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‘In that sense,’ said the older man, ‘he was fortunate.’
‘I saw him last in Now Zad,’ said the Chechen. ‘Or perhaps the Korengal. I can’t remember, exactly. He’s a fighter, but lucky again, because the Americans’ – he almost spat the word – ‘they don’t know him. This is the beauty of it. Two years ago, he’s in Islamabad, he flies to Turkey, then travels to Germany. Nobody says a word to him, nobody even looks at him. For the last year, he is in England, in London. There he has made a very good contact, with someone who has a very interesting situation. Very interesting indeed. But we need funding and I know that you can find money for us.’
Khasmohmad Kadyrov talked some more, and the Yemeni called al-Shafra listened, and he smiled.
And the more he listened, the more he smiled.
And when Kadyrov had finished talking, Saeed al-Shafra looked out of his window, across the empty, sun-baked Balochi desert, which lay between his humble home and Afghanistan’s distant Helmand River, and he chuckled.
‘Oh, Khasmohmad,’ he said. ‘Khasmohmad, Khasmohmad. Truly, this is a gift from Allah.’
PART ONE (#ulink_f07bd844-6755-5d18-abf7-2adb843bae22)
1. (#ulink_bcb589d0-687c-52cf-a500-e3f306701464)
AT SEVEN-THIRTY, half an hour before unlocking, the prison came banging and rattling and echoing to life.
But Zeff Mahsoud and his cellmate had been up since well before sunrise, in order to perform their fajr.
Now they sat facing each other, Mahsoud on a tubular chair pushed hard against the cream-painted wall, the other man on his steel-framed bed.
‘I have a good feeling about today, brother,’ said the cellmate. ‘I think it will be good news.’
‘Inshallah, Hamid,’ said Mahsoud. ‘Time will tell.’
‘Be confident. Tonight you will be in your wife’s arms. Tomorrow…’ Hamid paused, and lowered his voice. HMP Belmarsh was not a place which rewarded the incautious. ‘Tomorrow, who knows?’
Mahsoud smiled. ‘Who knows indeed?’ he said.
Lazily, he got up and walked to the cell door, bending down to pick up the breakfast tray which had been handed over the previous night.
A plastic bowl of own-brand cornflakes, a carton of UHT milk, and a bread roll: he curled up his lip.
‘You’ll visit my friend?’ said Hamid. ‘Like I said?’
‘If I am released…’
‘You will be.’
‘If I am released, then yes, I will visit your friend.’
‘He will be most interested to meet you. I think he will have very interesting proposals for you.’
‘I hope so.’
‘I know so. He has big plans. Dramatic plans.’
Zeff Mahsoud smiled.
Cornflakes in hand, he walked over to the small window, and looked up at the clear blue skies over south-east London.
Seven or eight miles away, over Bromley, a passenger jet was climbing away through 6,000ft.
Mahsoud watched it go.
Three hundred souls and a hundred tonnes of aviation fuel, in a thin aluminium tube.
So thin.
So vulnerable.
‘I have plans of my own, brother,’ he said.
But I’m afraid I cannot share them with you, he thought.
2. (#ulink_16e19f07-153a-5903-92e6-bafcb6861637)
SEVERAL MILES NORTH, on the other side of the river, Paul Spicer – senior partner at the human rights law firm Spicer, McGraw and Hill, and long a thorn in the side of the government – was already at his table in the Booking Office restaurant at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel.
He was eating a much grander breakfast, his plate piled high with crispy bacon and waffles, drizzled with maple syrup in the American style.
He ate methodically, his chin wobbling as he chewed, pausing only to drink from his cup of strong black coffee.
Around him buzzed smart waitresses, eager waiters.
On his left, the morning maître d’ showed another small group of businessmen to their seats, smiling unctuously.
At 7.45 a.m., Emily Souster joined Spicer.
Slim and elegant in her grey trouser suit.
Roedean and Cambridge.
Blonde.
Stunningly pretty.
At one time, Spicer had half-hoped… But she’d made it quite clear that there was no chance of that.
Emily sat down and looked at him, eyebrows raised.
Said, in her cut-crystal Queen’s English, ‘How on earth can you eat that?’
‘Easy,’ he said, in his broad Leeds. ‘Open your gob, shove it in, and chew.’
She shuddered. ‘I’m a bag of nerves,’ she said.
A waitress came over.
Took her room number and her order – no food, just a fresh pot of coffee and a glass of orange juice.
Spicer said, ‘What’s there to be nervous about?’
‘Aren’t you?’ she said.
‘No. I’m ninety per cent certain we’re going to win. And even if we don’t…’
Even if we don’t, we bank our money and move on.
He left it unsaid.
