Stella Rimington - Rip Tide

And two hours later, as a French sailor was showing his commanding officer a rope hanging from the bow rail of the Aristides, Dave Armstrong and Captain Guthrie were being led across a beach at gunpoint ten miles south of Mogadishu.

Liz was fast asleep in her flat when the phone rang at 5 a.m. ‘Cabinet Office duty officer here,’ said a voice, in reply to her drowsy greeting. The caller told Liz that pirates had stormed the Aristides. ‘ A French corvette, part of the International Protection Force, intervened,’ the voice went on, ‘and the ship and most of its crew are safe. Unfortunately some of the pirates escaped, taking with them Captain Guthrie and your colleague Dave Armstrong.’ COBRA was being opened, she was told, and she was required to attend as soon as possible.

When Liz arrived in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room, known as COBRA, deep underneath the Cabinet Office in Whitehall, things were buzzing. Peggy was there with some others from Thames House, sitting at computer screens, alongside colleagues from MI6 and GCHQ. The SAS’s area was manned up; Bokus was already in evidence, with a small team from Grosvenor Square with their own communications, and, in a corner, sat a team from the French Embassy.

Geoffrey Fane came into the room just behind her, looking as smart as ever in a three-piece suit and silk tie and handkerchief, as though he had never been to bed. ‘Good morning, Elizabeth,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Bit of a pickle your chap’s got himself into.’

Liz started to say something cutting, along the lines of ‘Whose idea was it to put him on board?’, but thought better of it. With Dave in serious danger, this was no time to be sparring with Geoffrey Fane, so she merely replied, ‘Good morning, Geoffrey. You’re looking very dapper.’

Considering how many people were present, there was surprisingly little noise in the room, just quiet voices and the hum of computers and TV monitors with their volume turned low. Information was streaming in and being collated and assessed by a Cabinet Office team at the back of the room, in preparation for a meeting to be chaired by the Foreign Secretary.

At 9 a.m. he swept in, followed by a team of officials. Those who had been working at computers left their desks and came to sit in the rows of chairs facing the platform on which the Minister and his senior advisors sat, and the briefing began. The Naval Attaché from the French Embassy gave the latest information from the corvette about exactly what had happened on board and who they had in custody; Geoffrey Fane spoke about the background to the UCSO shipments and what was known about the group who had taken the hostages (not much); Liz gave a brief account of the investigation in Birmingham and their suspicions about the Pakistani crew members who had been arrested on board; a Defence intelligence officer produced satellite imagery of the coast of Somalia, pinpointing the best assessment about where the hostages were being held and a woman from the Meteorological Office described the weather conditions there.

The Foreign Secretary refrained from asking why the MI5 officer had been on the ship – no doubt that question would be picked over to death later on. The present meeting was about rescuing him and the Captain. He listened closely to debate about the viability and logistics of a rescue operation and negotiated his way courteously through a proposal from Andy Bokus that they should go in heavy with maximum firepower, eventually coming down on the side of the Colonel from the SAS who outlined his plan for a small, quick in-and-out operation. He listened sympathetically to Liz when she argued that the rescue attempt should be mounted without delay. The pirates, she said, must have taken Dave Armstrong because they suspected that he had some special role. That being the case, his life was in hourly danger.

The SAS Colonel was invited to speak about timing, and after consulting his team, he confirmed that they could be ready to go at 05.00 Mogadishu time the following morning, 03.00 hours London time, when the light conditions would favour the attackers. Provided of course that it could be established without doubt where the hostages were being held. The Minister called for comments or objections. Bokus remained silent and it was agreed that the SAS should go in at 05.00 local time the following day.

The Minister withdrew with his supporting team of civil servants, asking to be kept up to date with developments, and the room returned to its working mode, while in the SAS corner the decision was relayed to operational control in Hereford.

Liz left Peggy in charge of the Thames House team and went back to the office to brief the directors’ meeting. Peggy would keep her in touch as events developed.

Many years before, Taban had been told a fable about twin brothers who had been raised by a violent father. Instead of uniting against this tyrant, the brothers had fallen out between themselves and become bitter enemies. They argued endlessly and often fought – and one day they fought so fiercely that one of them died from his brother’s blows.

At first the surviving brother was happy to be rid of his detested sibling. But over time he became uncertain and afraid, and started telling everyone that the ghost of his dead brother had come back to haunt him. Asked what this ghost looked like, the surviving brother cried, It’s a shadow and it looks like fear.

That was exactly how Taban would have described the shadow cast over his own life by the Middle Eastern men at the camp. He tried to avoid them, but his duties at the compound meant that inevitably he came across these Arab strangers almost every day, and when he did they were hostile and aggressive. The Tall One in particular seemed to enjoy frightening the boy, and had taken to pointing his gun at him every time he saw him. The first time he’d done it, Taban had flinched in fear, and the other men in the gang had laughed. Now he’d steeled himself not to react when the gun was aimed at him, but he sensed that it was just a matter of time before the Tall One actually pulled the trigger. Taban had told Khalid about this terrifying game, but the leader of the Somali pirates had just shrugged and said that there was nothing he could do about it. It was clear that if Khalid was ever going to stand up to the Tall One, it wasn’t going to be on Taban’s behalf.

Very early this morning, for the first time in weeks, six of the Arab men had gone out to sea, ‘borrowing’ skiffs from Khalid and the other Somalis. But Taban’s relief at their departure was short-lived; they returned before midday, though only three of them came back. They were in a hurry, too, running from the beach into the camp, pushing two Westerners towards the pen at gunpoint. The younger of the two had a massive bruise on one cheek, and when he was slow entering the pen the tall Arab pushed him so hard from behind that he hit his head on one of the timber frames.

Hostages, thought Taban. But this didn’t look like the usual situation. Why were there only two men and not a whole crew? And where were the other Arabs and the ship? And why did the Middle Eastern men seem so jumpy and nervous? Normally when hostages were taken there was celebration and feasting while the pirates waited happily for the first phone calls to come through, signalling the beginning of negotiations for the release of the ship and the hostages. But the Middle Eastern men were on edge, talking together loudly and looking out to sea and up at the sky. None of them had put down their weapons, and the Tall One had ordered several of the ones who had stayed behind to guard the perimeter of the camp. He himself was standing in the centre of the compound, holding an AK-47 and constantly looking around.