Ultimatum, page 17
‘Shall we?’ said Zahra, steering them towards a narrow alleyway where Chaplin could see hessian sacks piled high with dates, dried apricots and pistachios. As they moved deeper into the narrow confines of the bazaar, walking just two abreast now, the walls seemed to close in on their party, squeezing them through passageways where lacquered clocks competed against wall decorations carved with elaborate octagonal Islamic patterns. Curious, smiling faces loomed out of the shadows, passing them briefly, and were gone. And Geoffrey Chaplin realized to his surprise that he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He even tried his hand at exchanging a few words in broken Farsi with a cloth merchant.
It was when they reached the spice market, a stall on the corner selling bags of saffron, that they heard it. A deep-throated angry chanting, rising and falling, coming at them down the alleyway, like a rolling wave. Sara Vallance grabbed Chaplin’s arm and looked up at him in alarm. Chaplin glanced from her to his hosts. He could see the concern on their faces. The roar of voices was the same that they had encountered on the road out of Tehran airport. Chaplin recognized the words.
‘Marg bar Ingilistan! Marg bar Ingilistan!’
Chaplin whirled round. Craig Dunne was already beside him, his jacket open, looking this way and that as he searched for the best way out. He reached up to his earpiece, straining to hear what was being said above the noise in the bazaar. Moments later he turned to Chaplin and Sara Vallance. ‘We need to move! Right now! That was one of my officers up ahead. Says there are masses of protesters heading this way. Sounds like somebody’s tipped them off you’re here.’
Zahra, the interpreter, rushed up to them and tugged at Chaplin’s sleeve, pointing at an alleyway behind them and to the left. Shopkeepers were frantically bringing down the metal shutters on their displays and some were already rushing past them.
‘Come! Please come, Minister, we must go this way quickly!’ she said breathlessly. Chaplin could see the fear in her eyes and started to follow her but Craig Dunne had other ideas.
‘It could be a set-up,’ he hissed, in Chaplin’s ear. ‘We’ll go this way instead. Follow me.’ He led them down a second passageway, narrow yet almost deserted, but they hadn’t gone twenty metres before they stopped in their tracks. A solid stream of people was coming towards them. They didn’t look to Chaplin like protesters, more like shoppers and merchants, and they were abandoning their stalls and rushing down the passageway in a stampede of panic, trying to escape whatever was behind them. The trio of Britons was forced to flatten themselves against the walls to avoid being trampled and now, from somewhere close, came more chanting, so much closer now.
Suddenly there was the loud report of a firearm going off, followed immediately by screams. The noise sent a stab of fear through Chaplin and he flinched as a small fragment of the vaulted ceiling fell to the floor beside them, then a shower of masonry. Stumbling and tripping over bags of abandoned shopping, the group tried to turn back towards the ceramics bazaar. Craig Dunne kept looking round for their Iranian escort and, for a second, he thought he saw them, shepherding away their Foreign Minister before their heads disappeared in the crowd.
‘For God’s sake!’ Chaplin shouted at him, his voice rising in panic. ‘Get us out of here, will you!’
‘I’m trying!’ he shouted back. Dunne had his weapon drawn now, the Glock 19 cocked with the safety on, as he kept scanning for an exit. Sara Vallance was right behind him, the headscarf she had modestly put on to conform with her hosts had come loose and was now hanging halfway down her shoulder.
‘Oh, God!’ she screamed. ‘Here they are!’
Chaplin turned to see a wall of black-clad figures coming towards them, their heads wrapped in yellow headbands inscribed in Farsi, black-and-white scarves draped around their necks. With a jolt, he saw that one was brandishing a pistol. He was a huge, bearded figure, and in the split second he caught sight of him, Chaplin thought he looked exactly like the man who had lunged at their car as they’d left Tehran airport. Someone was shouting in English and he realized it was Dunne.