Shot her a glance.
The junior solicitor sitting across the breakfast table from him was a true believer: a passionate human rights lawyer, a righter of wrongs, a romantic burner of midnight oils in pursuit of every cause she could find.
Why was it so often like that?
Emily had known every advantage in life – an ambassador father, the best education money could buy, a trust fund to fall back on… If you grew up like that, it allowed you the space to spend what felt like half the year working pro bono, seconded to crew aid convoys, and going on marches and demonstrations.
Whereas, if you grew up like he had – born to a single mum in Harehills, eating chip butties for tea, sharing bathwater with three brothers…
Make no mistake about it, he loved the challenge, loved picking holes in the government’s cases, but if you came up like that then you knew the value of a quid.
‘There’s no even if we don’t, Paul,’ said Emily. ‘We have to win. We can’t let him rot in there for the next fifteen years.’
Spicer smiled absently.
‘I’ll say one thing, Emily,’ he said, forking half a waffle into his mouth. ‘It won’t be for want of trying.’
3. (#ulink_8a0f28e2-7617-531a-8324-941cb419d88e)
AS HE SAID that, Charlotte Morgan was getting out of the shower of her flat in Pimlico, and wrapping a towel around her dripping body.
She opened the door and leaned out.
‘What time is it?’ she shouted, wrapping another towel around her wet hair.
‘Quarter to eight,’ came the reply from the bedroom. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Bloody alarm,’ said Charlotte, half to herself.
Eddie appeared in the doorway of their bedroom, in his boxers and a white T-shirt.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he said, again. ‘It’s only twenty minutes. I’ll make you a cup of tea and some toast.’
‘Half an hour, if the traffic’s bad,’ said Charlotte. ‘I need to be there by nine. And my hair’s still soaking.’
‘You just crack on,’ he said. ‘I’ll check the cab’s booked.’
He passed her, and they kissed, before he disappeared downstairs, and she walked through to the bedroom to begin drying her hair.
Clicked on the Today programme.
‘…in the case of Zeff Mahsoud.’
The voice of the BBC Radio 4 presenter drifted from the speaker.
‘Mr Mahsoud, a charity worker from Yorkshire, you’ll remember, was arrested after arriving home to the UK on a flight from North Africa. He maintained that he’d been on a humanitarian mission to Libya, but six months ago he was given a lengthy jail sentence for terrorism-related offences. He has always protested his innocence, and an increasingly noisy campaign for his release has led us to the Court of Appeal where, later today, his case will be re-considered. Whatever their lordships decide, the appeal has thrown into sharp relief a number of questions about the operations of both MI5 and MI6, and…’
She clicked the clock radio off.
She most definitely didn’t need that.
4. (#ulink_5c9f66e5-a3a7-5563-9b1d-9616e266dba4)
AT JUST BEFORE 8 a.m., Zeff Mahsoud was taken from his cell to the holding area.
There he was handcuffed to a prison officer, who led him through three sets of steel doors to the cold air outside.
He breathed in deeply, despite the diesel fumes which were filling the vehicle yard.
Overhead, the blue sky was slowly clouding over, but still he felt an overwhelming sense of release.
No matter who you were, and what you were doing there, prison was prison, and Belmarsh was worse than most.
Several police officers, wearing body armour and carrying MP4s fitted with suppressors, watched with undisguised contempt as he was loaded into the back of a prison transport vehicle.
There was a short delay as they waited for an armed robber whose appeal was to be heard on the same day, and then the truck fired up and lurched out of the prison gates, sandwiched between two Met Range Rovers and assisted by a pair of motorcycle outriders.
It’s an hour dead from Belmarsh in Woolwich to the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand – for ordinary vehicles.
With their sirens and blue lights, and the motorcyclists zipping ahead to hold up crossing traffic, they made it in forty minutes.
On arrival in the secure parking area, Mahsoud was debussed and led into a cell in the bowels of the court.
Paul Spicer and Emily Souster were waiting nearby, and were shown to the cell a few moments later.
Spicer and Mahsoud shook hands – Emily knew better than to offer hers – and Spicer cleared his throat.
‘I’m pretty confident, Zeff,’ he said. ‘As discussed, we’ve a strong case and you’ll not find a better pair to put it across than Jim Caville and Charlotte Morgan. But nothing in life is guaranteed, as I’ve said, and there’s always the risk that the judges won’t see it our way.’
Zeff nodded.
‘It wouldn’t necessarily be the end,’ said Emily Souster. ‘Even if they find against us, there are other avenues. The Supreme Court, the European Courts…’
Mahsoud held up his hand. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I have every confidence.’
For a moment, he looked almost preternaturally calm.
