The Sanction Read online

  * * *

  Holm found a clean shirt but his suit lay crumpled where he’d thrown it when he’d arrived back from work. He pulled on the trousers and jacket and grabbed a couple of chocolate biscuits from a cupboard in the kitchen. A swig of milk straight from the carton in the fridge and his breakfast – at four fifteen in the afternoon – was done.

  Half an hour later he was emerging from the depths of Victoria tube station and striding towards the river. He headed up Millbank, dodging people coming the other way. It was rush hour now and most folk were going home. Throngs of workers. Crowded buses. Nose-to-tail traffic. As Holm neared Thames House, he looked across at a couple of young mums with babies strapped to their fronts. Nearby a trio of city types shared office banter and a teacher led a group of foreign schoolchildren on a tour. This was the soft underbelly of the country, awash with easy targets. Many a time he’d discussed with colleagues how lucky they were that most terrorists were fairly stupid. How else to account for the relatively low number of attacks? Sure, the security services had had great success in foiling a number of plots, but it didn’t explain why there weren’t more.

  At Thames House he went through the rigmarole of passing through security and made his way to the situation room. When he’d left in the early hours there’d been empty chairs and blank monitors, but now every screen was ablaze and nearly every chair taken. People talked into phones, fingers clattered across keyboards and a buzz of half a dozen different languages filled the air.

  To one side of the room a junior operative, Farakh Javed, hunched over a laptop staring at some black and white images. Javed was an analyst in Holm’s department who’d unfathomably latched onto Holm as some kind of intelligence guru. Javed had a bouncy shock of black hair and an engaging smile. He was very bright and very gay – a fact, he’d told Holm, his second-generation Pakistani parents weren’t happy with. Holm secretly sympathised with them. Live and let live was a motto he tried to abide by, but he had to admit he was slightly uncomfortable with Javed’s overt sexuality. He put it down to his age, lumping Javed in with a jumble of things he found difficult that included smartphones, self-scan supermarket checkouts and music streaming.

  ‘This is good,’ Javed said without looking up, somehow sensing it was Holm at his shoulder. ‘CCTV from a building near the scene. We’ve already got a match on one of the attackers.’

  ‘Really?’ Holm began to feel a glimmer of hope. He glanced down at the screen where Javed had zoomed in on an image. A young man stood with an automatic rifle in his hands. He wore a chequered shemagh round his head, but part of the covering had slipped away to reveal his face. The man had a beard and his features were indistinct, but Holm knew only a few data points were needed for the facial recognition software to pick a match. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Mohid Latif.’ Javed half turned to Holm. ‘And he’s British.’

  ‘British?’ Holm looked closer. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. A British citizen carrying out an attack on foreign soil and we missed him. The Spider’s going to blow her top.’

  ‘Is Latif on our radar?’

  ‘He’s on a long list. A very long list. Three years ago he was questioned by police regarding the distribution of some pamphlets.’

  ‘And we did nothing?’

  Javed didn’t answer, merely made a face and shrugged.

  ‘Where’s Huxtable?’ Holm said. He couldn’t see the deputy director anywhere in the room.

  ‘Prowling.’ Javed raised his hand, palm down, and wiggled his fingers. A spider creeping forward. ‘And hungry. I hope you’ve got something for her.’

  ‘Christ.’ Holm felt his knees weaken and moved to a spare workstation. He slumped down in the chair and logged in using a fingerprint scanner. ‘There was nothing, Farakh, nothing.’

  ‘Sure.’ Javed held his hands up. ‘You don’t have to convince me, sir. You couldn’t have done any more.’

  You. Holm noted the word. Javed was distancing himself. He didn’t want to be caught in the sticky web that was awaiting Holm.

  Javed got up from his station and walked off, and Holm turned to the far wall where a towering bank of screens showed news reports, live operation maps, stock prices and currency rates. A glance at one of the screens told Holm the Tunisian dinar was under pressure. The markets were spooked. Tourists had only just begun to return to the country after the atrocities a few years back at the Bardo National Museum and the resort of Sousse. Now they would stop coming once more and the foreign exchange the country needed would dry up.

