Stephen Leather: False Friends

Shepherd ran towards him, pulling out his Glock. Pasha saw him, saw the gun, and then began to grope inside his backpack. Shepherd stopped, steadied himself and took aim. As Pasha’s hand appeared from the backpack holding a gun, Shepherd fired twice, both shots to the chest. Pasha fell backwards and hit the ground hard. Shoppers screamed in terror and began running out of the mall.

‘He’s got a gun!’ screamed a woman with close-cropped hair and a nose ring.

Shepherd looked at her in amazement. ‘I think they know that,’ he said.

The woman pointed at Shepherd. ‘He’s got a gun!’ she screamed again at the top of her voice. She backed away, then turned and ran towards the entrance.

Blood was pooling around Pasha. His legs shuddered and then went still.

‘Armed police! Drop your weapon!’

The shout came from above him. Shepherd looked up. Two cops on the floor above were aiming their MP5s at him. A third armed officer was on the escalator, keeping his weapon trained on Shepherd as he moved smoothly down to the lower ground floor.

‘Armed police! Armed police!’ More shouts, this time from the entrance to his left. Two more armed officers.

Shepherd bent down and placed the Glock on the floor, then straightened up and put his hands behind his neck. He slowly knelt down and waited as the armed police ran towards him. ‘Please don’t shoot me,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I really don’t like being shot.’

Khalid beamed and looked across at Abu al Khayr. ‘It is after six o’clock, brother,’ he said. ‘It has started.’

The two men were alone in the sitting room of a terraced house in Tower Hamlets, home to an Afghan refugee and his family. The man was a diehard Taliban soldier but had claimed to have been a government official who had been forced out of his village under threat of death. In fact al-Qaeda had funded his travel from Afghanistan to the UK and had guided him through the asylum process. Along with him had come his wife and four children. All had been in the country for three years and his council-funded home was often used as a safe house and as a place to store weapons and materials. A false wall behind the water tank in the attic had concealed more than a dozen of the handguns that were being used in the attack on the shopping mall.

The man had taken his wife and children to see a movie and was under instructions not to return before nine that evening. But there were two other men in the house; both worshipped at a mosque in west London and were trusted associates of Khalid’s.

Khalid was sitting on a sofa with a floral pattern and Abu al Khayr was settled in a matching armchair. On a pine coffee table between them were eight cheap Nokia phones lined up in a row. On the wall above the fireplace was an LCD television tuned to Sky News. Khalid knew from experience that the station was almost always the first to cover a breaking news story.

‘How long before we know?’ asked Abu al Khayr.

On the television a blonde woman with unnaturally smooth skin and hair that looked like a blonde plastic helmet was talking earnestly about a car crash on a motorway in the north of England.

‘The first reports should be out within minutes,’ said Khalid. ‘Someone will call the station because they pay for tip-offs. They will check with the police and then they will announce it. But it will take another half an hour or so before they have pictures.’ He rubbed his beard. ‘But as we speak the kaffirs are being killed in their hundreds. It is a glorious day, brother, a day that will live for eternity.’

‘It is a pity that we could not be there to witness it,’ said Abu al Khayr. ‘It would be quite something to see.’

‘There will be CCTV footage of everything and the media will show it,’ said Khalid. ‘The whole world will bear witness to our triumph.’

‘Allahu akbar,’ said Abu al Khayr.

‘Allahu akbar,’ echoed Khalid.

They heard a dull thud from the hallway.

‘What was that?’ asked Abu al Khayr.

Khalid pulled a face. He stood up and as he did so he saw a movement through the lace curtains at the window that overlooked the street. Three men, all dressed in black, their faces concealed. He turned to say something to Abu al Khayr but at that instant something smashed through the window and rolled across the carpet. It was a small metal cylinder and Khalid immediately recognised it for what it was. He closed his eyes and clamped his hands over his ears. The flash-bang was deafening even with his ears covered and he staggered back.

The door to the sitting room was kicked open and a black figure burst into the room, cradling an MP5. The gun kicked twice and Abu al Khayr slumped back with two holes in his chest pumping blood.

Two more soldiers moved into the room and fanned left and right, bent low as their guns swept the room.

Khalid’s ears were still ringing from the explosion but he raised his hands high. ‘I am a British citizen!’ he shouted. ‘I demand to see a lawyer!’

‘That’s not going to happen,’ said the soldier.

‘I have my rights!’ shouted Khalid. ‘I am a citizen and I am unarmed. I do not have a weapon.’

The soldier used his left hand to pull out a Zastava M88 pistol from the holster on his hip. He tossed it at Khalid and it bounced off the man’s chest and clattered to the floor. Khalid stared at it in horror.

‘You do now,’ said the soldier. He brought his left hand up to support the MP5 and pulled the trigger twice. The first shot hit Khalid in the chest, just above the heart, and the blood hadn’t even begun to flow from the wound before the second shot hit him in the face. Khalid fell backwards and hit the coffee table hard before rolling off it and ending up on the carpet. Mobile phones were scattered around his body.

Major Allan Gannon pulled down the mask that had been covering his face and he clicked on his radio. ‘Tell her ladyship that we have neutralised the situation, Terry,’ he said into his radio mic. ‘No survivors.’ He clicked off the mic. ‘What the lady wants, the lady gets,’ muttered the Major. He stepped over Khalid’s body, picked up the M88 in his gloved hand and pressed it into Khalid’s lifeless palm.

The doctor finished examining Malik’s mangled foot and replaced the dressing.

‘Will I be able to play the piano again, Doc?’ asked Malik. The doctor smiled but didn’t reply.

‘Well, it’s good to see that you haven’t lost your sense of humour,’ said Button.

The doctor took a final look at Malik’s chart and then left. They were in a private room in Cromwell Hospital in South Kensington. Malik had been booked in under an assumed name.

‘What happens now?’ asked Malik.

‘You stay here until you’re well enough to leave,’ said Button. ‘Then it’s up to you.’

‘I suppose it could have been a lot worse,’ said Malik. He nodded at Shepherd. ‘If John hadn’t turned up.’ He shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if the torturing had continued.

‘Yeah, well, maybe next time you’ll be more careful,’ said Chaudhry. ‘I mean, the fact that a pretty girl seemed interested in you really should have tipped you off that you were being set up.’

‘Yeah, well, twenty-twenty hindsight is a wonderful thing. Who was she anyway?’ Malik asked Button. ‘She isn’t a student, right?’

‘Her name is Alena Kraishan. She was born in Palestine but has spent time in Iraq and the Gulf states under other names.’

‘Is she in al-Qaeda?’

‘She works for pretty much any Islamic terrorist group that pays her,’ said Button.

‘How old is she?’ asked Malik.

‘Thirty-one,’ said Button.

‘She looked good for thirty-one,’ said Malik. He shook his head. ‘Bloody typical. First time a really fit bird fancies me and it turns out she just wants to kill me.’