‘Feel like I’m hitting my head against a shithouse wall.’
‘I thought you Yanks called them restrooms?’
‘Getting too English for my own good. I even queue without complaining these days. Even skipped complaining altogether about anything.’
‘Jamil Akram,’ Henry guessed.
‘Mm.’ Donaldson looked despondent. He sighed, ‘Part of the problem I have is that I foisted — foisted? — myself on Beckham, the spookmeister, and he don’t want me around because I annoy him. I know more than he does, but they — your security service — seem content with what they’ve got.’
‘Two suicide bombers, one in custody, one dead?’
‘Hey — a victory in the war on terror.’
‘A good victory, Karl,’ Henry assured him. ‘And you played a major part in it.’
‘Hell, yeah… but it could be so much better… and not only that, this goes real deep, Henry. Feel it in my bones.’
‘Feel what?’
‘Instinct, Henry, instinct. You know what the hell that is?’
‘The dictionary definition or the gut-wrenching feeling you have when you just… just know? That can’t be defined.’
‘That’s the one.’ Donaldson stifled a yawn. ‘We missed him by a gnat’s todger. I picked that up from one of your Met guys.’
‘A midge’s dick.’
‘Same difference.’ He sipped his coffee. It was good, slightly bitter and with a subtle kick to it. ‘Jamil Akram is a fanatical terrorist,’ he said forcefully. ‘He runs training camps that teach stupid kids how to make bombs, shoot guns, stick knives into people and he has the ability to brainwash people, too. Simple kids who are disaffected and want something… his bombs have been planted in war zones and shopping malls. People he’s brainwashed have walked up to military checkpoints, superstores, and blown themselves and hundreds of others to pieces. His bombs were used in the American Embassy blast in Kenya in 1998 where I lost a good pal. Mostly, though, he doesn’t come out of hiding. But when he does, it precedes something major.’
‘Do you have evidence of that?’
‘Intelligence over the years, yes. Which is why I have a very bad feeling.’
‘As to why he put in an appearance here?’
Donaldson nodded.
‘What does Zahid Sadiq have to say on the subject?’ Henry asked, naming the young man entombed in the depths of Paddington Green police station.
‘Not a lot… I haven’t been allowed in to torture him yet. Haven’t been allowed near him, come to that,’ he said wistfully.
A deep tremor zinged through Henry’s veins. Donaldson — FBI agent, husband, father of three incredible kids — gave the impression of being a simple, straightforward bloke, good at his job and a bit naive in the ways of the world. But if this veneer was peeled away, Henry knew there was much, much more to this man. He could be a violent operator, in a controlled way, and had no qualms in making bad guys suffer. Over the years, Henry had pieced bits together and was fairly certain that his friend carried out clandestine jobs for the US government and certainly wasn’t averse to torture if he thought it necessary. Henry had witnessed some of Donaldson’s interview techniques first-hand and they had shocked him, even though he understood the purpose behind them. And his little offhand remark, Henry knew, was more than a joke or a flight of fancy. If he could have Sadiq to himself, Henry had no doubt that the misguided youth would soon be begging to confess all.
A text message landed on Donaldson’s phone. He shuffled it out of his chinos pocket, read it, then said, ‘You got Internet access here?’ Henry pointed to the computer on Rik’s desk. Donaldson handed his phone to Henry and said, ‘Can we have a look at this?’
The knocking woke Boone. He jerked awake, almost falling off the bench in the cockpit. Rubbing his eyes and making a dry clacking noise with his tongue on the roof of his mouth, he stood sleepily and took in the figure standing at the cockpit door.
It was a hunched, desperate looking, grey-faced man, gaunt and wild, and for a moment Boone did not recognize him. Then he did, just in the moment before he said, ‘What the fuck’re you doing on my boat?’ But the words, though formed, did not come out because he realized this frail individual was the man he’d taken to Gran Canaria a few days earlier, and transferred to another boat. Boone also recognized there was something very wrong with him now, hence the appearance.
‘I’m here,’ the man said. He stepped forwards and then, seemingly for no reason, he stumbled. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, so that they now resembled yellow billiard balls, and he fell. Boone’s tired mind clicked into place and he caught the guy before he, literally, hit the deck.
Boone dragged him roughly through the cockpit into the stateroom and heaved him on to the bed. As his hands came away, they were wet and, when he looked, covered in blood. Boone swore.
The man opened his eyes, gasped.
‘Jesus, man,’ Boone said. He removed the man’s zip-up jacket and saw that the area around the top of his right arm and chest was soaked in blood. The man moaned. Boone gagged slightly, tossed the jacket to one side and peeled the man’s shirt off, blowing out his cheeks as he saw the equally blood-sodden bandages around the man’s bicep.
‘What the hell happened?’
‘You do not need to know,’ the man whispered.
‘OK. Nor do I know what’s underneath those bandages, but I do know you need medical attention.’
‘I’ve had some. You must take me back to the Gambia.’
‘After you’ve seen a doctor.’
‘No. Just take me back. That is what you have been paid for.’
‘I haven’t been paid to take a dead man on my boat.’
The man’s eyes were cold and he meant it when he said, ‘If I die, then throw me to the sharks.’
Boone and he regarded each other. Boone ground his teeth noisily. The man exhaled and winced. Boone weighed up the odds — and saw the blood starting to stain the duvet cover.
‘I want extra money. I’m not a fucking paramedic.’
‘OK. There’s money in my wallet. Sterling. But I need the wound re-dressing, I think. The bullet has been removed, so you don’t have to worry about that.’
Boone sneered and knew that there and then he should have set sail and hoisted the man into the Atlantic, dead or alive. But the money lured him and he was also proud that — up to a point — he was a man of his word. He had been contracted to do a job and he would do it to the best of his abilities.
He nodded and realized why Aleef had given him the first aid kit, in which he’d found half a dozen morphine ampoules amongst everything else. He knelt down and peeled the blood-soaked bandages from the arm, revealing a truly ugly wound underneath, most likely caused by a gunshot that had entered the back of the bicep. He looked into the man’s eyes; his head was angled down as he watched Boone.
‘Jesus,’ Boone said again.
‘Your prophet, not mine,’ the man said. ‘Although I doubt you have a religious bone in your body.’
‘Strictly an unbeliever.’
‘Then why blaspheme?’
Boone shrugged and dropped the bandages into a plastic waste bin, where they landed with an unedifying splat. With distaste on his face, Boone inspected the wound closely. Under normal circumstances it looked like a pretty treatable wound, if getting shot could be considered to be normal. Something any half-competent ER doctor would have eaten up. But it was blatantly obvious that this man did not wish to turn up at a casualty department.
‘Who took out the bullet?’ Boone asked.
‘A friend.’
A friend who hadn’t really cleaned up after the mess. It needed disinfecting, though the blood oozing from it appeared to be nice and clean at the moment. But wounds like this had to have proper treatment in Africa because it was a continent of disease. At least it didn’t whiff just yet.
