Zero 22, p.14
Zero 22, page 14
part #8 of Danny Black Series
‘Sir, they will not believe that. They know I would have made such an appointment well in advance.’
‘Then you’d better be convincing when you’re up there, laddie. In my experience, oligarch bodyguards are a short-tempered bunch. You don’t want them using those secret weapons on you.’
‘But I would normally ring in advance, at the very least.’
‘We can’t risk it. They might tell us not to come, then they’ll be suspicious when we turn up anyway.’
‘Where . . . where will you be?’
‘Close behind. Everything goes according to plan, you won’t notice us until it’s too late. As soon as things go noisy, I want you to get face down on the ground and put your hands over your head. You think you can do that?’
‘Please, sir, what do you mean by “go noisy”?’
‘You’ll work it out, laddie,’ Cunningham said. He looked over at Hunter. ‘You know what tae do?’
Hunter nodded.
‘Alright then.’ He pulled out his phone. ‘I’m going tae call Hereford. As soon as we get the green light, we move in. While we wait, we’ll examine the plans of the building so we know what’s waiting for us up there.’
He dialled.
It was twelve thirty. Alice was tired and for the first time since working at MI6, she found herself wishing she was more soberly dressed. She was still wearing the casual gear she’d thrown on the night before. But now she was sitting at a boardroom table on the fifth floor not only with her boss, Maxwell Stark, but also with Alan Sturrock, head of the service. Stark was opening a fresh packet of extra strong mints. The boardroom was heavy with the smell of peppermint, but somehow Alice didn’t mind that. Sturrock repelled her: the oily hair, the way he regularly rubbed moisturising lotion into his hands with a repulsive, slimy sound. But these were serious men, seriously dressed on serious business. It was a big deal that she had a seat at the table.
There were two tablets in front of them. One had an open line to SAS headquarters in Hereford, the other to Number 10. Alice had been with Stark when he explained to Sturrock her deduction that Poliakov was being sheltered by Rostropovic, and she sincerely thought the chief’s eyes might fall out of his head. Apparently Rostropovic was a no-go area, at least without the say-so of the PM. Alice could only imagine what kind of messy political deal she had stumbled across, but she was certain that Sturrock was not the type to take action that might be detrimental to his career.
A voice came over the Hereford line. ‘We have confirmation from our team on the ground that they’re ready to make the arrest.’
‘Not until I give the instruction,’ said Sturrock. He tapped a button on the tablet connected to Number 10. ‘We’re ready. Do we have approval?’
A pause.
‘Approval withheld. Repeat, approval withheld.’
Sturrock’s lips thinned. He looked at Alice as if the lack of approval was her fault. Then he spoke again. ‘Hereford, this is Sturrock. You have no green light. Repeat, you have no green light.’ Sturrock turned to Alice. ‘Let’s hope your intelligence is good, young lady,’ he said. ‘This could be an embarrassment for us all if you’ve made a mistake.’
‘Does this mean the operation is over?’ she asked.
Sturrock didn’t answer her directly. Instead, he continued his communication with Hereford. ‘Keep your men on the ground, is that understood?’
‘Understood.’
Alice glanced at Stark. Her boss gave her a reassuring smile, as if to say: ‘Wait and see how this plays out.’ Then he leaned across the table and offered her a peppermint.
Alice declined.
Five o’clock, Amman. Danny and Bethany’s suitcases were in the boot. Their press passes were in their shoulder bags. Danny’s handgun was stowed in the glove compartment. He had the wheel and was once again negotiating the city traffic. The GPS unit was set to take them to the Hotel Grand, but the route it chose was not direct. Amman is a city built on hills. Although there were broad, tree-lined thoroughfares heading through central parts of the city, these main arterial routes were clogged with traffic. And so they found themselves winding carefully through narrow side streets and over cobbled, semi-pedestrianised areas bustling with people. Almost all the women they saw wore headscarves. A very few wore a more concealing niqab. The men seemed more westernised in jeans and T-shirts, though some, mainly the older ones, wore traditional dishdash. Danny had his window down to get some airflow going in the intense afternoon heat. It let in the sounds and smells of the city. Exhaust fumes. Street-food stalls deep-frying falafal. Market traders bellowing outside covered bazaars. Loud Arabic pop blaring from cars and first-floor windows. The buildings were a colourful mixture of browns and mustard yellows. Danny had the impression of a busy but friendly place.
