Dark Justice

‘It’s not your fault, Blake. We did everything right. The tooth thing was just unfortunate.’

Sergeant Mary appeared with two glasses of champagne, which they took gratefully.

Blake toasted Clancy. ‘Let’s hope the President agrees with you.’

In Washington the rain was even heavier when they arrived, but a limousine was waiting and they were taken through at once and on their way, moving along Constitution Avenue towards the White House. In spite of the weather there was a sizeable crowd of demonstrators, a kind of moonscape of umbrellas against the rain, shepherded by police.

‘Which war are they protesting against?’ Clancy asked.

‘Who knows? There’s some sort of war going on in nearly every country in the world these days. Don’t ask me, Clancy. All I know is some people seem to make a profession out of protest.’

The chauffeur lowered the glass screen that separated him from them. ‘Too difficult from the front, Mr Johnson. May I try the East Entrance?’

‘That’s fine by me.’

They turned up East Executive Avenue and stopped at the gate. Blake leaned out and the guard, recognizing him at once, waved them through. The East Entrance was much used by White House staff, especially when wishing to avoid the media. The limousine pulled up, Blake and Clancy got out and went up the steps. A young Marine lieutenant was on duty, and a Secret Service agent named Huntley greeted them warmly.

‘Mr Johnson, Clancy. You’re looking stretched, if I may say so.’

‘Don’t ask,’ Blake said. ‘We spent most of the night stranded by fog at Kennedy, and the President’s expecting us.’

‘You know where he is, sir, but I’ll lead the way. It’ll give my legs some exercise.’

The President’s secretary, a pleasant woman in her mid-forties, admitted them to the Oval Office, where they found Jake Cazalet in shirtsleeves at the desk, working his way through a raft of documents, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He glanced up, smiled.

‘The return of the heroes. Have you eaten?’

‘Early breakfast at Kennedy. Congealed scrambled eggs and fries at five-thirty, and that was the VIP lounge,’ Blake said.

Cazalet laughed and turned to the secretary. ‘We can manage our own coffee, Millie, but speak to the chef and find them something exotic like bacon sandwiches.’

‘Of course, Mr President.’

She withdrew and the President said, ‘Okay, gentlemen. Let’s hear the worst.’

‘The worst didn’t happen, Mr President. The worst would have been Morgan shooting you from the first-floor window of Gould & Co. when you got out of your car outside Senator Harvey Black’s townhouse to join him for dinner.’

‘Which invitation I cancelled on your advice a week ago. You said then you wished to handle this business yourself. No one from the FBI, no police, no military. Even the head of the Secret Service was excluded, which makes it puzzling that you got away with using Clancy in this affair.’

Clancy intruded. ‘I was served a Presidential warrant, Mr President, so I had to do as I was told.’

‘I have a stack of them in my safe,’ Blake said. ‘All signed by you.’

‘Really. And you just fill in a name?’

‘Correct, Mr President. You know how the Basement works.’

During the Cold War, when it appeared the Communists were infiltrating every level of government, the then President had invented the Basement as a small operation answerable only to him. Since then it had been handed from one President to another. It was one of his most valuable assets. All other agencies were tied up in rules and regulations, the legal system. This was not. The Presidential warrant cut through the crap. People thought Johnson was a desk man. In fact he had a file of names of ex-FBI and Secret Service agents he could pull in on an ad hoc basis. He could connect at any time with General Ferguson in London, who ran a similar organization for the British Prime Minister.

‘I can, in effect, kill for you,’ Blake went on. ‘I can have, for example, someone like Morgan disposed of without a trace, but only if I’m left alone to do things my way. The war on terrorism can’t be won unless we’re willing to fight back on our own terms. Fight fire with fire.’

‘And where does that leave the rule of law?’

‘I’m not sure. People at al-Qaeda would have their own answer to that. All I know is that we won’t beat them by playing patty cake.’

‘Okay, I take your point. Tell me about this Morgan business. You said you didn’t want me to know too many details before. Tell me now.’

‘It was Major Roper who came up with it.’

‘Yes, I know about him. The bomb disposal hero who ended up in a wheelchair.’

‘And made a new career for himself in computers. Anything you want in cyberspace, Roper can find for you, but his great gift is developing new programs in which millions of facts can be overviewed in seconds. Take your evening out with Senator Black. The computer imaged that townhouse on Park Avenue, the surrounding properties. He then tapped in to every detail about the buildings, what was going on there, the personnel involved, and so on.’

