Ultimatum, page 18
There were only three people in the room when that call came through, just three people in 10 Downing Street who now knew the full extent of what had taken place in a country three thousand miles away. There was the PM, his Chief of Staff and his principal speechwriter.
In the shocked silence that followed it was the Chief of Staff who was the first to speak. ‘We’ll have to cancel PMQs,’ she said, already pulling out her phone. ‘I’ll get onto the Speaker’s Office straight away.’ She began scrolling through her contacts, searching for the number, but the PM held up his hand to stop her. Cancelling Prime Minister’s Questions was a rare and drastic step. The last time it had happened had been in 2009 when David Cameron’s son had died. Cancelling them now would immediately set the hares racing when the news from Iran was not yet out.
‘No,’ said the PM, emphatically. ‘We will end the session in Parliament at twelve thirty sharp, not a minute later. I will chair COBRA in the Cabinet Office immediately afterwards. Make sure we get everybody who needs to be there. And I want to speak to our Ambassador directly. Get him on the line, will you?’
COBRA – short for ‘Cabinet Office Briefing Room’ – was the government’s crisis response team, convened in times of national emergency. It had assembled in record time, just fifty-seven minutes after the call came through to Number 10. From Vauxhall Cross came Sir Adam Keeling, Chief of SIS, and his Director of Counter-terrorism, Sid Khan. From New Scotland Yard came the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and from the MoD the Director of Special Forces. Others, like Jane Haslett from the FCO, had less far to travel. Some, like the Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Jeremy Buckshaw, had only to make their way across on foot from MoD Main Building, or use the secret underground passage beneath Whitehall to reach Building 70. Others were dropped off by car. Only the Director General of GCHQ, the government listening station in Cheltenham, was unable to cover the distance from Gloucestershire in time. Instead, he’d sent a deputy from their little-known office in St James’s.
In the hushed underground conference room concealed beneath the pavements and government offices of Whitehall, the meeting began bang on time with a grim announcement from the PM.
‘As most of you are aware, the unthinkable has happened. Just under two hours ago Geoffrey Chaplin, our Foreign Secretary, was taken hostage by armed men in the city of Isfahan while on a ministerial visit to Iran. His Close Protection Officer, Craig Dunne, was murdered while trying to prevent his abduction. We’ve informed his next of kin. Now, I’ve spoken to Mervyn Davies, our Ambassador to Iran – he’s on his way back from Isfahan – and his view is that the Iranian government was not behind this. But, of course, we still hold them entirely responsible. We have also received what amounts to a ransom note, an ultimatum if you will, with an impossible demand. The sender is calling for all Western forces to be withdrawn from the Gulf within forty-two hours, which is clearly a non-starter.’
‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Prime Minister.’ It was Sir Jeremy Buckshaw, the Chief of Defence Staff, who spoke, a veteran of many COBRA meetings but none as serious as this. The operational medals emblazoned across his chest stood testimony to his experience in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierre Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘Has Washington been told?’
‘Thank you, CDS. The Ambassador in DC is briefing the White House as we speak. So …’ A pause to let everyone in the room digest what they had just heard. No one moved a muscle. ‘As Mervyn is still in transit back to Tehran I’m going to ask Clare James, his deputy, to give us her assessment of the situation.’
All eyes turned to the video display screen at the far end of the room where a worried face swam into focus. Just visible behind her, a pale green wall was hung with antique gilt-framed prints, all softly lit. It was an oddly calming backdrop, completely at odds with the reality of what had just taken place. Clare James’s disembodied voice erupted from the speakers, a little too loud, as she launched straight in, without preamble.
‘We are working flat out with the host nation,’ she told the COBRA meeting, ‘to establish the whereabouts of the Foreign Secretary. I’ve just got off the phone to Dr Askari, Iran’s Foreign Minister, and he’s given me personal assurance that his government had nothing to do with this. I should add—’
‘Do you believe him, Clare?’ interrupted the PM.
‘I’m sorry? Could you repeat that?’ The video picture quivered on the screen then froze, treating the room to an image of the Deputy Head of Mission with her mouth half open in mid-sentence, her eyes tight shut as she collected her thoughts. Then it came back onstream.
