Stella Rimington: Dead Line

Aleppo had forecast the assassination of a senior Lebanese politician, information which subsequently proved of intense interest to that part of the Syrian secret services that was widely (and erroneously) thought to have been responsible for the murder. He had exposed a fundamentalist cell of Saudi extremists in Germany who were plotting to kill Bashar-al-Assad, Syria’s young President, during a forthcoming trip to Paris; the result was the discovery of four men shot dead in a Hamburg flat, killings put down by the German police to internal Wahhabi feuding. And Aleppo had revealed the location of Iran’s research facility into limited plutonium-based explosions, information Syria kept carefully in reserve.

So when Aleppo had revealed that two agents were actively working against Syrian interests in the UK with the intention of blackening Syria’s name before the Gleneagles peace conference, Ahmad had ignored the vagueness of the information and promptly passed it back to Tibshirani. He had long ago learned that when an agent had a perfect record, there was no point in trying to pick and choose; he would leave that to his superiors at home, while he got on with trying to control this goldmine on his own.

In the Underground, Ahmad bought a ticket from the manned booth rather than a machine, then stopped to buy a copy of the Evening Standard before descending on an escalator into the cavernous depths of the Piccadilly Line.

He stood on the platform, almost empty at this time of day. He did not board the first train that came in, but took the next one, and stood up in the compartment, holding his paper in front of his face, until he got off at Acton Town. Here he went upstairs and through the ticket machines, then made a show of looking at his watch, before going back into the station. He caught a train heading north and after a single stop got off at Ealing Common. There he remained on the platform until the others who disembarked – there were only three of them – had taken the lift and gone. Then he caught the next train.

At Park Royal, he got off again, but this time he left the station. He took the pedestrian subway to the south side of the roundabout for the North Circular, and walked along Hangar Lane until he suddenly turned around and reversed his steps, stopping just short of the subway and going down a dingy side street of small shops.

Near the end of the line of shops was a small premises, with a hanging sign outside reading G. M. Olikara . On the front pane of the shop were dozens of manufacturer’s stickers for every conceivable make of vacuum cleaner, and the window was packed with old and new models. On the glass window in the door, next to the small sign that said OPEN, was another sign, hand-lettered and stuck on with sticky tape. It read We Fix Hoovers!

Inside an assistant was demonstrating a Dyson machine to a customer, deliberately tipping the contents of an ashtray onto the thinning carpet of the shop before sucking up the mess into the vacuum’s transparent tank with a single pass of the machine.

Ben Ahmad ignored both men and walked straight through the shop to the rear, through a bead curtain, past the stockroom and the single, squalid lavatory, and out into the yard at the back. Here, in contrast to the shabbiness of the shop, a new Portakabin had been installed, freshly painted, its door unlocked. Ahmad found it prepared for his visit; a full kettle sat waiting to be boiled, and in the miniature fridge in one corner was a fresh carton of milk.

He switched the kettle on and sat down, suddenly tired by the tension of his trek. He knew he had to take every possible precaution. British surveillance was legendary, a daunting mix of the latest technology and intelligent legwork – and agents of Mossad were also all over London. But he was confident he had not been followed to the shop, which was rented in the name of the Syrian Christian who managed the business, but paid for in full by the Syrian Arab Republic.

He did not have long to wait. Before the kettle came to the boil, there was a sharp rap on the door. ‘Enter,’ commanded Ben Ahmad, and he was joined by the man he knew as ‘Aleppo’. Aleppo was wearing a black leather jacket, his face was flushed and he was breathing heavily. Without removing his jacket or so much as glancing at his host, he sat down hard in one of the two director’s chairs on either side of the cabin’s small desk. He was clearly on edge: ‘It’s not convenient for me, meeting here,’ he complained angrily.

Ben Ahmad shrugged. They had had this conversation before. ‘It’s safer out here. You know that. I have to insist on it.’

Aleppo frowned, shook his head in disgust but did not argue further. His mind and his eyes seemed elsewhere, and he suddenly switched to the classical Arabic spoken from Morocco to the Gulf. He spoke it beautifully, while Ahmad, who had grown up in a poverty-stricken village on the Hawran Plateau, could never entirely shed all traces of the demotic from his speech. Aleppo said tersely, ‘There’s been a leak from your people.’

‘A leak?’ Ben Ahmad was shocked; this was the last thing he had expected. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Someone’s been talking. To the West – the British, most likely. They know the two names I gave you and they know they intend to derail the conference in Scotland.’

‘How did you learn this?’ asked Ben Ahmad. He was beginning to tremble, as the awful implication of what was being said hit him.

‘It’s my business to know.’ Then, sarcastically, ‘It’s not as if I can expect your people to protect me.’

‘How do you know the leak comes from Syria?’

Suddenly, Aleppo’s eyes turned hot and angry, fixed thunder on the man across the table. His voice was biting. ‘Where else could it come from? Unless your Damascus masters are in the habit of sharing secrets with their enemies.’

Ben Ahmad was trying to think, though panic was slowing his brain. He must reassure and pacify Aleppo. ‘I will report this at once,’ he declared. ‘I give you my word, we will root out the traitor.’

Aleppo was unappeased. ‘You’d better, or this is the last you’ll see of me. And why has no action been taken against these two people yet? I took great risks to get that information. I assumed you would see its importance. But the two are still operating. Against you, I need hardly say.’

‘I appreciate that. But my superiors are cautious.’

‘Why? Do they doubt my information?’

He said this challengingly, and Ahmad’s palms sweated as he felt the situation running out of his control. It was a cardinal rule for an agent runner to stay in charge, to make it clear that he, not the agent, was running the show. But with this man, Ahmad found it impossible. He was not just prickly and quick to take offence, but there was something dangerously unpredictable about him, an air of menace that Ahmad feared. Had his superiors not valued Aleppo so much, Ahmad would have been happy to break the contact. But he knew that if he lost Aleppo, his career would be finished.

‘Not at all,’ he said reassuringly. ‘No one doubts the truth of what you say. But it has been hard for us to know what these people could do that would damage our interests in any substantial way.’ And, he decided not to add, that would justify the risks of moving against them on foreign territory.

‘So they’d rather take their chances, your masters? Fools.’

‘I didn’t say that. In fact, you can expect action to be taken soon.’ Ahmad thought this was likely, though in truth he didn’t know what would happen or when, and he daren’t give a hostage to fortune by promising the man a timescale. Soon would have to do for now.

Aleppo was clearly unimpressed. ‘Make sure it does.’ He got up from his chair, moving towards the door. ‘Now this has been leaked to the West, I am in danger. I have little confidence that you can plug this leak, which makes it all the more urgent that these people are dealt with right away. Otherwise, you may find it is too late. Tell your superiors that, from me.’ And he went out, banging the door so hard that the flimsy walls of the Portakabin shook.