Spoils of War, page 17
‘Good afternoon, Mr Rushton,’ he said. He had Reg Kilmartin’s letter and Jack’s business card in his hand. ‘I apologize for the inconvenience you’ve been put to. There is no alternative, I’m afraid. Over the years the Mukhabarat have made three attempts to kill or kidnap me, and I feel it’s particularly important at present not to offer them a fourth opportunity.’
Karim looked like a tired man, but he had retained a good-humoured briskness. He held out his hand and Jack stood up and shook it. Smiler was still in the room and Jack was aware now that other people were moving about the house. Somewhere in the background a telephone was ringing. Karim said: ‘You’ll understand, I hope, if we keep this rather brief. So many awful things are happening to my people in Iraq and Turkey that I am overwhelmed with work. But if you and I have a common enemy in Saddam Hussein, then let’s listen to each other.’
‘That isn’t quite what . . .’ Jack began, but Karim had turned to Smiler and was addressing him in Kurdish. The bodyguard left the room, closing the door behind him, and Karim gave his attention to his visitor again.
‘Where do we begin?’ he said.
Fifty yards away, at the corner of Cricklewood Lane, Ali Shakir waited five minutes before heaving his motorbike off its stand, starting the engine and cruising down the road.
A gentle downhill slope, a long line of redbrick Victorian semis on either side: a typical street of the north London suburbs. Each house had its own scrap of front garden, and some had just enough space to have had garages squeezed in beside them. The house that had been the destination of the Bedford van was one of these.
The road was called Plumtree Road, though no trees of any kind grew on it, just as there seemed not to be any woods in Cricklewood. Such vagaries of the language had puzzled Ali Shakir and his younger brother when they had first come to serve in England eighteen months ago; now they could look back and laugh at the naïve, literal-minded village boys they had been. Ali took pleasure in knowing how easily he had adapted to life here, how readily he had understood its codes, how quickly he had grasped the geography of London and submerged himself in its multiracial diversity. Not even his new superior, the man he called the Mudeer, knew this great city as well as Ali did.
He did not succumb to the sin of pride, though. He knew that God had given him a mission. Like the Mudeer, like Saddam Hussein himself, Ali had been chosen to serve a cause.
The occupants of the van hadn’t spotted him as he followed it. He was sure of that; otherwise they would certainly not have led him straight here. Now, as he travelled slowly down Plumtree Road, looking right and left as if searching for an address, he was confident that he drew no attention to himself. Motorcycle couriers were everywhere in London, more numerous than taxis and even more anonymous in their standard uniform of crash helmet and black leathers. Those from the smaller firms did not even wear a sign indicating who they worked for.
Passing by the house he had identified, he was careful to show it no more interest than he did any of the others. The van, which he had seen being reversed through the gateway, was no longer visible; it must have been shut away at once behind the doors of the garage attached to the house. Presumably there was an internal door between them. Bay windows upstairs and down were the building’s only distinctive feature, and heavy curtains were drawn across the lower one. There was no sign of a burglar alarm, and no evidence that the police were guarding the place; that would have defeated its purpose anyway.
A panel of coloured glass was set into the upper half of the front door, and above this the street number of the house was picked out in brass lettering. It was 48.
Ali Shakir rode on, turning the next corner and doubling back towards Cricklewood Lane before he halted again, well out of sight of the house. He pulled off his gauntlets, noticing how excitement had suddenly made his palms sweat.
He had waited nearly a week for this moment. In a wider sense, it was the culmination of everything he had trained and prepared for over the past eighteen months. God had rewarded his patience. Watching the offices on Paradise Row from different vantage points, avoiding the scrutiny of the police who protected it, observing how the Kurdish renegades dealt with the reporters and other visitors who arrived there, he had followed a dozen false trails before finally understanding how their system worked.