‘Do we believe Dr Askari? Can we take him at his word?’ The PM was frowning, his fingers drumming impatiently on the table, as if he had already made up his mind. ‘Because if we don’t think he’s telling the truth, if the Iranian government turns out to be behind this, well, it’s effectively an act of war, isn’t it?’ He was looking directly at the Chief of Defence Staff as he said this but he knew that his next conversation was probably going to have to be with the Attorney General. No one in the room was an expert on the legal ramifications of a British Foreign Secretary getting kidnapped overseas.
‘Yes …’ came the answer, from deep within the embassy compound in Tehran, the voice sounding somewhat hesitant. ‘I do believe Dr Askari is being sincere.’ Then she added: ‘This is a national embarrassment for the Iranians. At least, it will be as soon as it breaks. We’ve agreed a news blackout on it for now to give them a chance to find him – Geoffrey, that is. Meanwhile there’s this.’ She held up a piece of typewritten paper towards the camera – she was wearing a pair of forensic gloves. The paper was too blurred for anyone to read. ‘It was delivered to our embassy here just after three this afternoon by two men on a motorbike. They haven’t been found yet. I’ll translate it for you.’ She put on her glasses, then began to read out loud: ‘“To the British government. We have your minister. He is safe for now. We have one simple demand for his release. All imperialist Western armed forces must commit to vacate Persian Gulf waters. Today is Day One. You have until 0900 on Day Three, Iran time. If you do not comply then we regret your minister will be killed and his death will be broadcast.”’
Clare James removed her spectacles and looked straight into the camera again, her pale face looming just a little too close to the lens. ‘So it’s an ultimatum. Just forty-two hours to pull out of the Gulf. It’s totally absurd. Whoever’s behind this knows full well we’re not going to comply. So it’s a stunt, they’re testing us, but I think we have to assume they’re serious. Serious, that is, about carrying out their threat …’
Her words hung for a moment in the room. Almost everyone there that afternoon had met Geoffrey Chaplin at some time in their career. ‘A likeable chap’, ‘A safe pair of hands’, ‘Not one to rock the boat’. People rarely had anything bad – or exciting – to say about him. So the idea of the Foreign Secretary now being bundled away by armed men in a distant country was just too hard to contemplate.
It was the PM who broke the silence, addressing the COBRA meeting in a deadpan voice. ‘Right. I would like to know two things. Who is behind this? And what can we bring to bear, right now, to effect his release, unharmed?’ He turned towards the video screen. ‘Clare, are you still hearing us there?’
‘I am, Prime Minister.’ A two-second delay, then a nod.
‘I’m getting a team of Met detectives over to you today, from the Hostage and Crisis Negotiation Unit. I don’t want to hear any nonsense from Tehran about not letting them in. Full access, d’you understand? See that they get it.’
Another nod from Clare James on the video screen.
A sharp cough and everyone turned their attention to the Secret Intelligence Service Chief, who sat two chairs down from the PM on the left. ‘I’d like to add something, if I may.’ Quietly effective, Sir Adam Keeling had risen through the ranks of MI6, establishing himself as a Soviet expert during the Cold War, later moving with the times to focus instead on what Whitehall liked to call ‘international terrorism’, meaning the jihadist threat from Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Trying to keep tabs on Iran’s covert nuclear activities and cultivate agents inside that country had also been a priority in his service for years. ‘There is a strong possibility there’s a link here to the hardliners in the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards. They’ve been looking for ways to embarrass their own government since before the last elections. They’re even more determined now. They want the reforms put on hold and they want Iran to return to international isolation. They’re the only ones with the brass to do something like this. It’s got their stamp all over it.’
‘Hold on, that’s a pretty strong statement, if you don’t mind my saying.’ The National Security Adviser swept his glasses off his face and gave Keeling a fixed smile, devoid of all warmth. ‘Would you care to share some of the evidence for this conclusion?’
‘Not in this room, right now, no, I’m afraid I wouldn’t,’ he replied, returning him an equally frosty smile. ‘I’m quite sure you’ll understand my reasons.’ There was a grunt from the National Security Adviser. It was clear he was far from satisfied.
