[Spider Shepherd #13] - Dark Forces Read online

  ‘You think it could be a trap?’

  ‘There’s no need to go jumping the gun,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m just trying to get the lie of the land. But if Yusuf is playing both ends against the middle, there might be something else going on. What did he actually say when he made the first approach?’

  ‘We were in a bar. Yusuf is a Muslim but he likes his beer. He was a bit worse for wear and said he was in deep shit with some Islamic State people. He said he’d heard they weren’t happy about him fraternising with the NGOs and were planning to take out him and his family.’

  ‘What’s his family situation?’

  ‘Wife and three kids. They’re in Urfa about forty kilometres away. He’s got them protected, he says, but fears for their safety. He was badmouthing Islamic State, saying they were shits for targeting him after all he’d done for them. I asked what exactly and he tapped the side of his nose. You know, Secret Squirrel, couldn’t tell me.’

  ‘He said that? He said he’d been helping Islamic State?’

  ‘Like I said, he’d been drinking. Said he needed to get out of Turkey. Said he’d only be safe in the US or the UK.’

  ‘He specifically said the UK? Not the EU?’

  ‘He’s got relatives in London. Said he’d be safer there. Anyway, he puts his arm around me, starts calling me his one true friend and did I know anyone who could help him out of his predicament.’

  ‘No mention of Five or Six? You were just a friend?’

  Parker nodded. ‘I said I’d see what I could do and that was the end of it. He started talking about this and that. Didn’t mention it again.’

  ‘And what did you do, afterwards?’

  ‘I put in a call to London. London got Shuttleworth to call me, we talked it through and he drove down. Spent an hour with Yusuf but I got the impression they didn’t click.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Yusuf said he didn’t trust Shuttleworth, to put it bluntly. Too smooth, he said. Too quick with the promises, too eager to see the gold up front.’

  ‘The gold being?’

  ‘Names and photographs of Islamic State fighters that Yusuf had moved into Europe. Most of them with fake Syrian paperwork.’

  ‘So he has pictures?’

  ‘He was fixing them up with fake passports. He says he’s kept copies.’

  ‘But Yusuf wouldn’t show the pictures to Shuttleworth?’

  ‘He told him he wanted to speak to someone from London face to face. Said he wanted cast-iron guarantees. Shuttleworth wasn’t happy.’

  ‘I’m sure he wasn’t,’ said Shepherd. ‘Where did they meet?’

  ‘A café in Suruç.’

  ‘Your security were there?’

  Parker nodded. ‘Shuttleworth insisted on it.’

  ‘And Yusuf was happy enough to meet in a public place?’

  ‘He didn’t seem to mind. I assumed he thought it would be less conspicuous than at the camp.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘Out and about, I guess. I called him this morning to confirm you were on your way.’

  ‘Does he know where we’re meeting?’

  ‘I said I’d tell him later.’

  ‘And he didn’t press you for details?’

  ‘He’s fine. He just wanted to be sure you were from London. That’s all he was concerned about.’

  Shepherd nodded. It was a good sign: if a trap was being set up for him, Yusuf would have wanted to know where the meeting was to take place. ‘Where would you suggest?’

  ‘To be honest, if your cover as a journalist is good, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true, Craig. Would Islamic State be happy for their man to talk to the press?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Parker. ‘I reckoned we could say you were doing a feature on the camp and that way you could talk to anybody.’

  ‘Nah, I need a chat in private. What’s your office like at the camp?’

  ‘It’s okay. It’s a prefab but it has air-con.’

  ‘Private?’

  ‘There’s a few of us use it but I can make sure we’re not disturbed.’

  ‘Let’s do that, then. But keep your security close by, just in case. Set me up in the office first, then call him in. If anyone sees him coming and going, they’ll assume he’s there to talk to you.’

  The Greek coastguard patrol boat was about twice the length of a yacht, but it was much faster and better equipped. The two yachtsmen had seen the boat coming and had carried on heading for Greece under full sail. The wind was lacklustre at best, and even with all the sails unfurled they weren’t making much more than four knots. Not that running was an option. The Faiakas Class boat was just short of twenty-five metres long, came with a .50 calibre heavy machine-gun, and could reach thirty-two knots in calm water.

