Ultimatum, page 29
Together they stumbled and ran through the oozing mud, tripping on mangrove roots in the dark as the noise of the helicopter filled their ears. He heard Tannaz cry out in fear. The searchlight beam was swinging closer to them. Seeking them out. Luke urged her on, dragging her alongside him until their feet hit the sand of the shoreline and they hurtled headlong into the inky waters of the Gulf.
‘Get down!’ he urged her. Tannaz couldn’t hear him, she was still standing half out of the water, staring up at the helicopter above them, transfixed by the cacophony from its rotor blades as it hovered along the shoreline. The down-draught from the rotors was whipping up the water, driving a wall of spray into their eyes. It felt like they were in the eye of a hurricane.
Luke reached up and pulled her down into the water. He began to kick out, swim away from the shore, Tannaz following him. But now the search beam was racing across the water towards them. If it didn’t change course it would find them any second now.
‘Dive!’ he yelled, twisting his head round in the water to check she was still with him. Luke took a last gulp of air and plunged under the surface, just as the silver beam began to light up the surface above him. He held his breath for as long as he could, groping his way to the shallow seabed, reaching out to grab hold of submerged mangrove roots as the gust from the helicopter rocked the water. He prayed that Tannaz was doing the same.
Fifty-five seconds later he broke the surface, gasping for air, shaking the water out of his eyes. Tannaz was nowhere to be seen but, looking up, he was greeted by the sweetest sight he could have hoped for: the chopper’s red tail-light receding into the night sky, its searchlight still sweeping to and fro. It had missed them.
‘I’m over here!’ He could hear Tannaz’s voice, high and plaintive, from somewhere across the water. Struggling to his feet in the soft sand, he waded towards her. She was back on the shore where they had just come from, sitting on the mud, her knees drawn up to her chest. She was trembling with cold and fear. He sat down next to her and pulled her close to him, sharing his body warmth with her.
‘What are we doing here?’ she asked. ‘This is crazy, just crazy!’ She was shaking her head in despair.
I did try to warn you, Tannaz. But there was no point in telling her that. He – they – needed to stay focused. They were cold, wet and being hunted, like prey, and Luke understood only too well that it was at this point, when the odds seemed stacked against you, despair could set in. He remembered a survival exercise in Scotland to avoid capture by the hunter force of Paras. He had learned a lot about himself that day. Now he needed to sort himself out and remind himself of what this mission was about. Get to Qeshm Island. Locate Zamani and his hostage. Guide in the rescue team. If he could just focus on that, everything else would fall into place – in theory. Luke examined his phone, turning it over in his hand. The digital display was blinking on and off, and he could see the battery was already running low, but at least they’d given him a waterproof model.
With the helicopter gone, the sounds of the swamp had returned, with all its invisible slitherings and scuttlings. He should probably warn her about snakes, but there was only so much he could heap on her at one time.
‘It’s not just us two facing a crisis,’ he told her. ‘These are crazy times for the whole country. So listen, Tannaz, this is what needs to happen now. We’re going to work our way around this shoreline until we can find a boat to steal.’
‘Steal a boat?’ she questioned.
‘Yes.’
Tannaz thought about this, then shrugged. ‘Okay. And then?’
‘Then we’ll get across to Qeshm and find your dad. You’ll go to him and plead with him to end this hostage crisis. That’s our plan, right?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Tannaz? That’s the plan, okay? Because if we don’t get to him before the deadline expires, the hostage could die and that would be a disaster for Iran. It might result in a war and your country would be ruined.’
‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, her voice tailing off. ‘I just don’t know how he will react. My father can be very cruel. That’s why Mama is leaving him.’ She looked up at him, as if suddenly remembering he was there. ‘What do you think he will say to me?’
‘I have no idea, but I do know we’ve got to keep going. The police and security people will keep looking for us, and when daylight comes they’ll find our footprints so we don’t have much time.’ He helped her to her feet and brushed the mud off her shawl. ‘Let’s get moving.’ He checked his diver’s watch and bit his lip. Less than ten hours before the ultimatum ran out.
