Empire State Part 10

'I'll see to it that you get in this afternoon. Present yourself at the US Emba.s.sy at three unless you hear from me.'

'And RAPTOR?'

'Just see Khan, do your stuff and send back a report to the Bunker. Believe me, they're very preoccupied with the other nine active suspects and it will only confuse things if you start kicking up in your usual way.' He paused and laughed quietly. 'So, no break-ins for the moment, Isis. Keep your powder dry and use those observant eyes of yours. I'm afraid I can't brief you more clearly than this, because things are very fluid: I'm relying on you and Harland to respond in a way that I know you're both capable of.' He gave her a number, then hung up, leaving her sitting in the cool of the communications room, wondering what the h.e.l.l was going on. Her father had observed that the Chief might be waiting to make his move, but with only three or four weeks left of his tenure, it seemed a little late. Besides, everything he was interested in seemed way off the point.

She left the Emba.s.sy and walked out into the dust and noise of Rruga e Durresit, along which she had noticed some shops. She entered one of the boutiques, a sad little place with almost no stock, bought two brightly coloured T-shirts and a canvas shoulder bag she had seen some of the Tirana women carrying. In another, where there was more sense of actual commerce, she chose a belt and some jeans with studded seams. She moved on to a market and threaded her way into a rickety wood and tin structure pierced with shafts of light. Beyond the pyramids of vegetables and boxes of live chickens, she found a woman with a tray of cheap costume jewellery, and bought some imitation gold bangles and a necklace of white and black plastic beads. She turned to the adjacent stall, which was run by a young man with a wispy moustache, and bargained for a black fish-net shawl and a pair of high-heeled ankle-length boots with a cowboy fringe at the top. She placed all her purchases in a white supermarket bag, together with some fruit, and walked purposefully through the stall holders, who had now cottoned on to the presence of a foreigner and were plucking at her jacket.

By ten-thirty, she reached the hotel and, deciding that she would wait for Harland to contact her, went to the swimming pool with a couple of books and a newspaper.

When the doctor first came to Khan in the headquarters of SHISK, the Albanian intelligence service, and treated him for the abscess and broken lip, Khan a.s.sumed he was Albanian, but through the days of his interrogation he had learned that the man was Syrian. The SHISK interrogators referred to him as The Syrian or The Doctor, the latter always accompanied by a brief ironic smile that puzzled him. The Doctor also had a habit of making notes when Khan was answering a question. What did a doctor need to know about his past in Afghanistan? More unnerving was the way he interrupted proceedings by leaving his chair near the window and walking over to grasp one of Karim's arms or dig his thumbs into the tendons at the back of his leg. While the doctor went about his curious inspection, the two Albanian interrogators would sit back and light up; the Americans, of whom there were never fewer than three, stretched, rubbed their necks and murmured under their breath.

At first he was rea.s.sured by The Doctor's presence, thinking it would protect him from the treatment meted out to the other prisoners, but he gradually came to resent, then loathe the strange prodding and pinching that went on. Besides this, the expression in the man's face had hardened in blood-chilling appraisal. He wished fervently never to be left alone with this man.

The interrogations had followed the same pattern since the first days, when he had given them the outline of his story from Bosnia to Afghanistan. Their interest focused on the last four years. They took it for granted that he met and knew the leadership of the Taleban and al-Qaeda, although he told them over and over again that he was just a mountain commander and had little experience of the regime, and none of the terrorist training camps. But, prompted by the Americans, the Albanian intelligence officers went on asking: 'Where did you train? Who trained you? What methods were you taught - car bombs, sniper attacks, butane bombs, timing devices? What about dirty bombs?' Did he know of any radioactive material coming over the border from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan or Tajikistan? He had admitted being in that area during the summer of 1999, they said, so he must have known of the shipments of strontium and caesium chloride. He insisted that he didn't know anything about these shipments, but would not have hesitated to tell them if he had known. He was numb with repet.i.tion, going over the details so often that the words lost meaning for him.

They showed him books of photographs, brought by the Americans in two metal cases. This was a welcome break in the routine. He used these to show that he wanted to cooperate, and for all of two days they went through the four or five hundred faces of men who were suspected of having trained in Afghanistan. He gave them names of about a dozen he had fought with, and pointed out that three of the men - a Saudi, a Yemeni and another Pakistani with a British pa.s.sport - were dead. He had seen the young Yemeni killed in front of him by a Northern Alliance rocket, and he'd buried him with five others under a mound of rocks, the ground being too hard to dig.

The interrogators returned again and again to the al-Qaeda camps. Khan explained that he had gone already trained, battle-hardened from Bosnia. As far as tactics and weaponry went, he knew much more than any of the men he fought with, but he had absolutely no contact with the terrorist training camps. During the last two winters, he had been trapped at the front with no supplies, freezing his a.r.s.e off, men dying of cold and illness all around him. They had radio contact with Kabul but n.o.body seemed to care about them. 'I was a soldier,' he concluded wearily. 'I was nothing to them, and the Arabs mostly kept to themselves.'