‘Amman was originally built on seven hills,’ Bethany said as the vehicle laboured up a particularly steep incline, reminding Danny that she was a Middle East specialist. ‘Nineteen hills now, they say, with the urban sprawl. Lots of refugees. Palestinians originally, after the Arab–Israeli war. More recently, Syrians.’
‘I didn’t realise I’d booked a tour guide,’ Danny said. He was less interested in the geography of the city than in getting to their destination without incident. As they passed some kind of ancient monument – sand-coloured pillars and a tiered, half-circle arena – he paid it barely any attention. They drove on in silence, through various sprawling districts of the city, up and down hills, until finally the GPS unit returned them to one of the main arterial routes where the traffic had eased and Danny was able to up his speed. Five minutes later, the Hotel Grand appeared.
It was a long building, four storeys high with an elegant roof turreted and tiled. It took up the entire side of a pleasant square, in the middle of which was a flower garden. A couple of palm trees grew by the entrance, their leaves motionless in the still air. Between them, three flags drooped pathetically on flagpoles. The road around the square was fairly busy with traffic, but it was the military vehicles parked right in front of the hotel that drew Danny’s attention. There were three khaki-coloured, open-topped trucks parked in a row directly in front of the main entrance, noses pointing outwards. There were at least fifteen soldiers surrounding the vehicles, all armed with assault rifles. ‘Looks like our general’s got a quite a retinue,’ he said.
Bethany didn’t reply. She was eyeing the soldiers steadily.
Danny allowed himself to drive a single circuit of the square. He knew there was a good chance that someone was observing the traffic to identify suspicious patterns of behaviour. Any more than twice round, they were likely to be observed and possibly trailed. As they drove past the front of the hotel, he noted the two armed guys at the main door checking the ID of three Middle Eastern men entering the hotel. He glanced upwards and saw an open window on the top floor where another armed man was looking down on to the square. There was no getting away from it: the Yanks in this hotel were on high alert.
‘You think someone’s tipped them off?’ Bethany said, her voice edgy, as Danny continued his circuit of the square.
‘No,’ Danny said. ‘The General’s meant to be overseeing a peace treaty between the Turks and the Kurds. It’s an obvious target for terrorist activity. If I was them, I’d be jumpy too.’
‘They’re right to be,’ Bethany said quietly.
Danny couldn’t argue with that.
He drove down one side of the hotel and then round the back. There were more soldiers here, guarding either end of the street. They passed three exits, one with a cluster of large plastic refuse bins outside. Two soldiers guarded each of the three exits. There was no way of getting in or out of this place without your ID being checked.
‘I don’t like it,’ Bethany said.
‘What did you expect?’ Danny said. ‘A walk in the park?’
She didn’t answer.
They were able to park the car about 800 metres from the hotel along a narrow road lined with cafes and small shops. The route back to the hotel would take them to a crossroads, where they would turn right on to a main road that led to the hotel. They parked outside a small shop selling fabrics. Danny stowed his handgun under his seat. He felt naked not wearing it, but there was zero chance of getting into the hotel if he was carrying. If he needed a weapon when he was inside – and he hoped he wouldn’t – he’d have to improvise. They exited the vehicle. Danny locked it and pocketed the key. He looked up and down the road. There were plenty of pedestrians, but they all seemed to be going about their business. If any of them were paying any special attention to the two smartly dressed westerners who had just stepped out of the dented old Passat, Danny didn’t notice them. And he was trained to do just that.
‘This is where we split up,’ Danny said. They couldn’t enter the hotel together. Once they were inside, nobody could know they were associated, if Bethany was to lay her honeytrap successfully. ‘You get in first. I’ll be watching.’
