THE NEW RECRUIT
Chapter 10
The Interrogation Room
The intimidating room, its walls encased in dull grey metal cladding like some science fiction fantasy, was Spartan; devoid of decorative touches and empty apart from a table and three chairs of plain utilitarian design. Huddled on one of the chairs was a man in his late twenties of Middle Eastern appearance with thick black curly hair. His clean-shaven face had assumed an expression of muted defiance, although his eyes betraying the state of mind behind the bravura were filled with fear and anxiety.
In the adjacent room Zaf prepared himself mentally for the task that lay ahead. He was devoted to his job and would willingly have followed Adam and Harry into hell and back without a moment's hesitation, but this was different. He was not naïve, he realised that questionable acts would have to sometimes be performed in the name of security, perhaps even of justice, but given the choice, he would far rather face overwhelming odds armed with a baseball bat or put himself in harms way in a terrorist situation rather than face what was now being asked of him. He glanced briefly at the tall, cool and collected figure standing next to him. Adam might give the impression of being one of the lads – a smooth laid-back charmer with a warm smile and a twinkle in his eye; but his colleagues knew that a darker, ruthless persona lay beneath the handsome exterior. Adam had endured torture and was equally prepared to dole it out without a second thought if the occasion demanded. Zaf might like to give the impression of being a hard nut, but he was squeamish at the thought of deliberately inflicting pain on another human being who was unable to defend him or herself. Adam he knew had a different perspective. He was more able to compartmentalise his emotions – if it were expedient and necessary to torture a suspect then he would not shrink from being directly involved in the process. Harry tended to distance himself from such activities for political reasons, but Zaf knew that if pressed, his boss would prove every bit as ruthless and determined as Adam.
Zaf let out a deep breath and nervously straightening his tie, followed Adam through the door into the Interrogation Room. He stood by the wall whilst Adam took a seat at the table opposite to the prisoner.
"You are Khalid Siddiqi of 12 Laburnum Drive, East Finchley?"
Silence.
"Look, I don't have time to arse around with you. This is not a cell in some comfortable English police station where you get tea and biscuits and a phone call. You have been brought here to provide answers. Now we, as they say in all the best films, can either do this the easy way or the hard way and believe me you don't want to find out what my hard way is."
The man kept his eyes on the table and his fists clenched in his lap. In one swift movement Adam got up from his chair and positioning himself behind the man, roughly wrenched his arms back and handcuffed them together behind the chair. He then brought a thin wire out of his pocket and placed it round the man's neck, attaching the loose ends to the metal handcuffs.
"Right; there is now a wire at your throat so sharp that any slight movement will cause it to start slicing through your flesh like this …"
Adam brought out another wire and holding it up in front of the man, whose upturned face was frozen into a rictus of fear, brought it slowly across his own index finger, smiling as the flesh sprung apart and blood spurted out. He leaned down so that his face was close to the man's ear:
"Left tied like this long enough, your muscles will start to spasm and the wire will tighten and slice into your throat; cutting through first ligaments and capillaries and then larger blood vessels; but the nerves are further back so it will be a while before the pain or the sensation of ripping flesh will stop. Have you ever felt your flesh being torn slowly Khalid? Believe me, it's very unpleasant. Not as unpleasant of course as being blown apart by a rocket but still unpleasant and of course much ….. much ….. slower."
The man swallowed nervously and the slight movement was enough to cause the wire to graze the stretched skin of his throat and blood oozed out from the thin red line that ran horizontally across his exposed flesh. The man's eyes widened in panic as he felt the sting of the metal slicing into him. Adam smiled down at him, his eyes ice-cold:
"I think it's time we speeded things up."
He placed his hands on the man's shoulders and tilted him backwards. With the shift in weight the metal wire dug deeper into the man's flesh and the drip of blood became a steady trickle. Adam leaned his head down so that his lips were level with the man's ear:
"If I accidentally let go of this chair the momentum will cause the wire to slice through at least thirty per cent of your neck, but you will still be alive, but not for long. It will take about forty minutes for sufficient blood to haemorrhage out for you to drift into unconsciousness and then death. I think this is a good moment for you to consider your options."
