Henry Porter: Empire State

She founded Philip Sarre in the library, leafing through some material on Uzbekistan, which he informed her was now his speciality. ‘If you go to Langley, you find whole rooms of Uzbek specialists; here it’s me in my coffee break.’

Sarre always maintained that he had been brainwashed by MI6 and was actually meant to be in Cambridge watching particle acceleration experiments. His friend Andy Dolph was equally improbable. The son of an independent bookie, he had come to MI6 via the City of London and a banking job in the Gulf States where he had allowed himself to be recruited to relieve the boredom. Sarre reported that Dolph was across the river in a pub waiting for him and an Africa specialist named Joe Lapping. Sarre said he’d extract both men and bring them to Heathrow.

An hour later Herrick and the three men were crowded into the security room at Terminal Three having arranged for two of the technical people to stay as long as they were needed. Their first break came after 1.00 a.m. Dolph had been going over the film from the gates of two flights that landed consecutively from Bangkok at 9.15 and 9.40 a.m. when he saw the man who had taken Rahe’s place walk off the second flight. Wearing a dark red jacket, a bright tie with hibiscus motif, grey trousers and black shoes, he was among the last passengers to leave the plane. This told them that he had probably been seated at the back of the Thai International Airways 747. The airline’s records showed that one of the rearmost seats had been occupied by an Indonesian national named Nabil Hamzi, who they later found was travelling on to Copenhagen at 11.40 a.m. from Terminal Three.

Herrick gasped. ‘Rahe didn’t check in until past midday,’ she said.

‘So?’ said Sarre.

‘Don’t be a fucking idiot,’ said Dolph. ‘It means that Rahe couldn’t have made the Copenhagen flight. And that means there wasn’t a straight swap between Rahe and Hamzi.’

‘There had to be a third man, at least,’ said Sarre.

‘By George, he’s got it,’ said Dolph, pinching Sarre’s cheek.

‘And the third man must have arrived in the airport before eleven to give him time to change clothes, tickets and passports with Hamzi and get himself to the Copenhagen departure gate.’

They crowded round a screen to watch film of flight SK 502 to Copenhagen boarding and with little surprise saw a man in a red jacket, hibiscus tie and grey trousers waiting to present his boarding card and passport. It was neither Rahe nor Hamzi but another individual who was the same height and build and who was also in his mid-to-late thirties. After a couple of hours they found this man on footage from one of the long corridors leading to the departure gates. Then, working back through recordings made by a series of cameras, they traced him to a flight from Vancouver. This worried Herrick – it had implications for the other North American airlines. Still, there was no way of pairing the face with a seat number and therefore a name, because they couldn’t work out at what stage he’d left the aircraft. However, Dolph realised that there was probably a pattern.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘These guys aren’t going to be travelling with baggage in the hold. And they are all likely to be booked on connecting flights out of Heathrow on the afternoon of the fourteenth. So all we have to do is go through the manifest of the Vancouver flight and match the two criteria.’

This produced the name Manis Subhi, who was travelling on a Philippine passport and had left London for Beirut four hours after landing.

Herrick wondered out loud whether she should let Spelling know the provisional results.

‘No, let’s tie this thing up, darling,’ said Dolph. ‘Present them with a fucking bunch of roses in the morning. Let’s follow the trail until it ends.’

Sarre reminded them that they hadn’t yet discovered the eventual destination of Rahe.

‘Maybe it’s not so important,’ said Herrick. ‘Perhaps he was just one element in a serial identity switch involving many people.’

‘A daisy chain,’ said Dolph.

‘Yes, just because we spotted that Rahe didn’t get on the right plane, it doesn’t mean he’s the crucial figure. He unwittingly let us in on the secret – that’s all.’

‘He loaned out his identity?’ said Dolph.

‘Could be. The whole point must be to shuffle a lot of key figures at once, and they can do that here in Terminal Three.’

‘Because it’s like the General Assembly of the United Nations,’ said Dolph.

‘No, because departing and arriving passengers mingle on their way to and from the gates. Also, passports are barely inspected when passengers are boarding – the airline just matches the name on the passport with the name on the boarding card.’

They watched film of the Middle Eastern airlines flight to Beirut, recorded by a camera close to the desk, and duly noted that Manis Subhi had been replaced by another, obviously taller man who, other than wearing the red jacket, hardly bothered to impersonate him. He also carried a bag that Subhi had not had with him. Then by chance, when the technician made an error and fast-forwarded the film instead of rewinding it, they spotted Rahe in a dark suit carrying a camera bag. This meant that Rahe had left for Beirut with another man involved in the operation.

It was now 5.00 a.m. and Herrick had seen all she needed. She asked the technicians to splice together the film of each man onto a single videotape. Then she borrowed a security pass and a radio and walked into the terminal building. There was a surprising amount of activity in the public areas – maintenance men fiddling with cable ducts, gangs of cleaners moving slowly with their machines like ruminants, and one or two passengers waiting for the first flights out. After half an hour, having tramped the best part of a couple of miles, she found what she was looking for.

Discreetly tucked into a bend was a men’s lavatory, the entrance completely hidden from CCTV cameras. She went in and found a cleaner wiping down the basins. The name on his identity tag read Omar Ahsanullah and by the look of him she guessed he was Bangladeshi. The washroom was relatively small and consisted of six cubicles, a row of urinals, four basins and a locked storeroom.

She nodded to the man, then went out and radioed Dolph in the security room. She wanted him to watch as she walked down the corridor so that he’d see the exact moment she disappeared from view on the cameras. They found there was a blind spot of about fifty feet either side of the entrance. Although they were unable to watch the washroom’s entrance, she realised they would be able to go back over the film for the two nearest cameras and get all they needed: anyone making their way to the men’s toilet would have to pass under them. Dolph said he would try to verify her theory by checking the film for these two cameras from 12.30 until 2.00 p.m. to see if Rahe showed.

The sight of the cleaners reminded her that there must have been a man on duty in the lavatory when the men were swapping their clothes and possessions. She went back in. The cleaner explained that there were two shifts, one that started at 5.30 a.m. and finished at 2.30 p.m., another that ended at 11.30 p.m. It was possible to do a double shift, and those with many relatives back home often needed the extra money. As he spoke, she suddenly saw the drudgery and fatigue in his eyes and she remarked that it must be a hard life.

He stopped polishing the mirror and replied that yes, it was tiring, but he was in the West and his children would get a good education. He was lucky. He paused, then told her if he was looking unduly sad that day it was because a friend, a fellow Bangladeshi, had died in a fire. His wife, two children and his mother had also died. Herrick remembered hearing about the blaze in Heston on the radio news the day before. It was being investigated as a hate crime. She said how sorry she was.