The Angry Sea

As he did so, his mobile rang, with an MI6 identifier.

‘Nicholls,’ he said.

It was Alec Palmer.

‘The Spanish say the boat was empty when it blew up,’ said Palmer.

‘Empty?’

‘Yes. There was a guy driving it, but he jumped off and started shooting people, and it exploded a few seconds after that. The human debris field starts a few metres from the vessel itself – there were some Spanish marines nearby who copped the whole thing. But there’s no sign of any human remains from the inside.’

‘Could they be mistaken?’

‘No.’

‘If I’m going to tell the PM, I need to be sure.’

‘I’ve spoken to them myself,’ said Palmer. ‘They’re a hundred per cent certain. Meat is meat. No meat, no bodies.’

Meat is meat.

Justin Nicholls winced, Charlotte Morgan’s face entering his mind.

‘How did they get off?’

‘The Spanish are working on that,’ said Palmer. ‘The target boat might have slowed for a few seconds and…’

‘A sea transfer?’

‘Looks that way.’

Nicholls nodded. ‘Okay. Let me know immediately if there’s any developments, Alec.’

‘Of course.’

Nicholls ended the call.

‘Mr Nicholls?’ said a waiting aide. ‘If you’d like to follow me?’

She took him down through the back of the house and outside to the garden.

On the other side of the large, bowling green lawn, on a wooden bench pressed against the tall, brick wall, and under the shade of a large buddleia alive with butterflies, sat the Prime Minister, Penelope Morgan.

She was ashen-faced but holding it together.

She always had been a tough cookie, Nicholls thought.

Next to her was Sir Peter Smith, the grey-haired Cabinet Secretary.

Smith stood up and pulled a garden chair out and round in front of the bench.

The two men shook hands, Justin leaned down and kissed Penelope on the cheek, and then he and Smith sat down.

‘Is she dead, Justin?’ said Penelope.

‘No,’ said Nicholls.

‘How do you know? The boat… On the beach at Ceuta… ’

‘I’ve just had word. The Spanish say there was only one terrorist left on board when it went ashore, and he got off just before it went up.’

‘How can they be sure?’

‘Trust me,’ said Nicholls. ‘They’re sure.’

‘It was all about her, wasn’t it?’ said the Prime Minister.

‘It does look that way,’ said Nicholls, gravely. ‘The cruise liner at Málaga seems to have been a diversion. The main target was the beach at Puerto Banús.’

‘You mean Charlie was the main target?’

‘Yes,’ said Nicholls. ‘She and two of her friends were taken aboard a yacht – some sort of super-fast, millionaire’s plaything which had been stolen and the owner killed. The Spanish eventually got a chopper next to it and followed it all the way to Ceuta, where, as you know…’

Sir Peter Smith cleared his throat. ‘So if Charlotte and her friends were on the boat when it left Marbella, but not on the boat when it exploded, how did they get off?’

‘They must have had another boat waiting somewhere. You slow down, push them off into the water, and then haul them into the new boat… Not pleasant, but perfectly survivable. Clever, really.’

‘So where is she now?’ said Penelope Morgan.

Nicholls shrugged apologetically. ‘I assume they landed somewhere on the North African coast. We’re working on it.’

‘No word from the… from the men who took her?’

‘Not yet. But that’s the one thing to hold on to. Look, Penny, there’s no point in kidnapping the daughter of the British Prime Minister just to kill her.’

‘What happened to Eddie?’ said Penelope Morgan.

‘Her boyfriend? I’m afraid…’

Morgan looked down, her hands clasped together tightly.

‘He was a lovely young man,’ she said. ‘Paddy and I had high hopes of him. I must speak to his parents. They lost another son two years ago on a motorbike. How awful.’

‘I’m sorry.’

There was another, heavier silence.

Nicholls looked up at the mortar fence protruding six feet above the weathered brick wall.

He felt a pang of nostalgia for the old days, when the worst threat they had faced was a few angry Irishmen and their home-made fertiliser bombs. That had been bad, but manageable. He wasn’t sure the new enemy was going to be so easy to contain, much less defeat, unless the playing field changed dramatically – and the rules with it.

Penelope Morgan cleared her throat. ‘Why didn’t we know about this?’ she said.

Justin Nicholls was silent.

‘It’s a major failure of intelligence, Justin.’

Nicholls looked down at his feet for a moment.