‘Right now,’ cut in the PM, ‘we need to stay focused on one thing alone. And that’s finding Geoffrey.’ He turned to the Chief of Defence Staff. ‘Sir Jeremy, I want a hostage-rescue team put on standby. I don’t care if the Iranians say they can handle it. This is our problem, we own it, and we need to move extremely fast.’
Chapter 46
South Tehran suburbs
GEOFFREY CHAPLIN COULDN’T move. He was in pain, he was in shock, and he was terrified. Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs lay helpless on the hard metal floor of a moving van, slumped in the spot where they had dragged and deposited him earlier. He was gagged, blindfolded, his hands bound behind his back with plasticuffs. After years of moving through life in a protected ministerial bubble, he was now completely defenceless.
The shock of capture, back there in the Isfahan bazaar, was still raw. While he tried hard not to, he couldn’t help replaying those last terrifying minutes over and over in his head. What had become of his team? Oh, God. Craig Dunne was dead. He had watched it happen with his own eyes, that man standing over him with the pistol, execution-style. And Sara? He remembered seeing her struck, but then what? Was she a captive too? Bound, gagged and humiliated like him, being driven away by masked men in the back of some lurching van?
The one thing he wasn’t thinking of was escape. Geoffrey Chaplin had no military experience. Instead, years of parliamentary lunches and endless sedentary meetings in Westminster had left him decidedly overweight and out of shape. On the cusp of his sixty-second birthday, he had already been told by his doctor that he needed to reduce his cholesterol and take more exercise. He also needed a stronger pair of glasses. Geoffrey Chaplin was in no position to put up a fight or make a run for it. He knew his best chance of getting through this in one piece was to cooperate and do exactly as his abductors demanded. There would be others, surely, working frantically on his release.
And now he desperately needed to pee. He grunted as loudly as he could through the cloth gag around his mouth but, with all the noise and movement, nobody heard him. They seemed to be travelling at speed, turning sharply to left and right, accelerating then braking abruptly. Every turn meant more pain, his head banging into something hard and metallic, the plasticuffs biting into the chafed flesh of his wrists. And he felt car-sick. He wondered what would happen if he threw up into his gag. Would he end up choking on his own vomit? What a dreadful way to go – and what a pitiful end that would be to his thirty-two-year political career.
A sudden screech of brakes and he felt himself sliding briefly, helplessly across the metal floor of the van, then crashing into some other hard object. They had stopped. Oh, God, what now? Was this about to be his execution? Who were these people, for Christ’s sake? He could hear the van’s rear door being yanked open, letting in a flood of daylight that he sensed from behind his blindfold. It must still be late afternoon, then. Chaplin could hear several voices all talking at once in hushed tones. Then hands were grabbing him and he was being half pulled, half lifted out of the back of the van. They were trying to make him stand, he could feel arms holding him roughly on either side but at first his legs gave way and he fell in a heap at their feet. When they pulled him up and made him try again, something happened. His blindfold slipped, only a fraction. They had wrapped it round his glasses and now the gap was just enough for him to catch a glimpse of the men who held him. Police uniforms. Good God, they were wearing Iranian police uniforms! He was no expert but they looked identical to those worn by the very people who had been chaperoning him around Tehran only yesterday. So was this an Iranian government operation after all? It couldn’t be, could it? But then he remembered the hostage crisis back in 2007, when five Britons had been seized in Baghdad. True, that was Iraq, not Iran, but the kidnappers had belonged to a fanatical Shia militia group trained in Iran and, as he remembered from the reports at the time, they had worn stolen Iraqi police uniforms.
‘Toilet,’ he mumbled through his gag.
‘No toilet,’ came the answer, and now he was being steered towards another vehicle – he could hear its engine running. Switching vehicles? That would make sense, buying his abductors more time. More time? Heavens, why hadn’t he been rescued already? What was taking them so long, for God’s sake? Chaplin fought to control the rising panic that was welling inside him. Suddenly he could feel rough hands grabbing his own behind his back. There was a click and his wrists were free of the plasticuffs, blood coming back into his hands. So he was being released. Well, good. I should think so. About time. He’d expect a full apology from the Iranians after this. And a detailed report from his own side once he got back to London. But no one was removing the gag, or the blindfold. And now someone was tugging at his clothes and there was a man saying something to him, just behind his ear.
