information which may be useful, in fact, critical to my inquiries.’
The woman suddenly became cooperative.
‘One of my colleagues says you knew some of the foreign Muslims who defended Sarajevo during the siege?’
‘Yes, I lived with one. How can I help?’
‘We’re interested in two men, Sammi Loz and Karim Khan.’
‘Ah yes, I knew them both, but not well. They were the medics, no? The ones that came out with supplies then stayed. Those guys?’
‘Yes,’ said Herrick. ‘Would you mind telling me the name of the man who you lived with?’
‘Hasan Simic. He was of mixed parentage but was brought up as a Muslim. He liaised with the foreign Muslims – the jihadistes. It was a tough job. They always wanted to do what they wanted to do. They kept themselves apart. They were not like the Bosnian Muslims.’
‘Can I talk to Mr Simic?’
‘He’s dead. He died in ninety-five.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. He was born to die young. A very beautiful man but un sauvage – you know? If he had not been killed, he would have been taken to the Hague for war crimes.’
‘How much did you see Khan and Loz?’
‘I met them about four or five times. A few of the men used to come to our apartment when there were breaks in the fighting. I had food, you see. Not much, but more than they had. We made big pasta dinners. Karim was a favourite of mine. Tres charmant… tres sympathique.’
‘What about Loz?’
‘ Un peu plus masque, comprenez vous? Dissimule. ’
‘And you were working for press agencies then?’
‘ Oui, l’Agence France Presse.’
‘The other men – the friends of Hassan. What were their names?’
There was a pause.
‘Do you remember Yahya?’ asked Herrick.
‘Yahya? No, I do not remember this man. Who was Yahya? What did he look like?’
‘He would have been in his late twenties, early thirties. A short man, of Algerian origin. We believe he was a very private man. Inconspicuous. He may have been some kind of scholar before he went to Bosnia. Perhaps he even studied in Sarajevo before the Islamic Institute was shelled. We are not sure.’
‘And it is this man you are really interested in?’
‘Yes, it is possible that he used the name Youssef. Karim and Sammi used to call him The Poet. That was their nickname for him before he became a friend of theirs.’
‘Maybe… Ah oui, oui, oui! I know the man you mean, but his name is not Yahya. The man I think of was called Yaqub.’
‘Yaqub?’ said Herrick doubtfully. ‘Are you sure?’
‘ Oui, un autre prophete.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘So, we have three names for this man and they are all the Arab names for prophets in the Bible.’ Her tone was of someone being forced to talk to an idiot. ‘Youssef – or Joseph, is the son of the Prophet Yaqub – or Jacob! And you mentioned Yahya, who is the Prophet John, son of the Prophet Zachariah. This is obvious. He is using nommes de guerre from the Bible. One day he must use the name Zachariah. That is logical. No?’ Herrick made a rapid note of this.
‘And you know he was Algerian?’
‘Yes, he comes from Oran. I know this because my father served in Algeria. I have been to Oran.’
‘And this man was bookish and withdrawn, somebody who kept to himself?’
‘He came to the apartment once with Hassan – never the others. He was a mystery to them. But he was polite and well-mannered. There is little else that I remember about him.’
Herrick hung up, thinking that it was a pity Helene Guignal was not at her desk in Brussels to receive an emailed file of one of the images of Rahe at Heathrow. That way Herrick would be sure of an instant no or yes in her attempt to tie Rahe with Yahya or Yaqub. She got a picture out of the files nevertheless and put it in plain white envelope, thinking it was bound to be useful over the next few days. Then, with her notes of the Guignal conversation, she went to find Dolph, who she heard had arrived back from Hertfordshire.
He was with Lapping and Sarre in one of the conference rooms near the Chief’s office with his laptop fixed to a projector. They were sprawled about the room watching the photographer’s archive of the Bosnian civil war; frame after frame of haggard faces staring from fox-holes and ruined buildings. There were men pleading for mercy, women dashing across the street, barefoot children wandering snowy craters and Serb gunners coolly observing their targets below.
‘This is all stuff from ninety-three and ninety-four,’ said Dolph, after he had given Isis a brief kiss and welcomed her back. ‘He’s organised it by date rather than subject. He spent the early winter of ninety-three on one of two fronts manned by the Mujahideen Brigade. So we should be nearly there.’
Herrick reminded herself that none of them knew Rahe was now a prime suspect. Lapping had got near the truth of the matter with his observations about Rahe’s behaviour at the airport, but he hadn’t gone the extra few yards to the logical conclusion. More important, they did not know there was now some urgency to find Yahya and Loz. The Chief had been most specific that she should not talk about this.
After forty-five minutes fruitlessly peering at all the group shots from the front, they came to the end of the relevant part of the archive.
‘This photographer,’ said Herrick, ‘did he remember anyone like Khan or Loz?’
Dolph shook his head.
‘Or anyone else significant?’
Dolph shook his head. ‘I could do with a pint. What do you say we treat ourselves over the river, lads?’
Herrick asked if they had seen any groups of soldiers before she came into the room.
‘A few.’
‘I’d like to go back over those pictures.’
‘Why?’ asked Dolph a little truculently.
‘Because you don’t know what we’re looking for.’
‘We’re looking for Khan and this guy Sammi Loz.’
‘But none of you has seen them in the flesh and there may be someone else important in the photographs. This man was taking pictures throughout the crucial period.’
Dolph peered into his screen to locate the relevant files while Lapping went to get them all coffee.
At length Dolph found the photographs from mid-November 1993 showing a group of about a dozen men moving a burnt-out truck. The ground was covered with a light dusting of snow and the sky above was bright. Ice sparkled in the trees. Their faces were turned to the ground and in profile as they put their weight behind the truck. With the shadows playing across the snow, the energy expressed in the men’s bodies and the interesting form of the wrecked vehicle, it was easy to see why the photographer’s eye had been attracted to the scene, and why he’d kept his finger on the shutter button through eight frames. Dolph sped through the images, almost animating the sequence. At Herrick’s insistence they went back over them again slowly. At the fourth image, she shouted. ‘Stop there.’ She went to the wall and pointed to a man’s head which had lifted into the light and faced the camera. ‘Can you enlarge it? Here, the area at the front of the car.’
Dolph highlighted the area with his mouse and made a couple of keystrokes. ‘Who the fuck is that?’ he asked as the picture sprang onto the wall.
‘That,’ she said, withdrawing the photograph from her envelope and slapping it against the wall, ‘is Youssef Rahe, otherwise known as Yahya or Yaqub. Take a look for yourselves. ’
Dolph got up and peered at the two pictures. It took him a few seconds to understand the significance of the match. ‘Isis, you’re a bloody marvel. He’s the main man.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Everything that’s happened this morning with Spelling and Vigo is because you knew that already. You were expecting to find Rahe here – or at least you were looking for him.’