The scale and nature of the threat they faced meant that it was impossible to stop every attack, but he knew that she was right.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There will have to be a full enquiry. But, for now, let’s worry about finding her and getting her back alive.’

The Prime Minister winced.

Sir Peter Smith stood up. ‘I have a couple of things to do ahead of the COBRA meeting. Will you be attending, Justin?’

‘No. C will be there, though.’

Smith nodded, said his goodbyes, and walked off into No. 10.

Penelope Morgan watched him go, and then looked up at the early evening sky above; it was a perfect blue, with a single fluffy cloud hanging overhead.

‘Gorgeous,’ she said, absently. ‘I remember my mother telling me that I was going to be Prime Minister one day. You know what she was like.’

Justin nodded and smiled, despite the situation.

‘We were down by the stables,’ said Penelope. ‘She said to me, “You’ll be the Prime Minister one day. Ten years at the Bar, then fifteen years of politics, then you mark my words, my girl, you’ll be the head honcho!” And here I am. I achieved her dream. Would have made her proud.’ She sniffed, fighting her emotions. ‘But I wish to God I’d married Dicky Coates and become a bloody farmer’s wife. When was the last time anyone kidnapped a farmer’s daughter?’

Nicholls said nothing.

The air was filled with late evening birdsong, and the muted sounds of London traffic.

Somewhere inside No. 10, a phone was ringing off the hook.

He said, ‘Have you told Paddy and the other kids yet?’

‘Paddy’s in the States on business,’ said Penelope Morgan. ‘He’s cutting it short and flying back tonight. Sophie was at her boyfriend’s house and is on her way up to town. Joff’s upstairs in the flat. He’s in a terrible state. It’s his big sister.’

She looked at Nicholls.

‘One thing does occur to me, Justin,’ she said. ‘How did they know where Charlotte was?’

‘Yes, that has occurred to us, too,’ he said, drily. ‘It’s something else we don’t yet know. We’ll look at the airlines and the hotel and all that, but someone probably told someone they shouldn’t have. It’s usually loose lips.’

Morgan nodded.

She thought for a moment.

Then she said, ‘I’ll stop at nothing to get them back, Justin. Whatever it takes. She comes home. They all come home. Is that clear?’

‘Well, we’ll…’

‘I’m serious. Never mind the courts. Those girls are in this position because I am who I am. And there’s no point being who I am if you can’t use what little power you have.’

Nicholls nodded.

Perhaps the rules had changed.

33.

FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES south, at 20:00hrs local time, John Carr was sitting in an interview room in the main Policía Nacional station in Marbella.

He was nursing a few bumps and bruises, and a split lip, and looking across a grey melamine table at a pair of Spanish detectives.

They’d just come back to the room after a while spent checking out his story.

Now the older of the two pushed a sweaty, Clingfilm-wrapped cheese-and-tomato roll across the table, along with a Styrofoam cup of weak Lipton’s tea, the yellow tag showing that the bag was still in it.

‘I’m formally telling you now that you are no longer a suspect,’ said the younger man, Inspector-Jefe Javier de Padilla. He spoke in Spanish, since Carr was fluent – he’d spent a lot of time in South America on Regimental operations targeted against the coke barons of Colombia and Mexico.

‘I hope you can see why we were not sure. Everyone else had run away, except for you and your son…’

He tailed off.

‘Yeah,’ said Carr. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

He’d had plenty of experience of terrorist situations, and he knew the deal: everyone’s hostile until proven otherwise.

In fact, he’d been surprised at the professionalism of the guys who had arrested him and George.

They’d got them face down in the sand, hands on heads, and then he’d felt the muzzle of his No1’s weapon pressed hard into the back of his skull, no room for ambiguity, while the No. 2 conducted a good search.

True, once he’d been cuffed they’d stuck a few punches and kicks in – a lawyer wouldn’t like it, but lawyers operated in quiet, air-conditioned rooms, not with the air filled with gunsmoke and the groans of dying, blood-spattered children.

As far as Carr was concerned, they’d shown good drills.

‘If you feel the treatment was too rough…’

‘Nah,’ he said, with a slight grin. ‘I’ve had worse off my ex-wife. Like I said, don’t worry about it. All I’m interested in is any news on my daughter.’

‘I have good news, there, Mr Carr,’ said de Padilla. ‘I just heard from the officers we sent to your villa. Both she and the other member of your party are safe and well, and at the villa.’