The going was slow but they were helped by the crescent moon that now rose above the horizon, casting enough of its cold light to guide them along the shore. Neither spoke.
It was Tannaz who spotted them. In the distance, the twinkling lights of a fishing village on the coast of Qeshm. Too far to swim, but at least they had something to aim for. It was another hour before they found what they were looking for: roped to a mangrove tree and bobbing gently in the water, a small open boat, its outboard motor tilted up out of the mud. Could you hotwire an outboard? Luke knew plenty of people he’d served with in the SBS who could. He wasn’t one of them. His question proved academic. As he and Tannaz grabbed hold of the boat’s gunwales and were about to climb in, a figure clutching a boat hook reared up and lurched towards them, yelling in Farsi. Luke was ready to fend off the attack that seemed to be coming, but the man they’d disturbed was elderly. He looked more frightened than threatening.
Tannaz answered the man, her voice low and soothing, and he lowered the boathook. She had reached into a pocket and pulled out a wad of sodden banknotes and was holding them out to him. Luke could see him thinking this one through as he hesitated. What could a young city girl and a Western man be doing, their clothes soaked, on the edge of this mangrove swamp in the middle of the night? Were they eloping? Indulging in immoral relations? Should he report them to the authorities? But his eyes kept flicking back to the banknotes, and Luke breathed a sigh of relief when he saw him take them from Tannaz and stuff them into his top pocket. They climbed into his boat.
After what they had just been through, the sound of an outboard coughing into life, then puttering them out into open water, was familiar and reassuring. They were still wet and cold, but at least they were on their way. The sea’s surface caught the moonlight in a myriad tiny silver reflections and the occasional fish leaped clear of the water as they passed, returning with a gentle plop. The boat’s engine was old and weak, and was chugging along at less than ten knots, but Luke had reason to be relieved. They had escaped Bandar Abbas and were on their way to Qeshm. He settled back on a coil of rope and turned his face against the wind, rubbing the scarred stump of his missing finger. It always ached as the adrenalin began to ease off. Lulled by the gentle sound of the engine, he dozed off.
He awoke to the crunch of the boat sliding up onto sand and shingle.
‘Jazireh-o-Qeshm,’ the old man announced. They had arrived.
A cloud had passed over the moon but in the faint light Luke could see the outline of low buildings a few hundred yards along the shore. He moved to the front of the boat and jumped clear, landing with a crunch on the wet shingle.
‘Wait here and I’ll help you down,’ he called to Tannaz, then went off to check that the shoreline was deserted. A stifled cry of pain greeted him when he got back. Tannaz had ignored his suggestion and jumped, landing awkwardly on her ankle. He rushed over to her and found her wincing in pain and gripping her leg. ‘Tannaz! Let me see if you’ve broken anything.’
But she waved him away. ‘Khaak bar saret,’ she moaned. ‘God damn you.’
Luke ignored her protests and gently felt around her ankle. It wasn’t broken but it was almost certainly sprained. She’d be unable to walk on it now. Behind them came the sound of the fisherman pushing off from the shore, then the putter of his outboard as he pulled away. In the silence, a dog barked in the distance. They were alone, marooned on the shore, with no means of transport, and they had just one dodgy phone with a dying battery between them. There were only a few hours left to hide before daylight. And one of them couldn’t walk. Brilliant, Luke thought. We are completely fucked.
Chapter 79
British Embassy, Dubai
SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT a white van, emblazoned with the words ‘FedEx Express’ in English and Arabic, pulled up close to the well-guarded gates of the British Embassy in Dubai. Having checked the paperwork, the driver stepped down from his cab, walked to the sentry house next to the gate and tapped on the reinforced glass. One of the two Gurkha guards on duty recognized the man and waved him round to a side window. There he handed over the package. Neither large nor heavy but bulging slightly in the middle, the white envelope was wrapped in cellophane. It was addressed to the Ambassador and marked ‘Urgent’. The junior Gurkha on night duty who signed for it followed the standard protocol: he passed it through the embassy’s HI-SCAN 7555 high-resolution X-ray sensor, checking for any microscopic particles of explosive residue. When the LED display on the machine signalled ‘Clear’, he carried the package across the embassy’s inner courtyard, past the well-watered lawns and flowering bougainvillaea, and inside the main building to the night duty officer.
