Empire State Part 3

'Do you think the two things were connected at Heathrow?'

'Of course they were. I quote you the product law of probabilities. "When two independent events occur simultaneously their combined probability is equal to the product of their individual probabilities of occurrence." That means it was b.l.o.o.d.y unlikely that the two events were unconnected. They were syzygial - yoked, paired, conjoined, coupled - like we should be.'

He finished the origami with the napkin and balanced it on his shoulder.

'What's that?' she asked.

'A parrot - so you won't notice what I look like.'

CHAPTER SIX.

The silence ended with a single dramatic sentence. 'Youssef Rahe was ours.' Richard Spelling said it with studied understatement. 'He was our man.' He folded his arms and looked at her over a pair of slender reading gla.s.ses.

Herrick was not totally surprised. She had been at the point of articulating Rahe's double role for herself, but hadn't gone the whole way because of the surveillance operation. Why had they put all that effort into watching a man who was already working for them?

'Was?' she said.

'Yes. His body was found in the boot of a car near the Lebanese border with Syria. He had been very badly treated and finished off with a shot to the head which, without going into detail, made him practically unrecognisable. As well as this, the car had been set alight. However, we are absolutely certain it is Rahe.'

'I see,' she said. 'Was he killed by the second man on the Beirut flight?'

'We're not sure. We suspect he had something to do with it but there were others involved.'

She asked herself why they were telling her this. Not out of any sense of obligation, that was for sure. She had been summoned to the high table and was being told an intimate secret for a reason. She looked around the room and wondered what they wanted from her, apart from silence. The const.i.tuent parts of this late night gathering were altogether odd. Colin Guthrie, head of the joint MI5-MI6 Anti-Terrorism controllerate, well, you would expect him to be there, but not Skeoch c.u.mmings and Keith Manners from the Joint Intelligence Committee. The JIC provided intelligence a.s.sessments for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and wasn't responsible for making or implementing policy, yet here they were, comfortably ensconced in the inner sanctum of the intelligence executive. And why Christine Selvey, the deputy director of Security and Public Affairs? What the f.u.c.k was she doing there, with her powdery skin and brittle, bouffant hair which Dolph had described as 'South coast landlady with a pa.s.sion for china dogs and young actresses'?

There was one other man there and his presence baffled her most. As she entered he had risen, turned and offered her a soft, cool hand and asked after her father, a pleasantry which seemed out of place and was calculated, she thought, to wrong-foot her in some way. Walter Vigo, the former Head of Security and Public Affairs. Isis knew perfectly well that her father would have nothing to do with him. Why was Vigo there and not the Chief? What did Vigo's presence mean six weeks before the handover from Sir Robin Teckman to Spelling? Vigo was the outcast, the defrocked prelate who'd been exposed by a former SIS man, Robert Harland, for his connections with a gun runner and war criminal named Lipnik. She'd got some of the story from her father, who had trained both Vigo and Harland at different times during the Intelligence Officers' New Entry Course. Vigo had escaped prosecution because he was in a position to make life seriously unpleasant for the entire Service. Instead he had been declared a pariah, with Teckman forbidding all contact with him and the members of Mercator, the security consultancy he ran in tandem with an antique book dealing business called Incunabula Inc.

There was silence. She was expected to ask a question. 'If he was ours, why was he under surveillance?'

'Our relations.h.i.+p was a very, very secret matter,' Spelling replied. 'We shared his product, but not his ident.i.ty with anyone. Only four people knew that he worked for us. Those were his conditions when Walter Vigo came across him two years ago and we abided by them.'

Vigo stirred to give Spelling a nod of grat.i.tude.

'The surveillance was to give him credibility?' persisted Herrick. 'Was that why we laid it in on with a trowel?'

Spelling whipped off his gla.s.ses and folded them in his left hand. There was something unpractised and self-conscious in the gesture. 'Yes, he was worried he'd been tumbled.'

'Can I ask whether you knew about the operation at Terminal Three in advance?'

