Empire State Part 1

Empire State.

HENRY PORTER.

For Graydon Carter.

Acknowledgements.

Thanks are due first to my agent, Georgina Capel, who showed great faith in this book from the start, and also to Jane Wood, my editor, who tirelessly made suggestions and gave me encouragement during its writing. She was helped by Sophie Hutton-Squire. It would be difficult to overestimate their contribution, or that of Puffer Merritt, who read and corrected the first draft with her usual enthusiasm and generosity.

The idea for Empire State came to me on a fis.h.i.+ng trip organised by Mark Clarfelt in June 2002. So I thank him for the happy accident that set off a train of thought, and also Stephen Lewis, Matthew Fort, Tom Fort, Jeremy Paxman and Padraic Fallon who unwittingly nurtured the plot during the course of a very idle afternoon by the river. My friend David Rose introduced me to Hadith literature, Roger Alton made many clever suggestions, Lucy Nichols helped with occasional research and Aimee Bell gave me the 1949 first edition of E.B. White's hymn to New York, Here is New York, which contains some inspirational thoughts used here.

During the research of a book of this nature there are many who help but cannot be thanked by name. I was particularly grateful to a man who, at some risk to himself, arranged a tour of the Egyptian prison system, and then found the island where part of this book is set. My contact in Albania was also invaluable. He shed light on his mysterious homeland and gave me insights into the history and workings of the intelligence service.

Empire State is a work of fiction - no secrets are betrayed here - but there is some authentic detail which has been gathered from numerous sources. Without them I would flounder. In parts of the book I drew from actual incidents. There was an al-Qaeda cell in Albania. Five suspects were arrested in a CIA-backed operation and flown to Egypt where they were tortured before being tried. Two were subsequently executed. I have also used part of a story of a group of migrant workers who were gunned down by the Macedonian security forces on March 2, 2002. At the time, it was alleged they were terrorists, planning an attack on the US and UK emba.s.sies in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, a claim which the United States government was unusually forthright in rejecting.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Liz Elliot. Throughout the writing of this book, as with the others, she has been the source of much support and good judgement.

PART ONE.

CHAPTER ONE.

The pa.s.senger known as Cazuto arrived in the Immigration Hall of Terminal Three, Heathrow, in the early afternoon, carrying a raincoat and a small shoulder bag. He joined one of the lines in the non-European Union section. Looking mildly about him, the American registered the two uniformed policemen with Heckler and Koch machine guns on the far side of the immigration desk, and then a group of men who were clearly searching the lines of travellers about to enter the United Kingdom on that stupefyingly cold day in May.

Larry Cazuto, in reality Vice-Admiral Ralph Norquist, guessed they were looking for him and noted the urgency on their faces. This interested him because they could not have known which flight he was on. His schedule was kept secret even from his wife and secretary, who knew only that he would be in Europe for a time, not on what day he was travelling or that he would be seeing the British Prime Minister and his intelligence chiefs.

The President's special counsel on security matters decided that he would not at that moment make himself known. Instead he did what comes easily to a middle-aged man with a paunch and a slight academic stoop - he merged with the crowd and turned his benevolent gaze to the line forming behind him. He glanced upwards to the security cameras but none was trained on him and it was clear they weren't sweeping the surge of travellers in the Immigration Hall. In front of him, a woman in her late forties - rich-looking and attractive in a brash way - was struggling to change her phone from an American to a European service while keeping hold of several pieces of hand luggage. He leaned into her vision to ask if he could be of a.s.sistance, and as she replied she dropped the open pa.s.sport clamped in her teeth. He picked it up and returned it to her, noticing the semi-circular impression of lipstick on one of its pages. 'You've given yourself a visa stamp,' he said pleasantly.

The woman smiled. As she took the pa.s.sport, one of the bamboo handles of a large tapestry bag escaped her grip and the contents tumbled to the floor. He crouched down and helped her again. As she swept everything back into the bag with the speed of a croupier, he examined her and wondered whether he imagined the intent that pulsed briefly in her eye. She got up, thanking him profusely and they went together to the desk, where he made a point of looking over her shoulder to see if the name in her pa.s.sport matched the initials on the silver cigarette lighter that he'd retrieved from the floor. This was second nature to him and it struck him as odd, and almost certainly significant, that they did not tally, not even the first name and initial.