‘I need to go,’ said Carr, pushing back his chair. ‘She’ll be worried to death.’

‘Please, Mr Carr,’ said the policeman, holding up a hand. ‘I told my officers to stay with her, and to tell her that both you and your son are fine, and are helping us.’

Carr sat back in his chair.

‘One hour,’ he said. ‘Then I have to go.’

‘I understand.’ De Padilla picked up a pen. ‘So, I would like to take a statement. Is this okay?’

‘Sure.’

‘Do you want a lawyer?’

‘Do I need one?’

‘As I say, you’re not a suspect. We have broadly the same laws of self-defence as in the UK.’ He smiled. ‘To me, the only question is which of our civilian gallantry awards you and your son will receive.’

Carr thought for a moment. ‘What about the two police officers and their pistols?’

The officer shrugged. ‘You did what you had to do. I am more concerned that you don’t tell people that our guys were running away. They’ll finish their careers in a small town somewhere far away, believe me.’

‘My lips are sealed.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I won’t tell anyone.’

‘Okay,’ said de Padilla. ‘So, I really want to see if you can help us identify any members of the gang.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Carr.

‘So, we start from the beginning. You went to the beach with your son and the two ladies at what time?’

‘Before we get into that,’ said Carr. ‘I think I saw one of them.’

‘One of the terrorists?’ said de Padilla. ‘I don’t understand.’

Carr sipped his tea.

It was hot and weak.

‘You know my background,’ he said. ‘I’ve done a lot of surveillance work. There was a guy on the beach. Dark hair, dark eyes, white clothing. Carrying flip-flops in his hand. He was trying to act like a normal tourist – playing the grey man, we call it – but he didn’t quite pull it off. There was a group of young Brits, including four girls. Twenties, good-looking. One in a shocking pink bikini, one in a black bikini. A couple of others. I just thought he was scoping them out. I didn’t blame him, to be fair. But given that the girls he was looking at were later taken away… He obviously had other things on his mind.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘No. He was so busy trying to disassociate himself from his target that he forgot about third-party. Most basic mistake in surveillance.’

‘What’s third party?’

‘Me. The watcher watching the watcher. He thought it was just him, the target, and a bunch of random civilians. But I’m a paranoid motherfucker, and he stood right in front of me, so I paid attention. He stuck in my mind. He had a big chunk out of his right calf – probably a round, or a bit of shrapnel. It gave him a weird, rolling gait.’ Carr finished off his tea. ‘That’s another mistake. Should have given that job to someone less distinctive.’

‘Would you recognise him again?’ said de Padilla.

‘Aye. At night, in a jungle, blindfolded.’

‘I don’t understand, Mr Carr. Why at night, in a jungle, blindfolded?’

‘Sorry,’ said Carr. ‘Sense of humour trying to kick in. Basically, yes, I would. I’d recognise him anywhere.’

34.

AT AROUND THAT moment, the little green RIB finally came ashore, guided by a Garmin GPS device to a rocky beach on the western end of the Al Hoceima National Park, a remote and empty swathe of northern Morocco which was forested with thuja cypresses, and criss-crossed by dirt tracks.

His dark eyes flashing, Argun Shishani and the surviving shooter – Abdullah el Haloui, in his Manchester United shirt – hustled the three women onto the shallow beach and up into the cover of the trees.

‘Lie down!’ snapped Shishani. ‘Face the ground.’

‘No, please,’ said one of them, but when el Haloui raised his shortened AK they meekly complied.

‘Now be quiet,’ snapped the Chechen.

He cocked his head on one side, listening.

Nothing but crickets, and the rustling of the trees overhead.

He nodded, satisfied. ‘Wait here,’ he said, to his comrade. He nodded toward the water. ‘I have to speak to him.’

With his strange, lopsided walk, Shishani hurried back down to the inflatable, where the boatman, his face weathered by sixty years of sun and salt spray, was in the process of refuelling the engine from a jerry can.

‘Malik, my friend,’ said Shishani. ‘I have a gift for you.’

‘It’s not necessary, saheb,’ said Malik, with an open smile. ‘I am just happy to do my duty.’

‘But it is necessary,’ said Shishani, and as he walked towards the other man he reached into the bag over his shoulder.

When he was six feet away, he pulled out a pistol – an FNP, loaded with .45 ACP subsonic rounds – and an angular Osprey suppressor.