‘Over here!’ His Principal Protection Officer was gesturing frantically at a gap between market stalls. Sara Vallance was already squeezing through it, her headscarf now lost and trampled somewhere underfoot. Chaplin’s heart was thumping – he was unused to sudden physical exercise and knew he was slow. Dunne reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him through the gap. Looking around him, Dunne pointed at a dark recess beneath a trestle table, the nearest hiding place he could see. ‘Get down! Low! Lower!’ he hissed. ‘Cover your faces.’
They sank to the floor, flattening their bodies against the cold flagstones as booted feet trampled past in a blur of black. Thank God, thought Chaplin. But then he heard a triumphant shout, followed by a roaring cheer, and suddenly the crowd was back. Their hiding place had been discovered.
The mob came pouring through the market stalls. Dunne was already getting to his feet, both hands on the Glock that he now held steady in front of him. If the first young men to reach him had any fear they didn’t show it. Ignoring the policeman’s gun, they surged on top of the three Britons, overwhelming them in seconds. Dunne managed to fire once, a warning shot above their heads. It was a futile gesture. Arms reached out and, in a blur of limbs, the weapon was knocked out of his hand. Chaplin looked on in horror as Dunne was forced to the ground, his face pressed onto the rough stone floor. He could hear a woman screaming. It was Sara, his special adviser, her hands clamped over her face in terror at what she was witnessing. Now a man stood over Dunne, legs slightly apart, black shirtsleeves rolled up. In his hands he held a pistol and was aiming it, execution-style, at the Close Protection Officer’s head.
‘No!’ shouted Chaplin, and in that same instant he saw the pistol buck with the recoil as the shot reverberated all around the bazaar. Craig Dunne’s body slumped. Numb with shock, Chaplin stared. This couldn’t be happening. He turned to see another man knock Sara Vallance unconscious, then felt himself being dragged to his feet and a cloth clamped over his face.
Not far away, inside a windowless van parked in a side-street, a man in a grey tracksuit punched a message into his phone and sent it, using an encrypted app. It was a single word, one of millions criss-crossing cyberspace at that moment, and it made its way to an upstairs room in a nondescript building in Qom. The word was ‘Shalamcheh’ and the man who received it knew exactly what it meant.
It meant it had begun.
Chapter 43
Tehran
THE MOTORBIKE WAS parked in a side-street off Ferdowsi Avenue, engine idling. Two figures sat astride it, both in black leather jackets and helmets with tinted visors. The man in front revved the bike with a gloved hand, ready to go. Behind him, the pillion rider tensed, waiting. Then the earpiece inside his helmet crackled into life. It was the word they had been waiting for: ‘Shalamcheh.’ He tapped the rider in front twice on the left shoulder and held on tight as they accelerated down the street.
They drove fast, weaving and swerving through the backed-up traffic along Jomhouri Avenue, ignoring the angry hoots of motorists as they cut across them. At the junction with Ferdowsi Avenue, between the National Bank headquarters and a fast-food outlet, the bike swung left and hugged the red-brick walls of the British Embassy. Seconds before they reached the blue metal entrance gates, topped with spikes and flanked by a bronze lion rampant, the motorbike passenger reached down and grabbed a broken half-brick. He could see them clearly now, the two Iranian government guards posted outside the gates, armed with German Heckler & Koch MP5s. He had to time this just right. Make the move too soon – or too late – and he’d end up dead. They couldn’t afford a mistake and they had trained hard for this. Zamani had seen to that.
As they drew level with the embassy gates, he lobbed the brick onto the pavement between the two guards. Alerted by the roar of the bike, one swung round, bringing his weapon up to his shoulder and taking aim, but he was too late, his target had gone, vanished into the maelstrom of Tehran’s traffic. The other rushed forward to retrieve the brick.
Reg Weston saw the whole thing unfold on his CCTV monitor. As the embassy’s Regional Security Officer, he liked to keep a close eye on what was happening outside the compound gates. He, for one, would never forget what had happened in 2011 when a mob had breached the walls and ransacked the embassy. A former British Army bomb-disposal specialist, with many proud years of service in the Royal Engineers, his first thought now was that someone had hurled an improvised explosive device, an IED, at the embassy. He raced across the forecourt, through the security building and out onto Ferdowsi Avenue.
