Stella Rimington: At Risk

She was wearing a parka jacket over jeans and Nike trainers. On her head, a brown corduroy Beatles cap from a stall on the Quai des Celestins, its peak pulled low over her face, and-despite the overcast day-a pair of aviator sunglasses. She looked somewhere in her early twenties, she was carrying a holdall and a large rucksack, and there was nothing to distinguish her from the other long-weekenders who spilled cheerfully from the train. A careful observer might have noted just how little of the woman was actually on display-the parka entirely disguised her figure, the cap completely covered her hair, the sunglasses obscured her eyes-and a very careful observer might have wondered at her unseasonally sunburnt hands, but on that Monday morning no one was paying a great deal of attention to the day’s second consignment of passengers. The non-EU passport-holders were submitted to the customary examinations at the gate, but the vast majority of passengers were nodded through.

At the Avis rent-a-car counter, the woman joined a four-strong queue, and if she was conscious of the CCTV camera mounted on the wall above her she gave no sign of it. Instead, opening the morning’s edition of the International Herald Tribune, she appeared to bury herself in a fashion article.

A sharp mobile phone beep from beneath the counter greeted her arrival at the front of the queue, and the assistant excused himself for a moment to read a text message. When he looked up again it was with an absent smile, as if he was trying to think up a snappy reply. He processed her with due courtesy, but he could tell from her cracked nails, poorly kept hands and choice of car-an economy hatchback-that she was not worthy of the full beam of his attention. Her driving licence and passport, in consequence, received no more than a glance; the photos appeared to tally-both were from the same photo-booth series and showed the usual blank, slightly startled features. In short, she was forgotten by the time she was out of sight.

Slinging her luggage on the passenger seat, the woman eased the black Vauxhall Astra into the stream of traffic crossing Waterloo Bridge. Accelerating into the underpass, she felt her heart race. Breathe, she told herself. Be cool.

Five minutes later, she pulled in to a parking bay. Taking the passport, driving licence and rental documents from her coat pocket, she zipped them into the holdall with her other passport, the one she had shown at the immigration desk. When she had done this she sat and waited for her hands to stop shaking from the delayed tension.

It was lunchtime, she realised. She should eat something. From the side pouch of the rucksack she took a baguette filled with Gruyère cheese, a bar of hazelnut chocolate, and a plastic bottle of mineral water. She forced herself to chew slowly.

Then, checking her mirror, she pulled out slowly into the traffic stream.

Reading through the Marzipan file at her desk in 5/AX, Liz Carlyle felt the familiar sick unease. As an agent-runner, anxiety was her constant companion, an ever-present shadow. The truth was grimly simple: if an agent was to be effective, then he or she had to be placed at risk.

But at just twenty, she asked herself, was Marzipan truly aware of the risks that he ran? Had he really taken on board the fact that, if blown, he might have a life expectancy of no more than a few hours?

Marzipan’s name was Sohail Din, and he had been a walk-in. An exceptionally bright young man of Pakistani origin whose father was the comfortably-off proprietor of several Tottenham newsagents, he had been accepted to read law at Durham University. A devout Muslim, he had decided to spend his gap year working in a small Islamic bookshop in Haringey. The work was not well paid, but it was close to the family home, and Sohail had hoped that it would provide the opportunity for religious discussion with other serious-minded young men like himself.

It had rapidly become clear, however, that the tone of the place was rather less moderate than it had seemed. The version of Islam celebrated by those who came and went was a long way from the compassionate creed that Sohail had absorbed at home and at his local mosque. Extremist views were aired as a matter of course, young men openly discussed their intentions of training as mujahidin and taking up the sword of jihad against the West, and there was jubilation every time the press reported that an American or Israeli target had been hit by terrorists.

Unwilling to voice his dissent, but clear in his own mind that a world view which celebrated the murder of civilians was abhorrent before God, Sohail kept a low profile. Unlike his fellow employees, he saw no reason to hate the country of his birth, or to despise the legislature that he hoped one day to serve. The crunch came one late summer afternoon when three Arabic-speaking men had entered the shop from an elderly Mercedes. One of Sohail’s colleagues had nudged him, indicating the oldest of them-a nondescript figure with thinning hair and a scruffy beard. This, Sohail learned when the three men had been taken to the rooms above the shop, was Rahman al Masri, an important fighter. Perhaps his arrival meant that Britain would at last taste some of the terror inflicted by its Satanic ally, the United States.

This was the point at which Sohail decided to act. At the day’s end he had not caught his customary bus home but instead, after consulting an A to Z, had taken a main-line train half a dozen stops south to Cambridge Heath. Exiting the railway station, having satisfied himself that he had not been followed, he had pulled up the hood of his coat and made his way through the drizzle to Bethnal Green police station.

Special Branch had acted fast; Rahman al Masri was a known player. MI5 had been notified, an observation post had been set up near the bookshop, and when al Masri and his two minders left the following day, it was with a discreet surveillance escort. Intelligence allies had been informed, and with several countries working closely together, al Masri was allowed to run. He was eventually picked up at Dubai airport, and taken into custody by that country’s secret police. After a week of what was officially described as “intensive questioning,” al Masri admitted that he had visited London to deliver instructions to terrorist cells there. Attacks were to be unleashed against targets in the City.

Forewarned, the police were able to identify and arrest those involved. One of the prime objectives throughout the operation had been to preserve the original source of the information. When it was over, after extensive background checks on Sohail, it had been agreed between a senior Special Branch officer and Charles Wetherby that the young Asian might be suitable for development by Five as a long-term agent. Wetherby had handed the file to Liz, who drove up to Tottenham a couple of days later. Their first meeting took place in a disused classroom at the evening institute where Sohail took a weekly computer course.

She had been shocked by how young he was. Physically slight, self-effacing and neatly dressed in a jacket and tie, he still looked like a schoolboy. But there was a steeliness there too, and talking to him she was struck by the unswerving rigour of his moral code. Nothing justified murder, he told her, and if informing on his co-religionists helped to prevent it, and to protect the good name of Islam from those who sought the nihilist Apocalypse, then he was happy to do so. She had asked him if he was prepared to remain in place at the bookshop, and to meet her at intervals to hand over information, and he had told her that he was. He had guessed which organisation she represented without being told, and appeared unsurprised by their involvement.

Since then there had been three more meetings at the evening institute. Sohail kept a record of the comings and goings at the bookshop in an encrypted online file on his laptop, and as a Special Branch officer kept unobtrusive watch in the corridor outside, he read off his reports to Liz. None of the information he had provided had been as momentous as the report of al Masri’s presence, but it was clear that the bookshop was a key staging-post for, in Special Branch parlance, “the Bin-Men.” If there was a big operation going down in the UK involving any of the ITS groups, the chances were that Sohail-Marzipan-would be aware of the advance ripples. Potentially, he was intelligence gold.