The girl pointed to the right. A woman with skin the colour and texture of leather was standing at the side of the road with an armful of plastic-wrapped roses. She wore a brightly coloured headscarf and large gold hooped earrings. She grinned at Alen, showing a mouthful of blackened teeth.
‘Twenty baht,’ repeated the child, pushing the flowers closer to Alen’s face.
‘Don’t encourage them,’ said the girl sitting next to him. She was in her mid-twenties with shoulder-length blonde hair that blew round her face in the draught from the wall-mounted fan. She spoke in Bosnian, her second language, and Alen’s too. Anna had been born in Italy, to an Italian mother and a Bosnian father. ‘If no one bought from the kids, they wouldn’t use them,’ she said.
‘And if they didn’t work, maybe they wouldn’t eat,’ said Alen. ‘Did you think of that?’ He was also of mixed parentage: his mother was Polish and his father Russian, but his father had left before Alen had been born. Alen and Anna had met in Sarajevo. They had a lot in common. They had lived together for the last three years and, if everything went as planned, they would die together.
Anna ruffled the child’s hair. ‘She should be at home and asleep, not hanging around with prostitutes and whoremongers.’
‘It’s Christmas Day,’ said Alen, his voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘Where is your Christmas spirit?’
Anna snorted.
Alen pulled a rose from the little girl’s hand and gave it to Anna, who took it and laughed at his sentimentality. He gave the child two ten-baht coins and winked at her. She ran over to her mother.
‘You’re too soft, Alen,’ said Anna.
‘You know that’s not true,’ said Alen. ‘You, of all people, know that.’
There were around two dozen beer bars in the complex off Bangla Road, a hundred yards or so from Patong, Phuket’s busiest beach. More than five hundred prostitutes worked in the bars, a fair number of whom were transsexuals, but even at ten o’clock at night a large number of families were around. Alen took another sip of mineral water. He would take no pleasure in killing children, but it was the will of Allah that the bombs were placed where they would do most damage and if the infidels chose to bring their children to a place of prostitution, then so be it.
He nodded at Anna, who smiled at him. She, too, was drinking mineral water. ‘Happy?’ he said.
‘Perfect,’ she replied. ‘Merry Christmas. And thank you for my rose.’
Alen clinked his glass against hers. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said loudly. He leaned across the table and planted a kiss on her cheek. She smelt of lemons and camomile. Her shampoo. ‘ Allahu akbar,’ whispered Alen.
‘ Allahu akbar,’ echoed Anna. God is great.
Alen and Anna stayed in Bangla Road until the bars closed. They visited half a dozen but drank nothing stronger than mineral water. They saw other Muslims drinking alcohol and walking off with prostitutes, but their faces didn’t betray the contempt they felt. Breaking the rules of Islam would bring its own reward. Alen and Anna walked arm in arm, laughing and smiling like any other holiday couple, but their eyes were watchful. It was the small details that would make or break their operation. Where were the police? How heavy was the traffic? What time did the shops and bars close? Were the streets busy? Did pedestrians walk down the middle of the road or stick to the pavements? Alen and Anna committed everything to memory.
They went down to the beach road to where they had parked their blue Suzuki Jeep, then Alen drove the short distance to the resort where they had been staying for the past three weeks. He drove up to their beach bungalow and parked on the cracked concrete strip by the door. The waves lapped the shore in the distance and the palm trees that surrounded the resort whispered in the night breeze.
They climbed out of the Jeep. Alen knocked on the door. Three quick knocks. Two slow knocks. Two taps with the flat of his hand. It opened, the security chain in place. Pale grey eyes squinted at him, then the door was closed, the chain removed and the door opened again. His name was Norbert, and at thirty-five he was the oldest of the group. He was wearing a red polo shirt and blue jeans, which he’d bought at a roadside stall that morning. His nose and forehead were sunburned and glistened with after-sun lotion. ‘Okay?’ he asked.