He shook his head. 'No. No, we don't think even he knew what was happening, though he had told us in the morning that he was going to a meeting with some important people. We were hoping for big game. But we had no notion of the switch you spotted and that means he didn't have any idea what was to happen at Terminal Three. We now think he believed he was being observed by them at Heathrow and was worried about making a call to us. No doubt he hoped we were there watching him too and we were, which is how you noticed what had happened. We realised he was in trouble when you called in, but by this time things were unravelling, and it's fair to say we lost sight of what was important. A few hours later he contacted us from a room in the Playlands Hotel in Beirut. They said the meeting would take place in the next few days and that he should stay put until they got in touch with him. Very shortly after making that call he vanished. We didn't have time to get anyone over to the hotel.'

Guthrie coughed and said, 'All of which underlines the thesis implied in your report on the events of May the fourteenth, that the alert over the President's man was a...'

'A strategic diversion,' offered Vigo, with his eyes closed.

'To achieve several things,' said Guthrie, 'among which was enticement of Rahe out of the country.'

'Can I ask you if the information about the hit on Norquist came from Rahe's computer?'

Vigo shot her a look of interest.

'What do you know about Rahe's computer?' asked Spelling sharply.

'I a.s.sumed that if he was working for us you must have had access to any information that came to him via his PC. After all, he barely left that shop and we had his phone covered so I imagined it was simply a matter of interception somewhere along the line.' This was feeble but she had to protect Andy Dolph. 'I'm simply asking if the information about the possible hit on Norquist came from Rahe, by whatever means. From the outside that seems to be the important point.'

'There was an oblique reference to it amongst the usual blazing rhetoric,' said Guthrie. 'But this was released after he left for Heathrow. Another source confirmed in some detail what was to happen.'

Spelling moved to take control. 'We believe he was unmasked during WAYFARER. As most of you are aware, this was the operation to track a hundred-odd kilos of sulphur and two hundred of acetone from Rotterdam to Harwich and then on to a factory in Birmingham. They must have examined their security arrangements after that and come up with Rahe's name. He was involved in some of the s.h.i.+pping arrangements.

'The important thing is that Rahe was tortured very badly indeed. He will have told them everything he knew about us before he died, which owing to Walter's deft handling was kept to a minimum. Still, he wouldn't have failed to learn quite a bit during the course of the twenty-odd months he was working for us, if only from the questions we asked him. And we must a.s.sume certain techniques are now in the hands of the terrorists.'

There was a pause. Vigo had listened to this expectantly, as though waiting to make a bid at an auction, but he said nothing. Christine Selvey seemed to be readying herself for something - a straightening of the back, a pluck at the front of her Sunday blouse.

'We heard you were out at Heathrow yesterday,' said Guthrie in what was clearly a planned intervention. 'What were you doing there?'

'Trying to tie up some loose ends for my own satisfaction. I wondered if the murder of the lavatory attendant and his family had anything to do with the man who was seen watching aircraft landing from the public viewing terrace. You see I hadn't heard from-'

'Yes, well, no more blundering around like that,' said Spelling fiercely. 'This is a very delicate situation and we can't afford the local police or anyone else putting it all together and feeding the theory to the media. n.o.body - I repeat n.o.body - must know that we appreciate the real significance of the events at Heathrow.'

Given that she'd spotted what was really significant that day, Herrick didn't much feel like the gesture of submission that was called for, but she apologised nonetheless, saying that it was often difficult for someone at her level to see the whole picture.

'There is one thing,' she said, levelling her gaze at Spelling. 'Won't our discovery of Rahe's body in Beirut mean they expect us to go back over his movements at Heathrow? After all, he was meant to be in Kuwait or the Gulf States, not the Lebanon, and that might very well lead us to check which plane he boarded and so go over the film.'

'It's a good point,' said Vigo. 'I'd like to know the answer to that one.'