Malik’s eyes widened as he saw the weapon. ‘What are you doing?’ he said, nervously.

‘I’m putting this suppressor on this pistol,’ said Shishani.

‘But why?’

Shishani didn’t answer for a couple of seconds, but continued screwing the suppressor onto the FNP.

Then he said, ‘Because although Al Hoceima is a desolate place I cannot discount the possibility that there may be someone nearby, and I don’t want them to hear this.’

And, with that, he raised the weapon and shot the boatman twice in the chest.

Suppressors do not ‘silence’ gunfire, but the right equipment does greatly reduce the report, and subsonic rounds have none of the crack caused by a faster bullet as it breaks the sound barrier: the noise of the shots, and the brittle, metallic sound of the moving parts in action, was lost in the humid breeze.

Malik fell backwards into the shallows with a splash and there he lay, eyes and mouth open, his breathing laboured, the water lapping over him, a red cloud forming on either side.

His pupils tracked Shishani as he stepped forward into the water.

The dying man tried to speak, but produced only guttural sounds.

‘Hush, my friend,’ whispered the Chechen, putting the pistol to Malik’s forehead. ‘I give you the gift of paradise.’

The single report from the pistol sent the old man on his way into eternity.

Shishani took a knife and stabbed the inflated rubber panels of the boat in several places. As the air hissed out, he pushed the foundering RIB out into the Mediterranean.

Then he walked back up the beach.

Abdullah el Haloui met him halfway, a sardonic smile playing on his lips.

‘Did you have to do that, zaeim?’ he said, his hands relaxing on the AK, which was slung from his neck across his chest.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Chechen. ‘I couldn’t risk him talking. And he is a martyr now. He should be grateful.’

‘I guess so,’ said the young Moroccan, with a chuckle. ‘But how do you know I won’t talk?’

‘I don’t,’ said Shishani, raising the FNP to other man’s chest.

The smile dropped off el Haloui’s lips in an instant.

He went for the pistol grip of his AK, but it was a futile move and the last thing he would ever consciously do.

Shishani fired two rounds, point-blank, into him.

The first clipped the top of his heart, and took his legs away. The second hit him in the throat as he dropped, smashing through his larynx and exiting the back of his neck, taking a chunk of his spinal cord with it.

The body hit the ground with a dead thud; this time, there was no need for any coup de grâce.

It was a moment or two before the Chechen could bring himself to look down at the fallen man.

Abdullah had played an invaluable role in the operation, from the moment when he had tailed the Morgan girl and her friends from the airport at Málaga to their hotel, to his glorious actions on the Spanish beach earlier this very day.

But this was no time for sentiment. If they were to succeed, then their mission had to be sealed off from the outside world.

Hermetically.

Not to mention, Abdullah was a true believer, utterly pure in spirit, and might well have caused trouble later.

‘I am sorry, brother,’ said Shishani, with genuine regret. ‘But I cannot bury you.’

He glanced up into the trees.

All three women were still lying face down, not daring to look around.

He bent down, pulled el Haloui’s weapon from his dead grasp, and walked back up the slope, looking at his watch.

Soon, soon.

‘Get up,’ he said. ‘We must walk. And if any of you does not do as I say she will die here and now.’

The three women stood up and walked into the forest along a sandy path, the heady scent of cypress filling their nostrils.

35.

AS THE MOROCCAN night darkened, the headlights appeared.

Five minutes later, two Toyota Land Cruisers rolled and swayed along the undulating dirt road, and stopped.

A man got out – a giant, dressed in a grubby, blue gandora thobe and sandals, with a bushy, greying beard.

He beamed at Shishani, and the two men embraced and kissed each other on both cheeks.

‘Oh, it’s good to see you, Argun!’ said Khasmohmad Kadyrov, in Chechen. ‘When was it last, brother? Now Zad?’

‘Khan Neshin,’ said Argun Shishani. ‘I believe.’

‘So it was,’ said Kadyrov. ‘So it was. And today you have done a wonderful thing. Let me see her.’

‘Surely,’ said Shishani, and he led the other Chechen ten or fifteen yards into the trees where the three women still lay, face down, petrified.

At the sight of their bikini-clad bodies, Kadyrov’s face grew dark.

‘They’re dressed like whores,’ he spat. ‘What is this insult?’

Shishani raised his palms in placation. ‘I’m sorry, brother,’ he said. ‘We had clothes for them but they were left on the boat by mistake.’