  Holm refocused on his own screen. He needed to rustle up some kind of supporting document. Bullet points. A graphic or two. Concluding remarks. He bent to the keyboard and flicked his fingers over the keys.

  ‘Stephen.’ His name sounded cold and harsh, an icicle spiking into his right ear. He turned to see Fiona Huxtable beside him. ‘Nice of you to join us.’

  Holm had more than ten years on Huxtable but he couldn’t help thinking of his boss as a stern headmistress, him as the naughty schoolboy. The image was one he was sure she cultivated. Her stick-thin body was always bulked out by a thick tweed jacket and skirt, but whatever she wore did little to disguise her angular figure. Bony, a colleague of Holm’s had described her as, and he hadn’t only been talking about Huxtable’s appearance.

  ‘I came as soon as I heard.’ Holm began to rise out of politeness, but Huxtable’s hand pressed down on his shoulder and held him in his seat. ‘Seven dead. Not good.’

  He didn’t know why he’d said that. The casualty numbers only served to compound his error and that it was not good was bloody obvious.

  ‘The latest figure is nine.’ Huxtable’s gaze flicked to a nearby screen and then back at Holm’s monitor. She appeared to be reading the three bullet points Holm had managed to think up. ‘Unsubstantiated reports? Is that the best you can do, Stephen?’

  Holm opened his mouth to say something. He was aware of Huxtable’s hand still resting on his shoulder. A reminder she was in control. That he was in her grasp.

  ‘My office in one hour with something better than this crap.’ She removed her hand. ‘And don’t even think of mentioning you-know-who, OK?’

  With that she was gone, leaving Holm in a sweat as he struggled to add something meaningful to his document. Something that didn’t involve you-know-who.

  Chapter Three

  You-know-who was the cause of all of Holm’s sleepless nights and most of his problems. He blamed you-know-who for his increased drinking, the loss of half of his hair, for his marriage break-up, for the fact he lived in a one-bedroom flat with a fridge stuffed with ready meals, for his lack of supportive colleagues at work, for his failure to progress up the ladder in the last few years. And now for this farce which could well lead to his dismissal. Of course he’d be offered the chance to take early retirement, the easy way to sanitise the whole unpleasant business. After many years distinguished service… blah, blah, blah. There’d be a short announcement in the internal daily briefing, a glass of sherry in Huxtable’s office, the meeting possibly graced with the presence of the head of MI5, Thomas Gillan. Back in the situation room a couple of bowls of hastily purchased snacks would be placed on a desk, and an envelope would be handed over. Inside a card signed by everyone and an Amazon gift voucher because nobody could be bothered with leaving presents these days. A few words would be said. There’d be some reminiscing about the good old days but nobody would mention the reason he was leaving the service. Nobody would mention you-know-who.

  You-know-who. MI5 code name RAVEN. Street name – almost certainly an alias – Taher.

  Taher…

  The name hissed through Holm’s thoughts, the two syllables drawn out as if part of a Siren’s song calling him to his doom. Time and again he’d been beguiled by the name, led astray, his attention diverted from other mundane but important tasks. He could almost hear the whispers at his leaving do. A nod and a wink as he turned his back to reach fo
r a bread stick.

  ‘The poor boy lost it, don’t you know? Became obsessed.’

  ‘Obsessed?’

  ‘Yes. Focused on chasing one individual instead of disrupting the network. Old style. Couldn’t update himself to deal with the reality of the post-9/11 world. Analogue not digital. Social circles rather than social media. So sad.’

  A pause. Then a joke at Holm’s expense.

  ‘Not that the old boy had much of a social circle. Somewhat of a loner, wasn’t he?’

  Muttering in agreement. A laugh. Some management speak and then a segue into a safer topic, perhaps football or cricket or the extramarital dalliances of a celebrity couple that someone in Five had inadvertently picked up on a phone intercept.

  Somewhat of a loner.