By now the men on the other side of the barrier had spotted him. Norquist recognised one of them; the k.n.o.bbly faced Peter Chambers, a senior bureaucrat from MI5 whom he'd met eighteen months before.

'I'm afraid we've got an emergency, Admiral,' said Chambers. 'We're going to escort you into London.' He gestured to a man who had come up behind him. 'This is Sergeant Llewellyn from the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. He will...'

Before Chambers could say any more, Norquist held two fingers to his chest then jabbed them in the direction of the woman, who was now headed down the escalator to the Baggage Hall, her bags hooked over her shoulders and the little gold-coloured mobile raised to her ear. 'Can you check her out? Her pa.s.sport says her name is Raffaella Klein but she has the initials E.R. on her cigarette lighter. She seemed to be making a point by dropping everything. This may help,' he said, slipping Chambers a chip of plastic the woman had failed to pick up and which he'd palmed as a matter of course. It was the SIM card for her US phone service and it would tell them everything they needed to know.

'We'll get right on to it,' said Chambers. He beckoned to a lean, casually dressed man who had been hanging behind the two armed police officers and gave him the card. 'Get Customs to search her and then keep her under observation.' He turned back. 'Now, if you don't mind, sir, we're in a bit of a hurry. Your luggage has been taken directly to the car. I'll explain everything once we're on our way. We really must go, sir.'

'If you've got the baggage it means you know the name I was travelling under.'

'That's rather the point, sir. Your security has been compromised. '

They made for a door at the side of the hall, which opened from the inside as they approached, and pa.s.sed along a corridor of mostly empty offices. Here two policemen in anoraks and fatigue trousers joined them, so a party of more than a dozen descended three flights of a metal stairway, causing it to vibrate with a dull ring. At the bottom the corridor turned right and led to a fire exit where a security officer was on hand with a swipe card. He signalled to a surveillance camera above and operated the lock, throwing both doors outwards. The fumes of aviation fuel and the noise of taxiing aircraft filled the corridor. Rain slanted through the door. Norquist began to put on his raincoat, but Llewellyn took it from him and pa.s.sed it, together with Norquist's bag, to one of the policemen behind. He waved the two uniformed police out to a line of four cars just visible off to the right.

'We're having to make this up as we go along,' said Chambers. 'We've had very little notice.'

Norquist shrugged. 'Right,' he said.

They waited a few more moments until a voice came over Llewellyn's radio. The rest of the men bunched round Norquist and they spilled from the door in a security rush, holding his head down until he was in the back of a black Jaguar. Chambers climbed in beside him; Llewellyn got in the front. The rest of the men divided between a dark green Range Rover, a Ford saloon and a BMW which brought up the rear.

'What's going on?' asked Norquist.

'We understand they are going to make an attempt in or around the terminal. I'm afraid this arrangement is far from ideal. We'd have preferred to use a helicopter to get you into town. We may yet have you picked up on the way, but the main thing is to get you away from public areas of the airport now.'

Norquist nodded patiently as if being told of some further minor delay in his schedule. The plane had already stopped for two hours at Reykjavik with a computer fault.

'We think it's a big operation. No details though,' continued Chambers, giving him a significant look which was to say that he couldn't talk in front of the driver and Llewellyn.

The cars moved off, weaving under the piers of Terminal Three. They had to slow for aircraft manoeuvring in and out of the gates and occasional service vehicles that blocked the route across the concrete ap.r.o.n. The squall that had blown in from the south-west didn't help their progress either, and several times the Jaguar hesitated, either from poor visibility or disorientation in the sprawling tentacles of the airport. After a few minutes they cleared Terminal Two and set off at speed over the open ground between the take-off and landing runways, towards the vast hangars on the east side of the airport. They were held up once by a yellow airport car to allow a 747 to be towed across their path from the service hangars. Instead of taking the exit by the British Midland hangar off to their right, they moved towards the head of the runway a few hundred yards away, close to the eight aircraft waiting to take off. Rain and exhaust from the engines blurred the landscape and they had to slow to look for the exit. Someone spotted a policeman on a motorbike waving in the distance.

