James Deegan - John Carr

Their lives were full of uncertainty, and privation, and fear, and precious few comforts and the wise man cut his ties, of friendship and of blood, permanently.

Death stalked them daily, and, being only human, they sometimes wondered how it was that they, who had given so much, had ended up living like rats, while others, who had given so little, lived like kings.

Why were their days all stone and no fruit, all grit and no pearl?

Of course, each tried hard to cast this unworthy thought from his mind; it was dangerous to harbour such ideas – and not merely in the spiritual sense.

That had been the way of their lives for so long that they had almost – almost – forgotten what it was like to live normally.

And then, one day, the younger of the two men contacted his older friend via a mobile telephony app with secure, end-to-end encryption.

After the usual small talk, the younger man – a giant Chechen called Khasmohmad Kadyrov, who was presently living in a cramped room in a safe house in Cairo – made a tentative suggestion.

Very tentative.

What, he asked, if there were a way in which they might both strike the enemy and – and he tried hard not to be vulgar about this – achieve a more… earthly reward for themselves?

At first, the older man – a Yemeni called Saeed al-Shafra – was sceptical, and even hostile.

But this was something of an act.

Al-Shafra was nearly sixty, now, and he had grown tired, and listless, and, as he looked around the spartan room, in his modest, baked-mud home, in the compound on the edge of the dusty village in the dreary Balochi outpost of Nushki, it occurred to him that he was perhaps even a little bitter about the turns his life had taken.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I have a friend,’ said Kadyrov, hesitantly. ‘A good friend, from the old days. I mean, a long way back – he’s from Vedeno, fought with the 055 at Mazar-e Sharif.’

‘I missed that party,’ said the Yemeni. ‘So many men, slaughtered like goats.’

‘Indeed,’ said Kadyrov. ‘But my friend was lucky. He got injured, some shrapnel took a chunk out of his right calf, so he got taken away before the massacre.’

‘In that sense,’ said the older man, ‘he was fortunate.’

‘I saw him last in Now Zad,’ said the Chechen. ‘Or perhaps the Korengal. I can’t remember, exactly. He’s a fighter, but lucky again, because the Americans ’ – he almost spat the word – ‘they don’t know him. This is the beauty of it. Two years ago, he’s in Islamabad, he flies to Turkey, then travels to Germany. Nobody says a word to him, nobody even looks at him. For the last year, he is in England, in London. There he has made a very good contact, with someone who has a very interesting situation. Very interesting indeed. But we need funding and I know that you can find money for us.’

Khasmohmad Kadyrov talked some more, and the Yemeni called al-Shafra listened, and he smiled.

And the more he listened, the more he smiled.

And when Kadyrov had finished talking, Saeed al-Shafra looked out of his window, across the empty, sun-baked Balochi desert, which lay between his humble home and Afghanistan’s distant Helmand River, and he chuckled.

‘Oh, Khasmohmad,’ he said. ‘Khasmohmad, Khasmohmad . Truly, this is a gift from Allah.’

PART ONE

1.

AT SEVEN-THIRTY, half an hour before unlocking, the prison came banging and rattling and echoing to life.

But Zeff Mahsoud and his cellmate had been up since well before sunrise, in order to perform their fajr .

Now they sat facing each other, Mahsoud on a tubular chair pushed hard against the cream-painted wall, the other man on his steel-framed bed.

‘I have a good feeling about today, brother,’ said the cellmate. ‘I think it will be good news.’

‘ Inshallah , Hamid,’ said Mahsoud. ‘Time will tell.’

‘Be confident. Tonight you will be in your wife’s arms. Tomorrow…’ Hamid paused, and lowered his voice. HMP Belmarsh was not a place which rewarded the incautious. ‘Tomorrow, who knows?’

Mahsoud smiled. ‘Who knows indeed?’ he said.

Lazily, he got up and walked to the cell door, bending down to pick up the breakfast tray which had been handed over the previous night.

A plastic bowl of own-brand cornflakes, a carton of UHT milk, and a bread roll: he curled up his lip.

‘You’ll visit my friend?’ said Hamid. ‘Like I said?’

‘If I am released…’

‘You will be.’

‘ If I am released, then yes, I will visit your friend.’

‘He will be most interested to meet you. I think he will have very interesting proposals for you.’

‘I hope so.’

‘I know so. He has big plans. Dramatic plans.’

Zeff Mahsoud smiled.

Cornflakes in hand, he walked over to the small window, and looked up at the clear blue skies over south-east London.

Seven or eight miles away, over Bromley, a passenger jet was climbing away through 6,000ft.

Mahsoud watched it go.

Three hundred souls and a hundred tonnes of aviation fuel, in a thin aluminium tube.

So thin.

So vulnerable .

‘I have plans of my own, brother,’ he said.

But I’m afraid I cannot share them with you, he thought.

2.

SEVERAL MILES NORTH, on the other side of the river, Paul Spicer – senior partner at the human rights law firm Spicer, McGraw and Hill, and long a thorn in the side of the government – was already at his table in the Booking Office restaurant at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

He was eating a much grander breakfast, his plate piled high with crispy bacon and waffles, drizzled with maple syrup in the American style.

He ate methodically, his chin wobbling as he chewed, pausing only to drink from his cup of strong black coffee.

Around him buzzed smart waitresses, eager waiters.

On his left, the morning maître d’ showed another small group of businessmen to their seats, smiling unctuously.

At 7.45 a.m., Emily Souster joined Spicer.

Slim and elegant in her grey trouser suit.

Roedean and Cambridge.

Blonde.

Stunningly pretty.

At one time, Spicer had half-hoped… But she’d made it quite clear that there was no chance of that.

Emily sat down and looked at him, eyebrows raised.

Said, in her cut-crystal Queen’s English, ‘How on earth can you eat that?’

‘Easy,’ he said, in his broad Leeds. ‘Open your gob, shove it in, and chew.’

She shuddered. ‘I’m a bag of nerves,’ she said.

A waitress came over.

Took her room number and her order – no food, just a fresh pot of coffee and a glass of orange juice.

Spicer said, ‘What’s there to be nervous about?’

‘Aren’t you?’ she said.

‘No. I’m ninety per cent certain we’re going to win. And even if we don’t…’

Even if we don’t, we bank our money and move on.

He left it unsaid.

Shot her a glance.

The junior solicitor sitting across the breakfast table from him was a true believer: a passionate human rights lawyer, a righter of wrongs, a romantic burner of midnight oils in pursuit of every cause she could find.

Why was it so often like that?

Emily had known every advantage in life – an ambassador father, the best education money could buy, a trust fund to fall back on… If you grew up like that, it allowed you the space to spend what felt like half the year working pro bono , seconded to crew aid convoys, and going on marches and demonstrations.

Whereas, if you grew up like he had – born to a single mum in Harehills, eating chip butties for tea, sharing bathwater with three brothers…