John Holmes was a retired policeman: thirty-one years of service with the West Yorkshire Police, several on the homicide and major inquiry team, before he’d taken a nice retirement job at the embassy in Dubai. John reckoned he’d seen most things in his time. Not a lot, he told people, could shock him, these days. So when the guard handed him the parcel and he started to open it on the table in his office, his mind was on other things. It was coming up to his ex-wife’s birthday and he really ought to get himself down to the gold souk and buy her something decent this time.
It was the moment the smell hit his nostrils that he knew something was wrong. Using a stainless-steel letter-opener, Holmes slit open the cellophane wrapper and immediately recoiled. Jesus, what was that? He stopped, went over to a drawer in the cupboard and pulled on a pair of blue forensic gloves. Ever so carefully, he teased out the paper padding inside the envelope. It was the front page of yesterday’s edition of Iran’s Kayhan newspaper. A small, laminated card, about the size of a business card, dropped onto the table. On it was printed:
Sevenoaks Library
Buckhurst Lane, Sevenoaks, TL13 1LQ
Member: G. Chaplin
Membership No.: 4365
And at the top right-hand corner a photograph left no doubt as to who the library card belonged to: the Right Honourable Geoffrey Chaplin, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
But there was something else inside the envelope and now Holmes reached in to pull it out. Blue cellophane had been wrapped around a small cylindrical object. He looked more closely at it. It appeared to be stained a deep red and felt slightly soft to the touch. With a rising sense of revulsion, John Holmes suddenly knew exactly what it was.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, to the empty room. ‘They’ve hacked off his bloody finger!’
Chapter 80
Vauxhall Cross
IN LONDON THE lights were burning on the sixth floor at Vauxhall Cross. Angela Scott paused in front of the outer door to the Chief’s office and checked her reflection in one of the framed glass photographs on the wall. The tired face of a forty-one-year-old career intelligence officer stared back at her, surreally superimposed onto an image of the Prince of Wales visiting MI6 headquarters.
As Luke Carlton’s line manager, she was on point for the Iran op, so the buck stopped with her. Sending him on a live mission into Iran, a ‘hostile nation’, had always been a gamble but it was one she’d been willing to take. He had initiative – he had more than proved that in South America – and he clearly had balls of steel. So she had backed him, against the advice of some of her seniors, and been vindicated. Only today his getting them Zamani’s private phone number had been hailed as nothing short of a triumph. GCHQ now had a fix on Zamani’s location.
But something was wrong. Luke had missed both his last two check-in times. It was supposed to be a simple coded text message – the single word ‘Iskander’ – sent through the VPN network via Akrotiri. Just enough to let his controllers in London know he was okay and still on-mission. Protocol dictated she shouldn’t contact him for another hour. Case officers can make mistakes, they’re only human, or they can be engaged in something so sensitive they can’t make the call at the appointed time. But when the silence from Luke extended past the second hour a knot of worry began to grow and fester in the pit of Angela’s stomach. This was unlike Luke. He would be well aware of the pressure mounting on the Service. COBRA, the National Security Council, Number 10 – they were all demanding to know when MI6’s man on the ground would be ready to guide in the rescue team. So now Angela was going to have to confess to the Chief that her protégé had gone dark on them.
She lifted her hand to knock on the outer door but it swung open before she could. The Chief’s PA was waiting for her. An intense, earnest young man, he now stood awkwardly in the doorway, waving her past him into the inner sanctum. ‘You’ll have to be quick,’ he told her, as Angela brushed past with murmured thanks. ‘C’s about to head across the river.’
They stood in the Chief’s office, at opposite ends of the gaudy Caucasian carpet, an unsolicited gift from some distant intelligence service in one of the former Soviet republics. Sir Adam Keeling already had his overcoat on and was hunting around for his glasses.