Adam wedged the man's knees against the table to stabilise the tilted chair and sat down facing the prisoner across the table, his eyes focused on Khalid Siddiqi as he waited for any sign of weakness or gesture that would suggest his tactic of intimidation had paid off.
Harry watched the proceedings through the 2-way glass, his expression anxious and focused. They had to get answers and fast, but torture didn't necessarily yield accurate information: victims of torture routinely gave their torturers what they thought they wanted to hear rather than the truth and they certainly would not be any further forward if the man ended up maimed or even dead and neither did he relish the prospect of explaining to Special Branch how their prisoner had come to be garrotted in the basement of Thames House. He started as he felt a hand softly stroke the back of his neck and fingers caress the curls of hair that resisted all efforts to flatten them. Reaching up he caught the hand and bringing it round he kissed the open palm in a tender gesture of affection, whilst not taking his eyes away from the brutal scene in front of him. The kiss was only momentary however, as the feel of small bony fingers and long fingernails alerted Harry to the fact that it was not (as he had imagined) Ruth's hand that had been touching him. Harry's grip on the interloper tightened and he flicked the hand away dismissively from his face.
"What the hell are you doing down here Catherine?"
Catherine Palmerston enjoying both the sensation of Harry's soft moist lips on her flesh and the obvious embarrassment she had caused him, laughed throatily:
"Oh the same as you I imagine Harry, admiring a master at work. If you're enjoying the idea of being tied up and tortured I'm sure we could come to some mutually beneficial arrangement."
"That is below even your idea of the acceptable Catherine. Anyway, to repeat what I've told you before – leave me alone."
"Don't be a hypocrite Harry. I can see you're not adverse to being touched up at work; it just depends on whose hands are doing the touching."
Harry scowled. It wasn't like him to be so easily caught out. In fact the gesture of intimacy had been unconscious, instinctual. If he had stopped to think about it, he would have realised that Ruth would not make such a familiar demonstration of affection in public and certainly not where her colleagues might easily observe her.
"Do you have any specific reason to be here? This is a restricted area."
"Yes actually I do. I've found out same more information from Prince Hassim."
"And?"
"It seems your vestal virgin's idea of a connection with the drug cartels is correct. That group Ruth identified has recently been shipping high velocity weapons and surface to air missiles, in addition to their usual cocktail of narcotics. They come into Marseille from the southern Urals and Lebanon and are then taken overland to Lisbon and hidden in the baggage compartment of the cruise ships."
"So the arms are not coming through the same route as the heroin?"
"No, they are sourced from different areas and are only transferred to the buyers in Marseille. Also the arms are not brought by small boats, but left on the cruise ships until they're docked and then somehow removed. The Prince wasn't sure of all the details, but he did say that there were regular consignments over the past 12 months, so the rockets for this current attack are not the only ones to have been brought in."
"Oh great. So there could be hundreds of the bloody things being passed around every crackpot with a grievance and delusions of grandeur. This supply chain has got to be broken. Give this information to Special Branch and Customs and tell them to get off their backsides and do what they're paid to do. Well done Catherine, I hope this information didn't cost us too much?"
"Oh cheap at the price. I organised a membership of the Garrick Club for our prince – apparently he is not only a mediocre arms dealer, but also an aspiring thespian."
Despite his dislike for Catherine, Harry had to smile as he shook his head in disbelief:
"Your ability to find a man's weak spot and exploit it has to be commended Catherine."
Catherine, willing to capitalise on the slightest encouragement moved closer to Harry and murmured
"Believe me Harry in your case exploiting a weak spot would be an unadulterated pleasure."
The word 'unadulterated' was breathed huskily into his ear as she simultaneously rubbed her hand up the inside of his thigh.
Harry's icy tones cut short Catherine Palmerston's assault
"Please keep your seduction techniques for the op Catherine – when I need a practical demonstration I'll ask for it."
