Black Ops

Book 12: The Spider Shepherd Thrillers

by Stephen Leather

Genres: Thrillers; Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Spider Shepherd's MI5 controller, Charlie Button, has gone rogue, using government resources to get revenge on the men who killed her husband.

Spider is told to betray her. Worse, he's asked to cooperate with his nemesis at MI6, Jeremy Willoughby Brown, in taking Charlie down.

Meanwhile Spider's 16-year-old son is caught with drugs. But the drug police offer Spider a deal: go undercover, unmask a local dealer and his son will go free. Spider has no option but to cooperate. There's little time to debate because another high profile mission is about to engulf him.

Along with everything else, it's down to Spider to stop the assassination of a head of state on British soil.

Release date: July 2, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 432

Sample

Rob Tyler wanted a beer, but he was working and on a point of principle he never drank on the job. He was sitting in a house in Queens, about ten miles from the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan. The house was in a quiet cul-de-sac, and probably worth a couple of million dollars. Three bedrooms, a nice yard, a garage easily big enough for two cars and a hot tub on a terrace leading off the main bedroom. He was sitting on an Italian sofa and on the marble coffee table in front of him was the rope that Tyler would use to hang the man who was expected home at any moment.

Tyler was dressed for murder. He was wearing white forensic overalls, paper covers over his shoes, and a shower cap. There were blue latex gloves on his hands, and in the kitchen was a black garbage bag into which he’d put all the protective clothing once the job was finished. The job specifications had been clear. The man was to be killed by hanging and everything had to point to suicide. That didn’t necessarily mean a note – it was a fallacy that all suicides left a note before killing themselves – but it did mean that the marks on his neck would have to be consistent with hanging and there would have to be rope fibres on his hands. Tyler had already selected the perfect spot for the hanging – the bannisters around the main hall would do just fine.

Tyler had carried out more than a dozen killings that had looked like suicides. Hanging was the most popular but he had also slit the wrists of a woman in a bath and had done a couple of overdoses. Overdoses were messy. The best way was to force a liquid down the victim’s throat with a large syringe and then follow up with tablets when they were unconscious. The overdoses were two-man jobs, Tyler doubted that one man could do it on his own. He’d done hangings on his own but this time the job had been assigned to two contractors. Tyler wasn’t overjoyed at working with another contractor, especially one he hadn’t worked with before, but the woman seemed professional. She’d said her name was Leila and was vague about where she’d come from and hadn’t given much away. She was pretty, with mahogany brown skin and the blackest eyes he’d ever seen, short, curly hair and a body that wouldn’t quit. She was wearing high heels and a short skirt that showed off a pair of awesome legs and a low-cut top with a cleavage that he couldn’t stop looking at. From her dark skin and hair Tyler suspected Guatemala or Nicaragua but her accent was a puzzle. Her English was perfect but her accent was slightly off, as if she’d been born overseas. He’d tried speaking to her in Spanish but she hadn’t replied. Tyler assumed she’d been hired because of her looks – she was the perfect honey for a honey trap.

Leila had made contact with the target and had been to the house with him the previous night. The target was divorced, she said, and had jumped at the chance of getting between her legs. He’d been so enamoured that he hadn’t realised she had copied his key and noted the burglar alarm code.

Now they were in the house and waiting for him to return. It was seven in the evening and they had been inside for the best part of four hours. Tyler had jokingly suggested that they visit the bedroom to pass the time but she had smiled sarcastically and said that he wasn’t her type. Tyler wondered if that were true. He was a little over six feet and was in the best physical condition of his life, better even than when he’d been in Delta Force. He wondered if it was worth trying again, after the target was dead. Killing could be the ultimate aphrodisiac, with the right kind of girl. He realised he was staring at her breasts again and that she was looking at him. He smiled and looked away.

‘How long have you known Mercier?’ he asked.

Mercier had hired them for the job. Tyler was getting a hundred grand for the gig. He didn’t know how much the girl was being paid. He’d be doing most of the work. As soon as the target turned up, the girl would cover him with her gun. He’d already brought a quilt down from upstairs and laid it behind the sofa. He’d wrap the target with the quilt and then place the noose around his neck and pull it tight until he was dead. That way there would be no signs of a struggle. Once the target was dead it would be easy enough to attach the rope to the bannister and set the scene. Tyler had already selected a dining-room chair. He would put the target’s fingerprints on the back and make it look as if the chair had fallen to the side.