  The two men had their story prepared. They were a couple of Greek sailors showing their English friend the delights of the Mediterranean.

  The patrol drew closer and a uniformed sailor with a megaphone shouted at them to heave to. They furled their sail and allowed the men on the boat to tie up to their yacht. Armed sailors stood looking down at them as an officer carefully made his way down a metal ladder to their deck. He was in his late thirties, totally bald with a sunburned scalp. His gun was holstered and his shirt sleeves rolled up. ‘ID,’ he said in Greek.

  They handed over their ID cards. ‘Don’t worry, we’re Greek,’ said the older of the two men. His name was Yasir. His family had moved to Greece from Pakistan when he was a toddler and his Greek was perfect, better than his Urdu.

  The officer flashed them a tight smile and returned their ID cards. ‘Where are you heading?’

  ‘Piraeus,’ said Yasir. ‘The wind isn’t great and we were thinking of switching to the engine.’ Piraeus was Greece’s main port, the largest sea passenger terminal in Europe.

  The officer grinned. ‘Fair weather sailor, huh?’

  ‘We don’t want to be out at night,’ said Yasir. That was a lie. The plan was to return to Greece under cover of darkness and they had night-vision goggles for just that purpose.

  ‘Where in Piraeus?’ asked the officer.

  ‘Mikrolimano,’ said Yasir. It was the second biggest marina in the port, a popular location with tourists and weekend sailors. It was pretty, surrounded by tavernas and restaurants, and often used as a backdrop in Greek movies.

  The officer turned to the second man. He had already checked his ID and confirmed that he was Greek, but he needed to check his language skills. ‘Did you stop anywhere?’ he asked.

  The man smiled and nodded. His name was Saif. His parents were also from Pakistan but he had been born in Greece, along with his three brothers and two sisters. Like Yasir, he had spent three months on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border being trained by IS before returning to Greece.

  ‘A few hours in Küçükkuyu, just taking in the sights.’

  ‘Did you buy anything? Alcohol? Cigarettes?’

  Saif shook his head. ‘We don’t smoke or drink.’

  ‘Anyone else on board?’

  ‘Our friend. He’s below deck.’

  ‘Call him out,’ said the officer.

  Yasir laughed. ‘I’m not sure he can come. He’s throwing up.’

  The officer frowned. ‘Seasick? Why did you bring him on board if he’s got no sea legs?’

  ‘His sea legs are fine,’ said Yasir. ‘He had some bad chicken in Küçükkuyu. You know the Turks, not the cleanest, right?’

  The officer pointed at the hatch. ‘I’m going to have to talk to him.’

  Yasir stood to the side. ‘Be our guest,’ he said. ‘He’s in the forward cabin. But I warn you, it smells terrible. Oh, and he doesn’t speak Greek.’

  The officer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where is he from?’

  Yasir laughed. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not smuggling in asylum-seekers,’ he said. ‘He’s English.’

  The officer waved for one of the armed sailors to accompany him and
the two men went down the hatch. The officer wrinkled his nose at the nauseating smell coming from the forward cabin. As they walked through the galley they heard retching sounds and the slop of vomit hitting the head.

  ‘Can you come out here, please?’ the officer called in Greek. Then he repeated his request in English. There was no reply other than more retching. The officer stepped to the side and waved the sailor through. Rank had its privileges, and the closer they got to the cabin, the worse the smell.

  The sailor grimaced but went forward. The door was open and inside the cabin a young Asian man was on his knees, throwing up again. ‘Sir, we need to talk to you,’ said the sailor in English.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said the man. He tried to get up, turned to face the men, and was promptly sick on the floor. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, dropping back to the floor.

  ‘What is your name?’ asked the sailor in heavily accented English.

  ‘Hammad Rajput.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘England.’

  ‘I need to see your passport.’

  ‘My bag. On the bed.’

  The sailor went into the main cabin. There was a black backpack on the bed and he found a British passport in a side pocket. He flicked through to the photograph. He checked the name. Hammad Rajput. Born in Birmingham. ‘Date of birth?’ asked the sailor.

