ankles and hooded him again. He avoided Khan’s eyes and said nothing. Khan already knew he was to be tortured. During the last twenty minutes of the flight, as the light flooded the cabin, he had strained round to see who was behind him and caught sight of a powerful, fat leg jigging in the aisle. Then he heard the rustling of The Doctor’s bag of nuts.
They hauled him from the seat and steered him towards the door, down the short flight of steps. Several men were shouting in Arabic and tugged at his arms, but Gibbons held on and guided him towards one of the vehicles where he was formally handed over. Beneath the hood Khan saw the shadows of the men and the outlines of the vehicles. The smell of the great city nearby came to his nostrils, a mixture of exhaust, wood smoke and shit. Gibbons said ‘Welcome to Cairo, Mr Faisal.’
Someone spoke to him harshly in Arabic. When he didn’t respond, he was hit in the small of the back with a rifle butt, and sank to his knees. He was picked up and the same phrase was repeated over and over. Gibbons shouted, ‘Look, you fucking goons. His mouth is taped!’ Someone took off the hood and ripped the tape back. He saw faces staring at him, men eager to hurt him. They spoke again, using the name Jasur Faisal, and although he understood better this time, Khan realised that it would be stupid to respond. Arabic was not his language; Faisal was not his name.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Speaking in a damp, official monotone, Vigo attempted to wind up the meeting with Herrick in the Bunker. He shifted in his chair and pushed her report on Karim Khan away from him as though confronted with a poor examination paper. ‘And you’re satisfied that Khan was the person executed on the hill?’ His eyelids seemed heavy; his hands lay limp on the table.
She nodded. ‘Yes. I observed him being loaded into the car by his Albanian guards at the SHISK headquarters. I noted his clothes and saw the same man taken from the same vehicle to the fire’s edge. There’s nothing more to say. They disposed of him.’
‘Were any of our people there?’ asked Nathan.
‘No, just Albanians,’ she replied. ‘A man named Marenglen was in charge of the operation.’ She stopped and looked at Vigo. How would Marenglen’s tutor respond to that?
‘We know of him,’ said Vigo neutrally. ‘And what was your impression of Khan? Did you believe he had any potential, or was he no more than what he claimed to be – a refugee, a disillusioned fighter?’
‘As a veteran of the jihad in Bosnia and a field commander with years of experience in Afghanistan, he could have told us much that was useful, yes. But the constant threat of violence and the actual abuse during his interrogation were counterproductive. Aside from this, there was disagreement between the Albanian interrogators and the agency personnel, who seemed concerned only with proving that Khan was in fact the Hamas operative Jasur Faisal. It’s clear to me that Khan’s story about taking the identities from Faisal’s body following the attack in Macedonia is true, but the presence of these papers was used to harass and intimidate him. Khan was guilty of no crime, whereas Faisal was wanted by several countries. And they wanted to pin Faisal’s crimes on Khan.’
‘Quite so,’ said Vigo. ‘Well, there’s evidently nothing more we can do on this.’
She nodded.
‘Now, as to your role here…’
‘I have a few questions about this,’ said Lyne. ‘It doesn’t make sense. I looked at the transcripts and it’s obvious that the questioning was unfocused, but what explains the change in direction when Isis went to the jail? You were having difficulty getting access, right? Then the moment you get in the room they start talking about Faisal. Why would they do that? And then why would they suddenly kill him? Whether they believed he was Faisal or Khan doesn’t make any difference. He was still useful by any standards.’ Herrick studied him. This was no play act. Lyne was genuinely puzzled, which meant he didn’t know about Khan being flown to Egypt.
‘In some respects it is regrettable,’ conceded Vigo. ‘But as you know, the American government has taken a firm line on terrorist suspects. They are to be eliminated…’
‘Sure, if they’re escaping through the desert like the al-Qaeda suspect in Yemen, but not if they are already in custody. I’m telling you, this doesn’t make any sense, especially as our guys were involved in debriefing the suspect. They wouldn’t let it happen like that.’
‘I can only say what I saw,’ said Herrick. ‘I was certain it was him in that valley and my conversation with Marenglen confirmed it.’ Vigo’s eyes glittered with concentration. The Chief had taken pains to rehearse her and warned that if she appeared too credulous or too sceptical he would suspect she knew Khan was alive.
‘But you, Isis,’ said Lyne accusingly, ‘the reigning queen of doubt, you know this doesn’t add up.’
‘Look, we weren’t in charge of the operation. Your people were. There’s a hell of a lot going on in Tirana that I couldn’t find out because Lance Gibbons wouldn’t tell me. You’re in a much better position to discover why this happened. Call your friends at Langley.’
‘I will do,’ said Lyne.
Vigo’s eyes moved from Lyne back to her with a slow, reptilian blink. ‘In the meantime we must discuss whether you’re willing to rejoin Nathan’s team without indulging your wilder impulses. We just can’t have that sort of behaviour, Isis. We must work together as a unit on this.’
‘It’s up to you,’ she said. ‘I apologised for the last incident and now I genuinely want to help with the ten remaining suspects. ’
‘Nine,’ said Lyne. ‘The Turkish guy in London is in a coma. Complications from surgery. He’s not expected to recover.’
‘Right,’ said Vigo, evidently having made up his mind. ‘You can start at the next shift in an hour’s time. You better bring her up to date, Nathan.’ He moved from the room with a slight limp on his left side.
Isis raised her eyebrows to Lyne.
‘Gout,’ said Lyne.
She smiled. ‘Good.’
Lyne seemed to be weighing something in his mind. ‘It’s great to have you back, Isis. But I got to say I don’t believe a word about Tirana, even though it’s you telling me. What about the torture? Were our guys involved?’
‘Not directly.’
‘That’s something, I suppose. I remember Lance Gibbons when I was in the DO. He was old school, crazy but brave as hell – and effective. He was captured in Kurdistan after the Iraqis penetrated one of the Kurdish groups up there in the mid-nineties. When he was being driven back to Baghdad he took out his guards with a concealed Beretta hidden on his ankle and then hiked back to Kurdistan and over the Turkish border through a fucking mine field. We need more people like him. I can’t see him sitting in some fly-blown jail turning thumbscrews.’
‘Can I ask you a question, Nathan?’
‘Shoot.’
‘What do you feel about the torture of terrorist suspects?’
‘Depends on the circumstances. Clearly, if you know a man is in possession of vital information that may save thousands of lives, like the location of a dirty bomb or a suitcase full of smallpox, well, then I can see the argument that the harm done to one man, repellent though it is, may be excusable in the face of protecting thousands of innocent people. Eventually you have to do the math.’
‘Even so, there’s a moral problem, isn’t there?’ She was aware of herself sounding priggish.
‘Yes, if you’re dealing in absolute terms, I guess there is. But the war on terrorism is not about moral absolutes. This isn’t a clash of moral systems of equivalent worth. The attacks on ordinary people aren’t justifiable in either Islam or the Judaeo-Christian systems. What we are dealing with is a profound, undermining evil that threatens everyone, and I suppose it’s understandable, if not forgivable, if the West tortures one or two men to save large numbers of people, some of whom may be Muslims.’
‘But a line is being crossed. Once we condone it, we lose the thing we’re fighting for.’
‘I’m not persuaded of that. You could easily argue that killing someone is worse than torturing them. When those guys were targeted by a missile in the Yemeni desert, that was clearly extra-judicial killing and wrong by any moral standard. Yet almost no one objected because people saw it as the justifiable elimination of a threat. Why is torture any worse than that?’