‘A couple of years.’

‘Done many jobs for him?’

‘A few.’

‘Anything I might have heard of?’

She tilted her head on one side and scrutinised him with her jet black eyes. ‘Do you always ask this many questions?’

‘I’m just curious.’

‘Well you know what curiosity did to the cat.’ She checked the action of her gun.

‘You do that a lot,’ said Tyler. ‘Check your gun.’

‘I like to be sure,’ she said.

‘You always use a Glock?’

‘For close-up work, sure. You can’t go wrong with a Glock. Plus there’s a lot of them about so they’re harder to track down.’

‘They kick their cartridges everywhere though.’

‘If you dump the gun, that’s not an issue.’ She shrugged. ‘Horses for courses.’

Tyler nodded. ‘And what did they tell you about me?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not much.’

‘And you didn’t ask?’

‘Why would I ask?’

‘Not curious?’

She laughed. ‘You’re the curious one, Robert. I don’t have a curious bone in my body.’

‘But when they said there’d be two people on the job, didn’t you ask for details?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’ She tilted her head on one side again and fixed him with her eyes. ‘You asked about me?’

‘Of course,’ said Tyler.

‘And Mercier told you?’

‘He just said that you were very pretty and I should keep my cock in my pants.’

‘Good advice,’ she said. ‘That’s all he told you?’

‘Why, does that worry you?’

‘I’d have hoped there would have been some sort of confidentiality. I wouldn’t want an employer to start giving out my personal information to a …’

‘Stranger? But I’m not a stranger. I’ve worked with Jules for many years. And it’s not as if he gave me your real name. Other than that he told me nothing.’

She walked over to the window and looked down at the street, then at her watch. ‘So what do you want to know, Rob?’ She reached into her pocket and took out a bulbous suppressor and screwed it into the barrel of her Glock as she continued to look down into the street.

Tyler shrugged. ‘You’re a pro, that’s obvious. But you’re young. What are you? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?’

She smiled. ‘Twenty-four.’

‘That’s still young. How did you get the experience?’

‘Israeli Army,’ she said. ‘Signed up at eighteen.’

‘You’re Israeli?’

‘My parents moved there before I was born.’

‘So you’re Jewish?’

‘Is that a problem?’

Tyler laughed. ‘Of course not. Wow, I wouldn’t have put you down as a former soldier.’

‘It’s compulsory in Israel, national service for everyone. Three years for men, two years for women. But only half go into the military. And a lot of kids duck it if they can. But I enlisted. I wanted to serve.’

‘And you got a taste for it?’

‘For what?’

‘Combat?’

‘There wasn’t much combat. But there was a lot of training. Then I joined Mossad. The Israeli equivalent of the CIA.’

‘What did you do for them?’

‘That’s classified. But between you and me, pretty much the same as I’m doing today.’

‘You were a government assassin?’

She smiled tightly. ‘Like I said, it’s classified.’

‘And now you do it for money?’

She nodded. ‘A lot of money. And you were what? A Navy Seal?’

‘Delta Force,’ said Tyler.

‘Were you one of the ones that got Bin Laden?’

‘I’d gone private before then,’ said Tyler.

‘How many jobs have you done?’

‘In total? A couple of dozen.’

‘You don’t know for sure?’

‘To be honest, once a job is done, it’s done. I don’t dwell. It’s like women. I have absolutely no idea how many women I’ve fucked over the years. A hundred. Two hundred.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t remember their faces, never mind their names. It’s the same with targets. Mind you, there’s one coming up that I’m never going to forget.’

She looked at him, intrigued. ‘Tell me more.’

‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘Is it for Mercier?’

‘No. Someone else. It’ll probably be my last job. For a while, anyway.’

‘It’s big?’

Tyler grinned. ‘Very big. The biggest.’

She smiled and locked eyes with him. ‘You can tell me,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell anyone. That’s one of the downsides of this job, you know? It all has to stay secret. Otherwise you’re fucked.’

‘You can tell people you trust,’ she said.

‘Yeah, but who can you trust?’ he asked. ‘You can’t trust anybody.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Why is he running late?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The target. Where the hell is he?’

‘He’s here already,’ said the girl.