Catherine shrugged her shoulders and raising her eyebrows suggestively left the room with the parting shot:
"Anytime. You just have to whistle. You do know how to whistle don't you Harry? You just …."
Harry interrupted her impatiently:
"Yes, thank you Catherine, we don't have the time to act out iconic film scenes. Get onto Special Branch as you've been instructed."
As Catherine disappeared Harry breathed a deep sigh of relief. He always felt uncomfortable dealing with dominating women who overstepped the mark and challenged him either intellectually or physically: Tess, Juliet, Ros, Catherine, all had put him on the back foot; even Ruth in her more determined moments had made him feel ill at ease. It was not that he disliked confrontation, indeed he would face down any opponent with bull-dog resolve and in fact relished a good scrap; but where women were concerned there was a residual old-fashioned sense of respect for the female sex that made him hesitate to go for a full gloves-off fight to the death. In the past Juliet and Tess had both accused him of being a male chauvinist, but he didn't agree. He supported women in the work place and did not feel challenged per se by women in more senior positions; it was not working with them on equal terms that was the problem but rather dealing with them as opponents that made him feel disconcerted and hesitant. There was also the fact that in terms of personal relationships with the opposite sex Harry preferred to be in the driving seat. Feminism was all very well in terms of equality of opportunity, but when it came to courtship he still believed he should be the one who made the initial advance, booked the dinner table and selected the wine and whether he would admit it or not, these traditional values coloured his attitude to his female colleagues. If Adam challenged his orders he would forcibly argue his reasons, if his authority was threatened by outsiders like Oliver Mace or Guy Facer, he would be ferocious and ruthless in counter-attack; if on the other hand, he was criticised or questioned by Juliet or Ros, his response was to become defensive or morose. Catherine recognised this fallibility and was using it to her advantage. She would challenge him at every opportunity and watch his obvious discomfort with amusement and triumph. Harry sighed again as he refocused his attention on the interrogation being conducted in the adjacent room. Life in the Security Service before Germaine Greer might have been less egalitarian but at least in the bastions of male privilege that were MI5 and MI6 in the 1950's you would have been marginally less likely to have had your thigh fondled as part of a standard debriefing!
Interrogation RoomWhilst Harry had been distracted by Catherine Palmerston's charm offensive Adam had continued to ratchet up the pressure on the prisoner. Zaf watched the proceedings with increasing discomfort and alarm. Not only did Adam look capable of crossing the line in terms of what was and was not permissible in the interrogation process, he did not appear aware that there were limits – his eyes were cold and his voice detached and icy in tone. Zaf frowned and glanced towards the glass behind which he knew Harry would be watching.. It was one thing to give the impression that you were prepared to stop at nothing, it was another matter altogether to actually be in that frame of mind and Zaf did not trust that the tall lean figure who was at that moment threatening and taunting the terrified captive was capable of making the crucial distinction.
If questioned, Harry would probably have shared Zaf's anxieties about Adam, but he had more detachment and experience than his young field officer and knew that instability and ruthlessness in others could be harnessed in certain situations to achieve results, morally ambivalent as such a manipulation might be. They needed answers out of Khalid Siddiqi and fast and Adam was capable of getting them, albeit with unorthodox not to say questionable methods. Hopefully the information they sought could be obtained without lasting physical harm to the prisoner. What impact the exercise of such tactics could have on the perpetrator's psyche was more problematic, but Harry acknowledged to himself that Adam was already damaged goods psychologically speaking: he had endured hellish torture himself in Syria, he had witnessed and failed to prevent the death of his wife and he had only narrowly survived the impact of a high velocity bullet. The cracks had been apparent for some time, this present situation was not going to be a pivotal moment; in fact on the contrary, it might even be cathartic. Harry hurriedly dismissed the idea from his mind – the torture of a prisoner as a means of positive therapy for a mentally fragile operative was certainly not an acceptable concept to any right-minded individual and he winced at the thought of what Ruth would have to say about the idea.
