CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At two, Herrick
walked from the pool with a bitter taste in her mouth, the result
of inhaling Tirana’s polluted air for most of the morning. She
walked through the lobby to the elevator bank and pulled out a card
which acted as both a lift and room key.
‘May I?’ said a voice
at her shoulder. She was aware of a friendly, dark face and a wide
smile.
‘Thank you,’ she
said, and stepped back. He pressed three, and asked which floor she
wanted. ‘That’s okay, my floor’s after yours anyway,’ she
lied.
The doors
closed.
‘Would it interest
you to know that I’m going to Robert Harland’s room?’
‘If I knew who he
was, it might,’ she said, looking away.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I
understood you were a colleague of Mr Harland’s. He told me to find
you in the hotel.’
‘And who are
you?’
‘Dr Sammi Loz. I’m
afraid circumstances have forced me to go under another name while
travelling. I am calling myself Charles Mansour, which I like even
less than my own name.’ Another smile.
She studied him in
the mirror. He was wearing a linen jacket, dark blue, unstructured
trousers and a white, probably silk, shirt, fastened at the neck.
He was evidently rich and took care over his clothes. There was
also self-assurance, vanity and deliberateness in his
movements.
‘Dr Loz, why didn’t
Mr Harland find me himself?’ she asked.
The lift came to a
stop and the doors opened.
‘Because he is laid
up with a bad back after three separate flights and since I am his
doctor, I have ordered total rest. He’s getting better gradually
and should be on his feet tomorrow. The room’s three twelve. I’ll
wait here if you would prefer it.’
‘Thank you. I
would.’
She knocked at the
door and glanced back to the elevator where Loz stood with his arms
folded.
The door opened and a
tall, but stooped middle-aged man held out his hand and said hello.
‘I’m sorry I had to get Loz to find you, but I’m pretty immobilised
at the moment. Come in.’ Robert Harland returned crookedly to his
bed and lay down very slowly. ‘I gather you were at the Embassy, so
you know what I’m doing here.’ He laughed grimly. ‘Actually, I
don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, so I can’t expect you
to.’
‘The Chief has got me
in to see Karim Khan this afternoon. I’m due at the US Embassy at
three. Perhaps we should talk after that?’
‘I’d like you to talk
to Loz first.’ He frowned, more out of perplexity than pain, she
thought. ‘I’d like to know what you think of him. He got here under
his own steam, with a fake passport. Teckman believes he knows
something, but God knows what, which is why I’m sticking to him.
Your brief, I gather, is to help me.’ He stopped and felt the front
of his pelvis. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking it may be worth letting
Khan understand that you’re with Loz, but in a way the Albanians
don’t appreciate.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to
know what his reaction is, though that’s not what I’ve told Loz.
Let’s have a talk with him, shall we?’
She opened the door
to find Loz waiting outside. He came in and Harland explained what
he needed.
‘I see,’ he said.
‘You’re looking for some code word or phrase which Karim will
recognise.’ He leaned against the desk, placed one hand at his
elbow and stroked his nose. ‘You could ask him about The
Poet.’
‘Who the hell’s the
Poet?’ said Harland rather bad temperedly from the
bed.
‘That’s the point,’
replied Loz. ‘Nobody knows. The Poet was a commander in Bosnia, but
none of us knew who he was or where he operated from. Karim did. It
was The Poet who persuaded him to leave for Afghanistan in 1997. If
you mention him, Karim will know you have spoken with me because
only I could have told you that.’
‘Fine,’ she said,
thinking that this was all pretty daft. ‘I’d better go
now.’
A couple of hours
later, she drove with Gibbons and a guard from the US Embassy to an
anonymous four-storey building with blinded windows. They passed
through some blue metal gates into a large car park where there was
an unusual sense of order, regimentation even. Several off-road
vehicles were lined up and were being hosed down, and the yellowish
run-off was being swept into a drain by a young man in army
fatigues. Around the high wall surrounding the SHISK headquarters
were coils of razor wire, cameras and movement sensors, all of
which she assumed were bought by the American money that had poured
into Tirana during the mid nineties. About half a dozen armed
guards were in the yard. Two at the entrance to the building came
to attention, while a third inspected their IDs before leading them
to the second floor and along a dark corridor. They were told to
wait.