‘It’s almost like you don’t trust me.’
‘When it’s done, we meet back here. Any problems, get a taxi back to the safe house.’
‘I’m about to walk unarmed into a hotel heavily guarded by American troops and kill their top guy. What makes you think something’s going to go wrong?’
‘You have your phone. Contact me if there’s a problem, but do it discreetly.’
She gave him what was obviously meant to be a ‘don’t patronise me’ look, but she couldn’t hide her anxiety as she glanced over Danny’s shoulder in the direction of the hotel. ‘How do I look?’ she said.
‘Right for the job,’ Danny told her, and he meant it. Bethany would turn heads. With any luck, she’d turn the General’s.
She set off along the pavement. There was no need for her to weave in and out of the other pedestrians. There was something about her seemingly confident stride that made others get out of her way. He waited until they were separated by a distance of fifty metres before following her. His skin was damp with sweat as he walked past the entrance to a souk, fragrant with incense, and ignored the shouts of a street-food vendor offering him something wrapped in flatbread. Bethany didn’t look back. At the end of the street was the crossroads where she turned right, and Danny lost sight of her for a few seconds. As he himself turned right, he saw the back of her head as she continued down the road towards the hotel. They passed one of its side entrances on the opposite side of the road. Then they entered the recently recce’d square at the front of the hotel.
Bethany approached the main hotel entrance. Danny stopped outside a cafe with a green awning where young Jordanians sat in the shade drinking tiny cups of coffee. He noticed, with a certain amount of satisfaction, that a few of the American guys on patrol outside the hotel watched her appreciatively as she passed. One guy, stationed between the two palm trees, risked a bollocking by moving from his post and approaching her. He noted the way she flounced her hair as she walked away from him, and how the soldier made a rueful, arms-in-the-air gesture to one of his mates, as if to say: ‘Hey, I tried!’
Bethany trotted up the wide steps leading to the main entrance. Danny could see that the guys on guard here were a more serious prospect. There was nothing about their body language that suggested they had any flirtatious intention. They examined Bethany’s ID and press pass for a full thirty seconds. For a moment, Danny thought they had a problem, because the soldier passed the documentation to his mate, who studied it just as intently. After another thirty seconds, however, he handed it back to Bethany. The two soldiers stepped aside and she disappeared into the hotel.
Danny took a seat at the cafe and ordered a coffee. He would give it ten minutes. He watched as an official-looking black car pulled up in front of the hotel and three Jordanian men in suits emerged. They received the same treatment from the American soldiers at the door, and appeared impatient with the security arrangements. It didn’t do them much good. The soldiers prolonged the ID check before allowing them in.
There was more movement. A group of guys in Arabic dress exited the hotel. A minute later, the soldiers directed a courier to another entrance round the back. Danny checked his watch. 17.45 hrs. He decided it was time to enter. He put some money on the table and left the cafe.
He attracted considerably less attention than Bethany as he approached the hotel. To the soldier standing between the palm trees, he was invisible. Walking up the steps to the entrance, he fixed one of the two guards with an easy smile. ‘State your purpose,’ the guard said. Close up, Danny could see that he was carrying an MP5 sub-machine gun, and he noticed the handgun holster bulge under his camouflage jacket. He had a shaved head, and the kind of leathery complexion that Danny recognised from men operating in hot countries for extended periods. He decided this guy was probably part of the General’s SF retinue.
‘Press,’ Danny told him.
There was an uncomfortable moment as the guy looked Danny up and down. Danny knew what he was probably thinking: you’re the biggest journalist I ever saw. He felt self-conscious of his size, as though he was squeezed into a suit too small for him, and was glad that Bethany had loosened his tie. He held the guy’s gaze with the same, easy smile. If he showed any sign of uncertainty, he might be denied entrance.
‘You have ID?’ the Yank asked. He had a sturdy New York accent.
Danny dug into his shoulder bag and took out his fake passport and Sunday Times press pass. The guy handed the press pass to his mate, who started keying his name into a handheld device. He opened up the passport himself. He checked the photo against Danny’s face then continued to examine the details. ‘How old are you, Mr Waldren?’ he asked.