‘Don’t touch it!’ he yelled. He saw the guard holding what seemed to be a fragment of brick. ‘Move back!’ He walked slowly, carefully, to where the projectile lay. As he walked he reached into his pocket and pulled out the pair of purple forensic gloves he always carried for just such a contingency. His initial fears seemed to be unfounded. He couldn’t see any wires protruding, no obvious detonator. It looked like an ordinary brick, after all. Just a random piece of masonry used for a casual act of anti-Western vandalism.
He squatted down, cursing quietly as his knees cracked, and picked up the brick between the tips of his fingers, turning it over carefully. And that was when he saw the envelope taped to its underside. Scrawled on it in black ink were the words ‘TO BRITISH GOVERMENT’. The embassy guards were standing over him now and one was holding out his hand for him to pass it over. But Reg Weston, late of 33 Engineer Regt (EOD), was having none of that, no, sir. He peeled the envelope away from the brick, stuffed it inside his jacket pocket, then stood up facing the guards. ‘This,’ he announced, patting his pocket, ‘comes with me.’ And with that he strode back inside the embassy.
The Ambassador was still down in Isfahan, escorting the Foreign Secretary on his up-country trip, which by recent accounts seemed to be going rather well. So Reg Weston reckoned the right thing to do was to take the envelope straight to Clare James, the Deputy Head of Mission, or DHM. He was almost inside the main Chancery building when he heard the shout from within.
‘Christ! No!’
He covered the remaining distance at a sprint, flung open the door to the Chancery and found the DHM sitting bolt upright behind her desk, one hand clamped to her forehead, the other holding the phone. She was still on the line but she broke off to give him the catastrophic news. ‘There’s been an – an incident at the bazaar, in Isfahan.’ She was struggling to find the words to describe the colossal magnitude of what had just taken place. ‘The Foreign Secretary’s been taken. Kidnapped! By armed men. He’s been driven off and the Iranians are going all out to locate him now. His SPAD’s been injured, she’s concussed, but she’ll be okay. But, oh, God, Reg, I’ve got some terrible news. Craig Dunne, his Protection Officer? I think you knew him?’
Weston sat down heavily in a padded armchair and nodded. He already knew from the tone of her voice what was coming.
‘He’s – he’s been killed. Doing his job. Trying to protect the Foreign Secretary. I’m going to have to notify his next of kin. Whitehall will go ballistic.’
Reg Weston didn’t answer at first. He looked away from her to the grandiose painting on the wall behind her, some imperial grandee with a sheathed sword and plumed hat, a nineteenth-century relic from the Great Game, a throwback to the days when Britain and Russia were vying for control of the trade routes to India. Well, there’s not much of a game about this, he thought. This is bloody serious. He had known Craig Dunne for years, met him as an instructor on a training course at Hendon. And now he was gone. Dead. Killed in the line of duty. It was a lot to take in. And then he remembered the envelope, just as the DHM was putting down the phone to the team in Isfahan.
‘We’ve had an incident here ourselves, just now,’ he told her. ‘Two blokes on a bike just went past and threw a brick at Gate Security. They got away but I’ve retrieved this. It was taped to the brick.’ He pulled out the envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
‘You’d better open it,’ she told him. ‘Here, use this.’ She passed him a silver letter-opener from her desk, engraved with the letters ER.
Reg Weston held up the envelope to the light, making one final check that it didn’t contain something nasty. Then he slit it open and gingerly removed a single sheet of paper, holding it by one corner. It would have to be sent to the forensic labs at Fort Halstead and dusted for prints later. The page was a handwritten note, in Farsi, a language that had so far eluded him. He held the letter in front of the Deputy Ambassador. Clare James put on her spectacles and leaned forward to read the message. Reg Weston watched her as she mouthed the words in Farsi, her brow furrowing.
When she had finished she sat back and turned to him. Her jaw was set firm, her eyes narrowed. Weston had never seen her look like that: she seemed almost feral.
‘So what does it say?’ he prompted her.
‘It’s an ultimatum, Reg. It’s a frigging ultimatum.’ Her voice was very low and quiet. ‘They’ve given us a deadline.’
