weapons.
They had found the bodies of two children in the same house, one boy, one girl, both killed by bursts of fire from an MP5, and ballistics showed they had been shot by the SAS Sergeants, though neither the IDF nor the SAS would ever reveal this. The time of death, of all four, was approximately identical. Another body in the house had been killed by the blast of a shell that had crashed right through the top floor of the house. The man had been the father of both children.
The wife, Shakira Sabah, was found living with her brother, a deeply suspected but unproven member of Hamas, and his family, a half mile southeast of her former home, deep in H-l territory. She had been at a neighbor's house when her own home was hit, and she was unable to regain entry through the rubble. She knew nothing of any British officer, had seen nothing, cared nothing, and was too upset at the slaughter of her family to be of any further help to anyone. Shin Bet did not believe her.
None of this brought anyone any nearer to the whereabouts of Ray Kerman. In point of fact, Shin Bet thought they may have found his combat jacket buried in the debris of the house, but it contained nothing, and was unmarked, and, of course, Israeli. It was also ruined, under the dust and cement of the building.
It had much in common with the other evidence. The Major could have killed both his colleagues, and it could have been his jacket, and he could be on the run. But from what? And where?
This was no ordinary SAS soldier, this was Ray Kerman, a decorated officer of impeccable character, training, and background. If he had been killed in the battle, where was his body? If Hamas had him prisoner or hostage, why had they not contacted anyone, either for reward or hostage exchange? Like they always did. No answers. No Major.
Russ Makin, at the age of thirty-eight, a career Officer since Sandhurst, had never encountered anything quite like it. In his twenty years as a Serving Officer he had never even heard of anyone going missing from the SAS. Certainly no one on the order of Major Kerman, who was a very important person, privy to many, many secrets in Great Britain's most secretive combat regiment.
In a quiet, irritated way, the Ministry of Defence had been pressuring him for months. He had been obliged to deal with the Legal Department, the Public Relations Department, the Pensions Department. There had been endless questions from the Next-of-Kin officials, from the Compensation Department. Did he consider the file should be closed under the heading 'Missing in Action'?
But was the Major really missing? And above all, was there anything about Major Kerman that no one knew?
This last question, Colonel Makin understood, may be answered in the next hour. At half past ten, a special courier was due to arrive from the MOD in Whitehall, bringing with him a classified report, the result of an exhaustive investigation conducted in tandem by the Ministry and by MI5.
The SAS Chief knew there would be no courier if there was nothing of any interest. And when the document finally arrived, on time, he read it with a sense of real disquiet.
The parents of Ray Kerman, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Kerman of North London, revealed, with very little prompting, that they were formerly Mr. and Mrs. Reza Rashood, lately of the city of Kerman in the southeast of Iran, where Ravi Rashood had been born.
'Ravi Rashood! Holy shit!' Colonel Makin muttered. 'I had no idea.'
Of course there was nothing illegal about any of it. Thousands of Middle Eastern families had immigrated to England and changed their names to fit in better with the locals. Neither Richard Kerman nor his wife seemed to be hiding anything. They produced Ray's birth certificate, and the family's immigration documents, including the official change-of-name papers issued just before Ray's fourth birthday. This included the boy's British citizenship conferred upon him when he was five.
They produced his school records, and even made arrangements, through Harrow's headmaster, for the men from the Ministry to go to the school and conduct whatever further investigations they wished.
The result of these further interviews were contained in a secondary document, which demonstrated how thoroughly concerned Whitehall was at the loss of the SAS Major. They had located two Old Harrovians who had shared studies with Ray during their school years. One of them, now a practicing barrister in London, recalled nothing of note.
The other, a struggling poet in North Wales, recalled that he had once seen a copy of the Koran on Ray's bookshelf. He remembered having asked his roommate about it, and he even remembered the reply. Ray said it had belonged to his mother and that there were some very beautiful passages in its pages. The poet, named Reggie Carrington, had been interested and in later years purchased a copy he found in a secondhand bookshop. He was pleased to show it to the man from MI5.
Like the headmaster at Harrow, the Chaplain at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst confirmed there had been no instance, to his knowledge, when Raymond Kerman had attended any other service, or Church Parade, other than those of the regular Church of England denomination.
A Muslim by birth, of Muslim parents, Ray Kerman had vanished in Muslim territory. Of that there was no doubt. However, there was not one shred of evidence to suggest he had not quietly converted to the Protestant faith, long before his tenth birthday, and become totally Westernized, before embarking on a career in the British Army, which would see him valiantly follow the creeds of fighting: for God, Queen, and Country.
The Ministry of Defence had taken every possible step to insure secrecy in its investigation, but it had spread its net widely. The Ministry had plainly been obliged to involve its Israeli colleagues, who had taken it upon themselves to repatriate the bodies of the two NCOs.
The British Embassy in Tel Aviv had also undertaken a great deal of investigation, but had advanced no further than the men from Shin Bet. The CIA in Langley, Virginia, had found out for themselves that 'the Goddamned Brits have lost a high-ranking SAS officer,' which was regarded as very bad news indeed.
Using a variety of Arab contacts, the CIA had done as much as it could to assist in the investigation but had succeeded only in finding an Arab member of Hamas who claimed to know the Major was dead. Since there was no body to be found, no one had the remotest idea if he was telling the truth or not.
Colonel Makin sat alone on this rainy day, and read large parts of the report, new stuff and old stuff. Like all senior officers involved in the case, he smelled a gigantic rat. It did not add up. If the Major was dead, they'd have found him. Even if he was a hostage, they would have heard. If he was merely hiding in Hebron with a new lover or something absolutely ridiculous, someone would have seen him.
For the past few months he had dismissed any thoughts that Ray Kerman could have gone over to the other side, as ridiculous. But Ravi Rashood? That was different. All of the Kermans' apparent respectability could not remove from the CO's mind, the chilling thought that for the first time in its history, the SAS had harbored a traitor, a traitor he himself had essentially hired and nurtured.
'Holy shit!' said the Colonel, for the second time that morning. He sipped his coffee and waited not terribly enthusiastically for the inevitable call from MI5 asking what he made of the latest information.
Meanwhile, that morning there had been two, possibly three, inquiries from journalists, direct to SAS Headquarters in Hereford. As ever, the SAS said nothing, referring all inquiries to the Ministry of Defence, whose Press Department immediately claimed to know even less than nothing, if that were possible.
The cordon of secrecy that surrounded the matter was about as secure as a ring of IDF tanks in Hebron. But when an inquiry goes on this long, with more and more people finding things out, it's just a matter of time before a credible leak interests a reporter, or, more likely, a senior correspondent with Whitehall contacts.
In this case, it happened at a cocktail party at London's Indian Embassy, a gray, granite building on the south side of London's Aldwych, up the street from the Law Courts. Anton Zilber, the tall, long-serving French-born editor of the Diplomatic Corps's magazine, Court Circular, was chatting to a slightly drunk Whitehall mandarin he had known for years.
'Busy week, Colin?'
'Matter of fact, it has been, Anton. Damned busy. The bloody Special Forces have mislaid one of their Commanding Officers. Bloody careless of 'em, eh?'
Anton was not a newshound. The Court Circular meticulously recorded all the diplomatic events around town… who was at which party, with photographs and captions. It recorded promotions, and farewells to departing Ambassadors, with articles about any new arrival to London. In a sense, it was something of a vanity mag for the Diplomatic Corps. Even its title suggested something of the grandeur of the ancient Court of St. James, the official title for all London Ambassadors. Each one of them is an Ambassador to the Court of St. James, not just London,