‘Which one is she?’ said Kadyrov.

‘The middle one.’

‘Wait here.’

Kadyrov returned to his Land Cruiser. In his left hand were a couple of black sheets; in his right, a digital video camera.

He dropped the sheets and handed the camera to Shishani.

‘The middle one, yes?’ he said.

‘Yes, she…’ said Shishani.

‘Give me that,’ said Kadyrov, pointing to the still-silenced pistol in Shishani’s waistband.

Shishani handed it over. Kadyrov stepped over to the women.

‘Get up!’ he said.

They stood, fearfully, not daring to meet his eye.

‘You,’ he said, pointing at the woman on the left. ‘Name?’

‘What?’ she said.

‘What is your name?’

‘Martha.’

‘Martha,’ he repeated, rolling it around his mouth. He nodded. Then he looked at the woman on the right. ‘And you?’

‘Emily.’

He chuckled softly.

‘Well, well,’ he said, and looked at Shishani, eyebrows raised.

Shishani nodded.

‘Thank you, ladies,’ said Kadyrov. ‘Everyone stand up, come with me.’

He grabbed Emily Souster roughly by the shoulder, turned her around, and pushed her forwards. The other women followed as he walked them back twenty, twenty-five metres, to the overhanging branches of the trees.

‘Kneel!’ he snapped.

‘Please,’ said Emily. ‘What are you…?’

He raised the pistol, placed it against her forehead, and said, quietly, ‘Kneel.’

She did as instructed.

‘You two kneel either side of her,’ he said.

‘Emily…’ said Charlotte Morgan.

Kadyrov slapped her in the face. ‘Be quiet, woman,’ he said, ‘and kneel.’

The three women knelt in the sand, Charlotte and Martha held in position by masked men.

Kadyrov pulled on a black balaclava and stood behind Emily Souster.

‘Turn it on,’ he said.

There was an electronic beep as Shishani clicked the video camera.

‘Begin filming,’ said Kadyrov.

Shishani nodded.

The harsh glare of the light from the camera illuminating him, Khasmohmad Kadyrov looked into the lens and spoke, in heavily-accented English. ‘Oh, Britain!’ he said. ‘This is a warning from us, the Warriors of Jihad. A taste of what is to come.’

He placed the pistol to the back of Emily Souster’s neck, and she started and looked up at Shishani.

‘What’s he doing?’ she said. ‘I didn’t…’

‘Silence,’ said Kadyrov, sharply. He looked into the camera. ‘We have the daughter of the British Prime Minister. You can see her here. Now you will see that we are men of action.’

Somewhere overhead, an owl cried out.

The huge, masked Chechen pulled the trigger of the pistol.

The shot was aimed slightly to the right of Emily Souster’s spinal column, and was designed not to kill her immediately, but to cause pain and suffering, and to increase the horror of the footage.

The round exited her throat underneath her chin and sent her sprawling forward, her eyes wide with shock as her body tried to draw in air through the ruptured airway. The noise of her dying gasps filled the otherwise silent air, as her lungs filled with blood.

From somewhere, Charlotte Morgan heard a high-pitched scream; she only realised that the scream was her own when the man holding her punched her in the back of the head, sending her face forwards into the sand.

Shishani kept rolling as Kadyrov leaned over the dying Emily and casually dispatched her with another shot to the head, as a hunter might destroy an injured rabbit.

The giant Chechen turned back to the camera.

‘We will be in touch with your government very soon,’ he said, placing the pistol back in its holster.

‘Perfect, Khasmohmad,’ breathed Shishani, before clicking the camera off.

Kadyrov pulled off his balaclava.

‘You will transmit that to our friends in the Ivory Coast, for them to disseminate?’ he said. ‘Along with our message?’

‘I will upload it as we drive,’ said Shishani.

‘And we’re a hundred per cent sure it’s secure? They won’t trace our location?’

‘We’ve been using these systems for long enough now, Khasmohmad. The encryption is superb.’

‘Designed by American nerds and made available for free to the world,’ said Kadyrov, shaking his head and chuckling. ‘It must drive the CIA crazy.’

He tapped Charlotte Morgan and Martha Percival on the heads and said, ‘To the vehicles.’

They stayed stock still, so the men who were holding them dragged them to their feet.

They were pushed roughly back towards the waiting Land Cruisers, where Kadyrov threw black sheets at them both.