Llewellyn yelled into his radio over the noise of the engines. 'Route Three. Is that understood? Route Three.' He sat back as the cars started forward and said under his breath, 'Let's hope this works.'

A little over a mile away a man held a Bresse Optic telescope to his right eye and scrutinised the procession of vehicles with twenty times magnification. The few plane spotters that had remained with him through the rain and poor light on the observation terrace of Terminal Two also trained their binoculars and telescopes to the head of the southern runway - or, as they referred to it, Runway 27 right. But when the four cars veered off through the gra.s.s margins of the airfield towards the emergency gate in the perimeter fence, their interest returned to the line of Boeings, followed by two Russian-made aircraft - a Tupolev Tu-154 and a Yakovlev Yak-42 - which by chance landed seventy seconds apart on the northern runway - or 27 left.

The men on the observation terrace mostly carried telephones. Some even held hand-radios with which they chatted to fellow enthusiasts around the airport. So it was perfectly natural for the man with the Bresse Optic to turn away from the noise of a taxiing Tunisair flight, to gaze across Heathrow's roofscape of air-conditioning ducts and radio masts and dial a pre-set number on his phone. m.u.f.fled in their anorak hoods, absorbed in the comings and goings of the jets, fiddling with their Thermos flasks and packets of sandwiches, the plane spotters paid scant attention to what he said about the cars leaving the airport and turning right towards the A30.

A surveillance operation of an entirely different kind had just ended in the Terminal Three Departure Lounge when a mixed team consisting of an Arabic speaker from MI6 named Isis Herrick, three officers from MI5 and four members of the police Special Branch were pulled off the observation of Youssef Rahe, an Arab bookseller. They were told by New Scotland Yard and MI5 headquarters at Thames House that an important American had just arrived in the terminal and that the highest possible priority was being accorded to moving him from the airport to Whitehall. The Prime Minister's armoured Jaguar, being driven back from Cardiff to London without its usual pa.s.senger, had been diverted to Heathrow. Through her earpiece Herrick then heard that the four undercover policemen with her were being summarily removed from the mixed surveillance team and would be armed with handguns in a room near the Immigration Hall.

Herrick and her three slightly dour colleagues from MI5 - Campbell, Beck and Fisher - went off to have coffee, Beck caustically remarking that the Special Branch officers had taken with them the keys and parking receipts for two of the three cars. As they sat, they were informed that the few Special Branch officers permanently stationed at Heathrow had also reported to the Immigration Hall. She realised this meant that Youssef Rahe would leave Britain un.o.bserved, except by the security cameras. It was no great disaster. As an anonymous voice pointed out from MI5 headquarters, Rahe, a minor intellectual figure in London's North African Community, represented no threat to the aircraft whatsoever. He and his baggage had already been thoroughly searched and he was, after all, travelling on an Arab airline to an Arab country. Once he got to Kuwait, the cooperative members of the local intelligence service, al-Mukhabarat, would watch him and log any contacts he made.

Still, Rahe's hasty departure from the Pan Arab Library in Bayswater had interested Herrick because there was no warning of his trip. He travelled little, spending most of his days seated at the desk in the front of the store, gla.s.ses dangling on a chain, testily answering customers' questions or consulting his computer. He was not a key figure by any means: they weren't even sure if he had connections with Islamist groups. However, during the sweep of Arab communities in Britain the name of the bookshop had come up, and it had been learned from the FBI that a suspect arrested in Canada had visited it while in London.

Herrick had been a.s.signed to the operation for a few days. She had taken the first appointment at the hairdresser that lay diagonally across from the Pan Arab Library. She arrived just before it opened at 9.45 a.m. and by ten she was in position at the seat nearest the window where the mirror allowed her a clear view of 119 Forsythe Street, an unusual nineteenth-century building, Italianate, a cut above its neighbours.

