were black and white. All but two were men. A few weren’t even photographs but artists’ impressions.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ said Button. ‘It goes back to 1992 when the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina held a referendum on independence. The result was a call for independence and separation from Serbia, and the result was civil war, with Bosnian Serbs murdering thousands of Bosnian Muslims. Ethnic-cleansing on a massive scale, just a few hours’ flight from London. Muslim fighters from all over the world, America, Russia and Europe, piled into the former Yugoslavia to help. Now jump ahead a few years. The UN peacekeepers are in, the civil war is over. Money is pouring into Bosnia to pay for reconstruction. Millions of dollars. A big chunk comes from Saudi Arabia. Muslims helping Muslims. Nothing wrong with that. King Fahd puts in $100 million from his own pocket. The Saudi government pours in $450 million, restores water supplies, rebuilds schools and mosques, and takes care of seven thousand orphans. A whole raft of Saudi-funded aid agencies and charities moves in. And that’s where the trouble starts. Move ahead to 2001. The Americans invade Afghanistan a few weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2003, they invade Iraq. Elements of the Muslim world see America as the enemy and want revenge. The jihad begins in earnest. Muslim terrorists carry out atrocities around the world. Terror has a new face – Arab men with beards and baggy trousers. The world goes on high alert. Every Arab who gets on to a plane is watched. Every Arab family is regarded with suspicion. Arabs and Asians get stopped more often by the police. Their passports are looked at more closely. It gets harder and harder for Arabs to travel, to apply for visas, to book into hotels, to hire cars. And that’s when we come back to Bosnia.’
She walked over to a window and looked down at the street below.
‘London is a target. As are most European cities. Our landmarks, our stations, our football stadiums. Al- Qaeda wants to kill, maim and destroy our way of life. And for that they need troops. Warriors prepared to die for the cause.’
‘Suicide-bombers?’
‘Right. But men and women who can blend, who can move through Western countries without attracting attention, who won’t get picked up by racial profiling. Al-Qaeda targeted two groups as fulfilling these criteria. The first are the Invisibles, second or third generation Muslims born in the West, of Asian or Middle Eastern heritage, but with full British citizenship. We think there are up to ten thousand Invisibles in the UK sympathetic to the al- Qaeda cause, and we know up to three thousand have been through some form of al-Qaeda training overseas. And they started looking for non-Arab Muslims, and Bosnia was the perfect hunting ground. Several of the charities there became recruiting centres for the jihad. The Americans discovered a stack of terrorist-related material at the offices of one of Saudi Arabia’s leading aid agencies, including instructions for using crop-duster aircraft to spray poisons from the air, US State Department identification badges, photographs and maps showing the location of government buildings. Half a dozen charities in Sarajevo have been shut down in the last few years because of suspicious finances. Money that was supposed to be used for the reconstruction of Bosnia has been channelled into terrorist networks. Millions upon millions of dollars.’
Button pointed at the photographs on the whiteboard. ‘Those are just some of the men and women we suspect have been recruited to the al-Qaeda cause out of Bosnia. And what makes them so dangerous is that none is an Arab. They can fly under our radar, assuming that their paperwork is in order.’
‘And you think they could be using the Uddin brothers for passports?’
‘We need to know who their contact is, and who he has supplied passports to,’ said Button. ‘It could just be that they’re helping economic migrants get into the country by the back door. Or something more sinister may be going on. That’s what we need to know. And we need to know quickly.’
Shepherd nodded at the photographs. ‘And these are all terrorists active in the UK?’
‘They’re all Muslims, and they were all in Bosnia at some point. And they’re all missing now – or, at least, unaccounted for. The Americans are looking for them. So are we.’
‘Isn’t there any facial-recognition system at the Passport Agency office same as there is for fingerprints? Cross-check these photographs with photographs submitted for passports?’
‘It’s been worked on, but there’s no system in place yet. Once we have biometric passports, that will change. But it doesn’t help us now. We need to find out who the Uddin brothers have supplied with passports and if any are on this board.’
