Stephen Leather - Dead Men

‘Do they worship here?’ asked Salih.

‘They used to go to the Finsbury Park mosque,’ he said. ‘They were selected and groomed by Abu Hamza himself.’

Salih knew of the hook-handed preacher who had taken control of the inner-city place of worship and turned it into an al-Qaeda training camp. ‘They must not look like fundamentalists,’ he said.

‘They shaved off their beards when they came back from Pakistan, and they wear Western clothing,’ said Hakeem. ‘We moved them away from Finsbury Park when Abu Hamza became a publicity junkie.’

The British authorities had tolerated Abu Hamza’s brand of racial hatred for years, but eventually their patience had worn thin. He had been sent to prison, convicted of inciting murder and racial hatred, but not before he had despatched hundreds of British Muslims to training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. ‘They are below the official radar?’ asked Salih.

‘They are what the authorities here call “invisibles”. They can travel freely in and out of Britain, yet they have dual citizenship so they arrive in Pakistan as nationals and can stay there as long as they like. I heard of them and suggested that they return to London. They can make a bigger impact here.’ He lowered his voice again. ‘We are trying to get them into Heathrow,’ he said. ‘We already have two of our people working on the security staff at Terminal Three. Now we are trying to get Mazur and Tariq on the baggage-handling staff. The British are so politically correct that they aren’t even allowed to question why so many Muslims are applying to work at the airports. But the day will come when we have everything in place and you will see an event to rival Nine Eleven in the United States.’ He raised his glass in salute. ‘And while I give my life to Allah, what are you doing? Creating havoc for money?’

‘If I create havoc, I’m not doing my job properly,’ said Salih.

‘But you do what you do for your own ends,’ said Hakeem. ‘Where is the glory in that?’

‘There is no glory,’ agreed Salih.

‘But there is money?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Salih. ‘There is money.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and handed over a bulky envelope. ‘This is for your expenses.’

Hakeem weighed it in his hand.

‘Ten thousand pounds,’ said Salih. ‘That is for the introduction. There will be another forty thousand if the two men are suitable.’

‘I shall use it wisely,’ said Hakeem.

‘I am sure you will,’ said Salih.

As soon as Charlotte Button had had breakfast, over the Irish Times and the Independent , she phoned Culford School and asked to speak to her daughter. She had to wait almost ten minutes before Zoe came to the phone. ‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Zoe, I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday but I didn’t get back until late. Daddy says you lost your phone.’

‘It wasn’t lost, it was stolen,’ said Zoe.

‘Have you told the school?’

Zoe’s sigh was loaded with sarcasm. ‘Of course,’ she said.

‘And will they tell the police?’

‘Mum, it’s a phone. The police don’t care about phones.’

‘I’ll need a police report to make a claim on our insurance,’ said Button.

‘I don’t think the school likes to call in the police. They handle things themselves.’

‘Oh, so they’ll find it for you, will they?’

‘Mum, please. Just send me a new phone, okay? Dad said you would.’

‘And did Dad say why he couldn’t do it?’

‘He said he was busy.’

‘And I’m not?’ Zoe sighed again. Button pictured the contempt in her daughter’s eyes, and the way her lips had pressed into a tight line. ‘I’m sorry, honey. I’ll get you a phone and send it to you.’

‘A Sony-Ericsson, okay?’

‘What’s a Sony-Ericsson?’

‘It’s a phone. Everyone here has one.’

‘I thought Nokias were the phones to have.’

‘Oh, Mum, Nokias are so yesterday. The new Sony-Ericsson is savage.’

‘Savage? That’s good, right?’

‘Yes, Mum, that’s good.’

‘Okay. Is everything else all right?’

‘Fine,’ said Zoe. ‘Look, I have to go. Love you.’

‘Love you,’ said Button, but the line was already dead.

She sat on the bed tapping the phone against the side of her head. Zoe was thirteen and had boarded at the school since she was eleven. It had been Graham’s idea, but Button hadn’t needed much persuading. They both had careers, and the only other options would have been a live-in au pair or turning Zoe into a latch-key kid. They had agreed that boarding-school was a better solution, and Zoe had been surprisingly agreeable. It had made her more independent, and she was thriving in the hothouse academic environment, but with that had come a coldness that often brought tears to Button’s eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was normal teenage rebellion or because Zoe had been sent away from home, but either way it was painful.

She tossed the phone on to the bed. Zoe was their only child and there had been complications that made it unlikely they’d have more. Not that she and Graham had planned a big family. Zoe had been an accident, a happy one but an accident nevertheless, and neither Button nor her husband had ever put her in front of their careers. They loved Zoe, of course, but Graham wanted to build his business and Button had always been determined to get to the top of her profession. And to do that she had had to make sacrifices. Button didn’t regret the decision they’d made, but that didn’t make Zoe’s coldness any easier to bear.

She picked up the phone and pressed redial, then cancelled the call. Zoe had lessons to go to, and she wouldn’t appreciate being dragged back to the phone. In any case, what could she say to her? That she loved her? That she missed her? That she wished she was there to give her a hug? She caught sight of herself in the mirror above the dressing-table and flinched. She looked scared.

She stood up and stared out of the window over the city. It was impossible to have everything, no matter what the glossy women’s magazines said. You couldn’t have a successful career, a fulfilling sex life and an adoring family. You had to make choices, and more often than not those choices led to sacrifices. No one had forced her to send Zoe to boarding-school, just as no one had forced her to join MI5 or SOCA. Suddenly she craved a cigarette, and laughed. Once a smoker, always a smoker.

Salih watched the two men from across the restaurant. They were young Pakistanis, with glossy gelled hair, dark brown skin and black eyes. They looked like a couple of male models, tall with broad shoulders and tight stomachs. He toyed with his coffee cup and wondered why two such good-looking young men would consider blowing themselves into a thousand pieces. They were British-born, which meant they had access to the country’s health and education systems, they lived in a country where the police didn’t shoot rubber bullets or worse into crowds, where civilians weren’t dragged off the streets and searched or roughed up, where soldiers couldn’t kill children and receive nothing worse than a reprimand.

Salih had been born in Israeli-occupied Gaza, where children died because hospitals lacked equipment and medicine, where schools had no textbooks, where two-thirds of the population had no jobs and where most families lived on less than ten dollars a month. Salih understood why so many Palestinians wanted to take up arms against the Israelis, and why so many were prepared to give up their own lives. But Mazur and Tariq weren’t Palestinians. They hadn’t grown up under the heel of an occupying power. They were free men in a free country, which was what made their decision to give up everything for Allah so mystifying.