‘What deadline? Who’s they?’
‘The people who’ve taken the Foreign Secretary. They’re holding him and they’re threatening to kill him if there’s a rescue mission.’
‘But what’s the deadline?’ he reminded her. She seemed distracted, which was hardly surprising. All hell was about to break loose.
‘They’ve given us a time limit. Just forty-two hours to withdraw all Western military forces from the Gulf or …’
‘Or what?’ Again, he probably knew the answer even as he spoke.
‘Or they’ll murder the Foreign Secretary on the morning of the third day. Live on camera.’
Chapter 44
Tehran
THREE MISSED CALLS, all from Vauxhall Cross. In the hum and din of Tehran traffic Luke hadn’t noticed his phone ringing as he made his way back to his first-floor room at the Hotel Shahrestan. His mind was busy working out how best to ‘play’ Tannaz, now he’d shown her the photos. She’d been shocked, no doubt about it. He’d got the reaction he’d hoped for. But shocked enough to inform on her father? No, he definitely needed more time.
So if this call was some deskbound reports officer in London pestering him to come up with fresh material on Zamani he’d tell them where to get off. Luke would do this his way, on his terms and his timetable. He dialled Vauxhall Cross. The phone was answered on the second ring. It was his immediate boss, Angela.
‘Have you heard what’s happened?’ Her voice sounded unusually brittle.
‘No? What?’ Luke was at the far end of the corridor outside his room. If he kept his voice down, he reckoned it was probably the safest place to make a call, just in case someone was listening in on his room.
‘The Foreign Secretary’s been kidnapped. In Isfahan.’
‘What? When? Who’s got him?’
‘About … twenty-five minutes ago. We don’t know who’s behind it yet. The host country’s denying all blame. As you’d expect. Oh, and the kidnappers have issued an ultimatum. Forty-two hours for Western forces to leave the Gulf.’ She let out a long sigh.
‘Jesus …’ Luke was still struggling to digest this news. ‘Forty-two hours? That’s a strange number, what’s that about?’
‘It takes us to oh nine hundred local the day after tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Maybe they’re timing it for maximum news effect. We just don’t know.’
‘So how did this happen?’ Luke pressed. ‘What about his CP team? Didn’t he have a bodyguard with him?’
‘He did. And he’s dead. Listen, we don’t have time to go into that now. We need you to focus one hundred per cent on finding the Foreign Secretary.’ From the urgency in her voice he could only guess at the pressure now piling onto the Service. ‘Do whatever it takes, spend whatever you have to,’ she continued. ‘Just find out where he’s being held and who’s got him. We’ll do the rest. You’ll have all the back-up you need.’
That’s what you said when you sent me to Armenia, Luke thought, but he didn’t say it.
‘Can you use Elixir?’ Angela continued.
‘I’ll try. She’s seen the photos now. It’s made an impression. But she’s not ready yet. I’ll need more time.’ He detected another sigh down the line.
‘We don’t have it, Luke. I can’t tell you how serious this is. Things are on a knife-edge here. We don’t know how Washington’s going to react. This could be just the provocation the White House is looking for.’
‘For what?’
‘Do I have to spell it out? The hawks in DC have been angling for something like this for months. Now Iran has just handed it to them on a plate. So you’d better get out there and find Chaplin for us. Before it’s too late.’
‘Or what?’ Luke persisted.
‘Before the Foreign Secretary is murdered and this turns into Gulf War Three. With ballistic missiles.’ She hung up.
Chapter 45
Whitehall, London
IN THE INNER office at Number 10 they had been going over the final preparations for Prime Minister’s Questions. Once again, the weekly Wednesday session in Parliament looked set to be dominated by questions over Brexit, trade deals, the single European market, immigration and the NHS. It was all there in the notes for the PM. Specific instructions had been left for no interruptions and all calls were to be held. But this call was an exception. It came from Sir Charles Bennett, the National Security Adviser. He could have walked across from the Cabinet Office, only a few corridors away, but what he had to say couldn’t wait and he asked to be put straight through to the PM.