  The man looked up from the toilet. His beard was smeared with yellowish vomit. ‘What?’

  ‘Your date of birth?’

  The man groaned and closed his eyes. ‘March the fifth,’ he said.

  The sailor nodded. ‘Okay.’ He put the passport back. ‘Have you taken medicine?’

  The man heaved and put his head back over the toilet. The sailor chuckled and went back to the officer. ‘All good, sir.’

  He headed back up on deck. ‘You might want to get your friend to the hospital, have him checked out,’ he said to Yasir. ‘Food poisoning can be serious.’

  ‘We’ll see how he is when he gets to port,’ said Yasir. ‘He’ll probably have thrown up most of the chicken by then.’

  The officer climbed off the yacht and on to the cutter, and his sailor followed him. Yasir switched on the yacht’s engine and steered away from the larger vessel. Five minutes later the cutter was heading back to Greece leaving a foaming white wake behind it.

  It took just under an hour for Parker to drive to the refugee camp at Suruç. His company compound was outside the refugee camp. Like the camp, it was surrounded by a chain-link fence, but it was patrolled by armed guards and everyone who went in or out had to show their ID. The compound included a storage area where food, water and medicines were held before distribution, a line of Portakabins, with the NGO’s logo on the door, and another of blue portable toilets. Parker slowed to a halt at the entrance and wound down the window. A guard wearing the ubiquitous baseball cap and wraparound Oakleys came up to the window. ‘How’s it going, Craig?’ he asked, in an Afrikaans accent.

  ‘All good, Jed,’ said Parker. ‘This is John Whitehill. He’s a journalist doing a story on us.’

  Shepherd held out his Whitehill press card but the guard barely glanced at it and waved them on. Parker drove through the gate and over to a parking area with a dozen SUVs already in it. The Landcruiser parked in front of a Portakabin with SECURITY on the door.

  Parker and Shepherd climbed out of the Jeep. The heat hit Shepherd immediately and sweat beaded on his forehead. He followed Parker to one of the Portakabins, and by the time they stepped inside Shepherd’s shirt was wet under the arms. The door opened into a waiting area with two plastic sofas and a coffee-table, and beyond it a desk where a young woman sat tapping on a computer keyboard. ‘This is Laura – she pretty much runs the place,’ said Parker.

  The woman looked up and smiled brightly.

  ‘This is John. He’s a journalist,’ said Parker. ‘I’m introducing him to a few people around the camp.’

  ‘Can I get you a coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘I’d prefer water,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Over here,’ said Parker, opening a fridge packed with plastic bottles of Evian. ‘One of the perks of working with the French,’ he said. He tossed a bottle to Shepherd and took one for himself. ‘Come on through.’

  He took Shepherd down a narrow corridor and opened a door into a large office. It was stiflingly hot and he switched on an air-conditioning unit before dropping onto an orthopedic chair behind a desk piled high with files. ‘I’ll call Yusuf, see where he is.’

  As Parker pulled out his phone, Shepherd sipped his water and gazed out through a large window that overlooked the camp. It was huge, with tents stretching almost as far as he could see. They had been laid out with military precision. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence but there were no armed guards and people were free to come and go. The tents had been set up in blocks separated by wide walkways, and in the middle there was a mobile-phone mast. Many of the refugees had smartphones and were sitting or standing as they tapped on the screens. Children were playing and women stood around chatting, but most of the refugees were young men. The heat was relentless. The blinding white light bounced off the soil, which was so bleached it was almost white.

  ‘Okay, he’s on his way,’ said Parker, putting away his phone. He stood up and went to the window. ‘It’s a hell of a sight, isn’t it?’

  ‘How many refugees live here?’

  ‘About forty thousand, give or take,’ said Parker. ‘To be honest, we never have an exact figure because we just don’t know. They come and go, and most of them don’t want to give their details.’

  ‘The Dublin Regulation?’

  Parker nodded. ‘They’re scared that if they go into the system here they won’t be able to move to Europe.’

  Under the so-called Dublin Regulation, asylum-seekers were supposed to apply for asylum in the first EU country they entered. Under the law, if they tried to claim asylum anywhere else, they could be returned to the first country they had applied to.