‘Your man Carlton did well,’ he told Angela briskly. ‘That phone number came at exactly the right time. The wheels are turning now. So, I gather you’ve got an update for me?’
Angela swallowed hard. Don’t look nervous. Just give it to him straight. ‘I know it’s not what you want to hear, Chief.’ Keeling stopped searching for his glasses and frowned at her. ‘But we’ve lost contact with Luke Carlton. He’s missed the last two check-ins.’
She saw him take a pace backwards and, for one awful moment, she thought he was going to explode with anger. Hell, it was hardly her fault that Luke had gone silent – he’d have a good reason for it. She just couldn’t produce it right now.
Keeling pursed his lips. She could see him thinking hard, and when he spoke, it was as if he were making a supreme effort to control himself. ‘I am quite certain,’ he said slowly, ‘that you’ll make every effort to locate him. Luke is instrumental to this whole operation. Please, Angela, just find him and keep him focused on the endgame. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be in the Cabinet Office.’
For the first time in her career, Angela Scott found herself standing alone in the private office of the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. She looked up past the row of souvenir gifts arranged on the windowsill – the carved wooden seagull, the miniature Omani incense burner, the curved Bahraini dagger – all donated over the years by intelligence partners around the world. Her gaze went beyond them to a barge on the Thames far below. It was emerging from beneath the darkened arches of Vauxhall Bridge. As she watched it, she felt sick with worry. Right now I have no idea if Luke is alive, dead or, quite conceivably, being carted off in chains for an Iranian interrogation. And I was the one who sent him.
Chapter 81
HMS Juffair Naval Base, Bahrain
BLEARY-EYED, EXHAUSTED AND surrounded by the detritus of a team on high alert, Lieutenant Colonel Chip Nuttall, Commanding Officer, SBS, stared at the screen in front of him, his head held between his hands. A green blip on the monitor showed the location of HMS Astute as she made painfully slow progress through the Strait of Hormuz. To the north and to the east, a scattering of red blips indicated the known positions of Iranian naval vessels.
Like all of his team, Nuttall was running on caffeine and adrenalin. The bin beside his desk inside the Royal Navy base at Mina Salman port in Bahrain was overflowing with half-compacted pizza boxes. A camp bed had been set up in the room next door for impromptu catnaps that rarely lasted more than twenty minutes.
From the moment the assault team had boarded the C130 in Oman, he and his staff had monitored them without a break from their forward base in Bahrain. Nuttall had chosen Captain Barkwell for this job, and in turn allowed him to pick his own operators from the standby squadron at Poole. He would have liked a bit of back-up from the Special Forces support group at St Athan, but Number 10 had been adamant: this had to be covert, which meant it had to stay small and it had to be discreet.
‘Boss.’ A voice behind him distracted him from the screen. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’ Nodding his thanks, Nuttall rubbed a hand across his face and stood. A young marine was at the door, showing in a US officer. Nuttall recognized him straight away. Tall, tanned, massive shoulders, chiselled jaw, Josh Katz was his opposite number in Bahrain, Commander of the US Navy’s SEAL special forces contingent. They had met years ago on a Special Warfare course at Coronado in San Diego and bonded immediately, trading too many tequila slammers on the last night and challenging each other to bouts of arm-wrestling while men thumped tables and called for more beer. Nuttall smiled. That seemed a lifetime ago now.
‘Yo, Chip.’ Katz strode up to him and gave him a bear hug, then stepped back to look him up and down. ‘You look beat, man.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Listen, you haven’t seen me here.’ The American’s voice was suddenly serious. ‘Can we get us some privacy?’
‘Of course,’ Nuttall replied, pointing to the anteroom with the bunk bed. Closing the door behind him, he turned to Katz. ‘Okay, you were never here. So what’s up?’
‘I’m serious,’ said Katz, glancing towards the door. ‘This conversation never took place. But I wanted to let you know, speaking as one pro operator to another, that something very big is going down very soon. Something that’s gonna impact big-time on your op.’