‘The big man in there
is Milo Franc,’ said Gibbons out of the corner of his mouth. ‘He’ll
do most of the talking, together with the SHISK officers. I guess I
don’t have to tell you that it’s best if you keep your yap shut.
They don’t like having a woman here.’
Herrick said
nothing.
Her first impression
when they got into the interrogation room, was of a gang of
schoolboys caught tormenting an animal. All but one looked at her
with a slight awkwardness. That man, heavy-set with a thick, black
goatee, did not look up from a bag of nuts. Khan sat shrunken at
the table, bedraggled with sweat and clearly at the end of his
tether. As the two SHISK officers turned to look her up and down,
his eyes darted to hers with an expression of utter bewilderment.
She saw immediately that his right cheek was affected by a tic, and
once or twice he put his hand up to swat the movement.
Gibbons pointed to a
chair along the wall, next to the three Americans. She glanced at
the one who she guessed must be Franc, another man in his thirties
with a clean-cut and well-policed parting, and a clerical type who
had a sheaf of documents on his lap.
No explanation about
her arrival was offered to Khan, but his attention now fixed on her
and she realised he was looking for a sign that she could offer him
a way out of that room. She removed her gaze to a point between the
two Albanians at the table, but felt uncomfortable doing so.
‘Please continue,’ she said.
One of the Albanians
leaned forward. He was a slender man, with a russet complexion and
a high forehead. He spoke with a somewhat stilted American
accent.
‘We have some
confusion here. You were carrying two documentations. One related
to Karim Khan and the other to Jasur Faisal al-Saggib, known also
as Jasur al-Jahez and Amir al-Shawa. You say you saw this man
killed in Macedonia two weeks ago. But our American colleagues have
asked the Macedonian authorities to look for the body of this man.
They searched the area where the incident took place and found no
dead body there.’
Khan looked
perplexed, as if they had suddenly started talking about
architecture or botany. ‘The man died with me. He was not killed -
I told you that. He died of a heart attack. Maybe he was suffering
from asthma. I don’t know.’
Herrick was surprised
by his upper-middle-class English.
‘But they could not
find this man,’ returned the interrogator. ‘What is the proof he
was with you in these times?’
Khan did not answer,
but shook his head hopelessly.
‘What is the proof
that these documents are not yours?’
‘The pictures are not
of me. Anyone can see that. They belong to a man who doesn’t look
like me. He was an Arab.’
The interrogator
examined a photocopy.‘This looks like you to me.’ He showed it to
his colleague, who nodded vigorously. Herrick glanced at the copy
on the CIA officer’s lap. There was no resemblance whatsoever to
Khan. However, she took out her notebook and wrote down Faisal’s
name and the other aliases.
‘But it is natural
that you do not want to look like a member of Hamas. The man Faisal
is wanted in Damascus, Cairo and Jerusalem. Everyone wants to speak with Mr Jasur Faisal
because he is responsible for many explosions and killings. In
Syria they want to see Mr Faisal for two murders. In Egypt, Mr
Faisal assassinated a politician and a newspaper editor and was
sentenced to death by the courts in Cairo. Maybe Jasur Faisal - The
Electrician - is sitting here in this room with us. Maybe we have
big shot terrorist here, right here in front of us, a real soldier
of Islam?’
‘Why are you asking
me questions I can’t answer? Proof that I am not Faisal lies in
front of you, but when you say you do not believe this, how am I
meant to answer you? It’s the same with the postcards. There isn’t
a code in the postcards. You have found what you wanted to find and
I am to be punished for this.’ After this speech Khan hung his
head. The sweat trickled down his cheek and collected in the
stubble at his chin.
There was silence.
Franc turned to her and gave her a big, fat wink.
‘May I ask the
suspect a question?’ Herrick said to the room. Then looking
directly at Khan she asked, ‘Who are you?’
‘I am Karim
Khan.’