  With a tinge of bitterness Holm had to admit it was true. He hadn’t played the game in either the police force or the security services. No union, no Masonic handshake, he hadn’t gone to the right school or university, and he definitely wasn’t what they called clubbable.

  He batted away the daydream and focused on his document, but nothing came to mind except a bunch of lame excuses, none of which would wash with Huxtable.

  Sod it.

  He looked up from his terminal and across at the screens. One news channel showed the centre of Tunis teeming with military personnel, another a beach full of parasols and sun loungers but devoid of tourists. A third focused on the glossy black door at Downing Street. A caption said the prime minister would shortly be making a statement.

  ‘It was you, Taher,’ Holm whispered to himself. ‘I know it was.’

  As soon as he’d spoken he looked up to check nobody had overheard. The mere mention of Taher’s name would have Huxtable frothing at the mouth. For her, Taher was a sign of Holm’s failings. The single-mindedness that had served him well when he’d been in Special Branch was frowned upon here. Phrases like the bigger picture, a connected world, and – Holm’s favourite meaningless platitude – one bullet doesn’t end a war, went down well. Holm’s old-fashioned ideas did not. You didn’t wear out shoe leather these days and you didn’t cultivate informants in smoky back-room bars. You didn’t chase after a man the security services were beginning to think was a myth deliberately propagated by the terrorists to confound their enemies.

  Holm had to admit there wasn’t much to go on. The first time the intelligence services had come across Taher had been in text messages found on a number of mobile phones that had been discovered in the UK, France and Belgium. Local ISIS operatives mentioned a free agent who was revered as some kind of emerging jihadi superhero. For a number of years he’d been rumoured to have been involved in almost every atrocity that had taken place in Europe. If he wasn’t actually there, then he was the one doing the planning and supplying the means and the money. However, recently the leads had dried up, leaving behind nothing but speculation. Even Holm’s most trusted informant had changed his tune.

  ‘You want to believe, then you believe,’ he’d said. ‘But I’ve come to the conclusion Taher is no more than a straw man you’ve created to justify your failures.’

  It was true that almost everything about Taher was unsubstantiated: his age, background, country of origin. Was he a refugee or home grown? British, French, German, Belgian? Did he wear his beliefs on his sleeve or was he in some form of deep cover? Was he in a relationship? Did he have a job? Where did he get his money from? Was he, in fact, a composite of more than one individual?

  For a couple of years Huxtable had tolerated Holm’s obsession because he was her spin of the roulette wheel, the couple of quid bunged on the lottery, a tenner on a long-odds outsider at the Grand National. Besides, what else could Holm usefully do? He was regularly sidelined on operations because he was too long in the tooth. He was passed over for younger men and women, graduates who had multiple languages and high-level computer skills. Holm spoke decent French and, in his pursuit of Taher, had picked up a smattering of Arabic. His German was limited to ordering beer and his Russian and Chinese non-existent. He could just about use a computer but when his colleagues began to talk of IP addresses and proxy servers and the dark web his eyes began to glaze over. Was tradecraft dead, he wondered. Didn’t anybody follow a hunch any more?

  Holm shook himself and concentrated on his screen. The hour had slipped by and there were no more bullet points. He logged off from the terminal and rose from the chair.

  * * *

  The man the security services knew as Taher sat in the back seat of a minibus bouncing along a rough track some fifty miles to the south-west of Tunis. After two hours of driving the stifling air was getting to him. The vehicle’s air con was broken and the windows were jammed shut against the dust. In the next row of seats were two of his foot soldiers, Mohid Latif and Anwan Saabiq. Saabiq reached up and slid a finger under his shemagh to scratch his neck. The skin was slick with sweat. A laugh came from the driver’s seat up front, hardened eyes flicking up to the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Bloody Europeans,’ the man said, his English heavily accented. ‘If you can’t stand the heat, that’s what you say, no?’