‘There is no god but God,’ he murmured to calm himself. He unzipped the leather jacket, took out his mobile phone and called a number in central London. It was answered by his brother, who passed him on at once to the gruff, suspicious voice of the Mudeer, their director.
‘Here is young Ah, ya-ustaz,’ he said respectfully. ‘I think I have found the traitor. I have followed a Nazarene to his house.’
15
‘So,’ said Abdel Karim, ‘there is not much that happens in Iraq that escapes our attention. We know many of their horrible little secrets. The Ba’ath Party has had absolute power now for well over twenty years, and of course power corrupts, nowhere more so than in the Middle East. During the first period of United Nations sanctions – in the middle of what was supposed to be an economic crisis – there were people making fortunes importing Mercedes Benzes and Scotch whisky and designer clothes. And, of course, exporting the profits. And who were these people? Officials of the Ba’ath. And army and secret police officers. The Iraqis liked to think of themselves as the Prussians of the Middle East, efficient and honest and straightforward, a cut above other Arabs, but now they’re the worst of the lot . . .’
Like all people devoted to a cause, Karim was a fluent and obsessive talker. He chain-smoked and paced the over-furnished room, and stabbed a finger at the air to emphasize the points he was making. His conversation was wide-ranging and vastly knowledgeable, and sometimes a bit hard to get to grips with.
‘Could I just bring you back to some details in this report?’ Jack said. He had the Kroll Associates’ dossier open on his lap. ‘I’m especially interested in the man named here as Mohamed Ghani. You say you think it’s a false name?’
‘If there were really a wealthy businessman in Baghdad of that name, then we would know about him,’ Karim said. ‘Almost certainly he has been invented to cover the true identity of someone in the army or the security services. Perhaps even more than one. They have dozens of these false sets of credentials, possibly hundreds of them, ready-made for people to step into: passports, citizenship papers, driving licences. Ostensibly they exist to allow Iraqi spies and agents to travel and live undercover abroad, but they are just as convenient for hiding the real identities of people moving money around.
‘These privileged cronies of Saddam Hussein have been allowed for years to tap into the foreign revenue accounts. A lot of the dollars that Iraq earns from its oil sales have been re-exported almost as soon as they arrive, into banks in the West. And then laundered through investments in shares, bonds, real estate . . .’
Jack said: ‘Mohamed Ghani, or whatever his real name is, seems to have put most of his money into the international bond market. Have you any record of where the bonds were issued?’
‘Usually for a big issue there is a consortium of banks involved. But wait, I may have an index here.’ Karim went to his desk and began hunting through the chaotic heap of files. He opened and closed several before finding what seemed to be the right one. ‘Remind me of the names.’
Jack stood up and joined him, with the report open at the page of the appendix where Ghani’s holdings were listed. Karim flicked impatiently through sheets of typed records as Jack recited the titles of respected multinationals and state-backed enterprises that had sought to raise working capital on the bond market: Unilever, Thyssen, Krupps, and public utility companies in half a dozen countries. In turn, Karim read out the names of the banks that had had a share in floating each issue.
There was one thing that all Ghani’s securities had in common. The Handelsbank Bauer in Zurich was the only bank that had sold bonds in every one of the companies.
Coincidence? It was possible.
Karim slapped the file shut. ‘Does that tell you anything?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s quite usual for someone who has money to invest but no expertise in the markets to put himself in the hands of a bank, which then recommends various purchases and manages the portfolio for him. Naturally the bank is inclined to favour its own issues, because it often picks up a special commission on them. That’s what could have happened with Ghani. But it’s also usual in Switzerland for a foreigner to be recommended to a particular bank by someone on the spot. Do you have the names of any brokers or middlemen who might have been involved?’
‘I’m afraid not. You know how secretive the Swiss can be. Besides, Kroll’s were interested only in establishing a direct connection between the Iraqis and their holdings, not in the people in between.’
‘That index of yours wasn’t incorporated into the report, then? Could you let me have a copy of it?’
‘Certainly. We have a photocopier upstairs.’