‘And you haven’t used
any of these other names - Faisal and the rest?’
‘No. I found the
identity on the man I fled with in Macedonia. ’
‘Have you ever been
known as The Electrician, or The Watchmaker, or The Poet, or any
other name?’ She said it lightly, as though the names had come to
her randomly, but Khan raised his head and his eyes filled with
recognition.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but I
once knew a man who was nicknamed The Poet - a long time ago, in
Bosnia. My friend Dr Loz knew of him.’ There was no doubt he
understood what she was saying. They had made contact.
Franc turned to her.
‘A moment outside, Ms Herrick.’ He steered her to the door,
beckoning Gibbons to go with them. In the corridor, he pushed her
to the wall and leaned into her face with his arm resting beside
her head. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re doing in there, but
let me tell you that you’re here on my sufferance and those remarks
were unacceptable. This is front line procedure, Miss Herrick, an
extremely delicate interrogation, the result of coordination
between us and officers of the Albanian intelligence service. I
can’t allow you to butt in with any damned thought that comes into
your head. You copy, Ms
Herrick?’
She moved her face
from the blast of his breath and remembered Nathan Lyne’s approach.
‘Mr Franc, I am here under a joint Anglo-American authority, the
likes of which you cannot even dream, and I will behave in the way
that I believe is appropriate to the operation. If you want to test
this, why don’t you call your station in London and speak to the
Deputy Director of the CIA, Jim Collins?’
Franc took his arm
from the wall. ‘What was that crap in there about?’
‘I wanted to know if
he recognised the code name for a Bosnian commander. You saw how he
reacted to it. That means he can’t be Faisal, and that the story of
the man dying in Macedonia is probably true.’
‘That proves
nothing,’ said Gibbons.
‘You really believe
he’s a member of Hamas?’
‘We have to explore
all the possibilities, Ms Herrick,’ said Franc, ‘and if I am going
to let you back inside that room, I need a guarantee you won’t
interrupt again. Lives could depend on us finding out what this man
was sent to do. We know from the codes he sent to his associate,
Loz, that he is part of a plot to mount a major attack in the
US.’
‘So why are you
asking him about Faisal?’ asked Herrick innocently. ‘You know he
isn’t Faisal - that’s clear to me from the early transcripts. Why
waste the time?’
‘The fact that he was
carrying papers belonging to a member of Hamas, the most feared
terrorist group in the Middle East, means there may be a connection
between al-Qaeda and Hamas. I don’t have to explain how important
that is.’ Franc had become avuncular, telling the little girl from
England about the realities of ‘front line procedure’. A look in
his eye spurred her to wonder exactly what was going
on.
‘Okay,’ she said,
apparently placated. ‘Shall we go back inside? I haven’t seen
enough to write anything sensible yet. By the way, who’s the man
with the bag of nuts?’
‘He’s a doctor,’
Gibbons drawled. ‘He’s looking after the welfare of the
suspect.’
When she went in, The
Doctor was perched on the interview table offering Khan a pistachio
nut. Relief spread over Khan’s face as he saw Isis and his eyes
leapt in hope, but then The Doctor leaned across and said something
to him. When she saw him again his expression was blank and
compliant.
She took her place as
the questions about Hamas resumed, most of which Khan refused to
answer, at one stage saying that he might as well be questioned
about Colombia. An hour passed and although the sun was sinking
outside, the room remained stifling. Suddenly Isis jumped up and
left the room, this time to the sniggers of the two Albanians and
The Doctor. Franc followed her out looking angry.
‘You’re yanking my
chain,’ she said. ‘You’re not interested in Hamas. In fact, I think
this whole session has been arranged for my benefit. You’re taking
the interrogation up a blind alley so I don’t get anything.’ She
stopped and looked at his glistening, fleshy face. ‘I’ll let you
into a secret, Mr Franc. I am not here on some kind of training
programme. There are literally hundreds of CIA and SIS officers
engaged in a secret operation in London and all over Europe - one
vast intelligence operation. I am here as part of that. Do you
understand? So let’s forget this Hamas business. It’s a load of
shite, and you know it. When I go back in, you steer the questions
to the matter in hand.’