  Taher met the man’s eyes but remained silent. The driver – Kadri – was Tunisian, nothing more than a hired thug, and he wasn’t there to ask questions. Taher had seen the way the man had caressed the assault rifle he’d used in the attack. It was as if the gun was a pet or a woman. Kadri was ex-military, knew how to handle himself, but the way he’d held the weapon suggested he derived pleasure from killing. For Taher the use of guns and explosives was only a means to an end; for Kadri it was something approaching a fetish. Still, Kadri had been employed because they needed a local guide for the mission. Taher and the others didn’t speak the language and, once you were away from the tourist areas, foreigners stuck out a mile. Kadri could mutter a few words, thrust out a handful of dinar or raise a fist, and trouble faded away. They’d never have been able to navigate the heaving streets of Tunis without him, never have found the route which had taken them south from the city into desolate, rolling hills populated with scrawny pine trees and little else. In short, the mission could not have succeeded had Taher been naive enough to believe he had all the answers.

  Rely on others. Depend on no one.

  His uncle had taught him the wisdom of the little phrase that made no sense, and Taher had always thought the sentiment it encapsulated was appropriate to his situation. Surrounded by those who venerated him and would die for him, he was nevertheless alone in the world. Aside from his uncle nobody knew the real Taher. He was a mystery, his name an alias. Perhaps, more correctly, a cipher. A jumble of letters that represented a man but had come to stand for something much more. His followers whispered his name with reverence and awe. Taher… the man behind Paris and London. Had he been in Berlin too? Barcelona? Sydney? Bangkok? Rumour had it he’d been a fleeting shadow in all those places and more. In truth the legend had grown larger than the man, and many attacks were linked to him even if he’d had no part in their planning, financing or execution. At first Taher had shied away from the notoriety, but he soon realised the legend was someone the security services chased in vain. When they shone a light into the dark, the shadow faded away, and the brighter the light, the quicker the shadow dissipated.

  Who was this man, people wondered. It was something Taher himself often worried about too. Who exactly was he? A freedom fighter? A religious zealot? A soldier of fortune? A thrill seeker? A psychopath? When he looked into his soul he knew there was a little of each in there, his identity a jumble of motivations. He was human like everyone else, and surprisingly, considering the number of people he’d killed, he had human feelings. Guilt, self-doubt, anger. Even, sometimes, love.

  They’d followed a cattle truck for the past few miles, unable to overtake, but finally Kadri pulled off to the right and took a tiny track down to a motley collection of buildings.

  ‘My brother’s farm,’ Kadri said. He laughed. ‘Goods for, how you say, export, yes?’

 
; There didn’t seem to be any animals or crops, just a main dwelling with sheet tin on the roof. An array of solar panels in a dusty field to one side. Some hefty steel doors on a brick outbuilding. Whatever Kadri’s brother farmed, it wasn’t going to end up on any supermarket shelf. Taher knew better than to ask. They were overnighting here and then Latif and Saabiq were journeying to a training camp close to the border with Algeria. Taher was heading for the tourist resort of Al Hammamet, from where a boat would take him across to Italy. He’d travel through mainland Europe and enter the UK secretly. In a few weeks, when they’d completed their training, Latif and Saabiq would do the same.

  In front of him, Saabiq turned round, unease written across his face.

  ‘Are we good?’ Saabiq said. He nodded at the ramshackle homestead. ‘Safe?’

  Taher nodded. Much as he despised Kadri, at least he knew how to stay calm. Saabiq was a worrier and worriers made Taher nervous. Latif, the other man he’d brought with him from the UK, was far more reliable.

  The vehicle lurched to a stop and Kadri wrenched open the door and climbed out. He pulled the side door across.

  ‘I told you, nothing to it.’ He spread his arms and then pointed to the dwelling where an older version of Kadri was pushing aside a tattered curtain and waving. ‘Now we can have a beer and some food and afterwards you can sample some of my brother’s stock.’ His eyes flicked to the building with the stout doors. ‘Fresh, young, and – how do you say – tight?’

  The older version of Kadri – his brother, Taher assumed – came across to help with the bags. He spat on the ground and grinned.

  ‘You boys up for that?’ Kadri said, laughing. ‘Some booze and some pussy? Or would you prefer a fucking prayer mat and your right hand, hey?’