At that moment Millie came in with a tray and the bacon sandwiches. ‘They smell good enough to eat, Millie. I might have one myself. Eat up, gentlemen, but carry on, Blake. What’s so special about what Roper’s up to? Surely our people can do that?’

‘Frankly, not as brilliantly as he can. His programs can show given nationalities, religious backgrounds, family, anything you want, and all at lightning speed. They also indicate anomalies, things that shouldn’t be. That means his computer is thinking for itself and making deductions, but doing it at a speed beyond human comprehension.’

‘Conceptual thought by a machine. Quite something,’ Cazalet said.

‘Anyway, to cut it short, the computer threw up the nationalities of the people working in the area of Black’s townhouse, which were many. Some of them were English, and Roper, interested, cross-referenced the identities, passports, birthplaces and religions, and in no time at all one Henry Morgan, who’d been working as a security guard at Gould & Co. opposite Black’s house, popped up. He was English, but with a Muslim mother.’

‘Really. Is that unusual?’

‘Just enough so that what Roper saw next rang bells: Morgan was a highly qualified pharmacist with a master’s degree, who also taught at London University, and he entered our country on a tourist visa.’

It was Clancy who put in, ‘So why does a guy like that take a job as a security guard, Mr President – and on a forged green card?’

‘Something else Roper discovered.’

‘Everything about us is on some sort of record these days,’ the President said. ‘So, General Ferguson tipped you off.’

‘No, there was more to it than that. Ferguson found Roper’s discovery interesting enough to check it out a little on his side. He sent his assistant, Detective Superintendent Hannah Bernstein of Special Branch at Scotland Yard, to visit Morgan’s home address in London. She discovered that the mother was in a wheelchair after a bad automobile accident that had killed the father five years ago. Bernstein posed as a welfare officer to gain her confidence. Discovered many interesting things.’

‘Such as?’

‘The mother had been disowned by her family for marrying out of the Muslim faith. Her son had been raised a Christian. After the accident, however, she rediscovered her faith and her son would take her to the local mosque, where she was received well. And the truly interesting thing was that she said her son had discovered Islam himself, and embraced it.’

Cazalet was looking grim. ‘So it all begins to fit.’

‘Especially when she said he’d gone to New York on vacation.’

‘Has Ferguson taken it any further?’

‘No, he’s waiting to hear from us.’

Cazalet nodded. ‘So Morgan obviously arrived on somebody’s orders.’

‘Exactly. An organization in the UK with some sort of contacts in New York.’

‘Why didn’t you arrest him the minute you got the story from London?’

‘I wanted to see where it would lead, and Charles Ferguson agreed. It was highly unlikely he was just a deranged loner, so there was a chance he could lead us to his New York contacts.’

‘Only he didn’t.’

‘The few days he was here, he didn’t meet a soul. I had two old FBI hands follow him when we found that the address he’d given Icon Security was false. He was staying in a small hotel; they discreetly gained access to his room and found nothing. No ID on him, no passport at his death. I’d say they’d all been destroyed, probably on orders from his handlers in London.’

‘They obviously were hanging him out to dry.’

‘Exactly, and the cyanide tooth indicates the equivalent of a suicide bombing. He wasn’t meant to survive.’

Cazalet said, ‘Okay, I know there’s a lot of supposition here, but I admit it makes a hell of a lot of sense. It still leaves the question of the AK. Where did that come from?’

‘It certainly wasn’t in his hotel room,’ Clancy said. ‘We figure it was probably left in some locker, maybe a train or bus station.’

‘By his unknown contacts in New York,’ Blake put in. ‘By pre-arrangement. He’d have been given the location, supplied with a key. Again, it’s supposition, but I’d say he didn’t pick that bag up until he was on his way to work.’

‘Yes, it makes sense, all of it,’ Cazalet said. ‘He would have made an interesting prisoner, but now he’s dead, which leaves us with a dead end.’ He frowned. ‘Except for Ferguson and his people.’

‘Exactly what I was thinking, Mr President. Maybe we can find out more from the English end.’

‘The mother,’ Cazalet said. ‘Maybe she knows something.’