For a moment Franc
was taken aback by her vehemence, but then he stretched and wiped
his forehead. ‘You’re quite a spitfire, Miss Herrick, I’ll grant
you that. But you got to understand that this is not my
interrogation. The man is in Albanian custody! We are here as their
guests, for chrissake.’
‘I don’t give a
fuck,’ she hissed. ‘If you want me to keep you out of my report,
you will go back to the line of questioning you were pursuing in
the transcripts.’ With this, she turned and walked into the room
again.
Evidently much of
their exchange had been overheard. The Albanians were barely able
to contain themselves and the other two Americans were smirking.
Amidst all this brutal jollity, Khan looked even more pathetic.
Suddenly he rose from his chair, but the restraints on his feet
held him and he lurched onto the table. ‘They’re torturing me,’ he
shouted. ‘This man, they call him The Doctor, he is the torturer.
Tell him to show you the plastic bag he suffocated me with.’ One of
the Albanians was now at Khan’s side, forcing him down and trying
to clamp his jaw shut, but Khan ducked from his grip and continued
shouting. ‘Everyone here is tortured and brutalised. Is that what
you want? Is that the policy of the British and American
governments? Get me out of here and I will tell you anything you
want.’ He was silenced by The Doctor, who had got behind him and
slipped a large forearm around his neck, locking it into the crook
of his other arm. Khan coughed and slumped to the chair, staring at
Herrick.
‘Stop that,’ Herrick
screamed. ‘Stop that now.’ But the Americans were already leading
her from the room. ‘My government does not condone this,’ she said
out in the corridor.
‘Nobody gives a damn
what the British government thinks,’ said Franc, physically handing
her to Gibbons. ‘Get her out of here, Lance, and make sure she
doesn’t come tomorrow.’ He turned and went back into the
room.
As the door opened
she caught a glimpse of Khan, the whites of his eyes shining in the
shadow cast by The Doctor’s form.
It was dusk outside.
The clouds above were mottled with the last rays of the sun and in
the east the mountains were brushed with a dirty pink. The noise of
the hot, swarming capital came to Herrick’s ears like a
roar.
Gibbons pushed her
into the Toyota and climbed into the driving seat. ‘You have some
fucking balls,’ he said, starting the engine. ‘This is the way it
is, you know! The way it has to be with these people.’
‘What?
Torture?’
‘Hell, that’s not
torture. He’s been slapped around a little. That’s all.’ His lips
pouted downwards with a kind of patronising disgust.
‘Oh, for Christ’s
sake! The man is going to be tortured because you can’t get the
answers you want. Has it occurred to you that he doesn’t have
anything else to tell you?’
They went a few
hundred yards, swerving to avoid the worst of the potholes and the
kids running into the street with iced drinks and cigarettes. Then,
in a quieter spot, Gibbons pulled up and swivelled round in his
seat, one arm hooked around the steering wheel. ‘I know this is
tough, but it is the only way. We have a man who could be part of a
plot to kill thousands of people. We have learned our lesson about
these guys. We have to fight fire with fire and be every bit as
ruthless and cruel as they are, because we’re here in this shitty
little country, charged by the American people to protect them - at
the very least, to give them warnings of terrorist attacks. How the
hell do you think we’re going to do that? Huh? I mean, like we
treat Khan nicely when al-Qaeda’s going to blow up this fuel tanker
or drop a truckload of nuclear waste in DC, so he tells us? Get
real, Isis. We’re in a different kind of war now. We got to respond
with all available means and, hell, if that entails one of the
murderous little bastards being hung from a beam for intensive
questions, I for one don’t give a shit. What matters is that we get
the result and protect our people. It’s the same with the British.
You think the average Brit cares a damn what happens to some Paki
terrorist thousands of miles away? Of course he doesn’t. He wants
you to go out and get the answers and prevent these people from
destroying his liberty and way of life. That’s your job. It’s as
simple as that, and if you don’t have the stomach for it, you
should find yourself another line of work. This is the way it is
from here on in, Isis. A long, cruel war between
civilisations.’