Tyler frowned. He was about to reply when he realised what she meant. He started to raise his gun but it was too late, way too late. Her Glock was already pointed at his chest and he barely had time to open his mouth before the first shot smashed into his chest, followed closely by a second. He was barely aware of the muffled pops of the suppressed shots and the bullets felt like nothing more than punches to his chest. He fell backwards and was dead even before the third shot hit him in the face and his brains and skull splattered across the wall behind him.

Lex Harper tapped his pool cue on the side of the table and tried to focus on the balls. ‘Remind me again, am I big or small?’

The three men sitting on bar stools to his left groaned as one.

‘He’s pissed,’ said a big man wearing a Singha beer vest and baggy shorts.

‘He’s taking the piss, that’s what he’s doing,’ said the man sitting in the middle of the three. He was tall and thin with a beard that compensated for a rapidly receding hairline. ‘Lex, mate, time to go home. And don’t use the bike. I don’t want to be visiting you in the ICU.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Harper, struggling to focus on the table. He frowned. ‘Just tell me, big or small?’

‘Small,’ chorused the three men.

The barman put down fresh bottles of Heineken in front of them, each protected with a foam tube stamped with the logo of Noy’s Bar, a red lipstick kiss on a St George’s Cross. The bar was open to the air and even with the large fans playing down on them from the ceiling, the beer wouldn’t have stayed cool for long without insulation. Noy’s Bar was just off Pattaya’s Walking Street. Most evenings Walking Street was packed with tourists eyeing up the red light area’s bars and hookers, but Noy’s Bar was off the beaten track enough for Harper and his pals to be able to enjoy a quiet game of pool and a few beers without being disturbed by crocodiles of Chinese and Korean tourists snapping away with their smartphones. Though in Harper’s case it had been more than a few beers along with half a dozen tequila chasers. It was just after 8 p.m. but the four men had been drinking and playing pool after an extended lunch in the Pig and Whistle and all the signs were that the drinking at least was going to continue into the early hours.

As Harper leaned over the table to play his shot, he felt a vibration from his denim hip pack. Night or day Harper always had the pack around his waist. It contained one of the many mobile phones he used, an Irish passport and two credit cards, and 50,000 baht in cash. The pack, together with the heavy gold neck chain he always wore, meant that he could get out of Thailand or anywhere else he found himself at a moment’s notice, leaving by the airport, by boat or travelling overland to a neighbouring country. He had a larger bug-out bag under the bed in his apartment and another in the back of his SUV, but all the essentials for a fast escape were in the hip pack. Much as he loved Thailand, his unbreakable rule was never to be so fond of a place that he couldn’t leave at a moment’s notice, without a backward glance.

His companions groaned as he straightened up, took out his phone and read the three-word text message from a UK number: YOU HAVE MAIL.

‘Guys, I’ve got to go,’ he said, slotting his cue into a rack on the wall.

‘He’s on a mission,’ laughed Singha shirt. ‘It’s that dancer from Anglewitch, the one with the tits.’

‘To be fair, they’ve all got tits,’ said Harper. ‘Real or fake. Okay, I’m off.’

‘Take a taxi, Lex.’

Harper nodded and waved a thanks for the advice. He was just sober enough to know that he was too drunk to be riding his Triumph Bonneville home. Pattaya’s streets were a death trap at the best of times, but being drunk on a powerful motorcycle when pretty much everyone else on the road was either equally intoxicated or high on drugs was a recipe for disaster. He headed off down the road in search of an Internet café. The nearest was run by a middle-aged former go-go dancer called Rose. Rose was still a stunner, so much so that at least four foreigners had given her the money to start her own Internet café-cum-print shop. Two of her backers were British, one was Australian and one was an Indian. The Indian and one of the Brits thought they were married to Rose, having gone through a traditional Thai ceremony in her home town of Udon Thani. Rose had never followed up with the paperwork, which meant she was free and single and open to offers.

All four of her backers lived overseas and, so far at least, had never decided to holiday in Pattaya at the same time. They all deposited regular sums into her bank accounts and sent her presents to prove their devotion and in return received daily Skype calls where she would shed a tear and say how she loved them and missed them.

When Harper walked in she was sitting at one of her terminals helping a pretty teenage girl with a tattoo of two Japanese koi on her back compose an email to an overseas sponsor.

‘Tell him you cannot dance because you miss him so much,’ said Rose, pointing at the screen. ‘And tell him your mother has to go into hospital soon. Don’t say what’s wrong with her. Wait for him to ask. And don’t ask him for money. Wait for him to offer.’