‘Busy,’ said Alen. ‘The bars are packed.’ He spoke in Bosnian. Norbert had been born in Luxembourg but, like Anna and Alen, he was fluent in Bosnian.
Another man, Emir, came out of the bedroom, his hair still wet from the shower. ‘Tomorrow? Definitely tomorrow?’ He was the only one of the four to have been born in Bosnia.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Alen. He went through to the second bedroom and pulled a grey Samsonite suitcase from under one of the two beds. He opened it, took out a rolled sheet of thick paper, then went with it into the sitting room. Emir and Anna had dropped down on to a bamboo sofa. Norbert helped Alen unroll the paper and weigh down the corners with saucers from the kitchen.
They all peered at the hand-drawn map. Alen ran his finger along Bangla Road. ‘It is busy all day, but more so after eight p.m.,’ he said. ‘The bars shut at one. The best time will be at midnight.’ Alen tapped a square some two-thirds of the way down the road. ‘The first device will be here,’ he said, ‘outside the Ocean Plaza department store. It’s always busy. Nearby there are dozens of parked motorcycles, which will add to the explosion. Immediately afterwards there will be panic. Most people will rush down the street towards the beach road.’ He tapped the bar area where he had earlier been drinking with Anna. ‘The second device will be detonated here precisely two minutes later. The street should be full and we will achieve maximum impact.’ He smiled at Anna. They would be responsible for the second device.
Norbert took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘ Allahu akbar,’ he said.
‘ Allahu akbar,’ echoed his three companions.
Alen straightened up. ‘Any questions?’
Three shaking heads. They knew what had to be done, and why they were doing it. They were prepared to give their lives to the jihad.
Alen went through to the first bedroom. It was larger than the second but had identical twin beds, which had been pushed to the side to give them room to work. A hundred and fifty kilos of Semtex had been packed inside metal petrol cans, with the handfuls of nails, screws and washers they had bought in Bangkok. More ironmongery had been taped around the cans. The Semtex had been manufactured in Czechoslovakia and shipped to Libya during the late 1980s. The Libyans had sold a batch to the Provisional Irish Republican Army a few years later and it had arrived in Dublin on a Spanish freighter. The consignment was split into four lots. The first batch was taken to London and formed the heart of a massive bomb that ripped through London’s financial district in April 1993, killing one man and causing more than a billion pounds’ worth of damage.
The remainder of the Semtex had stayed hidden for three years, until another batch was taken to London and used to detonate a half-tonne fertiliser-based bomb, left near the South Quay station on the Docklands Light Railway. It had killed one man, injured thirty-nine others and marked the end of a seventeen-month IRA ceasefire.
Four months later, another batch of the Semtex was used to destroy a busy shopping centre in Manch ester, injuring more than two hundred. It was only because the IRA had issued a warning in advance of the explosion that no one was killed. There would be no warning when the two bombs exploded in Bangla Road. Alen and his three colleagues were aiming to kill as many people as possible. It was only when the images of death and destruction were flashed round the world that policies would be changed, and the West would learn that it was time to treat the Muslim world with respect, not contempt.
The rest of the Semtex lay buried in a graveyard in Galway throughout the 1990s, under a tombstone that marked the resting-place of an eighty-three-year-old Catholic priest. In the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA High Command had decided to rid itself of the stockpile and sold it to a Bosnian gangster, who put it into a false compartment in the floor of a container and shipped it to Sarajevo. It remained hidden in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city until Alen had bought it, with a suitcase of euros still in their bank wrappers. The explosive went overland, past the country where it had been manufactured almost thirty years earlier and on to Thailand. Bribes were paid where necessary, and the truck carrying the deadly cargo arrived in Phuket without once having been examined by a Customs officer.
Norbert and Emir appeared in the doorway as Alen knelt to examine the petrol cans. He nodded his approval. ‘Good work,’ he said.
Norbert and Emir smiled, pleased at the compliment. ‘What about the detonators?’ asked Norbert.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Alen. ‘They arrive tomorrow. Inshaallah.’
Insha allah. God willing.