‘Take off your clothes,’ said a menacing voice, in English. A wave of panic swept over him as his mind leaped to the unthinkable. He hugged his jacket tightly around him and hunched his shoulders. He was damned if he was undressing for anybody.
‘No,’ he told them firmly, through the gag, but it came out so distorted it sounded like a grunt. The next thing he knew someone was kicking his legs out from under him and he was flat on the ground. It took them less than thirty seconds to strip him of his jacket and shirt. His shoes took a little longer, the precious polished brown brogues, from the shop in Jermyn Street, that Gillian had given him. Next to go were his socks and finally he could feel them unbuckling his belt and pulling off his trousers as his arms were held back. So this is it, he thought, this is how it happens. Still blindfolded and unable to see what was coming next, he flinched as a man’s hand reached down between his legs and briefly cupped his genitals before feeling all around the seam of his underpants. He said something to the others in Farsi, then felt a garment being pulled up over his legs and his arms being pushed through holes. It was a boiler suit, and it smelt of diesel. The moment it was on him they stood him up and led him over to the other vehicle.
‘Toilet!’ he protested again, through his gag. ‘I need the damn toilet.’ But no one paid any attention as he was pushed through onto the floor of another van and the doors slammed shut behind him. And that was when he realized it. These people were serious. They knew what they were doing. There was a reason they had made him change clothes back there, and it wasn’t about humiliating a visiting British minister. They must have guessed he’d have a tracking device on him. By now they must have found it, his Track24 Pocket Buddy, the personal GPS satellite locator device that the FCO Security people had insisted was Velcroed into the inside of his left sock. Which meant that right now, someone back in Tehran or London ought to be able to see where he was on a map. So why hadn’t he been rescued? For the second time he asked himself what was taking them so long. Every minute that passed, now that he’d been separated from his tracker, meant his chances of being found were reducing.
As the van moved off he felt his gag being untied and someone was trying to push something into his mouth. He turned his head away, then realized it was a straw.
‘Drink,’ said a voice, and he did as he was told. Chaplin hadn’t drunk anything since the banquet in Isfahan and his throat was parched. It tasted like warm, flat Coca-Cola but he drank it anyway. And now, of course, he was desperate to pee. It was when the vehicle gave a particularly violent jolt that he couldn’t help himself, and he let it go. Slowly, the hot, wet sensation spread from his groin down his legs and he could smell the familiar acrid tang of ammonia. He heard a low ripple of laughter from the people around him. Their captive had just humiliated himself. Slumped in the back of a van, being driven across Iran by armed men, Geoffrey Chaplin was cramped, blindfolded and soaked in his own urine. Like the ominous signs of an approaching storm, he felt something he hadn’t known in a very long time: the beginnings of despair.
Chapter 47
COBRA, Whitehall
‘OH, CHRIST!’ THE Prime Minister held the tablet at arm’s length as if he really didn’t want to read its contents. The COBRA meeting had been about to break up when a Number 10 aide had dashed breathlessly in and handed it to him. The PM now held it up for everyone in the room to see before examining it more closely.
‘The story’s got out,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s already in the public domain.’ Lurid colours danced across the screen and a banner headline screamed: ‘Chaplin Kidnapped!’ It was a MailOnline exclusive and there were subheadings like ‘War with Iran’. Beneath a large file photograph of the Foreign Secretary, there was a map of Iran and then a smaller photo of Craig Dunne, his murdered bodyguard.
‘A tearful relative of Mr Dunne contacted the Daily Mail to tell them he had died a hero,’ read the paragraph beneath that. ‘But she blamed the Foreign Office for putting him in harm’s way.’ The PM stopped reading and addressed the room, face stern, brow furrowed. ‘This crisis is now in the public eye,’ he told them. ‘Everything we do to resolve it is going to be picked over by the media. Foreign Office Counter-terrorism will take the lead, which means all enquiries are to go through their news desk. I do not want to hear of anyone else blabbing to the press. Is that clear?’ There were nods up and down the table.