The girl frowned. ‘What if he doesn’t offer?’

Rose smiled. ‘He will,’ she said, patting the young girl on the leg. ‘They always do.’

‘Can I use a computer, Rose?’ asked Harper.

‘No problem, Mr Lex,’ she said. ‘Take any.’

Harper sat down at the furthest terminal from the counter and logged on to Yahoo Mail. He had memorised the email address and password, but had never sent a single email from the account. Its sole use was for communications with his MI5 handler, Charlotte Button, the only other person who knew the password. They sent messages to each other using the drafts folder – a technique first developed by al-Qaeda terrorists, allowing instantaneous communications that bypassed even the most hi-tech surveillance systems. The National Security Agency in the States and GCHQ in the UK had the capacity to eavesdrop on every phone call and email anywhere in the world, but using the drafts folder trick meant that the emails were never actually transmitted and therefore could not be flagged up by anyone monitoring his communications. Only if a spook had discovered the existence of the email account and hacked into it would the messages in the drafts folder be compromised, and even then, they’d have to be quick because Button and Harper’s SOP was to delete every message as soon as they had read it.

A single message had been added to the drafts in the last couple of hours: LOCATION ONE. SOONEST. TEXT ME WHEN IN SITU. Harper smiled to himself as he deleted the message. Even if someone really had hacked into his account, the message wouldn’t tell them much. Location One was London. He waved over at Rose. ‘Rose, coffee, black. Two sugars.’

‘Coming, Mr Lex.’

‘And a bottle of water.’

Harper went back online. There was a KLM flight due to leave Bangkok at two thirty in the morning. He booked himself a business class seat and a connecting flight to Dublin. Rose brought him his coffee and Harper thanked her.

‘And when I’ve finished this one bring me another, and another. In fact, if you can put me on an intravenous drip, that would be great.’

Rose frowned, not understanding.

‘Just coffee, Rose, and keep it coming.’

He sighed and looked at his watch. At this time of night it wouldn’t take much more than an hour to get to Suvarnabhumi airport. He had plenty of time to get a couple of coffees under his belt before heading home to grab what he needed.

There were two of them sitting in the back of the van, and the ventilation wasn’t the best. The air quality wasn’t helped by the continuing flatulence of Jamie Brewer, Spider Shepherd’s number two on the surveillance operation.

‘I’m sorry, mate, really,’ said Brewer after breaking wind for the third time. ‘I had a curry last night.’

Shepherd wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘That is awful. Really.’

‘Mate, I’m sorry.’

Shepherd would have loved to open the rear doors but that wasn’t possible, not when it was packed with transmitting and recording equipment. The van they were in had the livery of a courier company and sitting in the front seat was a brunette in a beige uniform. Her cab was sealed and they had to talk to her via an intercom.

Shepherd stared at one of the four flatscreens on the side of the van. It showed an electronic map of the area around them along with six flashing red dots. Above each of the dots was a number from one to six, representing the six watchers on the operation. The watchers had been tasked with following Ahmed Khalaf, a twenty-three-year-old former medical student who had ended his studies early and travelled to Syria to fight alongside the jihadists of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Khalaf had been easy enough to track as he had posted numerous photographs on his Facebook page. He had been allowed back into the country but MI5 had kept him under surveillance from the moment he had arrived at Heathrow. It was clear from the way that Khalaf behaved once he was back in the UK that he had been well taught by ISIS. He didn’t have a mobile phone and he didn’t own a computer. He made calls from phone boxes and twice a day he went to one of several Internet cafés. It was clear he was up to something and MI5 put him high up on their list of priorities. There were three teams of five assigned to Khalaf, working eight-hour shifts. Shepherd had been assigned to monitor the teams and he took it in turns to do ride-alongs. Surveillance was a difficult job at the best of times and long-term surveillance was especially demanding, hour after hour of sitting outside buildings followed by short bursts of frenetic activity. As days turned into weeks and even months, the job got that much harder. Surveillance teams would start to make assumptions and let down their guard. A target might leave the house every day at the same time, walk down the road and turn left. He might do that every day for a hundred days. But on day one hundred and one he might turn right and disappear. Shepherd’s job was to make sure the teams didn’t lose their edge.