‘I don’t know. A handicapped, ageing lady in a wheelchair is hardly the sort of person that al-Qaeda would be recruiting,’ Blake said. ‘But she and her son were welcomed warmly at the local mosque.’

‘Which is where we should look.’ Cazalet nodded. ‘Ferguson’s the man to handle it.’ He smiled. ‘It’s London next stop for you, Blake. I’ll speak to Ferguson myself and promise him every assistance.’

‘What about me, Mr President?’ Clancy said.

‘No way. I need you to watch my back. You took a bullet for me once, Clancy. You’re my good luck charm.’

‘As you wish, Mr President.’

Blake said, ‘I’d like to keep a low profile on this one. I’ll fly over in one of our private planes, with your permission, and use Farley Field outside London, Ferguson’s base for special operations.’

‘By all means. As soon as you can.’ He hesitated. ‘When you asked me to cancel dinner with Senator Black, you didn’t tell me much, and I hesitated. Thank God I had enough faith in you.’

‘Just doing my job, Mr President.’

Blake went and opened the door and Cazalet called, ‘And Blake…’

‘Mr President?’

‘Take them down. Whoever they are, take them down.’

‘You can count on it, Mr President,’ and Blake went out.

LONDON

3

The Gulfstream came in to Farley Field right on time and Blake thanked the crew, alighted and walked across the tarmac, pausing to look around him. A lot of water under the bridge at this place, and not just the struggles with the Rashid empire.

A voice called, ‘Hey, Blake. Over here.’

Blake turned and saw a Daimler by the control tower, parked close to the entrance of the operations room. The man standing beside it was no more than five feet five with hair so fair it was almost white. He wore an old black leather bomber jacket and jeans, and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. The man was Sean Dillon, once a feared enforcer for the IRA and now Ferguson’s right hand.

Blake shook hands. ‘How are you, my fine Irish friend?’

‘All the better for seeing you. The right royal treatment you’re getting, Ferguson sending the Daimler.’

They climbed in the back and the chauffeur drove away. Blake said, ‘So, how are things?’

‘Pretty warm since Ferguson heard from the President. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Blake, but that was a close call.’

‘You know how it is, Sean, you’ve been there. I remember how you saved President Clinton and Prime Minister Major on the Thames riverboat years back, and took a knife in the back for your trouble.’

‘From Norah Bell, the original bitch and worse than any man, and it took a decent woman like Hannah Bernstein to shoot her dead.’

‘How is Hannah?’

‘Wonderful, as usual. If she didn’t work for Ferguson, I think she’d have been Chief Superintendent by now or even Commander at Scotland Yard.’

‘But she loves you all too much to move on?’

‘Blake, she’s still trying to reform the lot of us. You know her grandfather is a rabbi. It’s that moral perception of hers. She’s been shot to bits, had her life shortened in any number of ways, and still hangs in there trying to keep Ferguson and me in check.’

‘And fails in that respect.’ It was a statement, not a question.

Dillon said, ‘Blake, the world’s gone to hell in a hand basket. Terrorism, al-Qaeda, all that stuff since nine-eleven, has changed everything. It can’t be combated by the old-fashioned rules of war. It isn’t like that.’

‘I agree.’ Blake shrugged. ‘A few years ago I’d never have said that, in spite of what I had to do during my time in Vietnam. I believed in the decencies, the rule of law, justice, all that stuff. But the people we have to deal with these days – there are no rules as far as they’re concerned, so there are no rules as far as I’m concerned. I’ll take them down any way I can.’

‘Good man yourself, I couldn’t agree more.’ Dillon lit another cigarette. ‘I speak Arabic, you know that, and I’ve spent my share of time in the Middle East. Even worked for the PLO in the old days when I was a naughty boy, and I think I know the Arab mind a bit. Most Muslims in the States or the UK are decent people, interested only in making a living and raising their families, but there’s a few of them who have a different political agenda, and it’s dealing with them that’s the problem.’

‘Take Morgan. English father, Muslim mother, raised a Christian,’ Blake said. ‘I know what happened to his parents, his mother returning to the Islamic faith and Morgan finding that same faith himself. But what turned him into the assassin who tried to take out the President?’

‘Well, that’s what you’re here to find out,’ Dillon told him. ‘And Ferguson, Hannah and Roper are waiting at Cavendish Place to discuss it with you.’

