The Sahara was an unstable region at the best of times, but they had boot-loads of weapons should they run into any unwelcome attention. They were also authorised to hand over envelopes full of money to bribe their way across. A contact had communicated that the course was clear but that meant little until they were actually over the border and on their way.
Fawaz would take the riskier option of crossing the Mediterranean and travelling through Portugal, Spain and into France across the Pyrenees. Harry didn’t know Fawaz personally but everyone knew him by reputation. Their ties were bound through years of loyalty, and no one would ever rat him out. It wasn’t fear that would prevent them, but rather an undying allegiance to the legend and the man himself; he looked after his people. Only last year, Harry’s son had needed vital hip surgery to stop the spread of aggressive cancer through his weak body, and Fawaz had paid for him to travel to Tangier to be treated in a private hospital. It doubled the chances of his son’s survival and he was still alive today, God willing, thanks to Fawaz’s generosity. One day he’d like to thank the man personally.
The noise of men carrying boxes full of random cargo echoed loudly. Their grunts and groans hinted that the boxes were heavy, and Harry wasn’t too old to help. He did his bit, not knowing exactly what was in them, apart from weapons. Each truck would carry a different load, ostensibly being transported across North Africa with different destinations. Or at least that was the back-up should they be stopped. One truck was almost loaded and would depart first.
‘What’s weighing it down so much?’ Harry asked.
‘One hundred cartons of dried milk and medicines. Charity for remote villages.’ A man smiled at him and he nodded.
There was truth in it. Almost lost entirely to civilisation, these tribes were cut off from the rest of the world and relied on charitable organisations, such as the one Fawaz had set up, to deliver the precious goods. Though, this one would get lost and end up over the border in Algeria. The same applied to the other trucks, loaded with basic foodstuffs, clothes, shoes, children’s toys and clean water. Each would pretend to become disorientated in the desert, should they be apprehended, and the worst-case scenario was that they were escorted back across the borders. But in the middle of the Sahara, no-one cared about aid trucks.
Harry watched as the men laboured under the weight of the heavier goods. He’d done his bit and lit an American cigarette. Most of the cartons and pallets, labelled with the brand names of various fruits, electrical goods and textiles, needed two men to load them, and Harry saw the wheels of the trucks sink deeper into the sand as they became fully laden. It would take four days for them to arrive in the port of Algiers, but they’d know sooner than that if any of them made it into the country. By then, Fawaz should be in place. The fact that he was heading the mission himself bred even more respect from his wide network of adherents.
It wasn’t political. It wasn’t religious. It was merely right.
The first truck was fully loaded, and as it began to rumble away into the coming dawn, Harry prayed silently to himself that the plan was followed through. He knew little of what it involved, only that Fawaz would bring them glory and recognition on the world stage. He wouldn’t feel it here, of course, in this tiny backwater surrounded by sand. But he would hear of it soon enough.
No matter the outcome, they had already won.
Chapter 13
The Place des Terreaux was busy, and Helen pushed her way through the crowds, peering up at the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Ville. It was only a thirty-minute walk to the river from her hotel, then over the Pont Morand, and it meant she could absorb a bit of the city at the same time. She could have taken the metro, but she wanted to breathe the air and gaze at the Alps in the distance disturbing the horizon. Her apartment was clean and basic: all she needed. After reading into the early hours, she’d had a comfortable, if short, night’s sleep.
Helen knew the city well from a previous secondment to a joint international mission to gather intelligence on terror suspects embedded in Europe, working closely alongside Europol, Interpol’s European cousin. And it had yielded some good results. They’d averted seven major plots to attack civilian targets across Europe, and had contributed to Interpol’s growing database on lone operators, how they functioned and who they worked for. Terrorism inside Europe had taken a sharp upturn in the last eight years, and the internet had fast become the favoured way to communicate between cells and their sympathisers. New waves of organisations used social media platforms to reach increasingly large numbers of potential recruits, and it was getting worse.
The months she’d spent on the Europol collaboration gave her good knowledge of the geography and demography of France’s third-largest city. It was an urban sprawling hive of hiding places for criminals, with its ancient buildings and tiny back streets. Since the Second World War, the Croix-Rousse, to the north, with its series of intersecting traboules posed a massive headache for law and order. The covered passages had originally been used by silk weavers to transport their precious work, undercover, away from adverse weather conditions. Today they were ideal rabbit warrens for criminals, where they could lose the most ardent pursuer. As a result, Interpol was working hard at closing them down and making them one-way routes. It was an ongoing