Spelling shook his head. 'We didn't move the body. His wife doesn't know he's dead and I'm afraid we're going to leave things that way. She must believe he's alive in order for our operation to go ahead. And they must believe we've lost him. It will be essential to the safety of the people we're going to put in the field over the next few days.' He cleared his throat. 'As you know, the Chief has asked me to oversee the setting up of RAPTOR, the name of our response to the events of May the fourteenth. You will hear in the next few days what your part will be - the arrangements are being finalised at the moment - but I wanted to speak to you this evening because everyone involved must understand that this is an exclusively transatlantic operation. We are going to work very closely with the Americans on this, but not with the Europeans.

'International cooperation in the war against terrorism is still at a very early stage of development. Everyone pitches in and there have been some notable achievements in the sharing of information, but we're a long way from full cooperation. You'll remember Djamel Beghal, one of the men who was planning to blow up the US Emba.s.sy in Paris. He was arrested on his way back from Afghanistan and began to talk, providing valuable names and addresses, top grade material in fact. The counter-intelligence services of France, Spain, Belgium and Holland ran a joint surveillance operation in their individual territories to watch the cell at work. But then details were leaked to the French press, with the result that most of the network escaped. One or two were arrested, but there wasn't enough evidence to put them away for any length of time. In our opinion it was a serious loss not to be able to observe and watch these people's MO, the way they moved their money, communicated, planned, provided themselves with false papers and the supplies necessary for the large-scale attacks that they need to keep their movement alive. That's something we're not going to allow to happen again. Owing to your excellent work at Heathrow - a superb piece of intelligence gathering - we are now in a position to watch eleven individuals who are currently under surveillance as they merge into their new covers. We and the Americans plan to observe these men and get a fix on the person running the European networks. We know next to nothing about him, but believe him to be in Europe.'

'The same man who planned May fourteen,' she said. It now seemed more like fact than opinion.

'Possibly - certainly a very ambitious mind was deployed that day, someone who sees an operation as a means of achieving several things at once. It was daring and well thought-out to pull off an a.s.sa.s.sination of that order while shuffling his men around Europe.'

'But surely-' she began.

'If you wouldn't mind.' Spelling gave a tight smile that indicated he wouldn't suffer the interruption. 'I should have mentioned that tests have been carried out and there's no doubt that the bullet came from the machine pistol in the first van. Abdul Muid was the a.s.sa.s.sin. I gather that will be the finding of the inquest that opens tomorrow. It will also make plain the pattern that the two men - Muid and Jamil Siddiqi - were pulled from our midst to perform these acts of terrorism. Neither of their backgrounds suggests training by al-Qaeda in any formal sense, which I think is an interesting aspect that the Security Services will want to explore. There is still no trace of the lorry driver, which perhaps indicates that he was an integral part of the plot, rather than someone who was caught up in the incident.'

Skeoch c.u.mmings nodded. Guthrie brushed the end of his nose twice while Vigo looked into the distance with an expression that suggested he had not even heard what was being said.

Fine, she thought, they're running with that fiction. The possibility that a British bullet had killed Norquist was not going to be contemplated, which obviously suited both sides. The Americans knew what had happened, but when it came to their closest allies they were capable of miraculous forbearance. After all, they had absorbed the blow of Israeli warplanes attacking and sinking the USS Liberty spy s.h.i.+p in the Six Day War without any public comment whatsoever. Norquist had already been buried at the Arlington National Cemetery with full military honours. His widow had received the folded Stars and Stripes from the President himself and not a word of official complaint had been made. Not in public, at any rate.

But it was another matter in private, she thought. The White House must have used Norquist's death to maximise the US position. They would have received something in exchange and it was likely to be the contents of her report pa.s.sed up to Number Ten through the Joint Intelligence Committee. She imagined a telephone conversation between the White House and Number Ten during which the President insisted that the US be involved as an equal partner in the pursuit of the live cell. That meant the continental intelligence services would be kept in the dark.

Now she understood why Teckman was not there. The Chief had either lost the battle to keep the Europeans involved, or was standing back waiting for his successor to make a hash of things while he was still in control. Whatever the tactic, it was his absence that gave the meeting its furtive air. This, and Vigo. Spelling may have been in the chair but it was Vigo's return that established a new era of transatlantic exclusivity.