The Embassy of the Russian Federation is situated in Kensington Palace Gardens and it was typical November weather, rain falling, when Greta Novikova emerged through the main gates and paused at the edge of the pavement, waiting for the traffic to pass.

She was a small girl, unmistakably Slavic, with black hair to her shoulders, dark intense eyes and high cheekbones, and she wore an ankle-length coat in soft black leather over a black Armani suit. She would have made heads turn anywhere. She was a commercial attaché at the Embassy and had the degree to prove it, but in fact at thirty-five years old she was a major in the GRU, Russian Military Intelligence.

She crossed the road during the break in the traffic and entered the pub opposite. Early lunchtime it wasn’t very busy, but the man she was seeking was at the far end of the bar in the window seat reading The Times.

He was a couple of inches short of six feet, and wore a fawn raincoat over a dark wool suit. His hair was close-cropped, and a scar ran from the bottom of his left eye to the corner of his mouth. The eyes were cold and watchful, and the face powerful. The face of a soldier, which in a way he had been. A man of forty-five who had joined the KGB at twenty and had made major when he had moved on to other things. Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq in the old days – he’d seen it all. His name was Yuri Ashimov.

He stood up and kissed her on both cheeks and spoke to her in Russian. ‘Greta, more lovely than usual. A drink?’

‘I’ll have a vodka with you.’

He went to the bar, ordered two, brought them back, sat down, took out a pack of Russian cigarettes and lit one.

‘So, as nothing incredibly shocking has happened in New York, you must have a story for me.’

‘Not a thing,’ she said.

‘Come on, Greta, GRU handles all things Arabic and Muslim. There has to be something.’

‘That’s the point. There isn’t. The President didn’t keep his damned appointment with Senator Black. After the function at the Pierre he went straight to Washington.’

‘And Morgan?’

‘Certainly went to Gould & Co. as usual. One of our New York associates confirmed this. The only unusual activity was some sort of paramedic ambulance going down into the underground parking lot. It left half an hour later.’

‘Did our associate follow?’

‘He deemed it unwise.’

‘I should bloody well think so. It stinks.’

‘Do you think they got him?’

‘Sounds likely. But if they have they won’t let on, and it won’t affect us anyway. There were no direct contacts.’

Greta nodded. ‘I think they’d want him alive to see what he had to say. On the other hand, our American friends are a lot lighter on the trigger these days and he did have the cyanide tooth.’

‘Alive or dead, they won’t advertise the fact. What about the mother?’

‘I called yesterday, as you suggested. Brought flowers and a basket of fruit, supposedly from friends at the mosque.’

‘How was she?’

‘Faded – slightly confused as usual. She told me everyone at the mosque was so kind, Dr Selim was fantastic. And she mentioned that someone from the social services department had visited her. A woman, apparently.’

Ashimov frowned. ‘Why would the social services visit her?’

‘Because she’s handicapped?’

‘Rubbish. Her son’s well enough off. Why would social services visit?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like it. Did she say if they would visit again?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Be there, Greta. Just in case. If somebody turns up, I want a photo. I get an instinct for things.’

‘Which is why you’re still here, my love.’

‘True. But something here isn’t right. Let’s try and find out what it is.’

At Cavendish Place, Dillon and Blake were admitted by Kim, the General’s Gurkha manservant, and found Ferguson, Hannah Bernstein and Roper in the drawing room. Ferguson was in his sixties, a large, untidy man in a crumpled suit and a Guards tie. Hannah Bernstein was in her early thirties, with close-cropped red hair and horn-rimmed spectacles. Her Armani trouser suit was certainly more expensive than most people could afford on police pay. Major Roper sat in a state-of-the-art electric wheelchair, wearing a reefer coat, hair down to his shoulders, his face a taut mask of the kind of scar tissue that comes from burns, the explosion that had ended his career.

‘Here he is, the man of the moment,’ Dillon said. ‘I’m sure he’ll give it to us in graphic detail,’ which Blake did, everything that had happened in Manhattan.

Afterwards Blake said, ‘So there it is. For the disposal system I’m indebted to you, General. We’re fighting a new kind of war these days, although I can understand Hannah’s moral principles being bruised a bit.’

‘Bruised or not, the Superintendent works for this department under the Official Secrets Act. Isn’t that right?’ Ferguson glanced at her.