Rahe usually appeared in the shop just after ten, having left his family in the flat above, and unlocked the door from the inside to a sluggish morning trade. The plan was for her to drop into the bookshop in this slack period, look around for a while and engage Rahe in conversation on the pretext of needing to practise her Arabic. Despite Rahe's unfriendly manner, she'd learned that he appeared to have an eye for English women. The watchers monitoring his visitors from the street and from a room in a flat opposite had noticed he stared longingly at the fair women pa.s.sing his shop and that he became more helpful on the rare occasions they went in.

'You never know,' said the officer running the surveillance, 'he might take you to dinner. There are one or two very good Leb restaurants in the area where you can order in Arabic and then you can charm him.'

Herrick watched for signs of Rahe in the mirror, but nothing happened until 10.35 a.m. when she saw him step out into the street with a small suitcase and what looked like a folder of travel doc.u.ments. He was dressed nattily - bright tie, dark grey flannel trousers, olive green jacket and shoes with a showy buckle at the side. A few moments later a minicab pulled up and, after patting his right breast pocket to check his pa.s.sport in the gesture of nervous travellers the world over, Rahe climbed into the back.

Herrick got up, removed her gown and shook out her almost-dry hair. She reached for her black leather jacket, and announced she'd just remembered she had a meeting. By the time she was outside and calling the other members of the team on her mobile, they had already phoned the cab company and learned that Rahe was on his way to Heathrow. A search for his name on the airline computers began.

Three surveillance vehicles followed the cab along Gold-hawk Road and the M4 to the drop-off point for Terminal Three departures. Rahe got out, entered the building then walked out. This he did a total of three times without checking the notice boards for the 2.15 p.m. flight to Kuwait on which they had now established he was booked. At length he seemed to settle something for himself and walked purposefully to the Heathrow chapel near Terminal Two, where he sat in the Garden of Remembrance reading a newspaper and occasionally checking his watch. Herrick thought he seemed unsure rather than nervous, and wondered whether he was expecting to meet someone. But after half an hour he suddenly got up and hurried over to the check-in area, where he waited behind about half a dozen pa.s.sengers. He did not speak to anyone or, as far as they could tell, use his phone.

Still, his behaviour was considered suspicious and when he got to the security checks he was asked to step into a room and submit to a thorough search involving sensors being run over his clothes and shoes. His suitcase was examined intensively and sc.r.a.pings of plastic were taken from the handle and sides and tested for explosives. Everything was found to be in order and Rahe was sent on his way. It was at this moment, as he wandered off towards the duty free shops, his dignity visibly ruffled, that the order came from New Scotland Yard that Special Branch officers watching Rahe should instantly drop what they were doing and report to Peter Chambers in the Immigration Hall.

Herrick had grown slightly impatient listening to Campbell, Beck and Fisher discuss the events of the morning in the usual oblique code. Thames House had made the connection between Rahe's presence in Heathrow and the arrival of the American but had concluded that it was nothing more than coincidence. Besides, a few minutes before the American had been located in Immigration, Rahe's distinctive olive green jacket was seen on the security cameras, making its way to the gate where he duly presented his pa.s.sport again and boarded the Kuwaiti airliner.

As she was about to suggest they all return to London, Campbell, Beck and Fisher were summoned to the Baggage Hall to observe a woman named Raffaella Klein and follow her from the airport. They left immediately, now intrigued by the flow of commands from London.

Herrick, alone with her coffee and free of the in-house banter of her MI5 colleagues, began to think about Rahe's behaviour. It just didn't seem right that this unimpressive North African had suddenly departed for the Middle East. She wondered if he had a rendezvous on the plane - the best possible place for a long, un.o.bserved talk, as long as you fixed the seating. She drained the coffee and experienced a random flash of memory: fis.h.i.+ng with her father in Scotland, making the last cast of the day without hope of a pull on the line. What the h.e.l.l, she had nothing else to do. She'd go to the security room and see what she could find out about the people on the Kuwait flight with Youssef Rahe.