Adam was not hampered by the reservations that preoccupied Zaf and Harry. He had a goal and saw the means of achieving it no matter what resistance was offered by the prisoner. Terrorists and suicide bombers should not be simply dismissed as cowards. Deluded and pitiless maybe, but in their own fanatic twisted way, brave. It took guts to instigate your own violent death. Every man however had his limit: the point at which instinctive fear and the desire for self-preservation overcame doctrinal aims. It was one thing to steed yourself to press the button and blow yourself to smithereens along with whatever other poor sods were close enough to be taken with you and it was quite another to face protracted agony and as all in Adam's position had been trained to know fear was the key to successful interrogations. It was a combination of pain and the fear of future pain that would lead to a collapse of resolution. Some were trained better than others to withstand torture, some were mentally or physically more resilient; but sooner or later everyone had their breaking point and Adam was determined that this interrogation would be short if not sweet.
What Adam did not know was that Khalid Siddiqi and his fellow captive conspirator were not true terrorists. Their only fundamental belief was in their own personal advancement. Khalid was not holding out because of some brain-washed belief in jihad against non-believers, but because he still hoped to be able to fulfil his contract to the extent of being able to claim his $500,000 payment and more particularly he feared what Mustafa Zahir Shah might do to him if he started spouting details of the plot. Khalid focused his eyes on a joint in the ceiling tiles to stop himself from swaying, although he could already feel his legs begin to tremble with the effort of keeping his weight balanced on the propped chair. His heart rate increased as out of the corner of his peripheral vision he saw the MI5 officer approaching again.
"I always think a medieval torture would be the most appropriate response to a medieval ideology. Forget all these hi tec rockets and explosives, all you need is a sharp knife. A few hundred years ago there were a similar group of misguided individuals in this country who decided in the name of religion to try and blow up the King and Parliament just like you and just like you they failed. There were no encumbrances of human rights or respect for religious diversity back then; the prisoners were hung until they were almost dead, cut down and stretched on a rack until most of the bones in their bodies were broken, their stomachs were sliced open and their entrails pulled out and held up to them. Still just alive they were then slowly sawn in quarters and their bodies left to rot. Only the very lucky conspirators got to be burnt. We have a strong sense of history in this country Khalid, so we still commemorate the occasion by setting fire to an effigy of the ringleader of the conspiracy. I always think traditions are so important don't you?"
At that moment Adam opened a cigarette lighter he was holding and after pouring an amount of lighter fluid on the man's trousers, flicked the spark on the lighter and lowered a steady flame towards the ankles of the bound prisoner, watched by the bulging eyes of the petrified victim. Khalid Siddiqi let out a scream of fear as he felt the flame burn his bare skin and his involuntary twitch caused the wire to slice further into his neck.
"Alright, alright" he whispered frantically "I'll tell you."
A Terraced Street, Acton.
Imagine the following in a series of brief fast-moving scenes:
Armed police in black clothing and bullet-proof vests surround a modest Victorian terraced house, one of hundreds of similar terraced houses found in unassuming rows down the long snaking suburban streets of Acton. Tear gas canisters are thrown in through ground floor windows and rapid and intense gunfire is heard, followed by an explosion that tears apart the first floor of the building and ensures that at least one of the so-called terrorist group meets a true martyr's end. Fortunately despite some blast injuries to the advance party, the only other victim of Zahir Shah's sacrifice is an arthritic cat which had taken refuge under the bed. The man known as Jafar surrenders with some relief. He had been increasingly nervous of the erratic and lethal plans that his fanatical co-plotter had been hatching for their 'ultimate sacrifice' and certainly he will not need to be introduced to Adam's powers of persuasion to sing like a canary.
As a consequence of Jafar's co-operation a number of senior figures in both Whitehall and the City are left with red faces after being identified as peripheral supporters of the scam whilst the three financiers directly involved along with a group of eight banking officials are charged with conspiracy to defraud and to cause explosions.
