I Am Pilgrim(221)

‘Cumali is the sole carer for a six-year-old boy,’ I went on, once the tank transporters were vanishing in my rear-view mirror. ‘Obviously, the child can’t be abandoned – so the document lays out the arrangements for his welfare.’

I pulled out my phone, replaced the battery, opened its photo file and gave it to Ben. On the screen was one of the shots of the little guy I had taken in Cumali’s kitchen.

‘He’s Down’s syndrome,’ said Bradley, looking up at me.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘The document says he will be picked up by our people and transported to an orphanage in Bulgaria, one of the poorest nations in Europe. Due to poverty and the fact that he is an alien, nothing will be done to cater for his special needs.’

Bradley didn’t take his eyes off me; sickened, I think. ‘The purpose of the document is to panic her,’ I went on.

‘I think you just might succeed,’ he replied. ‘Why?’

‘We know she’s able to contact our target. The problem has always been that, if we try to force her, she’ll do it in a way that will warn him – he’ll go to ground and we’ll lose him completely.

‘If, however, she thinks she’s reading secret information and it panics her, she will contact the target voluntarily. No deliberate mistakes, and no clever warnings.

‘He’s the only person who can help her, the only person who can tell her what is going on. Even if he wanted to ignore her, he can’t – he’s an Arab, he’s her brother and that makes him the head of the family.’

Bradley thought about it, then looked again at the photo he was still holding. The little guy was laughing – a child, just a pawn in the great game.

‘You think this up all by yourself?’ he asked. It wasn’t admiration I heard in his voice.

‘Pretty much,’ I said.

‘Is it always like this – your work?’

‘No,’ I replied, thinking about two little girls in Moscow. ‘Sometimes it’s worse.’

Bradley took a breath. ‘Okay. So Cumali contacts her brother – what then?’

‘She tells him about the second email.’





Chapter Sixteen


I DRIFTED OVER into the slow lane and scanned the traffic behind in the mirror. When I was satisfied that we hadn’t picked up a tail, I walked Ben deeper into the shadow world.

‘The second email claims to be from the deputy director of the CIA. It was dated two days ago and it reports that we have had a breakthrough concerning the abduction of the three foreigners in the Hindu Kush.’

‘But you haven’t, have you?’ Ben asked.

‘No. The man and the events are a mystery. He’s a lone wolf, an organization of one. There hasn’t been any gossip and no chance of betrayal. We’ve been looking for a ghost.’

I swung down an off-ramp, heading for Bodrum. ‘But we have glimpsed him,’ I continued. ‘We know that he’s been to Afghanistan twice. First as a teenage mujahideen to fight the Soviets and then a few months back to abduct the three foreigners—’

‘Why were those people taken?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’ Ben was offended, but I couldn’t help it – there was no need for him to know, and that was the golden rule in the world he had entered.

‘One aspect of the event, however, has been critical to our plan. Dave McKinley realized it – you can’t abduct three people by yourself. Not in Afghanistan, not from different locations, not from fortified compounds. In that regard, our ghost must have had help. It has given us a way in.

‘McKinley has done two tours in the ’Ghan and nobody in the Western world knows more about the country than him. He’s certain it was old muj comrades, probably one of the warlords, who helped our man. Those ties run deep and would explain why, despite a thousand agents on the ground, we have heard nothing.

‘The second email says that, in two days’ time, one of those helpers – in return for a large cash reward and a new identity – will reveal the names of our ghost and all those who assisted him.’

We had reached the coast, and the setting sun was washing the azure sea with shades of pink. I doubted that Ben had seen anything as beautiful, but he barely registered it.

‘If that were true about the cash reward, what would happen to the men he betrays?’ he asked.

‘They would be interrogated, then handed over to the Afghan government.’

‘And executed.’

‘Yes. The email doesn’t reveal the traitor’s name, but it makes it clear that I know it.’

‘So, if your target – if the ghost – wants to save himself and his comrades, he has to find out from you the name of the turncoat and pass it on to the warlord fast.’