Fifteen minutes later she was sitting at a desk with the pa.s.senger manifest of Kuwaiti Airlines KU102 on a screen and noting down the names of the people seated in Rahe's immediate vicinity at the back of the plane. Around her were three men from Heathrow security who had kept tabs on Rahe by the airport CCTV system as he moved through the terminal to his departure gate. She asked them to print off the complete manifest from the computer, then let her eyes drift to the screen immediately in front of the supervisor, who had compiled a medley of clips showing Rahe as he progressed through the airport. He appeared in the check-in area at 12.30 p.m., a few minutes after the flight opened. At no stage did he talk to anyone or make any sign to a fellow pa.s.senger. The cameras then picked him up just after he had been searched and followed him to the duty free shop where he paid for two bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label whisky with cash. Ten minutes later he was seen buying a newspaper, then he crossed the field of another camera and entered a coffee bar. After this he vanished for a period of about twenty minutes, although the supervisor insisted that with a few hours they could piece together his movements for the whole period. As things were, they could be sure that Rahe had got on the plane. He ran the final film and Herrick watched Rahe approach the desk, swap the duty free bag and his little suitcase from his left to his right hand and show his boarding card and pa.s.sport.

She put her hands to her mouth, aware that her mind was tripping over something. 'That's not the same man,' she said, without consciously understanding what had produced such certainty. 'That's not b.l.o.o.d.y Rahe!' Vehemence made her voice rise.

'Right gate,' said the controller, yawning. 'And the jacket - I doubt there're two jackets like that on the planet, let alone in this airport.'

'It's the same jacket,' she snapped, banging the desk with her hand. 'But it's not him. Rahe is right-handed. When he gave his pa.s.sport to the woman at check-in he took it from the left breast pocket with his right hand. Here he's using his left hand to take the boarding card out of his right pocket,' she said, jabbing at the screen. 'Look! He changed the bags over so he could do that. Even from behind you can see they're different - this man's got a narrower head, a longer neck. He's thinning at the crown.'

The supervisor leaned into the screen. 'Maybe you're right. But the angle's not too clever up there. We had to s.h.i.+ft our cameras because of work on the cabling ducts for the visual recognition system. It's a shame we don't have a head-on shot of him there.' He knew she was right.

'I've been following Youssef Rahe all b.l.o.o.d.y morning and that's not him.'

They went back over the footage of Rahe in duty free, and noted how he walked away from the camera with short paces in which his feet veered outwards as they came down. The man who had just boarded KU102 walked with a definite roll and his arms worked more as he went along. There was a further, clinching anomaly. As Rahe waited in duty free he looked at his watch several times, thrusting his wrist out of his sleeve and revolving the gold strap which hung loose like a bracelet on his wrist. The man at the boarding gate appeared not to be wearing a watch, at least not one that could be seen below the sleeve of his jacket, nor as his left hand reached up and plucked the pa.s.sport and boarding card from his inside pocket. Admittedly, they were seeing him from above and behind, but there was no doubt that while Herrick caught a flash of s.h.i.+rt cuff in this movement she could not see a watch.

She didn't need any further confirmation. She dialled the direct line to the operations room at the Security Services. 'Youssef Rahe didn't get on his plane. There was a stand-in. Rahe may be your problem.'

Route Three took the convoy of cars from the north perimeter road westwards towards Terminal Four along a canyon formed by tall leylandii bushes and noise barriers at the edge of the airport. They travelled at 80 mph with the Range Rover sitting within a few feet of the Jaguar's offside rear b.u.mper. One false move by the Prime Minister's driver, Jim Needpath, and there would certainly be an accident, but he had worked with the protection officer in the Range Rover before. Out in front, five police outriders leapfrogged each other and raced past the convoy of cars to hold up traffic at every intersection. As they came to the roundabout near Terminal Four, they turned left and doubled back along the A30 towards London, the plan being to cross over to the M4 motorway by a dual carriageway and make their way to central London using the fast lane reserved for buses and taxis.

Inside the Jaguar, Chambers was on the radio, demanding to know why there was no sign of the police helicopter that was going to act as a pathfinder into central London. The sardonic reply came back that it was generally considered poor aviation practice to place a surveillance aircraft in the main flight path into Heathrow. At this Norquist smiled and looked out at the dismal housing estate rus.h.i.+ng by - people walking with their heads bowed to the rain, a pair of cyclists struggling along in cagoules and an Indian woman sheltering her kid in the folds of her sari. He wondered briefly how the Brits managed to keep their sense of humour in this climate.