Danny was glad he’d done his homework. ‘Thirty-four,’ he said.
The soldier nodded and handed back the passport. ‘Let me see the bag.’
Danny handed it over. The soldier removed the notebook and flicked through its empty pages. He replaced it and returned the bag to Danny just as his mate handed back the press pass, saying: ‘He’s on the list.’
‘British, huh?’ said the first guy. ‘One of yours already came in here, a few minutes ago. Good-looking broad. Maybe you’ll get lucky.’
‘Business, not pleasure, mate. Lot of interest in the peace talks in London,’ Danny said. He smiled more broadly. ‘Hey, when do you get off duty? Maybe we could do a little interview. It would be an interesting piece, no? A day-in-the-life kind of thing.’
‘Nice try,’ said the soldier, clearly free of all suspicion now. He jabbed one thumb over his shoulder. ‘You’re in.’
‘Well, if you change your mind,’ Danny said. But the soldier’s attention was already on one of his colleagues walking up the steps, perhaps to take over guard duty. Danny entered the hotel.
The interior was rich-Arab gaudy. The entrance hall was lined with glass presentation cases filled with chunky gold jewellery and expensive trinkets. There was an enormous chandelier in the reception area, decorative columns at regular intervals, gold paint on the elaborate architraves and an attractive young woman playing cocktail jazz on a white grand piano in the very middle of the room. There was no overt sign of any military presence inside, but Danny wasn’t fooled by that. He saw the white man standing by the ornate elevator, casually dressed, watching Danny as he entered. He saw the man and woman sitting wordlessly at a comfortable sofa, tea things in front of them, both of them checking out all the other guests in the reception area, of whom there must have been at least thirty.
There were several exhibition boards with information in English and Arabic regarding the preliminary talks that were ongoing in the hotel in advance of the main peace talks. A plan of the hotel and its various conference rooms was pinned to one. The day’s schedule was pinned to another – hourly meetings between nine and five, and lists of attendees. General O’Brien’s name appeared several times. He’d had a busy day, and Danny hoped that once his official duties were over, he’d be ready for a spot of R and R in the hotel bar, as was his habit according to Hereford’s intel. Danny took in the hotel plan at a glance. He confirmed that there were three floors, one elevator and one staircase. The bar was ahead of him, the staircase beyond that. A couple of smartly dressed blonde women with clipboards were standing by the exhibition boards. It appeared that they were there to help delegates with information, but the business day was over now, and they looked more interested in their watches than anything else.
Danny kept moving before the blondes could ask him if he needed any help. He calculated that the best way to avoid suspicion was to make contact with a member of the hotel staff: an open display that he had nothing to hide. He walked straight up to the reception desk where a friendly looking Jordanian woman greeted him with a lovely smile. ‘May I help you sir?’
‘I hope so,’ Danny said. ‘I’m looking for the bar.’
He already knew its location from the plan on the exhibition board, but he nodded politely as she directed him to a corridor to the right of the elevator. As he walked in that direction, he saw that the watchers all had their attention elsewhere.
The bar was even plusher than the reception area. A thick burgundy carpet, with low glass tables surrounded by comfortable armchairs. The bar itself was twenty metres long with an impressive display of alcohol bottles and optics on the wall behind it. A rare sight in the Arab world but not, apparently, in Jordan. The three bartenders were not busy. There were no punters at the bar itself, and only a smattering of people sitting at the tables. One of those people was Bethany. She had installed herself at a table in the far corner, next to a bookcase filled with leather-bound books. She had a full glass and a mixer bottle in front of her and she sat with her legs crossed, nonchalantly swiping her phone. She made no attempt to acknowledge Danny’s presence, but her own was having the desired effect. The three bartenders were staring at her quite openly. One of them even seemed to be making an appreciative comment to his colleague. Danny felt a pang of antagonism towards the guy for doing that, then cursed himself for feeling it.