Karim detached four or five pages from the file, went to the door and called to someone. A young woman appeared and listened to his instructions. Perhaps the index would be more revealing once he’d had a chance to study it, Jack thought. For the moment it seemed to raise more questions than it answered. Colonel Jalloul had signed the agreement with Hamadi and opened his account at the bank under his real name, so he could hardly have switched to the alias of Mohamed Ghani for the purpose of buying bonds. Besides, the million dollars Hamadi had paid him would have covered only a fraction of the investments credited to Ghani. Unless he’d already been holding assets under that name and had not revealed the fact. This, however, seemed to contradict another impression of the man that Abdel Karim had referred to.
Jalloul’s name hadn’t rung any bells for Karim at first, but then he had looked up his files and found confirmation from a source in Baghdad that Jalloul was indeed missing. He had been posted to Kuwait at the start of the occupation, and he never came back. There was no indication that he had been recalled to Iraq, or arrested or executed. He had simply disappeared.
Karim closed the door and Jack heard the woman’s footsteps retreating up the stairs. He said: ‘There’s no evidence that Jalloul was one of the people with their fingers in the till?’
‘None that I have seen. That was a privilege reserved for the sort of party lackeys I told you about, and he was apparently not one of those.’
‘Politically out of favour?’
‘Politically,’ said Karim, ‘he was not an enthusiast, and that’s all it takes to be distrusted. You mentioned that Jalloul was under suspicion by General Malik of the Mukhabarat – now there was a typical product of the regime. A bully, a thug, a yes-man and a crook.’
‘Was Malik one of the favoured few?’ Jack indicated the Kroll report.
‘Certainly. But his name isn’t there because we never found any evidence connecting him with funds being milked out of the treasury. And since he’s dead now, we probably never will. But perhaps there is your answer to the question of what became of Jalloul. Malik could have had him quietly eliminated while they were both in Kuwait.’ Karim paused and glanced at his watch. ‘Unless you have further questions, Mr Rushton, I believe I’ve told you everything I can. What was the information that you thought might interest me?’
‘It isn’t hard information, exactly. In fact, I can’t call it anything much stronger than gossip.’
He began to tell the story about the missing gold. Halfway through, he was interrupted by a knock at the door and the woman assistant entered. She handed the photocopies to Karim and left. Before Jack could carry on, the Kurd halted him with a gesture.
‘Let me save us both some time. Yes, I know of these rumours about the gold. In fact, I asked my people to check some of them out, but nothing can be pinned down. By all accounts there was a shortfall in the amount that was delivered to Baghdad, but there are conflicting stories about how much was missing. One version I heard was that part of the consignment was flown out of Kuwait to northern Iraq – to Kurdistan, in fact, my part of the country – and taken on to somewhere else by road. But that is just as impossible to verify as any of the other yarns.’
'Assuming it is missing,’ Jack said, ‘the Iraqis haven’t been in a position to try to recover it over the past few months. And the Kuwaitis don’t seem to care as long as they get compensated for it. So if there really is a pile of gold stashed somewhere in the Middle East, nobody is looking too hard for it. It isn’t quite as hot as it might be in other circumstances. It would make a nice little windfall for someone.’
‘No doubt,’ said Karim with a smile. ‘But there is also gold at the end of a rainbow, isn’t there? There’s nothing like a story of missing treasure to get people’s imagination going.’
Or to attract the interest of hard-up revolutionaries, Jack thought. Karim’s dismissive attitude didn’t quite square with the trouble he had taken to chase up the rumours. But he was looking at his watch again and Jack guessed he was close to outstaying his welcome.
It was approaching four o’clock when he was escorted from the house. He submitted more resignedly this time to the blindfold that was tied in place before he was guided out to the van. Karim’s friendly bodyguards said they were heading for central London and could drop him wherever he wanted. He said any tube station would be fine, and twenty minutes later he was blinking into the dull afternoon light beneath an Underground sign at Baker Street.