'But you were the big hero from Bosnia. You commanded Arabs in battle with the Northern Alliance and on the Tajik border,' said one of the interrogators.

'The Arabs without money stayed with us, yes. And they became good fighters. But the rich ones always bought their way back south. I saw them come and knew they would not last more than a few weeks. You may have heard of the different Arab words for them. Tharwa were the rich ones, Thawra were the revolutionaries. It is an old joke in Arabic - a pun, I believe.'

'Why didn't you leave earlier?' asked one of the Americans. 'You say you hated the Taleban and you had no respect for the Arabs, yet you stayed in Afghanistan longer than anyone we have interrogated. Why?'

'I was committed to the men I fought with. There were ten of us who'd been together since ninety-eight. We survived all the hardship together, the dangers and the crazy decisions that came from men in Kabul who didn't have to fight. We ate with each other, shared our possessions; we saved each other and buried our brothers. When you're out in the mountains like this for years, depending on one another, without supplies, you don't think about what is going on in the outside world. It's easy to become cut off...'

'Myopic,' offered another one of the Americans.

'Yes, myopic. I was guilty of that. Yes.'

'Horse-s.h.i.t,' said a man named Milo Franc. He was leading the American team and was easily the most hostile. 'That's hypocritical horse-s.h.i.t, Khan. You're a mercenary and you fought for a regime that executed women for reading school books!'

'I didn't support those things.'

'You enjoyed killing. That's the truth, isn't it? You're a professional killer. And when your people in Afghanistan were thrown out, you were ordered to the West to kill again.' He paused and lowered his voice. 'You left Afghanistan in December - is that right?'

Khan nodded, and stared at the patterns of chips in the wall paint. He knew every square inch of the room and was familiar with the routine noises coming from the street: the surges of traffic, the calls of vendors who appeared at exactly the same time every day, and the sound of students issuing from an academy up the road.

'So,' said Franc, hitching up his trousers. 'At the same moment the leadership disbanded all al-Qaeda fighters and told them to continue the struggle from their own countries, you get it into your head to return to London to complete your medical studies. You go over the border at Spin Boldak and dodge around until you make contact with your family in Lah.o.r.e. You went through Quetta, travelled north to the tribal areas then doubled back westwards to Iran. We have the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency report, so we know all this. It just so happens that at exactly that moment, hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters took the same route from Mashhad or Zabol in Iran, two cities you admit visiting. And you're saying that all this is coincidence?'

'Yes, I wanted my old life back. I realised I'd made mistakes with my life. I wanted to go back ... to leave the killing and become a doctor.'

'That's c.r.a.p. You were a lousy student and your professors in London - the ones that remember you - say you didn't give a s.h.i.t about medicine. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around and drinking, yes. Medicine, no. We checked with them. Your attendance record was terrible and you never turned in your term papers.'

Khan shook his head. 'I was a silly, misguided young man. I know that. But I have committed no crime.'

Franc looked at the two SHISK agents to see if they minded him continuing. One made an exaggerated flourish with his hand, as though to say 'be my guest'. Franc approached him and knelt down by the table so he was looking up into Khan's face.

'You see, Karim - or whatever the f.u.c.k your name is - you've had it good so far. Regular meals, a bed, treatment for your injuries. That's like three star service here. But it can all change. We can just leave you to these people. I guess you know what that means.' He turned and glanced at The Doctor over his shoulder and smiled with his harsh, grey eyes boring into Khan's face. 'This man is a real doctor. Like any real doctor he cures people and saves them,' he paused. 'That is, after he has hurt them so much that they want to die. But he doesn't let that happen. Oh, no. You see, he preserves the life of his subjects and then starts over with the pain. With your medical training, maybe you have an idea of what he can do. It's not just scalpels, draining the blood from your body; it's not electricity, or beating, or drowning. No, The Doctor is very scientific. He does things from the inside as well as the outside. He feeds you drugs, acid and every G.o.ddam s.h.i.t you can imagine. The pain is total, you understand that, Khan. Total. He takes you to another place, a place that no man alive can imagine, because it's so terrifying, so relentless. He can keep you in that state for years. Imagine that, Khan. He's had a lot of practice because he worked for Saddam Hussein. He had so many people to experiment with there that he became the best in the business. No one has ever failed to tell him what he wants to hear.' He got up and raised his voice. 'And you know what, you little p.r.i.c.k sonofab.i.t.c.h? We've got you an appointment with The Doctor. His time is booked for you, baby, and he's willing to start work whenever we give the word. So you better cooperate and answer our questions.'

Khan stared at the table and composed himself. 'I've told you everything I know,' he said. 'I have committed no crime. I fought a war as a foreign soldier in a foreign land, much like your people did in Vietnam. We both found we'd made a bad mistake and I wish to repay my debt to humanity.'