Spelling put on his gla.s.ses again and read something from the paper in front of him. Then he looked up, as if to address the whole room, and began to outline RAPTOR. Each of the eleven men so far identified and tracked would be allotted an entire team that would remain permanently on that individual's case. In effect the teams would mimic the cla.s.sic cell structure of terrorist organisations, shadowing the suspects and bedding in around them with an equal regard for cover and security. Herrick would be in one of those teams, and those involved would be expected to drop everything for the operation. That requirement had had some influence on the personnel being chosen: men and women with families would take roles where they could be inserted and removed without rippling the surface. Both the CIA and MI6 would call on the services of retired intelligence officers used to long-term surveillance operations, who would bring the field skills that were perhaps lacking in some of the younger generation.

'This is about close surveillance of an exceptionally discreet order,' he said, splaying his fingers on the table. 'It may go on for months, even years, because that is the timescale the terrorists work with. We will have to match their stamina and patience. Every step of the way will be monitored by us here and the Americans at Langley and Fort Mead. The risk a.s.sessment for the entire operation will be provided by the staff of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which will report three times a week. The Americans have agreed to abide by their recommendations though I stress that these reports will not define policy. The JIC will simply gauge the degree of menace presented by these men at any given moment. The Americans will naturally take their own view of how things are progressing and have insisted that each surveillance team has access to armed back-up. That means they can move against a target and arrest him if the situation requires. And so can we.'

Spelling's confident presentation of the battle plan didn't fool anyone. If the Americans and British, already welded together in an exclusive eavesdropping treaty known as Echelon, were to start killing or seizing suspects on European soil, untold damage would be done to an already shaky Western alliance. The resentment would last for years. This was to say nothing of the risk - or in Herrick's mind, the certainty - of one or other European agency catching on and, out of justified concern or sheer b.l.o.o.d.ymindedness, preempting the situation by arresting the suspect and causing the others to flee. She also knew that the terrorists were nothing if not close students of Western intelligence trade-craft, and that the mastermind who had planned the switch at Heathrow would be the kind of man who had set up trip-wires to give early warning of just such an operation. Sooner or later, someone would stumble across one.

Everyone got this. Equally, they understood they were just at the start of RAPTOR. As time went on, the situation would change; the grand scheme would be buffeted by chance and circ.u.mstance. They were going along with it because during an operation the policy makers - in this case a none too bright President and a Prime Minister with attention deficit problems - would become dependent on those who implemented their plan. All of which meant there were great opportunities for the secret servants: advancement, increase in influence and, in Vigo's case, rehabilitation.

But why show her the secret mechanism? The answer, of course, was that she had made the breakthrough, put it all together, so Spelling had been forced to include her. But why not Dolph, Sarre and Lapping? Simple. She had written the two-page report and then followed it up with her own inquiries at Heathrow. She understood the total operation on May 14 but had not spoken about it to them. That's what distinguished her and that's why Spelling had to get her on-side.

Spelling moved his papers together and looked around the table. 'I think we've just about covered everything. Isis, have you any questions? You will of course be briefed over the coming week. In the meantime, I suggest you take some leave, say two days. We'll see you on Wednesday. You'll receive instructions tomorrow about time and place.'

'There's one thing,' she said. 'I want to get clear in my mind why we're excluding the European agencies as a matter of course.'

'Because that's what our political masters have decided,' replied Spelling crisply. 'And that is what the Chief agreed with the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary this morning at Chequers.'

The invocation of all these authorities seemed weak, apparently even to Vigo, whom she was now sure owed his place in the secret deliberations to something more than his recruitment of Youssef Rahe. He shut his eyes with a hint of exasperation, and Herrick had the odd sensation that it didn't matter whether they were open or closed, Vigo still watched.

