‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Chaudhry. ‘Suppose they target the Prime Minister? Or the US President? You don’t think they’d worry about sacrificing me or Harvey if they had a target like that?’
‘They’ve never talked about using you for an assassination,’ said Shepherd. ‘And none of your training has been for that.’
‘We were taught sniping in Pakistan,’ said Malik.
‘You’re over-thinking it,’ said Shepherd. ‘Trust me, you’re worrying about nothing. Everything that happened at St Pancras points to a large-scale operation using a dozen or so men. And even a dozen men with suicide bombs wouldn’t kill more than a hundred or so people.’ He shrugged. ‘That sounds blase and I don’t mean it that way, but it’s a matter of effectiveness. The four bombers in London on 7th July 2005 killed fifty-two people and injured seven hundred, and while that’s horrific it’s still not the thousands that Khalid is talking about. Suicide bombs are terrible things but a bomb in a crowded station is effective only within twenty feet or so; there are simply too many bodies around absorbing the shrapnel. You get horrific injuries close to the source of the explosion but beyond fifty feet it’s survivable and at a hundred feet you’d be unlucky to get a scratch. What Khalid is talking about is something much, much bigger.’
‘So what’s the plan, John?’ asked Chaudhry. ‘What do we do?’
‘We wait and see what Khalid does next. I’ll talk to our technical people and we’ll see about increasing our electronic surveillance. Now we know he won’t let you take your phones with you we’ll have to come up with something else.’
‘Tracking devices in our shoes?’ said Malik. ‘Real secret-agent stuff?’
‘Something like that,’ said Shepherd. ‘The stuff they have these days is incredibly small. It’s not like it was in the old days when you used to have a metal box taped to your crotch and a microphone stuck to your chest.’
Malik looked at his watch. ‘Do you mind if I push off, John?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a five-a-side match later.’
‘Sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘I think we’re done. Good job.’
Malik got up to leave. ‘I’ll stay and finish my coffee, brother,’ said Chaudhry. Malik nodded and left. Chaudhry stirred sugar into his coffee. ‘So how long have you been working with MI5?’
‘Fifteen years, give or take,’ lied Shepherd. He’d already agreed with Button not to reveal his police or SAS background to Chaudhry and Malik. She’d decided that they’d react best to him if they thought he was career MI5 and believed he was fairly senior in the organisation, rather than an SAS trooper turned undercover cop who had been with the Security Service for less than two years.
‘How did you deal with the stress? The constant lying?’
‘I compartmentalise the job,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can’t be on all day every day. So you make sure you have time on your own, or with your family, when you can be yourself.’
‘But I can’t do that, John, can I? I have to lie even when I’m with my parents. My dad, he’d probably be proud of me, but my mum would hit the roof. And even if they were cool with what I was doing I can’t tell them, can I? I can’t tell anyone that I helped kill The Sheik. Or that I’m working against terrorists who are planning to kill thousands of civilians. I have to lie to my family, to my friends, to my fellow students. There are only two people that I can be honest with: you and Harvey.’
‘I understand,’ said Shepherd.
‘Understanding is all well and good, but I need to know how to deal with it,’ said Chaudhry.
It was a good point, Shepherd knew, but he wasn’t sure how to respond to it. Chaudhry was right, undercover work was stressful. Most operatives couldn’t do it for more than a few years. Divorces, breakdowns and career burnouts were common, which is why his bosses at the Met, SOCA and MI5 insisted on six-monthly psychological evaluations for all its undercover people. But Chaudhry and Malik didn’t have the luxury of a psychologist; all they had was Shepherd, and all he could offer them was the benefit of his experience.
‘Do you feel guilty about lying, is that it?’ asked Shepherd.
‘With my family, of course. They ask me how my studies are going and I say great and they ask me what I do in my free time and then I’m a bit evasive, and I really had to lie about the whole Pakistan training-camp thing. But that’s not where the stress comes from. It’s when I’m talking to Khalid and the others that it gets to me. My heart starts beating like it’s going to burst and sometimes I can feel my legs trembling. My mouth goes dry, which means I sometimes stumble over my words. If they see that they’re going to know that something is wrong.’
Shepherd nodded sympathetically. ‘You have to try to believe in what you’re saying,’ he said. ‘You’re like an actor playing a part, and you have to convince yourself that you are what you’re pretending to be. That conviction will then flow out of you. But to be honest, Raj, you’re worrying too much. You’re not pretending to be someone else; you’re yourself. It’s only your beliefs that you’re misrepresenting. All you need to do is to convince Khalid and the rest that you’re an Islamic fundamentalist who has embraced jihad. All the hard work has been done. You went to Pakistan, you went right into the lion’s den, you went through with the rehearsal at St Pancras. You’ve already proved yourself.’
‘But sometimes Khalid looks at me like he doesn’t believe me.’
‘What do you mean, specifically?’
Chaudhry shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to explain. He stares at me, like he’s looking through me. He frowns sometimes, like he’s thinking that something’s not right. He does the same with Harvey.’
‘That’s your guilty conscience kicking in. You know you’re lying and you know that lying is wrong, and because you’re basically a moral person you expect to be punished for what you’re doing. I’m not saying you want to be caught out, but part of you expects it to happen. Only sociopaths can lie without any sort of guilt.’
Chaudhry grinned. ‘That’s what my dad always used to say when I was a kid. He didn’t care what I’d done, provided I told the truth.’
‘That’s what all parents tell their children,’ said Shepherd. ‘Not that they always mean it.’
‘My dad did,’ said Chaudhry. ‘Even if I did something stupid, provided I owned up to it and provided I said I was sorry and tried to make it right, he wouldn’t punish me. Mind you, Dad didn’t have to punish me, it was enough to know that I’d disappointed him.’
‘He sounds like a good guy.’
‘He is,’ said Chaudhry. ‘He’s never laid a finger on me, my whole life. A lot of Asian parents reckon that if you spare the rod you spoil the child, but my mum and dad have been great.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I wish I could tell him what I’m doing.’
‘You can’t,’ said Shepherd. ‘You know that, right?’
‘Oh, I had it drummed into me by Ms Button. But the fact that he doesn’t know means that I have to lie to him, and you don’t know how much I hate that.’
‘No, I understand. I have a son, and I hate having to lie to him. But when you work for MI5 it comes with the job.’
Chaudhry tilted his head on one side. ‘You said you weren’t married.’
Shepherd’s stomach lurched. He’d made the worst possible mistake that an undercover agent could make: he’d slipped out of character. He’d been so relaxed in Chaudhry’s company that he’d answered as Dan Shepherd and not as John Whitehill. He forced himself to appear relaxed, and smiled as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but he could feel his heart pounding. ‘She died, a few years ago,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ said Chaudhry.
‘Yeah, my life’s a bit complicated to say the least,’ said Shepherd. ‘Thing is, it always sounds strange to say widower, but I guess that’s what I am. Easier to say I’m not married.’
‘And you’re a single parent?’
Shepherd nodded. ‘He’s at boarding school, so it works out well.’ He felt strange giving out personal information, which was something he almost never did when he was working. But having Chaudhry talk about telling the truth had struck a chord. Shepherd didn’t enjoy lying, even though over the years he had become an expert in the art of telling untruths.
‘I bet he misses you.’
‘I think he’s having too much fun at the moment,’ said Shepherd.
‘But he knows you work for MI5?’
‘To be honest, no.’
‘And you’re okay lying to him?’
‘It’s not like that,’ said Shepherd. ‘I very rarely look him in the eye and lie to him. On the very rare occasions I