Hannah didn’t look easy, but said, ‘Of course, sir.’

‘Good. Tell us about Mrs Morgan, then.’

‘She’s sixty-five and looks much older. I managed to get hold of her hospital records, and it’s bad. The car accident that killed her husband almost finished her off. She narrowly avoided being a paraplegic, but she has money. Her husband owned a pharmacy, which was sold after his death, and there was insurance, so she’s well fixed.’

‘Go on.’

‘Her family disowned her when she married a Christian, but now she’s returned to Islam, as you know. Her son started taking her to the Queen Street mosque in her wheelchair. It used to be a Methodist chapel.’

‘And he turned, too?’

‘Apparently.’

Blake said, ‘That really interests me, the idea of a highly educated man, ostensibly English for thirty years of his life, a university academic, turning to a faith he’d never accepted before in his life.’

‘And then ending up in Manhattan with the intention of killing the President,’ Dillon said.

‘Which makes me wonder what goes on at the Queen Street mosque,’ Blake said. ‘Some of these places are hotbeds of intrigue, pump out the wrong ideas. Sure, we finally captured Saddam in Iraq. But how long ago was that and how many terrorist attacks have there been since?’

Ferguson said, ‘In his last message, Bin Laden referred to the young extremists as “soldiers of God”, and what concerns us is that young men from this country could be among them. It makes places like the Queen Street mosque of special interest.’

Hannah said, ‘If you’re looking for suicide bombers, though, it doesn’t seem like the place.’ She opened a file and passed it across. ‘Dr Ali Selim, the imam. Forty-five, born in London, father a doctor from Iraq who sent the boy to St Paul’s School, one of our better establishments. Selim went to Cambridge, studied Arabic, and later took a doctorate in Comparative Theology.’

Blake looked at the file, particularly the photo. ‘Impressive. I like the beard.’ He passed the file to the others.

Hannah said, ‘He’s a member of the Muslim Council, the Mayor of London’s Interfaith Committee, and any number of government boards. Everyone I speak to tells me he’s a wonderful man.’

‘Maybe he’s too wonderful,’ Dillon said.

‘I’ve checked with the local police. Not a hint of trouble at the Queen Street mosque.’

There was a pause, and Ferguson turned to Roper. ‘Have you any thoughts, Major?’

‘I can only process facts, opinions, suppositions. Unless I have something to go on, I can’t help.’

‘Well, I’ll give you something,’ Blake said. ‘And it’s been intriguing the hell out of me. Does “the wrath of Allah” mean anything to you?’

‘Should it?’

‘When Clancy and I faced Morgan, in the moment before he bit on the cyanide tooth, Morgan said, “Beware the wrath of Allah.”’

Roper frowned and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t strike a chord, but I’ll run it by my computer.’

‘So, the way ahead on this one appears plain,’ Ferguson said. ‘I think you, Superintendent, should have another word with Mrs Morgan in your guise as a social worker.’

Hannah wasn’t comfortable, and showed it. ‘That’s a difficult one, sir. I mean, her son is dead and she doesn’t even know it.’

‘Which can’t be helped, Superintendent. It’s an unusual situation, I agree, but when one considers the gravity of the deed Morgan was trying to commit, I feel that any means that will help us to reach an explanation would be justified. See to it, and use Dillon as back-up. His knowledge of Arabic may prove useful.’ He turned to Blake. ‘We’ll drop Roper off at his house, and you and I can continue to the Ministry of Defence, where I’ll show you everything we have on Muslim activity in the UK.’

‘Suits me fine,’ Blake said.

Ferguson turned to the others. ‘All right, people, there’s work to be done. Let’s get to it.’

After leaving the pub on Kensington High Street, Greta and Ashimov crossed the road to the Embassy and got into a dark blue Opel saloon. She checked the glove compartment and found a digital camera.

‘Excellent,’ he told her. ‘You can drop me at my apartment in Monk Street and keep in touch on your mobile. Anything of significance, I want to know.’

‘Of course.’ She drove out into the traffic. ‘Where’s Belov at the moment?’

‘The good Josef is in Geneva. All those billions, my love, it keeps him so busy.’ There was an edge of bitterness there.

‘Come off it,’ she said. ‘Money is power and you love it, and working for Josef Belov is the ultimate power and you love that too.’