She was dismissed a few minutes later and left convinced that she'd already blown it by raising the business about the Europeans. It was cra.s.s of her, especially as she now understood that the sole point of the meeting had been to test her reliability, to see if she was fit for the game only the adults played.

She went to her desk, picked up her bag and left a note saying she would be out for a couple of days and if there were any problems to call Guthrie or Spelling. She saw a few people - the shades that always haunted Vauxhall Cross at night - but there was no sign of Dolph, Sarre or Lapping, whom she knew would be regarded somehow as her co-conspirators. They would be seen too, but she didn't think they'd get the full treatment with Madame Selvey, Walter Vigo and the inscrutable pair from the JIC.

She left the building, collecting the cell phone that always had to be checked in at the front entrance. As she walked out into the dreary no man's land of the Albert Embankment she noticed that she had a text message. 'Drnk tonite any time - Dolph.'

She replied. 'No thanx. Dead tired.'

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Khan expected the Albanians to descend into the valley once they crossed over from Macedonia, but they marched on into the mountains taking increasingly untravelled, treacherous paths that caused the six mules to stop every so often, snort and shake themselves as if to adjust their loads. After the first exchange with the head man who had given his name as Vajgelis, they said little to Khan and seemed bent on covering as much ground as possible before the middle of the day. A couple of the youths tagged along behind, apparently speculating about him and his bundle of possessions, which they occasionally poked with their sticks. He turned round and grinned at them, but the only response was a surly lift of the chin to tell him to keep his eyes on the way ahead.

When the sun was at its highest they stopped in the shade of some pine trees and squatted to eat a little cold meat and onion stew, produced from tall canteens. They offered it to him saying, 'Conlek, eat Conlek.' In return he offered them food stolen from the Macedonian kitchen, and then asked for water. They gave it to him gracelessly and now seemed to be making jokes at his expense. He smiled, nodded and thanked them. He remembered what they had said in Bosnia, the tales of savagery and endless slaughter amongst their Muslim cousins in Albania. For nearly thirty years the country had been the world's only official atheist state and under Enver Hoxha the people had happily pulled down their mosques or turned them into cinemas and warehouses. The civilised Bosnians shuddered at the G.o.dless barbarity of what had happened under the Marxists. But there again, he thought, he'd seen plenty of that kind of thing in Afghanistan without doing anything: the destruction of monuments; the execution of a whimpering boy who'd been caught listening to a music tape. He'd seen it and, willingly or not, he'd been part of it.

After eating, the Albanians dispersed through the woods to sleep, leaving a couple of men to guard the mules. Khan lay back where he had been sitting on a carpet of pine needles and, hugging his gun and pack into his stomach, told himself that he must s.n.a.t.c.h the rest while he could. He closed his eyes in the songless, dry forest and fell asleep thinking that he would now have to make his way to Italy rather than Greece. They were a more tolerant people.

In what seemed a very short time he was woken by someone tugging at his gun. The muzzle of a pistol was drawn across his cheek. He looked up. The two young men who'd trailed him during the morning were crouching either side of him.

'Come Mujahadin. Good. Come.' Standing above them was Zek, one of the mule guards, who placed his boot on the AK47 while one of the younger men pulled it gently from Khan's grasp. The third, who had been holding the pistol to his face, withdrew it.

'Okay. Mujahadin. Come.' Zek, who was a wiry man of about twenty-five, motioned for them to hurry. Khan got up and shook himself free of their grasp. He didn't know what they wanted, but since they had tossed his gun away he had to go with them. They walked to a hollow, about fifty yards from where the others were sleeping, and he was prodded roughly down the slope. Khan thought he knew what they were going to do. What they planned to do afterwards was anyone's guess - shoot him and say he had started the fight, or simply throw him down the ravine they had skirted a few minutes before entering the forest? He raised both hands and made as if to welcome the idea by reaching out to touch Zek's shoulder.