The outriders shepherded the motorcade smoothly through the roundabout under the M4 before the four cars rose on a slip road to join the motorway. Two motorcyclists stayed just in front of the Jaguar while the other three formed a chevron to snowplough the traffic out of the fast lane with their sirens and lights. At this point the helicopter appeared and hovered for a second or two at about 1,000 feet before spinning round to join the flow of traffic eastwards. Llewellyn was patched through to the pilot and told him that he needed an exact description of the traffic conditions ahead, and a warning about vehicles parked on the hard shoulder and on or under bridges.

The road was unusually clear and they covered the four-mile stretch quickly, with the pilot giving regular s.n.a.t.c.hes of laconic commentary. Suddenly an interested note entered his voice and he told them he was going to take a look at a white lorry that had pulled up about a mile in front of them at the beginning of the elevated section. As they rounded a bend they saw the truck with the helicopter positioned above it. Llewellyn told the drivers to reduce their speed and then sent the three motorcycles on to investigate.

'What do you see?' he asked the pilot.

'There's just one man in there,' came the reply. 'I'm taking her down a bit. He looks Asian, but I can't be sure. He's not responding to anything we do. He looks a bit freaked.'

They saw the helicopter descend on the left of the motorway.

'Hold on,' said the pilot, 'the lorry's moving. No. He's stopped again. He's put the vehicle across both lanes. You might just squeeze behind him or in front of him, as the cars are doing, but there's not much room either way.'

'That's not an option,' said Llewellyn. It was fast occurring to him that there were very few options. If they tried to pa.s.s the lorry and a device was detonated inside, it would certainly blow them all into the next world. And they could not cross the central reservation to the westbound carriageway or mount the bank to their left, which was fringed with dense hawthorn trees. Reversing up the hard shoulder to the service station a mile or so back was the only way left to them, unless the lorry moved of its own accord.

By now the Jaguar and its escort had slowed to 35 mph. The traffic that had been held up behind the lorry had all slipped through the gap and a stretch of about 800 yards of open road lay ahead of them. The two remaining police outriders had dropped back to prevent anyone overtaking the convoy.

's.h.i.+t,' said Llewellyn. 'This is a f.u.c.king mess.'

'If you can keep this part of the motorway clear,' said Chambers, 'you could bring the chopper down and we can hitch a ride.'

'Let's do that,' said Norquist, his voice moving from compliance to command.

The pilot heard this in the cacophony that was now reaching him from central control, but he had other things on his mind. 'You've got two vans approaching from behind - a red Transit and a dark blue Toyota. They're about half a mile along the bus lane and closing fast. I'll come down and get you, but the wind isn't good for this kind of thing and you've got to do something about those vehicles.'

Llewellyn told the drivers of the two unmarked escort vehicles to fall back and prepare to block the vans, forcing them off the road if necessary. He knew the conversation was being heard in New Scotland Yard and he told them very deliberately to open fire if they judged it to be the only way of stopping the two vans. He was now convinced that an attempt on Norquist's life was in progress and he said as much to New Scotland Yard, adding that it wasn't effing well going to happen on his watch.

The Jaguar and Range Rover shot forward over the next seventy yards then coasted along the hard shoulder, reducing their speed to almost walking pace. Jim Needpath's eyes moved from his wing mirror to the lorry, every part of his being jangling with the imperative to take flight, to bolt from the situation and save his pa.s.sengers. In front of them they saw the driver of the truck jump down from the cab, run the few yards to the side of the deserted carriageway and scramble up a bank towards the breaking wave of hawthorn blossom. Two of the three police motorcyclists brought their machines to a halt just before a narrow rail bridge over the motorway, kicked them back on their stands and set off in pursuit of the driver. The third drove up to the truck, circled it and accelerated away shouting in his helmet microphone that a liquid was seeping onto the road from the side of the truck. The vehicle was an Iveco diesel but the liquid smelled like petrol.

The helicopter pilot took matters into his own hands and decided to land on the motorway. The aircraft swooped over the rail bridge and flew at a height of a hundred feet towards the Jaguar, throwing up a storm of spray in its wake. At the exact moment that he lifted his nose and settled the aircraft onto the tarmac, the red Transit burst along the hard shoulder followed by the police BMW. The driver of the Range Rover saw what was happening, slammed his vehicle into reverse and went to meet the van, colliding with it a second or two later.