  ‘In fact the Dublin Regulation was suspended in 2015 when the exodus was in full swing,’ said Parker. ‘Hungary just couldn’t cope with the numbers pouring in so Germany said it was suspending the regulation and would take any Syrians who wanted to come. Czechoslovakia followed suit and promised asylum of passage to another country. But the refugees here think it might be a trap so they don’t allow us to process them.’

  Shepherd shaded his Ray-Bans with the flat of his hands as he surveyed the ranks of white tents. ‘Are they all Syrians?’

  ‘Most of the refugees here are Kurds who fled across the border from Kobane,’ said Parker. ‘Most had only the clothes they were wearing and what they could carry.’

  ‘There are no guards?’ asked Shepherd, gesturing at the entrance to the camp. There was no gate, just a large gap in the wire through which ran a two-lane concrete road.

  ‘They’re not prisoners,’ said Parker. ‘They can come and go. Some find work. They go shopping in the town, if they have money. Those who can’t work get by on the monthly vouchers the Turkish government gives them for food and basic necessities. Soap, toilet paper, stuff like that. And the NGOs provide what they can. Initially funds were flooding in but Paris put paid to that. Once the public found out that several of the terrorists who had attacked Paris had posed as Syrian refugees, well, sympathy evaporated.’

  ‘Understandably,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You know what I mean, right? Now everyone assumes that a Syrian refugee is an Islamic State jihadist in disguise. Countries that were lining up to take them are now bringing down the shutters. But I can tell you, most of the refugees in the camp are just that, refugees. People who dropped everything and ran for their lives.’

  ‘But some Islamic State fighters are using the refugee situation as a way of getting into the EU. That’s a fact, Craig, you can’t deny it.’

  ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but it’s a tiny, tiny fraction of the refugee population we’re talking about. One in
ten thousand, maybe.’

  ‘Which, extrapolated over two million refugees, means that we could be talking about two hundred terrorists. Look at the damage half a dozen did to Paris. You can see why people are worried.’ He saw disappointment flash across the other man’s face. ‘I’m not here to screw things up for you, Craig. I just want to talk to Yusuf and then I’ll be out of your hair.’

  Parker grimaced. ‘If Yusuf gives you what you want and the information goes public, there’ll be even less sympathy for the refugees here.’

  ‘The security services don’t usually go public with their intel.’

  Parker flashed him a tight smile. ‘They do when it serves their purpose,’ he said. ‘The French were bloody quick to publicise how their terrorists got into the country.’

  ‘That’s the French. They always do things their own way. This isn’t about messing with your work. This is about identifying potential terrorists who are planning to kill innocent civilians.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Parker. ‘It’s just you don’t see the suffering that I do. Most of these people have lost everything. The least we can do is offer them sanctuary and allow them to rebuild their lives.’

  Shepherd didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything he could say. If the tables were turned and he was fleeing a murderous regime, he’d do whatever he could to save himself and his family. But he wasn’t there to help refugees: he was there to identify and stop terrorists, and when it came to the war on terror there was no place for sentimentality. And there was no denying that the vast majority of the refugees in the camp were young, fit men. There were women and children, and a few old men with walking sticks, but everywhere Shepherd saw men in their twenties and thirties, huddled in groups, playing football or standing around smoking. Many had brand-label shirts, designer jeans and new trainers, and none appeared hungry or injured. He wondered why they didn’t stand and fight for their country, and why, if safety was their predominant concern, they didn’t want to stay in Turkey. But, as he had said to Parker, his mission had nothing to do with refugees and everything to do with terrorism.

  There was a knock on the door, and Laura came in. ‘Yusuf is here,’ she said. She stepped aside and a portly man in a white linen suit bowled in. He had a round face and was bald except for a heart-shaped patch of hair above his forehead. There were large dark bags under his eyes and he had droopy jowls that gave him the look of a bloodhound. His lips were large and fleshy and there were rolls of fat around his neck, which glistened with sweat. His shirt had come loose from his trousers and his blue and white tie was loosely knotted and scattered with small stains, which suggested he was a messy eater.