Zek told the two younger men to hold Khan over the tree, and started unbuckling himself to reveal a rank pair of undershorts. With an interested glance Khan again tried to show that he was more than happy about the situation and indeed enjoyed the prospect of indulging them. He even made to undo his own trousers. But they turned him and forced his head down violently on the tree trunk. The smell of resin and forest mould reached his nostrils. He glanced under the young man's arm and saw the guard behind readying himself. l.u.s.t had drained all meaning from his expression and he hissed for his two accomplices to hurry. Khan placed his feet squarely apart, to appear cooperative, and wiggled with a little coo of excitement. The young man holding the gun to his head sn.i.g.g.e.red, relaxed his grip and swapped hands to free himself to help yank Khan's trousers down. This was the opening Khan had waited for. He slipped from under his captor's arm and jabbed his left elbow back twice into his face, grabbing the barrel of the pistol and sending him to the ground. The completion of the movement brought him face to face with Zek, whose expression flooded with consternation. He smiled awkwardly just before Khan b.u.t.ted him once in the forehead, then knocked him cold with a second blow from his forehead delivered as he grabbed the man's shoulders and held him.

He spun round, but there was no need to attack the third boy, who had jumped away, raising his hands with a sly smile as if to say the whole thing had been a bit of harmless horse-play. Khan arranged his clothing and walked to the top of the hollow where he found Vajgelis contemplating the scene. He held Khan's AK47 under his arm, his hands tucked into the waistband of his chocolate brown corduroys.

'These men s.h.i.+t,' he said, his chin jutting with contempt. 'These men, they f.u.c.k pigs. I sorry for these hospitality. These men...' Words failed him, he shook his head and held out the machine gun for Khan, at the same time reaching for the pistol that Khan had taken from the young man. As Vajgelis took hold of it, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the machine gun back from Khan's grasp. 'You walk with me now, Mujahadin.'

A minute or two later the two injured men staggered up from the hollow with blood over their faces. Zek's nose was split and ballooning. They went to Vajgelis and Khan understood they were pleading to be allowed to kill him, but the request met with a tirade of abuse from Vajgelis, who tweaked Zek's ear and cuffed the younger man around the head.

A few minutes later they set off, Vajgelis at the head of the column and Khan just behind him with two older men now appointed as his minders. For four or five hours they walked along the parched tracks. As the sun sank behind the mountains they came to a lumber road littered with bark. The mules were tethered to the trees where they hung their heads and steamed and stamped their hooves. The men stood around smoking and glancing down the mountain.

Shortly, Khan saw truck lights slash through the trees and heard it grinding up towards them with many changes of gear. The men began to loosen the straps on the mules, but were told to stop by Vajgelis. He ordered them into the middle of the track with their guns showing. The truck appeared a few minutes later and pulled up. About a dozen men, all armed to the teeth, scrambled down from the back and flashed torches across the faces of the men in the road. Vajgelis moved forward. Recognising the driver of the truck, he signalled for the mules to be brought up and unloaded.

Long before this moment Khan had suspected that Vajgelis's band was involved in drug smuggling, not insurgency, and as the first tightly filled sacks were deposited at the tailgate of the truck, he wasn't in the least surprised to see the driver slit one open with a knife and taste the contents. Each time a mule was unloaded he sampled at random.

The time came for departure and the men from both sides lined up to face each other. Vajgelis pointed to a man in the line opposite and beckoned him across the track. Khan realised they were exchanging hostages. Now it was the driver's turn. Vajgelis moved closer to Khan, laid an arm round his shoulder and moved him back out of range of the truck lights. The trick worked perfectly. The driver walked over to them, placed his hand on Khan's other shoulder and steered him to the truck. Vajgelis laughed and murmured, 'Mujahadin is s.h.i.+t also.'

Khan was thrown in the back and n.o.body took much notice of him as the truck made its way down the mountain and then b.u.mped across a flat plain to the coast. A couple of hours later, the truck suddenly turned off the road, careered down a rutted track and juddered to a halt. The men tumbled out, unloaded the sacks and bore them off to a jetty where a powerboat was tethered. Khan could make out its shape in the dark and he heard the engine's exhaust spluttering in the gentle swell.

