Nick Oldham - Critical Threat

‘Ahh,’ Henry said.

‘Consequently, all our efforts have been concentrated on that little gem of gen … and incidentally, the guy in Spain was released without charge. He was found murdered two days later, having been subjected to real torture.’

‘Hence the Blackburn Field Office of the FBI.’

‘We set up here six weeks ago. Only your chief constable and a few people higher up the ladder know about us and we’ve been pulling our guts out trying to track Akbar down. It’s a joint task force — FBI, CIA, Secret Service, the military … there’s a helluva lot of territory arguments.’

‘Is he definitely in this country?’

‘Intelligence says yes … and intelligence brought us to East Lancashire last week in a hastily prepared series of raids, carried out by you guys — remember?’

‘So I was right to whinge that the whole thing was poorly set up.’

‘Not only that, pal — you missed Akbar. You!’ Donaldson pointed at him, then smiled and patted him on the knee. ‘Not your fault.’ He winked. ‘But he was there, DNA at the scene proved it.’

‘He was getting those two young lads to do his dirty work?’

‘In one! The intelligence was that he was spending time with young rebels and was about to push them out and cause merry mayhem on the streets of your cotton towns. Until you knocked on the door and spooked him … that’s the way it goes, sometimes.’ Donaldson took a breath. ‘But earlier today one of our surveillance teams slotted in behind a guy in London called Fazul Ali, a known associate of Akbar. They tracked him all the way to Lancashire — to Blackburn, actually. Ali is Akbar’s right-hand man … and if you’d had the stomach to watch the video you’d’a seen him help his mate to decapitate Lonsdale … Anyway, we follow Ali to Blackburn, then we lose him.’

‘Brilliant,’ Henry said sardonically.

‘These things happen, as you well know … but the interesting thing for me is, Henry, how did you end up knocking on that door this morning?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Shorten it,’ Donaldson said, checking his watch. ‘We’ve got two hours before the lovely Condoleezza Rice sets foot in this county.’

Henry related his story quickly, feeling as though he was telling a sordid tale of everyday life, grubby murder, sleazy passion and cultural issues which had no relation whatever to the world of terrorism. He had been dealing with the sad story of a woman who thought she could break free of a life that was strangling her and of an ex-cop who was trying to make a quick buck by leaning on somebody. What both had done was to underestimate the person they were dealing with. Just another tale of everyday folk caught in a vortex of mixed circumstances … but the sad reality was that terrorism now often overlapped into day-to-day life. It wasn’t something that happened on the other side of the world anymore; it happened on the doorstep, as evidenced by the 7/7 London bombers, boys who lived next door.

‘Mansur Rashid? I wonder what we’ve got on him … Name doesn’t ring any bells,’ Donaldson said as Henry finished.

‘I haven’t had the chance to do any digging yet, either.’

Donaldson stood up and switched on the lights. ‘Next door,’ he said. ‘Think you can stand up?’

The pain relief administered by Dr Chambers had actually kicked in, numbing down Henry’s injuries. ‘I might need a Zimmer frame,’ he joked.

Donaldson took him next door. Four people sat at computers, tapping busily away. No one looked round. Donaldson approached the nearest operator and laid his hands on the guy’s shoulders, making him jerk out of his concentration on the screen.

‘Mansur Rashid,’ he said simply. With a nod, the man began to interrogate his PC. ‘Access to thousands of databases,’ Donaldson said to Henry, ‘including every single thing Lancashire Constabulary has on computer record — and every other force in the country.’ He wasn’t bragging, just being matter-of-fact. Henry didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Nothing surprised him anymore.

Ten seconds later, the man said, ‘Mansur Rashid.’ He leaned back to allow Donaldson and Henry to look at the screen. ‘This is from Special Branch files in Lancashire.’

The two officers looked at the computer.

Donaldson read out, ‘Mansur Rashid, date of birth 22/10/64 in Pakistan … address on Balaclava Street, Blackburn … attends a local mosque … and that’s about it, a one-line entry … very thorough, you lot,’ he said critically, then more magnanimously, ‘Though to be fair, there’s a hundred thousand entries like this the world over, one-liners about people who might be of interest.’

The computer guy scrolled down the screen and said, ‘This file has been looked at twice today, by the way.’

Angela Cranlow and Graeme Walling, Henry guessed. That’s how they discovered his address. And Jenny Fisher accessing it for the same reason following Henry’s instructions: to find Rashid’s address.

‘No trace on any other database,’ the guy said.

‘Anyway, Karl,’ Henry said, ‘you haven’t told me how you magically appeared on Balaclava Street and saved my life.’

‘Eavesdropping,’ he admitted. ‘Our surveillance team lost Fazul Ali, then not long after I hear the chatter on the local radio channel that we are monitoring. I recognized your voice and picked up that a couple of your officers have gone missing in the same vicinity as Ali was mislaid, and you were investigating. I just decided to take a look … and in case you haven’t worked it out, pal, this is the second time that you’ve missed Akbar because I’m pretty sure that he was in the house when your people knocked … and how do I know that? The dead cops, for one thing, and for another, the guy who wanted to slice you up.’

‘Is Fazul Ali?’ said Henry, deadpan, suddenly realizing he’d been in hand-to-hand combat with one of the world’s most dangerous men.

‘Fazul Ali,’ Donaldson confirmed.

‘And you shot him.’

‘Winged him, actually,’ Donaldson said with a grin. ‘Now let’s go and torture him.’

Henry’s disbelief diminished as Karl Donaldson took him along the ground-floor corridor, up the set of wooden steps and on to the first-floor corridor, which virtually replicated the one below. ‘The far offices have been turned into sleeping quarters,’ Donaldson said with an airy wave of the hand, ‘and this is the interrogation suite.’ He opened the door of the first office and stepped through, Henry behind him like an obedient puppy.

They entered a dimly lit room. It took a moment for Henry’s eyes to make the adjustment and to his amazement he saw that there was a large two-way mirror in one wall, on the other side of which there was a very bare looking room. In the centre of that room was a chair and, tied to it and slumped forward, was the naked form of Fazul Ali, his head lolling drunkenly to one side, eyes glaring sullenly towards what must have been a very large mirror to him. He must have realized what it was and that he was being observed from the other side of it. The chair was screwed to the floor and Ali’s feet were shackled by thin chains to bolts fixed in the floor, his wrists cuffed to the back legs of the chair.

His right shoulder was bandaged, blood flowering slowly through the gauze from the gunshot wound underneath. Henry had a flashback of Ali being shot by Donaldson, recalling how the shoulder had seemed to explode. It was a bad wound, one which required hospital treatment.

There were two people in the observation room — Dr Chambers and a man in his late thirties who wasn’t even introduced to Henry. They were sitting on chairs, looking through the mirror at Ali. A door adjacent gave access to the interrogation room beyond. The two looked up at Henry and Donaldson as they came into the room, nodding, then, as if on cue, all three Americans put their right forefingers into their ears and their brows furrowed. Henry realized they were all listening to tiny earpieces.