‘And how am I supposed to do that?’
‘I’m not suggesting you can,’ she said. ‘But see how much the Uddin brothers know. See if they’ll tell you how many passports they’ve arranged over the years for what sort of customers. Anything you can get will help.’
‘When do they get busted?’
‘It’s still being discussed,’ said Button. ‘It depends how extensive the passport operation is, and how closely linked the passport guy is to the brothers. What we’ve got to decide is whether we pull in the passport guy as soon as we identify him, or let him run and watch him. My former colleagues in Five have been informed, and they’re pushing to leave him in place.’
‘So that we can see who else he’s supplying with passports?’
‘Exactly. If potential terrorists are using him, there’d be more to gain from watching and waiting. If it’s just economic migrants, we can bust him and plug the hole. It could be that we pull the Uddin brothers in for the currency-smuggling but leave the passport guy in place. It’s all up in the air.’
‘Okay,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’m sorry if it sounds a bit vague, but it’s complex. I know it’d be a lot easier if we were going after a drug- dealer or an armed robber. Catch them in the act and it’s on to the next case. As soon as there’s the possibility of terrorist activity, the game moves up a notch.’
Shepherd frowned. ‘Game?’
‘You know what I mean.’
Shepherd knew exactly what she meant. He’d worked with operatives from the intelligence services before, British and American, and they often treated their cases as an academic exercise. They enjoyed pitting their wits against an enemy who was their intellectual equal, took pleasure in every victory and were embittered by defeat. Button had said ‘game’ and that was what she meant. Her job didn’t involve putting herself in harm’s way: that was what Shepherd was for. He’d be the one on the ground, risking a bullet in the head or a knife in the gut, lying, cheating and doing whatever it took to take down the enemy. He’d be the one walking into the lion’s den with a recording device taped to his back. He didn’t regard what he did as a game. He put away criminals because they hurt other people physically, stole from them or plied them with drugs. Each case was a battle, and while he often doubted that he’d win the war, he was determined to win every battle he fought.
Button could sense Shepherd’s concern. ‘It’s an expression,’ she said.
It was – but it was more than that: it was an attitude. And when you were facing dangerous criminals, it could be a dangerous one. Generally spies didn’t shoot other spies, but drug-dealers most definitely put bullets into undercover cops. When he’d faced Kreshnik in the apartment in Paris, it hadn’t been a game, and it was important that Charlotte Button understood that. ‘No problem,’ he said. He remembered how she’d taken pleasure in telling him she’d followed him to the Ritz. She’d been playing a game then, no question about it.
‘I wasn’t minimising what I’m asking you to do, Dan,’ she said. ‘It really is just an expression.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Shepherd. He looked at the photographs and artists’ impressions on the whiteboard and wondered how many of those men and women thought of the jihad as a game.
Shepherd walked slowly along the pavement, checking reflections in shop windows, more from habit than any fear that he was being followed. The Uddin brothers’ bureau de change was little more than a booth set in a row of shops, with a staircase next to it that led up to the offices. An Asian youth with slicked-back hair was sitting in a glass-fronted cubicle next to an electronic board that listed exchange rates in red numbers. He was engrossed in a book. Plenty of people were walking by, but no one seemed interested in changing money. It was a busy street. There was an Argos, a Woolworth’s, small shops selling electrical equipment and phone cards, and an amusement arcade packed with fruit machines. The bulk of the shoppers were Arabs, and along the street there were several Arab coffee shops with tables on the pavements where men in long white robes sat and sipped strong, sweet coffee and sucked on ornate hookah pipes.
Shepherd crossed the road at a set of traffic-lights. A huddle of women clothed from head to foot in black burkhas, with veiled letterbox slots at eye level, scuttled out of Argos weighed down with bulging carrier-bags. They waved frantically at a black cab and climbed into the back.
The youth didn’t look up from his book as Shepherd walked past him and headed up the stairs to Salik’s office. He had a tight feeling in his stomach. He always did when he was wearing a wire. He could feel the battery