He caught a train back to Waterloo. In the concourse of the main-line station he went to one of a row of open telephone cubicles, intending to try the number he had been given for Colonel Thorpe in Sandhurst and then realizing he had left it at home. He rang directory enquiries again, forced almost to shout out the name and address over the background din of the station. He dialled the number they gave him and again got no reply.
In a dither he wandered across the concourse. Perhaps he should do what he’d been contemplating earlier and go straight to Thorpe’s home. It should be easy enough to get there from here. He still didn’t know whether this Thorpe was the same one Reg had referred to, let alone whether he could be of any help; all the same, this evening offered the last chance Jack would have to make contact with him before leaving for Zurich tomorrow.
He stood studying the complicated timetable boards. Like most Londoners he knew where his own trains went, and roughly when, but was unfamiliar with the other loops of the outer-suburban network. To get to Sandhurst he would have to change at Guildford, or was it Aldershot? He was still trying to work this out when he was distracted by a crackling announcement that the 4:44 Inter-City to Southampton would soon be leaving from Platform Ten, stopping at Woking and Basingstoke and . . .
Woking was near enough to his destination and the express train would get him there sooner. With three minutes in hand, he hurried to the ticket office. The crowds were just beginning to swell towards their rush-hour flood but he reached a vacant window quickly and bought a one-way ticket. As he turned away he bumped shoulders with a man close behind him who must have had the same idea, a slight, foreign-looking young man in dark clothes who’d been standing next to him at the information boards.
Muttering an apology, Jack ran to the barrier of Platform Ten. He made the train with half a minute to spare and found a window seat just as the train jarred into motion. The seat faced back down the platform and he could see that he had been the last to board. The other man either hadn’t got his ticket in time or had changed his mind.
A few minutes later, as the train was rushing between the grey back walls of the south-west London suburbs, Jack’s thoughts were thrown inexplicably back to the young man. Something about him must have imprinted itself on Jack’s subconscious, but he couldn’t identify it. The familiar cast of features, perhaps, of a Gulf Arab – but, no, there were plenty of those to be seen in London. Maybe it was the way the man had stood so near to him, both at the timetable boards and at the ticket window, almost as though he wanted to speak to him but had lost the courage. Come to think of it, someone had been standing close behind him when he’d made that phone call as well.
Then Jack remembered the way the man had been dressed. The resolution of one doubt has a way of banishing others. He forgot his earlier speculations as he recognized that what he had found odd, or at least out of place, about the man, were the black leather trousers and jacket, and the black, dark-visored helmet that he carried. Why would a man dressed for riding a motorbike be thinking of catching a train?
The answer, no doubt, would be even more banal than the question. Jack dismissed it from his mind.
16
He reached Woking at a quarter past five and took a taxi from the station. It would be a ten-mile journey, the driver said, warning him obliquely about the likely size of the fare. Jack asked him about getting back and he said public transport would be a problem after six o’clock; if Jack didn’t expect to be too long it would be advisable to have the cab wait for him.
The driver was talkative. He had opinions on many topics, though his favourite one appeared to be the incompetent or antisocial behaviour of other motorists. Only half-listening, Jack leaned back and watched the passing scenery. Though usually regarded as part of the London stockbroker belt, this corner of south-east England, where Surrey, Berkshire and Hampshire met up, was also the heartland of the British military establishment. Pleasant old towns like Aldershot, Guildford and Camberley were home to thousands of army families, and the landscape between them was dotted with camps, depots and training centres. Of these institutions the two most famous were the Army Staff College and the Royal Military College; although conventionally known as Camberley and Sandhurst, the driver took the opportunity to explain, they actually shared the same extensive grounds. He pointed them out as the taxi crossed a bridge over the River Blackwater, a broad sweep of parkland with a lake in the middle and beyond it just a glimpse of buildings, looking like rambling extensions to a great country house.