For the first couple of weeks of surveillance Khalaf did nothing out of the ordinary. He spent most of his time in a bedsit in Stoke Newington, venturing out only to pray at a local mosque. MI5 had two men in place at the mosque and they were able to ascertain that Khalaf spoke to no one while he was at prayers. He would occasionally shop for food and once a day he would take a walk through the thirty-one acres of Abney Park garden cemetery.

The cemetery was always a difficult venue. There were dozens of paths winding between the 200,000 or so graves and while there were always some people wandering around, it was difficult to stay close without being seen. Dogs were always a good cover and the teams could call on more than a dozen offered up by volunteers prepared to allow MI5 to borrow their pets.

During the third week Khalaf visited Stoke Newington public library in Church Street. On the first visit he had wandered around the bookshelves for ten minutes before leaving. A few days later he visited again, this time making use of one of the library’s six computers. The visit to the library then became a daily event, and each time he would spend up to an hour on one of the computers. The surveillance teams installed keystroke programs on all of the machines and they were able to keep track of his Internet activities. Immediately they saw what he was doing the teams went on to full alert. Khalaf was reading articles on the mass jihadist killings in Iraq, Kenya and India, and spent time studying online newspaper articles about the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby who was hacked to death near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich. During the fifth week of surveillance, Khalaf went to the place where Fusilier Rigby was murdered and spent more than an hour walking around.

During the sixth week of surveillance, Khalaf opened a Yahoo email account and sent an email to an address that was traced to a library computer in Ealing. Khalaf used a drafts folder for the account to contact a British-born Somalian later identified as Mohammed Mahmud. Like Khalaf, Mahmud had broken off his studies and travelled to Syria to fight with ISIS. He had somehow managed to travel there and back without attracting the attention of the security services. From the messages that piled up in the drafts folder it was clear that the two men were planning a beheadings rampage in the London area. In the sixth week they were joined online by a third London-based jihadist who was also a member of ISIS. The third man had been harder to track down, he went online using a pay-as-you-go smartphone and was rarely active for more than a few minutes at a time and changed his SIM card every week.

A second five-man team, also under Shepherd’s guidance, had put Mahmud under the microscope. Like Khalaf, he lived alone, leaving his small flat in a terraced house only to shop, visit a local mosque and the library.

During the eighth week of Khalaf’s surveillance, both teams converged on the Abney Park cemetery. When it became clear that the two men were going to meet, Mahmud’s team pulled back.

The two men sat together for more than an hour on a bench close to the Gothic church in the centre of the cemetery. Three watchers walked by during the time they were together but none was able to hear even a fragment of their conversation.

There was no doubt that the men were planning a major terrorist atrocity and Shepherd had recommended that they be arrested and charged. His boss Charlotte Button had agreed with him but they had been overruled – the surveillance was to continue until the third man was identified. That had been three weeks ago and they were no closer to finding out who he was.

The surveillance had turned up another cell, however; this one in Bradford. Khalaf had gone to a second email address draft folder and began communicating with another potential ISIS soldier, a British-born Pakistani who was about to fly out to Syria. Through him they managed to trace and identify another four would-be jihadists.

Meanwhile Khalaf was also using Google Earth to look at the roads around several shopping centres and railway stations in London, and visiting websites for large shopping malls, including the giant Westfield mall in White City and Stratford. Mahmud was just as active on the Ealing library’s computers, spending hours looking at websites that detailed the construction of IEDs.

As the two men continued to research and plot, the surveillance teams increased their hunt for the third jihadist, but his habit of only using a pay-as-you-go phone and constantly changing his SIM card meant he was impossible to pin down. The teams drew up more than a dozen possible suspects from the people that Khalaf and Mahmud met, but they couldn’t get any concrete proof of who the elusive third man was.

Shepherd had joined the surveillance team at eight o’clock in the morning, just as they had taken over from the night shift. Outside the vehicle were three watchers, codenames Whisky One, Whisky Two and Whisky Three. Whisky One and Whisky Two were on the pavement and Whisky Three was kitted out as a bicycle courier. All were in position outside Khalaf’s building. He wasn’t expected out before ten o’clock.

It wasn’t until after eleven that Khalaf appeared. He was wearing a black Puffa jacket with the hood up and he had a grey North Face backpack slung over his shoulder.