‘Civilisation,’ she
said, without looking at him, ‘is exactly what this is about.
That’s what we’re fighting for, the standard that says torture is
wrong. There is nothing more absolute than the absolute wrong of
what you’re doing to that man. Don’t you see that?’
‘Don’t be so fucking
pious. You think this is an exclusively American vice? Give me a
break, Isis. You Brits have been torturing people all over the
goddam empire for a couple of hundred years. Hey, you even used
those methods on your own citizens in Northern Ireland - bags over
the head, sleep privation, beatings. And as long as the people were
safe, they didn’t want to know about it.’
She exhaled heavily.
‘Torture and internment didn’t stop the IRA. In fact, there’s a
good argument that the Peace Process only happened once those
things had been abandoned. I didn’t say we were perfect, but I know
that if we start pulling people’s fingernails out now we lose a
sense of what we’re fighting for.’
‘The moral high
ground, et cetera, et cetera.’ He lit a cheroot and blew a stream
of smoke through the crack in the window. ‘You know about the guy
who planned to crash a dozen airliners into the Pacific? He was
arrested in the Philippines and after intensive interrogation he told them what was going
down, and the whole goddam cell was detained. Maybe they broke a
few bones on the way, but what’s that compared to the people they
saved, the vast numbers of Americans who aren’t grieving because
some nut says their lives offend the Prophet’s teaching? You know
what? We should go further. Every time they attack us, we should go
after them, take the fight to every goddam mosque, every meeting
held by every crummy imam and ayatollah, and if they don’t get the
point with a few smarts, we’ll show what a little instant sunshine
can do. It’s about power, and using that power to dissuade.’ He
swept his hand at the street and the teeming life ahead of them on
the Boulevard of National Heroes. The evening volta had begun, a procession of people walking up
and down in the dusk, admiring each other’s babies in a formal
ritual found all over southern Europe. It seemed to speak of an
ordered civil society. ‘The only reason I can park up and talk to
you is because those people know this is a US Embassy car and
inside there’s a guy with Lieutenant-Colonel Uziel Gal’s finest
invention on his lap.’ He touched the sub-machine gun through the
knapsack. ‘Otherwise they’d strip the car and take you
away.’
‘What happens if you
torture that man and get the wrong answers? What if you’re asking
the wrong questions?’
He smiled.
‘We are not going to be hurting anyone.
We don’t have any control over what
happens in the state prisons here. It’s like Colombia’s baby
brother. Everyone’s corrupt, the gangsters are running the
politicians, the police, the judges - everything. They sell their
neighbours’ children into sex slavery and when the kids get
pregnant the gangs take the baby and put it to work for a living in
the arms of some beggar. America doesn’t run Albania, Isis. We got
a toehold in the heart of darkness, that’s all, and we use it to
try to protect our own people.’ He paused. ‘We should have a drink
back at your hotel and talk some more about this. There’re things
you should understand.’
Her first instinct
was to say no, but then she thought there was every possibility of
Gibbons getting drunk and talking about Khan. Besides, she wanted
to see Khan again and she would need Gibbons to get her
in.
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘Yeah, why not?’
They passed through
the lobby, Herrick drawing sullen, hungry looks from the knot of
bodyguards, and went to the bar where Gibbons ordered whisky and a
Diet Coke which he drank separately, downing each in one before
Herrick had touched her glass of Albanian white. Another full glass
of whisky followed and they went to the terrace and sat down, where
Herrick recognised a piece of Schubert playing in the background.
One or two of the evangelists were still earnestly hunched over
lemonades. How odd, she thought, that in one part of town Americans
were standing by as a man was tortured, while in another they were
preparing a mission to convert the faithless masses. She made the
point less harshly to Gibbons.
‘Before you get too
self-righteous, remember the British in India - missionaries and
massacres. The sub-continent was virtually enslaved to the British
Raj.’ He paused and made a conciliatory gesture. ‘You’re a good
person, Isis. I know your type from college. You’ve got genuine,
honest to God goodness at your centre and, like all those people I
knew, you believe in the healing power of liberal
argument.’
