Frederick Forsyth - The Kill List

So the young midshipman traveled under the identity of his mother’s maiden name. A friend in government had authorized a genuine passport in the false name, and the passport had secured papers from the Swedish merchant marine authorities in the same name.

The four officers and the cadet were on the bridge that summer morning when the steward brought them coffee as the Malmö pushed her blunt nose into the rising swell of the Skagerrak.

Agent Opal had indeed managed to acquire a rugged trail bike from a Somali who was desperate to get out of the country with his wife and child and needed the dollars to start afresh in Kenya. What he was doing was utterly illegal under al-Shabaab law and liable to bring him a flogging or worse if he were caught. But he also had a scruffy pickup truck and believed he could make the border if he drove by night and lay up all day in the dense vegetation between Kismayo and the Kenyan frontier.

Opal had also strapped to the rear pillion a large wicker basket in which anyone might carry their meager shopping but which in his case would hide a large extra canister of petrol.

The map he had acquired from the belly of the kingfish showed him his handler’s chosen meeting point was on the coast almost a hundred miles north. On the pitted, rutted track the coast highway had become, he could manage it between dusk and dawn.

His other purchase was an old but serviceable transistor radio on which he could listen to various foreign stations — also forbidden by al-Shabaab. But living alone in his cabin out of town, pressing the tranny to his ear with the sound low, he could pick up Kol Israel and not be heard by anyone a few yards away. That was how he heard about showers over Ashkelon.

The inhabitants of that merry borough might look up the next day and be perplexed by a blue sky with not a cloud in sight, but that was their problem.

Benny was already with the fishing boat. He had arrived by helicopter, a machine owned and flown by another Israeli on what purported to be a private charter for a wealthy tourist from Nairobi to the Oceans Sports Hotel at Watamu on the coast north of Malindi.

In fact, the helicopter had flown past the coast, turned north past Lamu Island, east of Somalia’s Ras Kamboni Island, until the GPS system located the fishing boat below.

The helicopter held position twenty feet up as Benny fast-roped down to the pitching deck and the hands waiting to grab him.

That evening, Opal set off under cover of darkness. It was Friday, the streets were almost empty, the population at their prayers and the road traffic thin. Twice when the agent saw headlights coming up behind him, he pulled off the road and hid until the truck went by. He did the same when he saw the glow of lights on the horizon ahead. And he rode only by the light of the moon.

He was early. When he knew he must be a few miles short of the meeting point, he pulled off again and waited for dawn. At first light, he went on, but slowly, and there it was: a dry wadi, coming from the desert to his left, but large enough to merit a bridge to pass under. It would flood in the coming monsoon and become a raging torrent, passing under the concrete span of the bridge and through the cluster of giant casuarina trees between the highway and the shore.

He left the road and coaxed his trail bike the hundred yards to the water’s edge. Then he listened. After fifteen minutes, he heard it: the faint snarl of an outboard engine. He flicked his lights twice: up, down, up, down. The buzz turned toward him, and the shape of the rigid inflatable came out of the dark sea. He looked back at the road behind him. No one.

Benny stepped ashore. Passwords were exchanged. Then he gave his agent a hug. There was news from home, eagerly awaited. A briefing, and equipment.

The latter was extremely welcome. He would have to bury it, of course, under the earthen floor of his cabin, and then cover the patch with plywood sheeting. A small but state-of-the-art transceiver. It would take messages from Israel and hold them for thirty minutes, while they were transcribed or memorized. Then it would self-erase.

And it would send messages from Opal to the Office, which, spoken “in clear,” would be compressed into a single “squirt” so short that any listener would need ultra-technology to catch the tenth-of-a-second burst and record it. In Tel Aviv, the burst would be extended back into normal speech.

And there was the briefing. The warehouse, the need to know who lived in it, if they ever left it and, if so, where did they go? A description of any vehicle used by any inhabitant or regular visitor to the warehouse. And if any visitor lived away from the warehouse, a complete description of that residence and its exact location.

Opal did not need to know, and Benny could only presume, but there would be an American drone up there somewhere; a Predator, or Global Hawk, or perhaps the new Sentinel, turning slowly, hour after hour, looking down, seeing everything. But in the tangle of Kismayo’s streets, the watchers could still lose one vehicle among hundreds unless that vehicle was precisely described to the last detail.

With another hug, they parted. The inflatable, manned by four armed commandos, slipped away to the sea. Opal refueled his motorcycle and headed south to his cabin to bury his transceiver and the battery, energized by the sun via a photovoltaic cell.

Benny was lifted back off the sea by a rope ladder dangled from the helicopter. When he was gone, the commandos settled for another day of hard exercises, swimming and fishing to stave off the boredom. They might not be needed again, but in case they were, they had to stay.

Benny was dropped at Nairobi airport and took flight for Europe and thence Israel. Opal scoured the streets around the warehouse and found a room to rent. From a crack in its warped shutters, he could survey the single, double-gated entrance.

He would have to continue with his job as a tally clerk or arouse suspicion. And he had to eat and sleep. Between these, he would stake out the warehouse as best he could. He hoped something would happen.

Far away in London, the Tracker was doing his best to make something happen.

The installers of the security system at the house in Pelham Crescent were sufficiently confident of their skill and renown that they announced who they were. Pinned to the outside wall underneath the eaves was a tasteful plaque announcing “This property is protected by Daedalus Security Systems.” It was discreetly photographed from the leafy park at the center of the crescent of houses.

Daedalus, mused the Tracker when he saw the picture, was the Greek engineer who designed a not very secure pair of wings for his son, who fell into the sea and died when the wax melted. But he also constructed a maze of fiendish ingenuity for King Minos of Crete. No doubt the modern Daedalus was trying to evoke the skill of the builder of a puzzle system that no one could break.

He turned out to be Steve Bamping, who had founded and still ran his own company, which was very upmarket and serviced a wealthy client list with antiburglar protection. With the permission of the director of G Branch of MI5, Firth and the Tracker went to see him. His first reaction to what they wished was of flat refusal.

Firth did the talking until the Tracker produced a sheaf of photos and laid them on Mr. Bamping’s desk in two rows. There were eleven of them. The head of Daedalus Security stared at them uncomprehending. Each was of a dead man, on a morgue slab, eyes closed.

“Who are these?” he asked.

“Dead men,” said the Tracker. “Seven Americans and four British. All harmless citizens doing their best for their countries. All murdered in cold blood by Jihadist assassins inspired and impelled by a preacher on the Internet.”