The images of the City fat cats in their expensive suits being led away and bundled into waiting police cars sends a frisson of pleasure through many who watch the events on television.
A group of colleagues huddle together on the Grid to watch the events being reported on the BBC News. Ruth sits at her desk with Adam leaning over her shoulder, Zaf perching on the corner, Malcolm standing behind him, Jo flanking Zaf and Ros positioned at a distance from the others. The newsreader intones:
" AT 5 this afternoon armed police raided a house in Acton and arrested one man. A second man detonated an explosive device and is reported to be dead. Several officers were slightly injured in the explosion. Police have now sealed off the area and evacuated residents. It is believed these arrests are in connection with today's attacks on targets in central London including the City and Heathrow and also the rocket attack on Buckingham Palace yesterday which is believed to be the work of the same terrorist group. It is also reported that a number of senior figures in the financial world are being held for questioning….."
"Well done everyone. I think this calls for a celebratory drink at the George."
Adam's voice is bright and cheerful but the hands that grip the back of Ruth's chair are white at the knuckles and his eyes betray exhaustion and tension. The only figure missing from the group of friends and colleagues who don their coats and head through the pods is Harry.
Thames Embankment
In the lengthening shadows of evening Harry wrapped up in his velvet-collared overcoat leaned over the wall and stared into the dark sludgy currents below. Beside him stood a tall, slightly stooping figure with his back to the river, whose shrewd rat-like eyes scanned the surrounding area.
"You were willing to attack the very fabric of British Society and cause umpteen innocent deaths. What the hell for Oliver? Money?"
"Don't be gross Harry. I leave money-grubbing to our city friends."
"Well what then?"
"Oh I don't know. Influence – a bigger desk."
"Oh for God's sake Oliver. Have you totally taken leave of your senses?"
"Well perhaps on reflection I was mistaken."
"Mistaken? 7 people dead; a floor of Buckingham Palace badly damaged; likewise a bank, Thames House and a runway at Heathrow and God knows how many more casualties averted at Grassington. Is there nothing you won't stoop to Oliver to further your own ends?"
"Buckingham Palace was unfortunate I agree, but it was a mistake. It's what comes of hiring fanatics to do a clandestine operation. The intention was just to create panic. It might even have done the country a favour, given a wake up call for the need for greater vigilance."
"Oh Pleeeese Oliver, don't let's mask this sordid business with the fig leaf of altruism. You conspired against the monarch, the government and the financial institutions of this country. Your head will be on the block for this and in fact you should be brought up on a charge of treason."
Oliver Mace smirked and looked across at Harry's stern profile.
"You can't prove anything Harry believe me. Besides which, no one wants a bigger scandal than there is already. Wicked terrorist conspiracy foiled by brave security forces, mendacious bankers put behind bars: all's right with the world; why rock the boat and wash dirty linen in public?"
Harry's eyes narrowed in anger.
"Don't be so confident Oliver, there are certain things even you can't get away with. You groomed Jafar for two years, there will be a trail that leads him back to you and I intend to find it."
Mace turned round towards Harry and patted him patronisingly on the back
"You do that Harry. In the meantime I suggest, no I insist you take a short holiday. All this excitement has quite worn you out – you've become delusional."
Mace snorted with amused pleasure at his own wit and turning his back on Harry walked rapidly away. Harry remained and leaning against the wall, he lifted his gaze to the familiar London skyline that lay before him defined against the gathering clouds. Mace might be right, he would find it difficult to incriminate his slippery opponent but it didn't mean he wouldn't have a damn good try. He smiled a wry crooked smile to himself and continued to stare out at the city whose security once more had been defended by the dedication and talent of his team and a determination to defend the values that they had all sworn to uphold.
Keep tuning in folks – the next chapter will be the Bridget Jones-esque mini break – will Catherine Palmerston finally be put in her place and will that place be in Harry's bed? To find out leave reviews for this chapter & I might be encouraged to post chapter 11 soon!!