'You're a terrorist. That's the difference, buddy.' Franc went over to his chair, picked up a folder and returned to the table. 'Now you know about The Doctor, let's see what you say about this.' He withdrew the two remaining postcards of the Empire State. 'Can you explain these cards, which were found in your possession?'

'Yes, they were given to me by a friend a long time ago to remind me to keep in touch. That's why he addressed them to himself.'

'Yes, Dr Sammi Loz. You studied together in London and then went to Bosnia, right?'

'Yes.'

'Why the Empire State? What's the significance?'

'My friend had a love of the building, an obsession with it, you might say. He said he would always work from the Empire State because of its spirit. He said it was a lucky building. He can tell you this. I'm certain he's still there.'

Franc gave him a sardonic smile. 'We were going to ask Dr Loz, but he went missing when federal agents approached him four days ago. He is currently being sought in the United States. When we find him we will of course ask him, but at the present time we're going to have to rely on you.' While Franc paused to consult some photostats, Khan absorbed the news that Sammi was a suspect too.

'These postcards are written in code, aren't they? Our a.n.a.lysis has shown they may include an attack date and target information.' He placed five photostats on the table. 'I want you to read them for us and explain the code.'

'I can read them, but there's no code.' He shook his head and looked down at the surface of the table, then picked up the photostats and read the first one. 'Greetings, my old friend. I am in Pakistan and hope very soon to be in London. I may need a little help from you. I have good news. I am returning to complete my medical studies, as you always said I should. With warmest wishes, Khan.' He stopped. 'That is all there is - there's no message.'

'You sent that from Quetta, Pakistan, where you got the pa.s.sport doctored. Is that when you received your instructions? From the same people who gave you the name of the man who did the work on your doc.u.ments?'

'No, I did everything I could to avoid those people in Quetta. My family told me the ISI were looking for me. I had to be very discreet.'

'So you managed to find the man who does work for al-Qaeda by yourself?'

'I didn't know he worked for them.'

'Continue,' said Franc.

He read the postcards and, when he had finished, slammed his hand on the table with frustration. 'These mean nothing, I tell you. Nothing.'

Unmoved, Franc produced a second set of copies and put one in front of him. In the first postcard sent from Quetta, Khan saw that the capital letters were ringed in red:GrEetings, My old friend. I am in PakIstan and hope veRy soon to be in London. I may neEd a little help from you. I have good news. I am returning to complete my stuDIES, as you always said I should.

Karim looked up at him, mystified.

'Let me remind you about this,' said Franc. 'All the letters you made into capitals spell EMPIRE DIES.' He ran his finger along the message, stopping at each capital letter.

Khan shook his head incredulously. 'This is stupid. It is like a school kid's code. You think I wrote this to my friend? Honestly?'

'But you did. Take a look at the first one you sent from Iran. It's a little more complicated.'

He placed a grid of letters alongside a phrase from the postcard, which read, 'I want to hide in Lundun for all time. KariM.'

'This is the way you concluded your postcard from Iran. It's certainly an odd phrase, especially when you compare it to the rest of the postcard, which reads pretty naturally and is correctly spelt. So our a.n.a.lysts had a look at it and they came up with this.' He indicated the grid.

'What you wrote was a near anagram of a well-known Hadith, a saying of the prophet - 'Al kufr milatun wahidun' - meaning unbelief is one nation. It's a call to arms against the unbelievers.'

Khan stared at the letters. 'I don't understand.'

The American took a pencil and ticked off the letters that appeared in the Arabic phrase.

'But it doesn't work. There are too many letters in my postcard.'

'It's near enough. Why would anyone spell London like that? And again you use capital letters where they don't belong - the M in Karim is a capital. We're working on the next two cards but we think this is enough to put you and your friend Dr Loz in jail.' He paused. 'Unbelief is one nation. You people! What kind of s.h.i.t fills your minds?'

'This is crazy.'

'All you have to do is tell me where the target information is hidden. I want the date and time of the attack and the names of your a.s.sociates. What does the Empire State building have to do with all this? Is that your target? We need answers, Khan.' He was shouting now.

'There isn't a plot. I am innocent. I wasn't used to writing English - writing anything. The capital letters are a mistake and the codes you've found are coincidence. They don't exist.' He was sweating profusely, his throat parched with fear, and he had to hold his hands under the table to stop them shaking.

'Yeah, like the other coincidences in your story. Right now, we're all a little tired of listening to your c.r.a.p so we're gonna leave you for a couple of hours with The Doctor. When we come back, we want answers.'

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 circ.u.mstances 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-a.s.surance, 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 h.e.l.lo. '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 Emba.s.sy, so you know what I'm doing here.' He laughed grimly. 'Actually, I don't know what the h.e.l.l 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 Emba.s.sy 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 pa.s.sport. Teckman believes he knows something, but G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l's the Poet?' said Harland rather bad temperedly from the bed.

'That's the point,' replied Loz. 'n.o.body 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 Emba.s.sy to an anonymous four-storey building with blinded windows. They pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed 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 doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.mentations. 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-cla.s.s 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 doc.u.ments are not yours?'