She smiled a little
vulnerably. ‘Well, you have to believe in something,
Lance.’
‘Maybe we do, but
belief doesn’t work here. You got to see this as a vacuum. Since
the communists fell, every goddam religion and ideology has been
trying to fill it. That’s why there’re Christian evangelists in the
mountains with a Bible in one hand and a machine gun in the other,
and why every kind of shady Muslim charity came here and started
building mosques. But these people don’t give a shit about either
of them.’ He drank the whisky, eyes patrolling the tables on the
terrace. Then he clutched his belt. There was a faint buzz. ‘Hey,
that’s my phone going. I better make the call.’
‘That’s fine. I have
a couple of calls to make, too.’
‘Don’t you get lost,’
he said, and vanished into the gardens in a conspicuously
clandestine manner.
Herrick dialled
Harland’s mobile.
‘Who’s that with
you?’ he asked.
‘Where are
you?’
‘It doesn’t matter.
Who is he?
‘The guy from the US
Embassy.’
‘There are some
developments,’ he said. ‘One, you can’t use the phone in the hotel,
but I imagine you already knew that. Two, my charge has gone
missing. Probably nothing to worry about, but I need to find him.
He said the consignment you inspected this afternoon is much more
important than anyone imagined. In a conference call to head office
from the Embassy he blurted this out and now the MD is really
interested. They’re getting back to me. Meantime, you’re to find
out everything you can. Any movement of the consignment from the
warehouse and they want to know about it.’
‘Just like
that?’
‘’Fraid
so.’
‘I’ll do my best,
which in the circumstances won’t be much. How’s the
back?’
‘Comes and goes. Your
man’s returning to the table. I’d better hang up.’
Out of the corner of
her eye, in the darkened part of the terrace, she saw Harland get
up from a table and walk to the dining room door, which she knew
could be used to bypass the terrace. He was no longer bent double,
but he was moving stiffly.
Gibbons flopped down
beside her again. ‘Hell, I thought I had more whisky than that.
Isis, you been sneaking my booze?’ He ordered another. ‘So where
were we?’
‘What’s going to
happen to Khan?’ she asked.
‘That’s all you ever
ask.’
‘Well, we would like
to talk to him in slightly less threatening circumstances. Maybe he
would tell us more. ’
‘He’ll tell
us.’
‘Then what will
happen to him? Where will he be tried?’
‘Who the hell cares?’
He drank some more and looked at her with sudden sharp focus.
‘Forget about Khan. We just had word from London. I guess they told
Milo Franc that you were a royal pain in the arse. They sent you
here to get you out of the way. He talked to Collins, then a guy
named Vigo, and he said you had no authority whatsoever. The way
you threw your weight around has made Franc awful pissed. He said
to tell you that you should write your report and get the hell out
of Tirana. He doesn’t want to see you again.’ He laughed. ‘Hey,
have another drink for chrissake, you’re making me feel
awkward.’
‘Vigo spoke to
Franc?’
‘Yeh, Vigo, he knows
a lot of our guys at Langley.’
‘I’ll take that
drink,’ she said, brightening. ‘It’s a relief not to have to go to
that place. I don’t know how you stand it.’
‘Goes with the
territory,’ said Gibbons in a manly, stoic way.
They drank while
Herrick listened to Gibbons’ theories about the lack of car
mechanics in Albania and the fact - according to him - that no one
was able to read a map because the communists had banned them for
forty years. She was amenable, smiled a lot, and was certainly
guilty of implying that things might develop further that evening.
But just past nine o’clock he leapt up and said. ‘Got to leave you,
Isis. Date at the Valleys of Fire.’ He said it as if it was a film
title.
‘What’s
that?’
He looked down at her
without a trace of humour. ‘A place where questions are asked and
answers are given. I’ll check in tomorrow. Hey, why don’t we do
dinner at Juvenilja?’
He navigated a pretty
straight course through the tables of Tirana’s underworld and
hopeful reformers, which she thought was due more to momentum than
any residual balance.