They set off back up the mountains and after a couple more hours came to a small, almost derelict village. They pulled up in some kind of farmyard or compound. Cats darted from the lights of the truck and some dogs barked. Here the remnants of an old agricultural living were jumbled with the trophies of drug trafficking. There were animal stalls, a collapsed cart and a hay-rick, but also a large satellite dish and a pair of identical black SUVs chained by the fenders to a metal post. Khan was stiff from the ride and moved gingerly into the light. When the men saw his face for the first time there was a sudden uproar, and he was pulled from one man to another, spat upon, kicked and rifle-b.u.t.ted. There was no doubt in Khan's mind that these were his last moments on earth. But their anger subsided and the driver who had picked him from Vajgelis' group walked up and looked him over, muttering imprecations under his breath and asking questions. All Khan could do was smile idiotically and shake his head saying, 'English? I speak English only.'

'No ingleesh,' said the driver. 'No ingleesh.'

He was taken to one of the stalls and tied to a beam, while they made a cursory search of his possessions. At length someone was fetched from a neighbouring village to interpret. He was a mild, emaciated man in middle age, wearing mittens and a scarf wrapped around his head though the night was warm. He introduced himself to Khan as Mr Skender. He had once been a waiter in London, he said, but returned to his village after developing tuberculosis. To Khan he looked very sick indeed.

'I have to hear some things from you,' said Skender, rubbing the circulation into his hands and wiping a runny nose. He gestured to the driver. 'Mr Berisha wants to know why you are working with Vajgelis. Tell Mr Berisha who you are.'

Khan gave his name and said that he had come overland from Pakistan, looking for work in the West. All the time looking directly at Berisha, he said he was from a high-born family but that he was without money. He had rich friends in the United States - one who was like a brother to him. This man would reward handsomely anyone who helped him now, in a way that was beyond Mr Berisha's dreams. He added that they should take no notice of his present appearance.

Skender gave a brief translation to the driver, who called for a table and chairs. More lights were brought. Berisha sat down and poured some konjak for Skender and himself.

'Mr Berisha thinks you are terrorist,' said Skender.

'Then tell Mr Berisha that I'm not a terrorist,' said Khan. 'All I want is to find work and continue my medical studies.'

'You are a doctor?' asked Skender doubtfully.

'I studied medicine in London and I plan to return there to continue.'

At the end of the translation Berisha stroked his chin and growled a few sentences.

'Mr Berisha wants to know why a doctor, an educated man, is in the mountains with Vajgelis? He is a very dangerous man, this Vajgelis. You are fortunate to be alive. He trusts only his own people.'

Khan told him about the killings on the road, his flight from the Macedonian security forces and how he'd met Vajgelis' group on the border. Berisha sat with his lower lip hanging and his foxy little eyes darting around Khan, as if this would somehow prise out his secret. Skender explained that Berisha was a very clever man: Khan's presence there was like a philosophical problem to him. He might be a Muslim terrorist, or he could be a Macedonian agent who'd been sent to infiltrate the network and report back to the authorities. Maybe he was a plant from the Vajgelis clan to see if his part of the network could be taken over. The very thought of this prompted Berisha to get up and prowl around the stable stabbing at his imagined foes in the dark.

'Mr Berisha wishes you to know that he is strong and will not tolerate a challenge to his authority in this part of the mountains from Vajgelis. He will cut Mr Vajgelis' t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and feed them to his dogs. He wishes you to tell this to Vajgelis if you are allowed to live long enough to see him again.'

To emphasise this point, Berisha opened a door and allowed two fighting dogs to bound into the stable and sniff around Khan's feet.

Skender went rigid. 'Mr Berisha will discover the truth of your mission if he has to rip your t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es off with his own teeth.'

'I can see that Mr Berisha is a man of standing,' said Khan, making sure that he did not give the dogs the slightest provocation. 'But tell him I could not be a plant because he chose me. Mr Berisha walked to the line and chose me himself. Vajgelis could not have engineered that.'