Needpath didn't wait any longer. He shot the Jaguar forward to the helicopter, pulling the car round with a handbrake turn so that Norquist's side was protected from whatever was going on behind them, which was not at all clear because of the roar of the engine and the swirling clouds of spindrift. Llewellyn and Chambers got out, dragged Norquist from his seat and pushed him towards the helicopter, ducking under the rotor blades. They were halfway there when the Toyota van appeared through the mist and hit the Jaguar on its flank, just behind Jim Needpath's seat, and caused it to spin round. The Ford saloon carrying four Special Branch police officers was not far behind, but it slewed to a halt without hitting either car and disgorged at least three of the policemen, who began to shoot at the van. The same thing had occurred on the hard shoulder after the Range Rover launched itself backwards into the red Transit van.

Llewellyn and Chambers didn't wait to witness the battle on the motorway. As they lifted Norquist through the door of the helicopter, a shot glanced off the hard perspex in front of the pilot. Chambers had just scrambled in behind Norquist when the helicopter rose, tipped forward and roared away.

They climbed to 1,000 feet before the co-pilot turned round to check that his pa.s.sengers were strapped in and saw blood was coming from a wound in Norquist's neck.

He was already unconscious.

CHAPTER TWO.

On a gra.s.sy bank running down to a swollen stream about ten miles from the Albanian border, a man dozed in the morning light. The sun had not yet risen above the hill in front of him so the ground and his bedding were still wet. For some time he had been aware of his travelling companions moving around him, packing and rolling up the sheets which they'd hung between the bushes to give shelter. They coughed and grumbled to each other, mostly in languages he didn't understand. But the sounds of the camp breaking in the early morning were familiar - men stiff from a night in the open, wondering how they found themselves without bed, food or a good woman.

Someone was prodding the campfire into life. At first he didn't understand why: they'd eaten the last of the food the night before - dried lamb and a broth made from chicken bones - and he knew there was no coffee or tea. Then he smelled the mint and remembered they'd gathered it in a ditch the night before. They'd made mint tea and now one of them was beside him, nudging the back of his hand with a warm tin cup. He opened an eye to see a grin of chipped teeth, spreading in an unwashed, slightly pock-marked face: the youngest of the three Kurds, an amiable character who was always jollying the others on. He said in English, 'Drink, mister, for your health.'

The party began to move off down the bank towards the track, but he still couldn't bring himself to jump up and follow. The delicious memory of his dream was still fresh and part of him didn't want to leave it behind. He watched shafts of light moving over the hill to catch the top of a tree nearby. A tiny bird, one that he had never seen before, was flitting to and from a vine that had become detached from the tree. Each time it arrived to perch on the twig, it bobbed up and down, checking the area for predators before diving into the shade of the vine to feed its young. He realised the bird must have been there all night, within a few yards of the fire and the men under the shelters, and he marvelled at its nerve and discretion.

At length the sunlight fell on the ground above him and he shook himself from his reverie, stood up and stretched. He had only a few possessions and it didn't take long for him to bundle them up and tie them together with the belt that he'd kept with him these past six years. As he made his way down the bank, slipping on the damp gra.s.s, the men's voices were brought to him on a soft, warm wind. It would be a good day, he thought. Yes, they were due some luck after all that had happened to them. Maybe they would find a way of crossing the border into Greece without being arrested and treated like dirt.

In the past he might have prayed to Allah. Now it did not even occur to him. After so long in the holy war the Western part of him was rea.s.serting itself. He was leaving the wilderness and the barbarity behind and he was taking back his old name - Karim Khan - and with it the hope of finding the young medical student, who drank alcohol and loved and charmed but who was no less in awe of the Prophet because of these activities. Belief had not deserted him, but faith in sacrifice had gone, along with the nomme de guerre - Mujahad, or soldier of Islam - and just now he would rely on himself and not G.o.d's will.