‘That’s new,’ said Brewer, nodding at the screen showing the view from the CCTV camera mounted under the van’s rear-view mirror. It could be moved using a small joystick on a panel in front of Brewer.

‘He’s had a backpack before, right?’

‘Smaller than that. Adidas.’

‘Tango is on the move,’ said Shepherd. He was wearing a Bluetooth earpiece connected to the transceiver on his waist.

‘Whisky Three, I have eyeball. He’s going back behind the house.’

Shepherd and Brewer watched on the screen as Khalaf disappeared behind the house. There were a dozen occupants, each with their own room, though they shared two bathrooms and a kitchen. The rubbish bins were at the rear but Khalaf hadn’t been carrying any rubbish.

‘What’s he playing at?’ said Brewer.

The mystery was solved soon enough when Khalaf reappeared pushing a bicycle, an old-fashioned type with a wicker basket fastened to the handlebars.

Brewer cursed. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘Whisky Three, you need to stay on him,’ said Shepherd. He nodded at Brewer. ‘Get the driver moving.’

‘He’s never done this before,’ said Brewer.

‘It’ll be okay,’ said Shepherd. He looked back at the screen. Khalaf was pedalling down the street. ‘Whisky Two, Whisky One, you need to get mobile and head south. Taxi or bus. Over.’

‘Whisky One, roger that.’

‘Whisky Two, roger.’

Shepherd picked up his mobile and called the supervisor of the second surveillance team, over in Ealing. Her name was Lisa Elphick and like Shepherd she was sitting in the back of a van. ‘Dan, hey, we’re a bit busy here,’ she said.

‘Us too. Our Tango’s on a bike. Heading south. He’s never done that before.’

‘Ours is running what looks like counter surveillance, and he’s never done that before. I’m down to one eyeball at the moment.’

‘You’ve got a guy on a motorbike, right? I’m looking to borrow him for a while.’

‘That’s not going to happen. He had a car stop for him, turns out it’s an Uber cab. Normally he takes the bus so we were on foot. The bike is the only eyeball I have at the moment.’ She swore vehemently. ‘He’s just got out of the cab on The Broadway. Bravo Two stay close. If necessary, dump the bike. Bravo One, Bravo Three, where the hell are you? Dan, sorry, we’ve lost him, I’ll have to call you back.’ She cut the connection.

Shepherd brought Brewer up to speed.

‘You think they’re up to something?’ asked Brewer.

‘Could be a coincidence.’

‘Both out of character at the same time? That sets alarm bells ringing.’

‘Do you want to call for backup?’

‘I’d be happier,’ said Brewer.

‘Whisky One, I’m in a cab.’

‘Good man. Stay on him.’

‘Whisky Three, I have eyeball.’

Shepherd looked at the screen showing the positions of the watchers. They were all moving. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. Then he called up the Head of Mobile Surveillance and got through to his number two. Shepherd quickly explained what he needed and the officer agreed to get two surveillance bikes in his area as soon as possible. Shepherd asked for a time frame and was told five minutes, possibly ten. It was better than nothing. Shepherd ended the call. ‘Help’s on the way,’ he said.

The van lurched to a halt. ‘Sorry,’ came the driver’s voice over the intercom. ‘Red light.’

‘Whisky Three, we’re held at lights. Do you still have eyeball?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Whisky Three, affirmative. He’s heading south on Essex Road. I’m about a hundred yards behind him. He’s taking it easy and isn’t looking back. Over.’

‘Whisky One, are you still in the cab? Over.’

‘Whisky One, passed him about fifty yards back. Over.’

Shepherd looked at the map. ‘See if you can get the cab to wait at City Road. Over.’

Shepherd looked at the screen showing the forward video feed but Khalaf was too far ahead to be seen. ‘Has he ever done anything like this before?’ Shepherd asked Brewer.

Brewer shook his head. ‘Never. He always goes to the same place. The mosque. The shops. The library. The cemetery.’

‘There was no indication that they were getting ready to go,’ said Shepherd. ‘That new backpack is a worry.’

His phone rang and he looked at the screen. It was Lisa. ‘We lost him,’ she said. ‘He was on foot and we couldn’t get to him on time.’

‘Could he have got to a Tube station?’

‘Ealing Broadway? Possibly.’

‘What are you doing now?’

‘Canvassing the area. If he did go down the Tube then we really have lost him. Sorry.’

‘Any chance of you sending your bike my way? O