willoughby-Brown blew smoke and sighed contentedly. ‘What was it Churchill said? A woman is just a woman but a good cigar is a smoke?’

  ‘It was Kipling.’

  ‘The baker?’

  ‘The poet.’

  ‘But he did make exceedingly good cakes, didn’t he?’ said Willoughby-Brown before chuckling at his own joke.

  ‘What was Raj doing in Pakistan?’ asked Shepherd. ‘And how did he end up working for Six?’

  ‘Second question first, he was too good an asset to waste. Five were going to let him go back to his studies. We realised that there was a lot more he could do.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My boss, as it happens. He has a contact in Five and they chatted at their club.’

  ‘Not Charlie?’

  ‘The lovely Miss Button?’ He shook his head. ‘Above her pay grade.’

  ‘Did she know?’

  ‘Why does that matter?’ asked Willoughby-Brown, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘I’d just like to know.’

  ‘Curious?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Willoughby-Brown smiled thinly. ‘You know what curiosity did to the cat.’

  ‘It’s a fair question,’ said Shepherd. ‘I was Raj’s handler. I was told he was going back to his studies. If she had known that he was remaining active then she should have told me.’

  Willoughby-Brown looked at him levelly. ‘She didn’t know,’ he said.

  ‘So he was approached by Six?’

  ‘By me.’

  ‘You were his handler?’

  Willoughby-Brown nodded. ‘But not in Pakistan, obviously. Pasty white face like mine would stand out a mile and not do him any favours.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you sent him to Pakistan on his own?’

  ‘We had a handler for him over there. A Pakistani.’

  ‘A local?’

  ‘No, one of ours. British-born, bit of a rising star, actually. Double first at Oxford, fluent in Urdu and Arabic and a smattering of Pashto.’