He climbed down on to the track and noticed the bunches of twigs that had collected in the ruts along the road, borne there by the rainwater of the day before. Beetles were feeding on insects drowned in the storm. The pulverised rock in the road's surface sparkled with chips of quartz. Everything seemed beautiful and in its place that morning, and he felt a surge of optimism. He shuddered at the words that had taken him to war: 'Allah has conferred on those who fight with their wealth and their lives a higher rank than those who stay at home.'

No more of that. No more slaughter. No more chaos.

But whatever he thought, he was still the veteran campaigner and his ability to march on an empty stomach was undiminished. Soon the stragglers of the group ahead came into view. As always it was his two fellow Pakistanis at the rear. Both were very thin and clearly at the end of their resources. Nine months the two had been on the road. Having started from a mountain village in Northern Pakistan they had crossed to Iran and walked to the Turkish border. Most of their money had gone when a con man promised them flights and a visa to Greece, but they kept enough to get them to Bulgaria. Ahead of them went the Turk, Mehmet, and the Arabs, a Jordanian called Mumim, and a Palestinian from Lebanon who gave his name as Jasur. Out in front were the three Kurds - the young man who had given him mint tea, his uncle and a friend from his uncle's village. They had the promise of work in Athens and had only been travelling for a matter of weeks. They were the freshest of the party and it was clear they felt themselves out of place in this group of migrants, harried from one country to another and sometimes reduced to eating leaves and grubs to survive.

High in the pastures above them Khan noticed one or two locals moving about with their beasts. Cow-bells sounded with an unmusical clank across the valley. He was glad his party was not walking bunched up together because that always made people suspicious. In this country, where Muslims were so feared, they had to keep their wits about them. The men with dark skin - the two Pakistanis and the Jordanian, who had African blood in him - had to be especially careful. Not for the first time, he was grateful for his own light colouring, which family tradition held came from Alexander the Great's soldiers. Some part of him registered that he should feel at home here in Macedonia.

As he was having these thoughts he noticed the Kurds hesitate. He stopped and put his hand up to the sun and tried to see through the s.h.i.+mmer of heat already coming off the road. They had seen something in front of them. One had dropped his bed-roll and knapsack and spread his arms in surrender. He was showing that they weren't carrying weapons. His companions turned round to consult the others, or maybe to warn them.

Khan saw a figure moving in the clump of bushes on the left of the road. He was wearing a uniform that was exactly the same colour and tone as the shaded vegetation. A wisp of smoke came from behind him - a campfire - and beyond that tarpaulins had been stretched across the lower boughs of the trees. On the other side of the road, parked up in a cutting, were a truck and two covered jeeps.

The Kurds didn't seem to know what to do. One of them began to retrace his steps. He was gesticulating, shooing the rest of the party back up the way they had come. More soldiers moved from the shade onto the yellow strip of road; they swaggered and almost dragged their weapons along the ground. Khan recognised the type - soft, untested, conscript bullies. He had seen them before in the Balkans and he knew exactly what was going to happen next.

One of the soldiers, probably the first man to move from cover, raised his gun waist high, fired and brought down the retreating man. The other two Kurds turned back in disbelief to the soldiers, raising their hands. They dropped to their knees to beg for their lives but were killed the instant they touched the ground. One slumped forward; the other keeled over in slow motion.

With the first shot the remainder of the party had taken to their heels. The two Arabs and the Turk ran straight up towards Khan, but the Pakistanis had thrown away their possessions and dived for the bushes. The soldiers were galvanised. They ran across the road, climbed into their jeeps and, with great swirls of dust, turned the vehicles and tore up the valley towards the three men still on the road. Unlike the first shots that had killed the Kurds, the fusillade of gunfire that came from the lead jeep echoed around the hills. The Turk was. .h.i.t in the leg but limped on. One of the Arabs stopped and tried to drag him to safety, but the soldiers were upon them in a second and both men were mown down. Khan moved to the side of the road into shade. He watched the jeep pull up and the soldiers unleash a volley of shots into the corpses. The other jeep had stopped a little further back so that the Pakistanis could be hunted down. Shortly afterwards Khan heard another crackle of shots. A man cried out. Then a lone shot - the coup de grace - snapped through the woods.